Thursday, December 22, 2011

HBR's 10 Must Reads: The Essentials By Harvard Business Review

HBR'S 10 Must Reads: The Essentials

HBR'S 10 Must Reads: The Essentials
By Harvard Business Review

List Price: $24.95
Price: $16.47 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details

Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com

52 new or used available from $9.48

Average customer review:
(2 customer reviews)

Product Description

Change is the one constant in business, and we must adapt or face obsolescence. Yet certain challenges never go away. That's what makes this book "must read." These are the 10 seminal articles by management's most influential experts, on topics of perennial concern to ambitious managers and leaders hungry for inspiration--and ready to run with big ideas to accelerate their own and their companies' success.

If you read nothing else - full stop - read:

Michael Porter on creating competitive advantage and distinguishing your company from rivals
John Kotter on leading change through eight critical stages
Daniel Goleman on using emotional intelligence to maximize performance
Peter Drucker on managing your career by evaluating your own strengths and weaknesses
Clay Christensen on orchestrating innovation within established organizations
Tom Davenport on using analytics to determine how to keep your customers loyal
Robert Kaplan and David Norton on measuring your company's strategy with the Balanced Scorecard
Rosabeth Moss Kanter on avoiding common mistakes when pushing innovation forward
Ted Levitt on understanding who your customers are and what they really want
C. K. Prahalad and Gary Hamel on identifying the unique, integrated systems that support your strategy
Product Details
  • Amazon Sales Rank: #26132 in Books
  • Published on: 2010-11-08
  • Original language: English
  • Number of items: 1
  • Dimensions: .72" h x 5.54" w x 8.19" l, .65 pounds
  • Binding: Paperback
  • 288 pages

Features

  • ISBN13: 9781422133446
  • Condition: New
  • Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
Editorial Reviews

About the Author

HBR's 10 Must Reads paperback series is the definitive collection of books for new and experienced leaders alike. Leaders looking for the inspiration that big ideas provide, both to accelerate their own growth and that of their companies, should look no further.

HBR's 10 Must Reads series focuses on the core topics that every ambitious manager needs to know: leadership, strategy, change, managing people, and managing yourself. Harvard Business Review has sorted through hundreds of articles and selected only the most essential reading on each topic. Each title includes timeless advice that will be relevant regardless of an ever-changing business environment.

Classic ideas, enduring advice, the best thinkers: HBR's 10 Must Reads.
Customer Reviews

Most helpful customer reviews

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful.
5Quite literally "essential reading"
By Robert Morris

This volume is one of several in a new series of anthologies of articles that initially appeared in the Harvard Business Review, in this instance from 1960 until 2006. Remarkably, none seems dated; on the contrary, if anything, all seem more relevant now than ever before as their authors discuss what are (literally) essential dimensions of leadership and management.

More specifically, how to meet the challenges of disruptive change, compete on analytics, manage one's self, understand what all effective leaders share in common, put the balanced scorecard to work, what innovation's "classic traps" are and how to avoid or escape from them, why most transformations fail, what "marketing myopia" is and how/why it limits (if not prevents) success, what strategy is (and isn't) and what it does (and doesn't) do, and how/why the core competencies of the corporation determine the nature and extent of its success or failure.

Each article includes two invaluable reader-friendly devices, "Idea in Brief" and "Idea in Practice" sections, that facilitate, indeed expedite review of key points. Some articles also include mini-essays on even more specific subjects such as "Fitting the Tool to the Task" (Clayton M. Christensen and Michael Overdorf), "Going to Bat for the Stats" and "You Know You Compete on Analytics When" (Thomas H. Davenport), "Can Emotional Intelligence Be Learned?" (Daniel Goleman), "Building a Balanced Scorecard" (Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton), "The Lessons of Innovation" (Rosabeth Moss Kanter), "Japanese Companies Rarely Have Strategies" (Michael Porter), and "Vickers Learns the Value of Strategic Architecture" (C.K. Prahalad and Gary Hamel).

These ten articles do not - because they obviously cannot - explain everything that one knows to know and understand about these essential business issues. However, I do not know of another single source at this price (currently $16.32 from Amazon) that provides more and better information, insights, and advice that will help leaders to achieve success in the business dimensions examined in this volume.

7 of 16 people found the following review helpful.
4Read one part (lack of reviews)
By Everything Swan
Since there are not reviews for this item, I'll give you my brief impression from a very limited time spent reading this. It caught my eye while walking around the business section at Borders a few weeks ago. I enjoyed their case studies while an undergrad and occasionally enjoy their articles posted via Twitter so I picked it up along with a Seth Godin book. Once I saw Michael Porter's name, I knew I had to at least skim a few pages. I actually ended up skipping over Porter's section in favor of Rosabeth's on innovation and I was later pleased I did. It was an interesting read, although hardly groundbreaking (if this is your goal, then this is probably not the book you're looking for).

I found her writing concise(I think nearly every section is more or less 30 pages) and there were specific examples included to help understand the pitfalls she described. Her section specifically dealt with a corporate setting and how innovation can flourish or be smothered under different conditions.

Obviously the minds that contributed to this are nothing short of brilliant, so if you have ever found yourself interested in the topics above or the authors previous work you would probably find this an interesting read. It helped inspire me that night into doing some brainstorming and I plan on finishing it soon.

http://astore.amazon.com/amazon-book-books-20/detail/1422133443

 

No comments: