In 2004, Carl Schramm, president of the Kauffman Foundation, the world's leading foundation for entrepreneurship, published a groundbreaking essay with a radical premise: that Americans literally have no conception of the secret that truly underlies our economic success, and that for the United States to survive and continue to lead the world's economy, it is imperative we learn to understand and employ that secret.The secret that has led the American economy to become the world's strongestOur unparalleled skill as entrepreneurs. As Schramm compellingly shows in this sweeping manifesto, entrepreneurship alone not anything else can give America the necessary leverage to remain an economic superpower. Not technology, since everyone now has the same technology, or access to it. Not education we are years behind other nations in this area. Not basic manufacturing, long since moved overseas from the United States. And not capital markets, now truly global entities.Drawing on detailed research conducted by the Kauffman Foundation and on his decades of experience as an entrepreneur himself and as a leader and mentor to other entrepreneurs, Schramm persuasively demonstrates in detail what this entrepreneurial imperative means for the way we run universities and foundations, lead companies, make personal job decisions, and even conduct our foreign affairs. The Entrepreneurial Imperative will change not only the way our government, corporations, and nonprofits operate, but also our day-to-day lives as working Americans.

Rick Pitino is a basketball icon: the only coach in college history to lead three different schools to the Final Four, the winner of the 1996 NCAA championship, the owner of a sparkling career record, a bestselling author, and a lock for the College Basketball Hall of Fame. Yet Pitino's journey has not been without life-altering adversity: He's experienced profound personal and professional losses. In 2001, after three losing seasons as coach and president of the Boston Celtics, Pitino resigned, walking away from the $23 million left in his contract. And while recovering from the only breakdown in his extraordinary basketball career, Pitino who had previously suffered the devastating loss of his infant son, Daniel endured additional tragedies: His brother-in-law and best friend Billy Minardi, a trader at Cantor Fitzgerald, perished in the World Trade Center attacks of 9/11, less than a year after another brother-in-law had been fatally struck by a taxi. Pitino writes, "From that point on, my life changed forever. Nothing will ever be the same."This realization gave Pitino a new perspective. With it, the innovative leader felt the freedom to act even more dynamically than he ever had in the past. Returning to college basketball, he has rebuilt and revitalized the storied program at Louisville, guiding the Cardinals to a history-making Final Four appearance in 2005 that stamped him the only coach in history to take three schools that far. And in 2008, he rallied an injury-plagued Louisville team from a disappointing start and led it to the Elite Eight, setting the stage for greater success to come.The failures and tragedies he recounts make this book unique. More than just a recitation of what works and why, it's about how to succeed after you've failed; how to pick yourself up after being knocked down; and how to reframe yourself and see the world in a new light. This is a comeback story, a manual for overcoming life's difficulties. Pitino has experienced success as an author with his tremendously popular books Success Is a Choice and Lead to Succeed, but in Rebound Rules: The Art of Success 2.0, he's crafted a book that's more deeply personal, more inspiring, more practical, and more powerful than any he's written before.

In this penetrating work of investigative and historical journalism, Eamon Javers explores the dangerous and combustible power spies hold over international business.Today's global economy has a dark underbelly: the world of corporate espionage. Using cutting-edge technology, age-old techniques of deceit and manipulation, and sheer talent, spies act as the hidden puppeteers of globalized businesses. They control markets, determine prices, influence corporate decisions, and manage the flow of data and information of some of the world's biggest corporations. In his gripping and alarming book, Eamon Javers takes the reader inside this hidden global industry. Readers meet the spies who conduct surveillance operations, satellite analysts who peer down on corporate targets from the skies, veteran CIA officers who work for hedge funds, and even a Soviet military intelligence officer who now sells his services to American companies.This industry has tentacles in almost every industry in almost every corner of the globe. Intelligence companies and the spies they employ are setting up fake Web sites to elicit information, trailing individuals and mirroring travel itiner-aries, Dumpster-diving in household and corporate trash, using ultrasophisticated satellite surveillance to spy on facilities, acting as impostors to take jobs within companies or to gain access to corporations, concocting elaborate schemes of fraud and deceit, and hacking e-mail and secure computer networks. The work of this industry can be ingenious, but it also raises crucial moral and legal questions in a world where global conflicts are as likely to be corporation versus corporation as they are to be nation versus nation.This globalized industry is not a recent phenomenon, but rather a continuation of a fascinating history. The story begins with Allan Pinkerton, the nation's first true "private eye," and extends through the annals of a rich history that includes tycoons and playboys, presidents and FBI operatives, CEOs and accountants, Cold War veterans and military personnel. Built on exclusive reporting and unprecedented access, this book features accounts of Howard Hughes's private CIA, the extensive spying that took place in a battle between two global food companies, and interviews with some of the world's top corporate surveillance experts.

Going Wireless delivers the unexpected by showing how wireless is transforming every type of enterprise from micro-businesses to multi-national conglomerates.Award-winning technology journalist Jaclyn Easton begins with an in-depth look at owning your customers and clients through mobile commerce whether your company focuses on consumers or business-to-business.From there you will learn about the advantages of wirelessly fortifying your mobile workforce of itinerant executives, sales personnel, and field service technicians as well as how wireless is dramatically redefining customer service, marketing, and advertising.Going Wireless also delves deep inside the corporation. First you'll find out why most companies are "handsizing" in addition to deploying wireless technology to rejuvenate warehouses, supply chains, procurement procedures, data collection, competitive intelligence, and much more.The best part is that these scenarios are supported by over 40 brand-name success stories, including: How Sears saves millions by wirelessly enabling 100 percent of their appliance repair technicians; How the Gap proved that by sewing wireless technology in their clothing they could reduce labor distribution costs by 50 percent; How McKessanHBOC a Fortune 40 corporation used mobile technology to entirely eliminate all their manifest imaging costs. While most people associate wireless with cell phones and Palm handhelds, you'll also learn that wireless has been around for over 100 years and has spawned mobile options you've never heard of and is being used in ways you've never imagined.This makes Going Wireless the perfect book for executives and managers who need a comprehensive overview of the wireless options that can make their companies more competitive, more productive, and more profitable.

For more than twenty years, Stanley Bing has peerlessly explained corporate culture and strategy with wit and insight. Now he brings us this engaging and instructive book of white-collar fables that have charmed generations of businesspeople since Greece was glorious and Rome was grand, brilliant gems of wisdom flowing from the pen of the mysterious, legendary author known throughout the ancient corporate world by a single name: Bingsop. Bingsop's Fables is animated by a cast of archetypal characters that are as iconic and representative of human nature as were the jackdaw, the dull, the snake, the hare, the lion, the horse, and all the rest of the birds and beasts that populated the stories of that other fabulist, Aesop. The Stupid Investor, the Miserable Misery Mogul, the Ill-Tempered PR Person, and the Potentially Generous CEO each struts and frets his hour upon the stage and, in the end, presents us with a moral that rings so true it would hurt if we were not also laughing. Festooned with provocative, witty illustrations by New Yorker artist Steve Brodner, this lean, muscular edition will equally be at home on the shelves of aspiring hedge fund managers hoping to kill their elders as on the credenzas of those beleaguered executives who hear the next generation coming up fast from behind. No business library should be considered complete without it.

The definitive account of Wall Street's stunning collapse From critically acclaimed investigative journalist and CNBC personality Charles Gasparino comes a sweeping examination of the most recent volatile, anxiety-ridden era in our nation's socioeconomic history. The Sellout traces the implosion of the financial services business back to its roots in the late 1970s when Wall Street embraced a new business model predicated on taking enormous risks. It shows how a backwater business involving the trading of risky bonds packed with mortgages showered countless billions in profits on the financial industry but sowed the seeds of its ultimate demise. Gasparino walks readers through Wall Street's three-decades' love affair with risk, revealing a trail of culpability from the government bureaucrats who crafted housing policies that encouraged homeownership, to the Wall Street firms that underwrote and invested in risky debt, to the mortgage sellers who handed out loans to people without the financial wherewithal to pay them back, to the homeowners who became convinced they could afford mansions on blue-collar wages. The ongoing tumult in financial markets and the global economy began when some of our most esteemed financial institutions, our government, and even average citizens abdicated their collective responsibilities, eventually selling out investors and selling off the American Dream itself. In the spirit of classics such as Barbarians at the Gate and Liar's Poker, this page-turning narrative captures how avarice, arrogance, and sheer stupidity eroded Wall Street's dominance and profoundly weakened the financial security of millions of middle-class Americans. Eye-opening and engrossing, The Sellout provides the most thorough investigation to date of this latest gilded era.

A provocative user's guide to a world where the only thing that doesn't change is change itself "Before I die," Albert Einstein once said, "I hope someone will clarify quantum physics for me. After I die, I hope God will explain turbulence to me." Einstein might have been more confused today: Turbulence, in all its manifestations, is on the rise. Financial markets gyrate. Commodity prices zig and zag. New technologies disrupt long-standing businesses and entire industries. Scientific discoveries overturn historical truisms. Dirty bombs and pension busts, natural disasters and flu pandemics, add to the tumult. We live in a world beset by turbulence.We often respond to turbulence by accelerating activities that worked in the past. We lapse into inertia when we should adapt with agility, and we cling to rigid dogmas when we should improvise. But throughout history, volatility has not only dethroned incumbent leaders, it has also created untold possibilities to create economic value. Turbulence has an upside, and companies that seize the opportunities arising out of seething markets will become tomorrow's champions. Based on more than a decade of research, The Upside of Turbulence draws lessons from companies that have consistently spotted and exploited opportunities that rivals have missed. The book explores realms ranging from improvisational comedy to the U.S. Marine Corp's combat doctrine. The result is a series of provocative insights that defy conventional wisdom. The book also introduces practical tools, which have been field-tested by executives around the world, to wrestle triumph out of turmoil.

In Boundaries for Leaders, clinical psychologist and bestselling author Dr. Henry Cloud leverages his expertise of human behavior, neuroscience, and business leadership to explain how the best leaders set boundaries within their organizations--with their teams and with themselves--to improve performance and increase employee and customer satisfaction. In a voice that is motivating and inspiring, Dr. Cloud offers practical advice on how to manage teams, coach direct reports, and instill an organization with strong values and culture. Boundaries for Leaders: Take Charge of Your Business, Your Team, and Your Life is essential reading for executives and aspiring leaders who want to create successful companies with satisfied employees and customers, while becoming more resilient leaders themselves.

A lot of people talk about how great it is to start a business, but only Ben Horowitz is brutally honest about how hard it is to run one.In The Hard Thing About Hard Things, Ben Horowitz, cofounder of Andreessen Horowitz and one of Silicon Valley's most respected and experienced entrepreneurs, draws on his own story of founding, running, selling, buying, managing, and investing in technology companies to offer essential advice and practical wisdom for navigating the toughest problems business schools don't cover. His blog has garnered a devoted following of millions of readers who have come to rely on him to help them run their businesses. A lifelong rap fan, Horowitz amplifies business lessons with lyrics from his favorite songs and tells it straight about everything from firing friends to poaching competitors, from cultivating and sustaining a CEO mentality to knowing the right time to cash in.His advice is grounded in anecdotes from his own hard-earned rise from cofounding the early cloud service provider Loudcloud to building the phenomenally successful Andreessen Horowitz venture capital firm, both with fellow tech superstar Marc Andreessen (inventor of Mosaic, the Internet's first popular Web browser). This is no polished victory lap; he analyzes issues with no easy answers through his trials, including demoting (or firing) a loyal friend; whether you should incorporate titles and promotions, and how to handle them; if it's OK to hire people from your friend's company; how to manage your own psychology, while the whole company is relying on you; what to do when smart people are bad employees; why Andreessen Horowitz prefers founder CEOs, and how to become one; whether you should sell your company, and how to do it. Filled with Horowitz's trademark humor and straight talk, and drawing from his personal and often humbling experiences, The Hard Thing About Hard Things is invaluable for veteran entrepreneurs as well as those aspiring to their own new ventures.

