Stories
Stories
Alumni and Faculty Books for March 2016
Alumni Books
The Crimson Emperor: A Tale of Imperial Byzantium
by Wim Baren, i.e., Barry Wemple (MBA 1973)
(Amazon Digital Services)
In this romantic tale, a weapon-maker’s son becomes a deadly warrior and military commander, rising to power as ancient empires clash and a centurion seizes the throne. Enemies plot horrific evils against the hero, even as two passionate women seek him for their own, in a tale of intrigue, revenge, power, and the unquenchable, all-consuming passions of love.
Last Bell: Breaking the Gridlock in Education Reform
by Carl Bistany (OPM 17, 1991) and Stephanie Gruner Buckley
(Profile Books)
Beginning in the mid-1990s, Sabis, a private, for-profit education provider, transformed the Alfred Glickman School from a failing school in one of America’s most violent cities into a silver medalist in U.S. News & World Report’s annual “America’s Best High Schools” list. Given success of this magnitude, why aren’t for-profit managed charter schools like Sabis in high demand? The authors rebut the charge that for-profits running charter schools are in it for the money, not the kids, and they explore the motives of those fighting private-sector involvement in public schools.
We All Leak Eventually: Stories from a Humorously Unbalanced Mind
by Larry Castriotta (MBA 1973)
(Larry Castriotta)
Writing of his life growing up in a small town within a tight, loving family, Castriotta revisits his childhood memories and discusses the travails of growing older. Interspersed with comical tales are perceptive looks at things as different as family Christmas rituals, and the impact of 40 years of communism on society.
When Climate Change Hits Home
by Diogo Castro Freire (MBA 2012)
(Amazon Digital Services LLC)
Can people do something about climate change without compromising their way of life? The author provides surprising answers and helps readers develop a new understanding of the full ramifications of climate change, including the discovery that they have far more control over the impacts of climate change than they probably realize.
Entrepreneurs in Every Generation: How Successful Family Businesses Develop Their Next Leaders
by Allan Cohen (MBA 1961) and Pramodita Sharma
(Berrett-Koehler Publishers)
Companies owned and run by families need to develop leadership and entrepreneurial skills just like any other, but family firms face obstacles that “hire and fire” companies don’t. So what factors in the family and work environments foster the creation of leaders who share the founders’ entrepreneurial fire? How do some firms manage to bypass or work through family conflicts, disparate visions of the future, sibling rivalries, and generational struggles, which cause the demise of so many family businesses? The authors describe the practices that characterize entrepreneurial individuals, families, and organizations and offer detailed advice on how to develop and implement those practices.
Scudder’s Gorge
by Geoffrey Craig (MBA 1967)
(Pacific Press)
This novel tells the story of the residents of a small New England valley. The settlers and Native Americans trade with each other and live in peace until a love affair blossoms between a young Abenaki and the daughter of an elder settler. A crime reverberates down the generations, leading Everett Scudder and his daughter Roseanne to struggle for the dignity of all people.
Doggett Determination: Believing in Yourself to Create Success in Life and Business
by Ron E. Doggett (AMP 81, 1979) and Karen Zelden
(Zelden Writing Solutions LLC)
From Doggett’s modest beginnings in rural Minnesota to becoming CEO of Slim Jim manufacturer GoodMark Foods, this book shares the stories and lessons learned of an ordinary man who achieved extraordinary success by believing in himself. Despite nearly losing his job at General Mills several times, he persevered. How he went on to lead the acquisition of GoodMark from General Mills is just part of his story. His experiences in the corporate world and as a husband, father, philanthropist, and community leader are examples of how to weather storms and thrive, not just in a career but in life.
The Skooter Travels the World in Search of Adventure
by Dave Dressler (AMP 67, 1973)
(Dudley Court Press)
Dressler has written a love story and a travel book, filled with stories and photos of wild animals, diplomatic soirées, cultural fairs, religious and historic places, and even business practices around the globe. He recalls the adventures he shared with Skooter, his wife of sixty years, as she accompanied him on work-related trips to foreign countries.
A Profile of the Performing Arts Industry
by David H. Gaylin (MBA 1979)
(Business Expert Press)
At their best, the performing arts represent the height of human creativity and expression. But presentations on stage, whether they are Shakespeare, Beethoven, or The Lion King, depend on a business backstage. This book provides an overview of both the product on stage and the industry that makes it possible. While the industry's product is unique, with unique supply and demand characteristics, it is still an industry, with economic inputs, business models, competitors, value chains, and a dynamic, challenging marketplace. Gaylin examines each of the major segments (Broadway, regional theater, orchestra, opera, and dance) along these business dimensions.
