Joel Bines (MBA 1999) spent his high school summers wearing a tricorn hat and waiting for tour buses to disgorge visitors at the Battle Green in his hometown of Lexington, Massachusetts, where the first blood of the American Revolutionary War was spilled. “We’d circle up the tourists, tell them some tales, and then ask for tips,” Bines says. The experience taught him that the better you understand your customer, the richer the tips. He has worked in customer-facing businesses ever since, including his current role as managing director at the global consulting firm AlixPartners, where he specializes in retail turnarounds and transformation. Here, Bines shares a few words about his new book and two other indispensable texts about the trade.

“Since the dawn of time, retail has been about merchants who had stuff, making it available to customers who needed stuff. As the customer, either you bought the stuff or you didn’t. Now consumers can find out anything they want to know about a product and source it from multiple places. They have access to information that used to reside only with the retailers. There was an information asymmetry that created a power dynamic in retail, but that is gone. Consumers have stormed the castle, and the hard work for many companies is going to be shifting from the old paradigm to the new.”

“This book points out that data is driving too much decision-making and that executives have lost the art of management. Sutherland’s main argument—that for a business to be truly customer-focused, it needs to ignore what people say and instead concentrate on what people feel—is profound. Of course data matters, but not exclusively, and especially not in a ‘me-tail’ world.”

“This is the most detailed history of the consumer economy I’ve read. Trentmann takes us through the sweep of history, and it’s a fascinating treatise on the arc of the consumer and the impact on society. At over 800 pages of extra-small print, it’s a lot to tackle, but if you do, you will never look at shopping the same way.”

We also reached out to alumni on social media to ask about the books and podcasts that have been keeping them most informed and best entertained over the last year.

My sectionmate Wendy Lim (MBA 2006) told me that she read a hundred books last year, so of course I asked her for a recommendation. She suggested A Gentleman in Moscow, by Amor Towles. It did not disappoint. A great story for a claustrophobic time.
—Josh Green (MBA 2006)

The Premonition, by Michael Lewis, is a fascinating account about how creative thinkers and actors, with on-the-ground experience, find each other to move large organizations—in this case, governments.
—Eileen Rudden (MBA 1976)

A recent fave is The Surrender Experiment, by Michael Singer. Unlike the bold and brash Silicon Valley founder profile, this is the story of a ponytailed, non-business-suit-wearing yogi who built his billion-dollar medical technology business from a spiritual retreat center in Florida.
—Jinny Uppal (PLDA 9, 2012)

Favorite? Not sure I have an answer on that but I’m nearly done with The Codebreakers and just finished Professor Tom Eisenmann’s book, Why Startups Fail.
—Michael Horn (MBA 2006)

Since he’s on the thread and not tooting his own horn, I’ll give a vote for Michael Horn’s podcast, Future U. It’s great for anyone interested in higher ed and workforce development.
—Scott Benson (MBA 2008)

I’ve been listening to many of the podcasts by Mark Groves. I love his lighthearted style, humility, and vulnerability as he explores topics around personal connections and relationships.
—Shibani Joshi (MBA 2004)

I read Blue Ocean Shift, by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne, and discovered that it is possibly even more engaging than Blue Ocean Strategy. It may be that my expectations were low since it was the second part of a terrific management strategy book. The lesson is to never prejudge a book!
—Ambi Parameswaran (AMP 186, 2014)

The Paper Palace, by Miranda Cowley Heller, is an immersive, literary, emotional, and utterly captivating story about a middle-aged woman with three kids and a husband on Cape Cod and her choice to reunite with the love of her life.
—Zibby Owen (MBA 2003)

The Ministry for the Future, by Kim Stanley Robinson, is a powerful climate novel. It helps one understand better how things might proceed, and somehow it manages to be almost optimistic.
—Mark Tercek (MBA 1984)

In Angle of Attack: Harrison Storms and the Race to the Moon, Mike Gray tells the story of the people who built the Apollo mission. It’s very crisp, with tons of interesting details, and never boring.
—Humberto Bento Ayres Pereira (MBA 2011)

I’m really enjoying If I Live to Be 100: The Wisdom of Centenarians, by Allison Milionis and Paul Mobley, and Aging Gracefully: Portraits of People Over 100, by Karsten Thormaehlen. Both books shine the light on the greatest generation’s resilience, faith, wellness, and their positive outlooks.
—Jen Wilfong (GMP 3, 2007)

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