New Ideas from Dead CEOs uncovers the secrets of success of great CEOs by giving readers an intimate look at their professional and personal lives. Why did Ray Kroc's plan for McDonald's thrive when many burger joints failedAnd how, decades later, did Krispy Kreme fail to heed Kroc's hard-won lessonsHow did Walt Disney's most dismal day as a young cartoonist radically change his careerWhen Estée Lauder was a child in Queens, New York, the average American spent $8 a year on toiletries. Why did she spot an opportunity in selling high-priced cosmetics, and why did she pound on Saks's doorsHow did Thomas Watson Jr. decide to roll the dice and put all of IBM's chips on computing, when his father thought it could be a losing ideaWe learn about these CEOs' greatest challenges and failures, and how they successfully rode the waves of demographic and technological change.New Ideas from Dead CEOs not only gives us fascinating insights into these CEOs' lives, but also shows how we can apply their ideas to the present-day triumphs and struggles of Sony, Dell, Costco, Carnival Cruises, Time Warner, and numerous other companies trying to figure out how to stay on top or climb back up. The featured CEOs in this book were not candidates for sainthood. Many of them knew "god" only as a prefix to "dammit." But they were devoted to their businesses, not just to their egos and their personal bank accounts and yachts. Extraordinarily fresh and deeply thoughtful, Todd G. Buchholz's New Ideas from Dead CEOs is a truly enjoyable and fun yet serious and realistic look at what we still have to learn and absorb from these decomposing CEOs.

Everything you thought you knew about saving, managing risk, and securing your financial future has changed. The world is very different in the wake of the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression. Retirement accounts have been eviscerated, risk appetites diminished, and questions raised about age-old personal finance strategies such as "buy and hold" and the efficacy of relying heavily on stock mutual funds.In The Wall Street Journal Guide to the New Rules of Personal Finance, Dave Kansas offers guidelines for understanding the new regulations for finance firms, the rising importance of international investing, and the very different environment that now exists for home buyers. With valuable chapters on debt reduction, diversification, retirement planning, real estate, commodities, and other vital topics, this essential volume is designed to help the individual determine which tenets of an investing strategy remain sound and which deserve re-examination. It is the ultimate guide to profitably investing your money in a world that has fundamentally changed.

What happens when a renowned river guide teams up with the CEO of one of the largest and least Earth-friendly corporations in the worldWhen it's former Wal-Mart CEO H. Lee Scott and white-water expert turned sustainability consultant Jib Ellison, the result is nothing less than a green business revolution.Wal-Mart long the target of local businesses, labor advocates, and environmentalists who deplore its outsourced, big-box methods has embraced an unprecedented green makeover, which is now spreading worldwide. The retail giant that rose from Sam Walton's Ozarks dime store is leveraging the power of 200 million weekly customers to drive waste, toxics, and carbon emissions out of its stores and products. Neither an act of charity nor an empty greenwash, Wal-Mart's green move reflects its river guide's simple, compelling philosophy: that the most sustainable, clean, energy-efficient, and waste-free company will beat its competitors every time. Not just in some distant, utopian future but today. From energy conservation, recycling, and hybrid trucks to reduced packaging and partnerships with environmentalists it once met only in court, Wal-Mart has used sustainability to boost its bottom line even in a tough economy belying the age-old claim that going green kills jobs and profits. Now the global apparel business, the American dairy industry, big agriculture, and even Wall Street are following Wal-Mart's lead, along with the 100,000 manufacturers whose products must become more sustainable to remain on Wal-Mart's shelves. Here Pulitzer Prize winner and bestselling author Edward Humes charts the course of this unlikely second industrial revolution, in which corporate titans who once believed profit and planet must be at odds are learning that the best business just may be a force of nature.