Six Lenses: Vignettes of Success, Career and Relationships
by Ramabadran Gopalakrishnan (AMP 115, 1994)
(Rupa Publications India Pvt. Ltd.)
According to Gopalakrishnan, perceptions influence our thoughts and actions, and these, in turn, are influenced by the “lenses” through which we see the world. There are six such lenses, he says: purpose, authenticity, courage, trust, luck, and fulfillment. He uses the lives of ordinary people to illustrate his views. By rotating the lenses, he attempts to understand what success in career and life really means. He narrates the stories of PLUs (people like us) from business and society, whom he has known during his career. He elucidates the extraordinary lessons that can be learned from everyday experiences and shows how, by altering our perceptions, we can better overcome the challenges we face at work and in family matters.
The Three-Box Solution: A Strategy for Leading Innovation
by Vijay Govindarajan (MBA 1976, DBA 1978)
(Harvard Business Review Press)
Leaders understand that creating a new business and optimizing an already existing one are two fundamentally different management challenges. The real problem for them is doing both simultaneously. Govindarajan offers a simple, proven method for allocating an organization’s energy, time, and resources across “the three boxes”: the present (keep the current business going), the past (forget what made the business successful), and the future (create the new model).This framework makes leading innovation easier because it gives leaders a simple vocabulary and set of tools for managing and measuring the different sets of behaviors and activities, across all levels of the organization.
Wedged: How You Became a Tool of the Partisan Political Establishment, and How to Start Thinking for Yourself Again
by Erik Fogg and Nathaniel Greene (OPM 42, 2012)
(Eric Fogg)
For over a decade pundits have decried the dysfunction of American politics, and politicians have promised that, if elected, they’ll bring about the change we need. Cynical about such promises, we watch as US politics spirals further into partisan gridlock and mutual antipathy. Solutions to heal the partisan divide haven’t worked because they have failed to address the root cause of the problem: A wedge has been driven into American politics by powerful political, social, and economic incentives that are very difficult to overcome. The authors provide the strategy necessary for people to begin the hard work of extracting that wedge. This book helps readers become aware when wedging is happening to them, illustrates what wedging tactics look like, and provides alternative ways to think about problems that aren't sensationalized, black-and-white extremes.
Wineries of the Sierra Foothills: Risk-Takers & Rule-Breakers
by Barbara Keck (MBA 1976)
(Range of Light Media Group)
The Sierra foothills are the largest wine region in America, covering ten California counties that are best known for their Gold Rush history. Today there are 280 small, welcoming, family-owned wineries in the region that make great wine. This book includes a wine-touring-friendly directory to the 280 wineries and notes their flagship wines and “hidden gems.” The 21 “why they did it” winemaker stories each finish with original family recipes that pair well with their wines. More at www.WineriesOfTheSierraFoothills.com.
Gender Balance: When Men Step Up
edited by Marie-Christine Maheas (GMP 8, 2010)
(Editions Eyrolles)
The business leaders interviewed for this book are categorical: gender balance is a tool to transform organizations and build competitive advantage. But it is also a way of addressing men’s (and Gen Y’s) growing hopes for flexibility and innovative ways of working. This book clarifies the business case for gender balance, explores what men have to gain, and provides the basic knowledge to engender debate and action plans and to get men on board. It takes the man’s point of view in hopes of rebalancing a debate too often confined to women, to political correctness, or to conforming reluctantly to equality laws.
From Start-Up to Global Success: The Zensar Story
by Ganesh Natarajan (AMP 169, 2005) and Prameela Kalive
(Sage Publications Pvt. Ltd.)
At a crossroads in February 2001, the shareholders of Zansar Technologies were waiting for a maiden dividend, and profit margins were sliding. A new leadership team took charge and turned Zensar around into one of the most successful Indian IT companies. The authors tell the story behind Zensar’s success, a story that has seen revenues multiply, share prices jump many times, and customer satisfaction become an industry benchmark.
