The Innovator’s Guide to Growth: Putting Disruptive Innovation to Work

by Scott D. Anthony (MBA ’01), Mark W. Johnson (MBA ’96), Joseph V. Sinfield, and Elizabeth J. Altman
(HBS Press)

Building on HBS professor Clayton Christensen’s The Innovator’s Dilemma, which illustrated how disruptive innovations drive industry transformation and market creation, the authors explain how to unlock disruption’s transformational power. They provide a set of market-proven tools and approaches to innovation that have been honed through fieldwork with innovative companies like Procter & Gamble and Johnson & Johnson.

Understanding College and University Organization: Theories for Effective Policy and Practice. 2 vols.

by James L. Bess (MBA ’60) and Jay R. Dee
(Stylus Publishing)

The authors aim to show how college and university administration can be made more effective through rational decision-making while also respecting humanistic values. They lay out the positivist, social constructionist, and postmodernist perspectives on the theory of educational organization to help readers develop new ways of thinking about organizational principles and how to apply those ideas to policy-making and management in colleges and universities.

What the Customer Wants You to Know: How Everybody Needs to Think Differently about Sales

by Ram Charan (MBA ’65, DBA ’67)
(Penguin Group)

To upgrade the productivity of a company’s sales force, Charan recommends changing salespeople from “order takers” to knowledgeable ambassadors armed with cost-saving solutions customers will be happy to pay for. His method involves “value creation selling,” that is, reconfiguring a sales force’s orientation toward customers’ profitability before its own success. With diagrams and anecdotes from real companies, Charan shows how to “fix the broken sales process” while applying the concepts and actions to a case study of a fictitious software company.

The Breakthrough Imperative: How the Best Managers Get Outstanding Results

by Mark Gottfredson (MBA ’83) and Steve Schaubert (MBA ’74)
(Collins)

To answer the question implicit in the book’s title, the authors interviewed more than forty CEOs from both industry and the nonprofit sector, studied what successful managers do right, and drew on their own years of experience at Bain. They came up with four principles: costs and prices always decline; competitive position determines options; customers and profit pools don’t stand still; and simplicity gets results.

U.S. Naval Air Superiority: Development of Shipborne Jet Fighters, 1943–1962

by Tommy H. Thomason (MBA ’70)
(Specialty Press)

Thomason profiles the turbulent design and development stage of the Navy’s carrier-based jet fighter program. When introduced, the first jet aircraft were underpowered and in many ways inferior to propeller-driven aircraft of the time. This book examines the Navy’s internal struggle to adapt the jet engine to its style of warfare as well as the development and evolution of carrier-borne fighters and their airframes and engines.

The Tuition Travesty and What Students, Parents, Alumni, and Donors Can Do about It

by Robert Ronstadt (DBA ’75)
(BookSurge Publishing)

This book explains why colleges across the United States are charging so much for tuition and fees and provides dozens of tips and tricks for students and parents looking for an affordable education.

Health Policy Analysis: An Interdisciplinary Approach

by Curtis P. McLaughlin (MBA ’56, DBA ’66) and Craig D. McLaughlin
(Jones & Bartlett Publishers)

Taking the perspectives of such disciplines as economics, political science, management, communications, and public health, and drawing on the experiences of health policies in Canada and several European nations, this book analyzes current and past U.S. health policy and proposes alternatives for developing future health policy. Organized into three sections, it addresses the context of U.S. health policy, the policy analysis process, and the potential role health professionals can play in policymaking.

More Reading

The Journeyman

by Rip Gerber (MBA ’92) (iUniverse Inc.)

The Disposable Male: Sex, Love, and Money — Your World Through Darwin’s Eyes

by Michael Gilbert (MBA ’67) (Hunter Press)

Family Wars: Classic Conflicts in Family Business and How to Deal with Them

by Grant Gordon (OPM 30, 01) and Nigel Nicholson (Kogan Page)

The American Military after 9/11: Society, State, and Empire

by Matthew J. Morgan (MBA ’07) (Palgrave Macmillan)

Passion, Politics and Patriotism in Small-Town America: Confessions of a Plain-Talking, Independent Mayor

by Richard Muti (MBA ’71) (WingSpan Press)

While Bullets Fly: The Story of a Canadian Field Surgical Unit in the Second World War

by Ian Bruce Robertson (MBA ’66) (Trafford Publishing)

The Hunt

by Jennifer Sturman (MBA ’95) (Red Dress Ink)

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