You are not alone. Finally, here is a book that gets to the heart of what professional women want. You've probably been loath to admit it, but like most of us, you have had enough of the sixty-hour workweeks, the day-care dash, and the vacations that never get taken. You don't want to quit, you want to work but on your own terms and in ways that make it possible to have a life as well.Women have power. In Womenomics, journalists Shipman and Kay deal in facts, not stereotypes, providing a fresh perspective on the largely hidden power that women have in today's marketplace. WhyCompanies with more women managers are more profitable. Women do more of the buying. A talent shortage looms. Younger generations want to work flexibly, too. It all adds up to a workplace revolution that is great news for professional women not to mention men and businesses as well. As Brenda Barnes, CEO of Sara Lee, notes: Companies need to recognize that this kind of flexibility offers employees the ability to manage and balance their own careers and lives, which in turn improves productivity and employee morale.This new way of thinking and working is all the more valuable in a recession, as companies begin offering flexible schedules, four-day workweeks, and extended vacations as a way to avoid layoffs, save costs, and still reward employees. It is personal. Womenomics does more than marshal the evidence of this historic shift. It also shows women how to redefine success, be productive, and build satisfying careers that don't require an all-or-nothing lifestyle. Most appealing are the candid personal anecdotes from Shipman's and Kay's own experiences and the stories they have gathered from professional women around the country who are coping with the same issues.It is possible. Shipman and Kay don't waste time on what women can't do or can't have. Instead, they show women how to chart an empowering, exhilarating course to a richer life. Inspiring, practical, and persuasive, Womenomics offers a groundbreaking blueprint for changing the way you live and work with advice, guidance, and fact-based support that proves you don't have to do it all to have it all.

Seven business innovators and the empires they built. The pre eminent business historian of our time Richard S. Tedlow examines seven great CEOs who successfully managed cutting edge technology and formed enduring corporate empires. With the depth and clarity of a master Tedlow illuminates the minds lives and strategies behind the legendary successes of our times: . George Eastman and his invention of the Kodak camera; . Thomas Watson of IBM; . Henry Ford and his automobile; . Charles Revson and his use of television advertising to drive massive sales for Revlon; . Robert N. Noyce co inventor of the integrated circuit and founder of Intel; . Andrew Carnegie and his steel empire; . Sam Walton and his unprecedented retail machine Wal Mart.

Want freedom from management, mediocrity and moronsEver wonder what the best bosses know that you don'tDo you want to have great employees, people who don't need to be managed and who make everyone around them work harder and raise the department to a higher standardThe Gifted Boss is management guru Dale Dauten's classic yet revolutionary guidebook on teaching managers how to spot and court talent and how to give great employees what they want and need. This is a comprehensive system full of valuable insight and lessons aimed at creating the best work environment for the best people. Throughout The Gifted Boss, Dale Dauten defines his different breed of leader as one who is able to shape a business environment and culture that is a magnet for self-motivated employees. Dauten's starting point is a powerful fact about hiring great employees: the best ones are almost never in the job market. His system also includes a discussion of "ideal turnover" and how the great managers employ "the secret skill" of "de-hiring" to gracefully move mediocre employees up or out. Throughout his discussions, Dauten incorporates priceless knowledge gained from an exhaustive search for America's best bosses. The wisdom he acquired was startling, and it pertained to every type of organization: "Different isn't always better, but better is always different." The Gifted Boss has already earned itself a cult following. Now, based on conversations with hundreds of readers, Dauten has revised his work by adding a quick-start guide to help his audience get fast results and a discussion guide to help executives share the book with their teams. Though new technology continues to bring new changes to communication in the workplace, The Gifted Boss still remains the essential guide to maneuvering the tricky world of managing the modern employee. It belongs on every businessperson's desk.