The Happiness Equation: Want Nothing + Do Anything = Have Everything
by Neil Pasricha (MBA 2007)
(G.P. Putnam Sons)
Pasricha illustrates the happiness equation with nine secrets to happiness, each of which takes a common ideal, flips it on its head, and casts it in a completely new light. He provides step-by-step guidelines for applying each secret to live a happier life today and discusses such ideas as why success doesn’t lead to happiness, why multitasking is a myth, and how eliminating options leads to more choice.
In the Spirit of Napa
by Jennifer Raiser (MBA 1990)
(Assouline Publishing)
Rasier surveys Napa’s great local culinary establishments, legendary wine pioneers and cult labels, notable landmarks from fantasy castles to historic family estates, art collections, music festivals, and hot-air balloon rides. The book ends with a guide to hotels, restaurants, wineries and tasting rooms, natural mineral spas, shopping, sightseeing, entertainment, and recreation.
Investment: A History
by Norton Reamer (MBA 1960) and Jesse Downing
(Columbia Business School Publishing)
This history doubles as a sophisticated account of the opportunities and challenges facing the modern investor. It follows the rise of funded retirement, the evolution of investment vehicles and techniques, investment misdeeds and regulatory reform, government economic policy, the development of investment theory, and the emergence of new investment structures. The authors map these trends and profile the battle between low-cost index and exchange-traded funds, on the one hand, and the higher-fee hedge funds and private equity, on the other.
Women and Transition: Reinventing Work and Life
by Linda Rossetti (MBA 1991)
(Palgrave MacMillan)
Rossetti introduces women to a new way of thinking about the events that shape their adult lives—like marriage, job loss, or empty nests—and offers a step-by-step toolkit designed to help women navigate transition successfully. In a recent study, ninety percent of women stated that they “expect to transition” within the next five years. The book helps women increase their awareness of transition and understand it as positive and optimistic, a substantive departure from the negative characteristics typically ascribed to it.
Deep Blue Eyes on the Greek Isles
by Dimitri S. Sarantis (MBA 1979)
(Demetrios Sarantis)
A romantic suspense novel involving a young Greek businessman and a young Greek applicant to HBS, whose romance is threatened by plots fomented by family and friends.
Driving in the Middle Lane: Business and Life Lessons from the Auto Industry
by Pat Schuch (MBA 1986)
(CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform)
Schuch relates her adventures as a young wife and mother of two who embarked on a 30-year career in the auto industry in 1977. Her anecdotes describe her struggles and successes adapting to the predominantly male working environments of the factory floor and management offices, as well as her family challenges in a dual-career household. At the end of each chapter are “Pearls from Pat,” which reinforce the effective strategies she’s discovered along the way.
Food Foolish: The Hidden Connection between Food Waste, Hunger, and Climate Change
by John M. Mandyck and Eric B. Schultz (MBA 1983)
(Carrier Corp.)
One-third or more of the food produced each year is never eaten. This book details the sources and consequences of this waste. Some 800 million people remain chronically hungry, and more than 2 billion are malnourished, even though we produce enough food today to feed everyone. The carbon footprint of food waste totals 3.3 billion metric tons, enough to rank as the third-largest country in the world in greenhouse gas emissions. Wasted food means wasted fresh water, threatened national security, and increased competition for land. The $1 trillion global financial loss is staggering. Despite these challenges, the authors call attention to the extraordinary social and environmental opportunities created by wasting less food.
So You Want to Start a Hedge Fund: Lessons for Managers and Allocators
by Ted Seides (MBA 1999)
(Wiley)
Seides provides critical lessons and insights for those trying to decipher the industry and those seeking to invest in the next generation of high performers. He focuses on the common travails of startups and small investment firms. Their stories of success and failure include lessons on funding, team development, strategy, performance, and allocation. Some large funds do not survive their founders, and large sums are reallocated to a broader selection of managers. Seides outlines the allocation process for fledgling funds and demonstrates how allocators can avoid pitfalls in their investments. He also shows how to develop a sound strategy and raise needed money, gain a real-world perspective about how allocators think and act, structure the team and investment process for success, and recognize the patterns of successful startups.
Reinventing Dell: The Innovation Imperative
by Heather Simmons (MBA 1990)
(Murmurous Publishing)
This book tells the inside story of one of tech’s most intriguing giants. Simmons asks: How did Dell go from one of the most admired companies in the world to a firm whose stock flatlined for most of a decade? More important, how might it come back? Simmons turns Dell’s rise, fall, and return into cogent lessons for business leaders. She combines insightful interviews from former Dell employees, seminal innovation thinking from authors like Linda Hill and Clayton Christensen, and her own framework. She predicts that Dell’s innovation-driven comeback will be one for the ages and that more than half of Dell’s profits will soon come from product lines it didn't have five years ago.
