Stories
Stories
Edited by Margie Kelley
Far as the Eye Can See: A History of Seeing
by Susan M. Denham (MBA 1993)
The History Press
From the mastery of fire a million years ago, humans have repeatedly invented new ways to see their surroundings, each other and themselves. Artificial light, early art, mirrors, writing, lenses, printing, photography, film, television, the smart phone—these tools shaped Western culture and made us who we are. As Far as the Eye Can See traces the history of seeing from the first evolutionary stirrings of sight to the present. It reveals that each time we invented technologies that changed how or what we see, we changed ourselves and the world around us. Visual technologies propelled the human journey from walking apes to masters of nature to self-obsessed screen junkies. Having come this far, the author asks, are we now at peak seeing? Can our eyes—and the rest of us—keep up with technology’s relentless march? Have we gone as far as the eye can see? Told in five parts, Becoming, Transforming, Observing, Showing, and Curating, this book shows how each revolution in seeing has determined who we have become—and how we might change in the future.
Rogue Money and the Underground Economy
edited by John Edmunds (DBA 1977)
Greenwood
This easy-to-use guide covers the history, development, and current workings of cyber currencies and the underground economy, both in the United States and around the world. In addition to providing background on how major underground economic activities work to put cyber currencies in context, the book discusses the benefits and drawbacks of the increased role of cyber currencies in today's underground economy. It also includes an appendix of illuminating primary documents, providing insights into key historical developments.
The Case Method Miracle
by Anne Jones (MBA 1997)
Crimson Square Press
“Socrates created it. Harvard Business School perfected it. We parent with it; anyone, anywhere, anytime. Kids get grit and wise judgment.” Parent Anne Jones has created a “case method parenting approach” inspired by her MBA experience at Harvard, to address a variety of child-rearing challenges. Instead of control and discipline, this approach aims to help children to think for themselves, own their behavior and choices, and develop confidence from a young age.
The Speculator's Mosaic
by Robert Leppo (MBA 1969)
Self-published
The Speculator’s Mosaic is a speculative investment book that details the hard-earned wisdom accumulated during five decades of speculation and portfolio management. Culled from a lifetime of successes—and failures—the book offers a detailed suite of tricks and strategies that have given author Bob Leppo an edge in stock market investing, commodity futures, and the wild world of venture capital. Part memoir, part tale of discovery and rebirth, The Speculator’s Mosaic is a no-nonsense guide to navigating the ups and downs—financial, emotional, and otherwise—of a career in speculative investment. Detailing a half-century of stock market hits and misses, often with brutal honesty, the book relays lessons learned from both the crucible of failure and the elation of success.
The Disruption Mindset: Why Some Organizations Transform While Others Fail
by Charlene Li (MBA 1993)
Ideapress Publishing
Many companies make disruption their goal. They believe that if they develop the right innovation, they will disrupt their markets forever and drive the kind of growth worthy of a magazine cover story. But as bestselling author Charlene Li explains, that’s not how disruption works. Disruption doesn’t create growth; instead, growth creates disruption.
Growth is always hard, and disruptive growth is exponentially harder. It requires companies to make tough decisions in the face of daunting uncertainties: Should we bet our company’s future on next-generation customers or today’s reliable ones? Should we abandon our current business model for an entirely new one? Making bold changes demands bold leadership and, often, massive cultural transformation.
Li points to organizations that beat the odds and succeeded at becoming disruptive: Adobe, ING Bank, Nokia, Southern New Hampshire University, and T-Mobile, among them. Their stories make it clear that organizations don’t have to be tech startups or have the latest innovations to transform. What they need to do is develop a disruptive mindset that permeates every aspect of the organization. Drawing on interviews with some of the most audacious people driving disruptive transformation today, Li will inspire leaders at all levels to answer the call to lead disruptive transformation in their organizations, communities, and society.
Innovation on Tap: Stories of Entrepreneurship from the Cotton Gin to Broadway's Hamilton
by Eric B. Schultz (MBA 1983)
Greenleaf Book Group LLC
Innovation on Tap is the story of 300 years of innovation in America, told through the eyes of 25 entrepreneurs—living and departed—who have gathered to “talk shop” in an imaginary barroom under the watchful eye of economist-turned-bouncer, Joseph Schumpeter. From Eli Whitney and his cotton gin to the Broadway smash, Hamilton, their stories capture the essential themes of entrepreneurship, highlight the rules for success, and celebrate the expansive sweep of innovations that have transformed our world.
No Investors? No Problem!: A Serial Bootstrapper’s Playbook for Breakthrough Success on a Shoestring Budget
by Marty Schultz (OPM 31, 2002)
Self-published
Marty Schultz is a bootstrapping expert: he's bootstrapped five highly successful companies in his career. He is a mentor to entrepreneurs, an angel fund investor, and an award-winning innovator. In this playbook, Schultz makes the case for not raising outside money, finding mentors, and doing every job before hiring others and also discusses how to pivot when things go wrong and why failure is an outdated concept.
What It Takes: Lessons in the Pursuit of Excellence
by Steven A. Schwarzman (MBA 1972)
Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster
What it Takes: Lessons in the Pursuit of Excellence is the first book from Stephen A. Schwarzman, Chairman, CEO and co-founder of the Blackstone Group. Pulling from his 50-year career in finance, the book provides a practical blueprint for anyone wanting to learn how to make an impact as a leader, learn and adapt from failures, build thriving teams, and generally achieve success in both work and life regardless of industry, discipline or level of experience. Through lively storytelling, the book unveils the hard-learned and invaluable lessons from Schwarzman’s life and career that includes creating one of the world’s largest investment firms, and becoming an active philanthropist. The result is an empowering, entertaining, and inspiring guide to optimizing ambition, scale, risk, and opportunity in order to achieve excellence.
Fit to Compete
by Michael Beer, Cahners-Rabb Professor of Business Administration, Emeritus
Harvard Business Review Press
In his 30 years of working in corporations, HBS professor Michael Beer has witnessed firsthand how organizational silence derails strategic objectives. When employees can't speak truth to power, senior leaders don't hear what they need to hear about their company's fitness to compete and employees lose trust in those leaders and become less committed to change. In Fit to Compete, Beer presents an antidote to silence—principles and a time-tested innovative process for holding honest conversations with everyone in your organization. Used by more than 800 organizations across the globe, the strategic fitness process has helped leaders in a diverse range of industries—including medical technology, information technology, banking, restaurant chains, and pharmaceuticals—hear the raw but necessary truth about the sources of misalignment between their strategies and their organizations. In addition to step-by-step instructions, Beer offers illustrative case studies of companies that have conducted honest conversations to great effect. He shows how to apply the process more broadly to a variety of strategic challenges and at multiple levels throughout the organization.
Teaching by Heart
by Thomas Delong, Baker Foundation Professor of Management Practice
Harvard Business Review Press
Teaching by Heart summarizes the author's key insights gained from more than 40 years of teaching and managing, and illustrates how teachers can both lift people up and let them down. In examining how to lead and teach, renowned HBS professor Thomas J. DeLong takes the reader inside his own head and heart. He notes that, as teachers, we often focus more on our inadequacies and missteps than on our strengths and unique talents. He explains why this is so by dissecting and analyzing his own experiences--using himself as a case study. The book's goal is to help readers learn about the intricacies of teaching and managing, and to impart lessons about how teachers can create a unique teaching atmosphere. Throughout Teaching by Heart, DeLong discusses why empathy and authenticity matter. When teachers embrace this mindset, students have the opportunity to have a unique learning experience. Teachers and managers will learn how to create moments of transformation for students.