Let's say you're about to hire somebody for a position in your company. Your corporation wants someone who's fearless, charismatic, and full of new ideas. Candidate X is charming, smart, and has all the right answers to your questions. Problem solved, rightMaybe not.We'd like to think that if we met someone who was completely without conscience -- someone who was capable of doing anything at all if it served his or her purposes -- we would recognize it. In popular culture, the image of the psychopath is of someone like Hannibal Lecter or the BTK Killer. But in reality, many psychopaths just want money, or power, or fame, or simply a nice car. Where do these psychopaths goOften, it's to the corporate world. Researchers Paul Babiak and Robert Hare have long studied psychopaths. Hare, the author of Without Conscience, is a world-renowned expert on psychopathy, and Babiak is an industrial-organizational psychologist. Recently the two came together to study how psychopaths operate in corporations, and the results were surprising. They found that it's exactly the modern, open, more flexible corporate world, in which high risks can equal high profits, that attracts psychopaths. They may enter as rising stars and corporate saviors, but all too soon they're abusing the trust of colleagues, manipulating supervisors, and leaving the workplace in shambles.Snakes in Suits is a compelling, frightening, and scientifically sound look at exactly how psychopaths work in the corporate environment: what kind of companies attract them, how they negotiate the hiring process, and how they function day by day. You'll learn how they apply their "instinctive" manipulation techniques -- assessing potential targets, controlling influential victims, and abandoning those no longer useful -- to business processes such as hiring, political command and control, and executive succession, all while hiding within the corporate culture. It's a must read for anyone in the business world, because whatever level you're at, you'll learn the subtle warning signs of psychopathic behavior and be able to protect yourself and your company -- before it's too late.

In this gripping and colorful account of the American dream gone astray, Lewis Pinault provides the essential guidelines on how to get ahead and an enlightening perspective on the brutal infighting that can engulf even the most civilized consulting firm. This stunning expose of some of the most prestigious and respected names in the business leads you into a world where a client's interests are skillfully subordinated to those of the consultants, where money rules the day, and where principles and morals are unwelcome baggage.Humorous and insightful, this no-holds-barred account takes you behind the scenes of the dehumanizing indoctrination of an academic intellectual into an exploitative -- and exploited -- "global transformation contractor." Featuring new material dealing with the e-consulting industry's boom, bust, and its future, Consulting Demons offers the most complete look at an industry that exacts the highest prices for the most questionable standards of success.

A global-innovation expert offers a new perspective on how consumers think and how to develop products and services that affect their everyday lives.Who are your next customers not just the ones you are serving today but the ones you'll need three, five, or ten years from nowHow do you figure out what goods and services will attract them in the future before your competitors do?According to Jan Chipchase whom Fast Company has called the James Bond of design research and Fortune has called the Indiana Jones of technology for the developing world most of the clues are right in front of us. The key is learning to see the ordinary in a revolutionary new way. As the executive creative director of Global Insights at frog, an award-winning global design and innovation company, Chipchase draws on everyday objects and patterns to show us how to see the world differently, from making a phone call to filling up a gas tank to ascertaining whether it's actually half-and-half you're pouring into your coffee. Chipchase is always looking for opportunities gaps, anomalies, and contradictions that will give his clients, some of the world's largest and most successful companies, a distinct competitive advantage, whether they're delivering the most low-tech bar of soap or the most high-tech wireless network.In Hidden in Plain Sight, Chipchase takes readers on his journeys around the globe and shares his methods for identifying the unmet needs of customers. No matter where he stops whether Cleveland or Kabul his goals are the same: to spot and decode the routines of daily life and to help readers use the very same tools that he and his team use to see, and capitalize upon, what is hidden in plain sight today to create businesses tomorrow.

Why do some projects deliver under budget and ahead of schedule, while others cost more and take longer than expectedMore important, which products work better: the quick and thrifty or the slow and expensive?In a story-filled blend of quirky pop culture and practical engineering insight, Dan Ward's F.I.R.E. answers those questions and more. Ward's extensive research and firsthand experience show how the world's top technologists consistently deliver best-in-class results on shoestring budgets and cannonball schedules, and using skeleton crews.This remarkable book will make you laugh, make you think, and equip you to leverage the power of constraints. Discover the secrets of F.I.R.E. and learn how to:Build strategies for speed that enhance accountability and ensure your products are well aligned with the market's needs.Design your organizations, products, and processes with thrift in mind, solving problems with intellectual capital, not financial capital.Unleash the power of small budgets and small teams, using short schedules, short meetings, and short documents.Streamline your designs and cut through unnecessary, unproductive layers of bureaucracy.But this is not just a book about how to win. With unflinching candor, Ward shows how the F.I.R.E. method, even when followed wisely and well, can result in a flop. Taking a deep look at several negative outcomes, he shows how to make failures optimal rather than epic.F.I.R.E. provides strategic concepts for leaders, decision-making principles for managers, and practical tools for people working on anything from spacecraft and fighter jets to websites and children's toys. Technology professionals and curious amateurs alike will come away with a deeper understanding of effective product design. Plus, there's a funny story about a dishwasher that just may change the way you buy major appliances.

The Challenge Built to Last, the defining management study of the nineties, showed how great companies triumph over time and how long-term sustained performance can be engineered into the DNA of an enterprise from the verybeginning. But what about the company that is not born with great DNAHow can good companies, mediocre companies, even bad companies achieve enduring greatnessThe Study For years, this question preyed on the mind of Jim Collins. Are there companies that defy gravity and convert long-term mediocrity or worse into long-term superiorityAnd if so, what are the universal distinguishing characteristics that cause a company to go from good to greatThe Standards Using tough benchmarks, Collins and his research team identified a set of elite companies that made the leap to great results and sustained those results for at least fifteen years. How greatAfter the leap, the good-to-great companies generated cumulative stock returns that beat the general stock market by an average of seven times in fifteen years, better than twice the results delivered by a composite index of the world's greatest companies, including Coca-Cola, Intel, General Electric, and Merck.The Comparisons The research team contrasted the good-to-great companies with a carefully selected set of comparison companies that failed to make the leap from good to great. What was differentWhy did one set of companies become truly great performers while the other set remained only goodOver five years, the team analyzed the histories of all twenty-eight companies in the study. After sifting through mountains of data and thousands of pages of interviews, Collins and his crew discovered the key determinants of greatness -- why some companies make the leap and others don't. The Findings The findings of the Good to Great study will surprise many readers and shed light on virtually every area of management strategy and practice. The findings include: Level 5 Leaders: The research team was shocked to discover the type of leadership required to achieve greatness. The Hedgehog Concept (Simplicity within the Three Circles): To go from good to great requires transcending the curse of competence. A Culture of Discipline: When you combine a culture of discipline with an ethic of entrepreneurship, you get the magical alchemy of great results. Technology Accelerators: Good-to-great companies think differently about the role of technology. The Flywheel and the Doom Loop: Those who launch radical change programs and wrenching restructurings will almost certainly fail to make the leap. Some of the key concepts discerned in the study, comments Jim Collins, "fly in the face of our modern business culture and will, quite frankly, upset some people.Perhaps, but who can afford to ignore these findings?

Chronicling the rise and fall of the efficient market theory and the century-long making of the modern financial industry, Justin Fox's The Myth of the Rational Market is as much an intellectual whodunit as a cultural history of the perils and possibilities of risk. The book brings to life the people and ideas that forged modern finance and investing, from the formative days of Wall Street through the Great Depression and into the financial calamity of today. It's a tale that features professors who made and lost fortunes, battled fiercely over ideas, beat the house in blackjack, wrote bestselling books, and played major roles on the world stage. It's also a tale of Wall Street's evolution, the power of the market to generate wealth and wreak havoc, and free market capitalism's war with itself.The efficient market hypothesis long part of academic folklore but codified in the 1960s at the University of Chicago has evolved into a powerful myth. It has been the maker and loser of fortunes, the driver of trillions of dollars, the inspiration for index funds and vast new derivatives markets, and the guidepost for thousands of careers. The theory holds that the market is always right, and that the decisions of millions of rational investors, all acting on information to outsmart one another, always provide the best judge of a stock's value. That myth is crumbling.Celebrated journalist and columnist Fox introduces a new wave of economists and scholars who no longer teach that investors are rational or that the markets are always right. Many of them now agree with Yale professor Robert Shiller that the efficient markets theory represents one of the most remarkable errors in the history of economic thought. Today the theory has given way to counterintuitive hypotheses about human behavior, psychological models of decision making, and the irrationality of the markets. Investors overreact, underreact, and make irrational decisions based on imperfect data. In his landmark treatment of the history of the world's markets, Fox uncovers the new ideas that may come to drive the market in the century ahead.