Faculty Books
The Impact of Globalization on Argentina and Chile: Business Enterprises and Entrepreneurship
edited by Geoffrey Jones and Andrea Lluch
(Edward Elgar Publishers)
In this book leading business historians compare the effects of globalization on two Latin American countries while using the historical lens of the late nineteenth century and the status of the modern economy to draw their conclusions. They examine the impact of multinationals, the growth of business groups, and the conflicing relations between business and government. Specifically, this book provides a new historical perspective on current economic and political crises in Argentina and Chile.
Revolutionizing Innovation: Users, Communities, and Open Innovation
edited by Dietmar Harhoff and Karim R. Lakhani
(MIT Press)
The last two decades have witnessed the growth of new models of managing innovation that emphasize users over producers. Much of the knowledge economy now routinely relies on users, communities, and open innovation approaches to solve technological and organizational problems. This view of innovation counters the dominant paradigm, which casts firms’ profit-seeking incentives as the main driver of technical change. This volume provides a comprehensive, multidisciplinary view of the field of user and open innovation, reflecting advances over the last several decades. The contributors offer theoretical and empirical perspectives from economics, the history of science and technology, law, management, and policy. After discussing the fundamentals of user innovation, the contributors cover communities and innovation; legal aspects of user and community innovation; new roles for user innovators; user interactions with firms; and user innovation in practice.
Negotiating the Impossible: How to Break Deadlocks and Resolve Ugly Conflicts (without Money or Muscle)
by Deepak Malhotra
(Berrett-Koehler Publishers)
Some negotiations are easy; others are more difficult. And some situations seem completely hopeless. Conflict is escalating, people are getting aggressive, and no one is willing to back down. This book shows how to defuse even the most potentially explosive situations and to find success when things seem impossible. Professor Malhotra draws out lessons using behind-the-scenes stories of real-life negotiations, including drafting the U.S. Constitution, resolving the Cuban Missile Crisis, ending bitter disputes in the NFL and NHL, and beating the odds in complex business situations. He shows how these same principles and tactics can be applied in everyday life.
Lead and Disrupt: How to Solve the Innovator’s Dilemma
by Charles A. O’Reilly and Michael Tushman
(Stanford University Press)
Companies large and small are closing more quickly than ever. What does it take to buck this trend? One answer is ambidexterity. Firms must remain competitive in their core markets while also winning in new domains. O’Reilly and Professor Tushman explain how shrewd organizations have used an ambidextrous approach to solve their innovator’s dilemmas. They contrast these companies with those that have been unable to adapt and grow. The authors present a set of practices to guide firms as they adopt ambidexterity. Readers will understand how to improve their existing businesses through efficiency, control, and incremental change while seizing new markets where flexibility, autonomy, and experimentation rule the day.
Consumers, Corporations, and Public Health: A Case-Based Approach to Sustainable Business
by John A. Quelch
(Oxford Univ. Press)
The public health footprint associated with corporate behavior has come under increased scrutiny in the last decade, with increased expectations that private profit not come at the expense of consumer welfare. This book assembles 17 case studies at the intersection of business and public health to illustrate how each side can inform and benefit the other. Through contemporary examples from a variety of industries and geographies, this collection provides readers with an appreciation for the importance of consumer empowerment and consumer behavior in shaping both health and corporate outcomes.
Buying a Small Business: Think Big, Buy Small, Own Your Own Company
by Richard S. Ruback and Royce Yudkoff
(HBR Press)
Professor Ruback and Yudkoff give a practical tour through the steps required to find, evaluate, negotiate, and pay for a smaller firm. They tell the stories of a number of entrepreneurs-through-acquisition to highlight particular tasks or challenges and introduce readers to some fascinating characteristics of the small-firm ecosystem: Did you know that there are about 3,000 brokers in the US alone who specialize in brokering smaller firms? Or that there are private equity firms whose sole business is financing smaller firm entrepreneurs-through-acquisition? The book also deals extensively with mitigating the risks of entrepreneurship, showing readers how to find a business that is “enduringly profitable,” one that is more likely to have a stable income over time.
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