Business, Ethics and Institutions: The Evolution of Turkish Capitalism in Global Perspectives
edited by Asli M. Colpan and Geoffrey Jones, Isidor Straus Professor of Business History
Routledge
Business, Ethics and Institutions is the first systematic scholarly study on the business history of Turkey from the nineteenth century until the present. It aims to place the distinctive characteristics of capitalism in Turkey within a global and comparative perspective, dealing with three related issues. First, it examines the institutional context that shaped the capitalist development in Turkey. Second, it focuses on the corporate actors, entrepreneurs and business enterprises that have led the national economic growth. Third, it explores the ethical foundations and social responsibility of business enterprises in the country. The comparative and historical approach sets the volume apart from previous books on the subject. The authors aim to strengthen scholarly and policy understanding of Turkish capitalism and the diversified business groups which dominate the economy by providing a deep analysis of the evolution of political and social institutions which shaped corporate activity.
Competing in the Age of AI: Strategy and Leadership When Algorithms and Networks Run the World
by Marco Iansiti, David Sarnoff Professor of Business Administration and Unit Head, Technology and Operations Management;
and Karim R. Lahkani, Charles Edward Wilson Professor of Business Administration
Harvard Business Review Press
Marco Iansiti and Karim R. Lakhani show how reinventing the firm around data, analytics, and AI removes traditional constraints on scale, scope, and learning that have restricted business growth for hundreds of years. From Airbnb to Ant Financial, Microsoft to Amazon, research shows how AI-driven processes are vastly more scalable than traditional processes, allow massive scope increase, enabling companies to straddle industry boundaries, and create powerful opportunities for learning—to drive ever more accurate, complex, and sophisticated predictions.
When traditional operating constraints are removed, strategy becomes a whole new game. The authors present a framework for rethinking business and operating models, explain how "collisions" between AI-driven/digital and traditional/analog firms are reshaping competition, reveal the opportunities and risks created by digital firms, and describe challenges and responsibilities for leaders of both digital and traditional firms. Packed with examples from the most powerful and innovative AI-driven competitors, and based on research in hundreds of firms across many sectors, this is an essential guide for rethinking how your firm competes and operates in the era of AI.
The Wise Company: How Companies Create Continuous Innovation
by Ikujiro Nonaka and Hirotaka Takeuchi, Professor of Management Practice, Strategy Unit
Oxford University Press
High-velocity change is the fundamental challenge facing companies today. Few companies, however, are prepared to continuously innovate because they focus on the short term and do not emphasize the wisdom needed to make sure that their interests are aligned with those of society. Practical wisdom is the basis of continuous innovation, where companies are ceaselessly creating and disseminating new knowledge, and converting it to action over time. In The Wise Company, legendary management experts Ikujiro Nonaka and Hirotaka Takeuchi highlight how various companies have confronted the challenge of rapid change to create new products and new ways of doing business that benefit employees, consumers, and society. The key: a relentless self-renewal process where companies realize the future they envision, rather than only responding to changes in the environment.
Experimentation Works: The Surprising Power of Business Experiments
by Stefan H. Thomke, William Barclay Harding Professor of Business Administration; Chair, General Management Program
Harvard Business Review Press (February 2020)
When it comes to improving customer experiences, trying out new business models, or developing new products, even the most experienced managers often get it wrong. They discover that intuition, experience, and big data alone don't work. What does? Running disciplined business experiments. And what if companies roll out new products or introduce new customer experiences without running these experiments? They fly blind. In this rigorously researched and eye-opening book, Stefan H. Thomke guides us through best practices in business experimentation, illustrates how these practices work at leading companies, and answers some fundamental questions: What makes a good experiment? How do you test in online and brick-and-mortar businesses? In B2B and B2C? How do you build an experimentation culture?
Some hugely successful companies, such as Amazon, Booking.com, and Microsoft, run tens of thousands of controlled experiments annually, engaging millions of users. Thomke shows us how these and many other organizations prove that experimentation provides significant competitive advantage.
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