Business books coming out in January 2018 ...

Here are several new business books that I have been able to preview:  

GREAT AT WORK by Morten T. Hansen came to my attention a couple of weeks ago due to a feature article in The Wall Street Journal. There, Hansen had written “The Key to Success? Doing Less” and I was intrigued by his simple premise: that most top performers accept fewer tasks and then obsess over them. A professor of management at the University of California, Berkeley, Hansen has developed the idea based on a five year study involving more than 5000 managers and employees. In fact, he lists “Seven Work Smarter Practices” in his new book and another excerpt appeared recently in Time magazine where he discusses happiness, work-life balance and quality of life. GREAT AT WORK is very readable and will be of interest to both our Business and Psych classes, given its discussion of creating value, learning loops, tying passion with purpose, grit, teamwork and collaboration. In fact, it seems that this intriguing text could be a candidate for a one school-one book type read – certainly it’s of interest to teachers and administrators, with possible application to students’ time management practices, too. 

 

START A SUCCESSFUL BUSINESS by Colleen DeBaise is a compilation of quotes, tips and suggestions from Inc. magazine offering “Expert Advice to Take Your Startup from Idea to Empire.” Since it is a fairly basic primer, our entrepreneur class could use it to learn about concepts like elevator pitch. DeBaise also includes sections on developing your idea, structuring the business, funding, marketing, researching customers’ needs, leadership and globalization.  Quotes from current entrepreneurs and from very established business thinkers like Michael Porter appear. Our current high school students were born around the time that Reed Hastings established Netflix as a DVD rental service (1997) and most were born after Jeff Bezos launched Amazon (1994) as a bookseller; both businesses have changed dramatically and that experience would provide valuable perspective as they refine their own plans. In addition, our students will relate to many of the more contemporary case studies (like Rent the Runway and Warby Parker). At one point, START A SUCCESSFUL BUSINESS comments on the traits of entrepreneurs, particularly risk-taking and growth orientation, noting they tend to score less well on relational skills. That’s an area – and an underlying set of potentially biased assumptions made by Inc. – worth examining further. 

Asheem Singh, former interim chief executive of Acevo (British charity leaders group) and a mentee of Paul Farmer, has a new book, THE MORAL MARKETPLACE, which is about a different kind of entrepreneur.  As the subtitle says, it focuses on “how mission-driven millennials and social entrepreneurs are changing our world.” Singh uses numerous examples, noting for instance, that “citizens from every other continent outside North America and Europe are more likely to buy from social enterprises than people from these two places. … we are the ones who have to catch up.” He explores topics like incubators, co-operatives, metrics and measure, education, and government action, concluding with a section advocating a new kind of capitalism. As best I can determine, this title is only available digitally, but related titles in our collection would include ones like Start Something that Matters, Do the Kind Thing, How We Got to Now, Eric Liu’s You’re More Powerful than You Think and Yunus Muhammad’s Creating a World without Poverty.     

Stop by the library and see our recent display about social activism with quotes from Martin Luther King, Jr. and others. Let us know if you have a book to recommend. We look forward to seeing you.

Building a StoryBrand and other new business books

Below are comments about several new business books:
BUILDING A STORYBRAND by Donald Miller is the number one selling hardcover business book according to the charts in today's Wall Street Journal. Its subtitle is "Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen"and it begins with tons of testimonials from practitioners and small business owners who are amazed at its effectiveness. I am curious to see if these principles can translate to other entities like our school library or our school district when voters are deciding on funding levels. Miller advocates using the StoryBrand7 Framework, refining your website to be clear and compelling and executing the StoryBrand Marketing Blueprint's five tasks (create a one-liner for your company; create email addresses using a lead generator; create an automated email drip campaign; collect and tell stories of transformation; create a referral generating campaign).  I wondered about the emphasis on emails, but Miller says a 20% open rate is industry standard. It's an interesting take on a marketing plan and should pair nicely with Simon Sinek's START WITH WHY.

My favorite of the titles listed here, REAL IMPACT is written by Morgan Simon who has an impressive background in finance and social justice. She serves on several advisory boards and is an adjunct professor at Middlebury.  Here, she extols the possibilities for impact investing -- that is, the trillion dollar trend of investing both for profit and for social benefit. As an activist, she writes not only about good intentions involved, but also about the flaws in the current system (e.g., free market plus charity, microfinance, fair trade efforts). Then, Simon proposes a new, transformative model (based on principles like "engage communities in design, governance, and ownership," "add more value than you extract," and "fairly balance risk and return between investors, entrepreneurs, and communities") and provides stories of specific impact investment projects. She addresses her comments to portfolio managers and to the general public interested in using their money to do good, inviting readers to use REAL IMPACT as "an opportunity to reflect deeply on what having real impact can mean to your work." Including her own experiences and emphasizing the importance of community level research makes this an engaging, appealing read, especially to young people interested in the field.

INVESTING WITH IMPACT is by Jeremy Balkin, another expert in this field - see his TedTalk here.

Finally, THE STARTUP WAY is by Eric Ries, an entrepreneur, author of the New York Times bestseller The Lean Startup, and consultant to a range of businesses, including GE. This longer, 400 page text emphasizes the importance of an entrepreneurial mindset and ways that the modern company can transform itself to embrace entrepreneurial thought and actions. After providing some historical perspective, Ries outlines "a management system for innovations at scale." More information and excerpts are available at his website.

We are in the process of identifying some possible titles for our business students to read as part of an independent assignment.  If you have some to recommend, please let us know.

Airbnb and Uber stories

THE UPSTARTS by Brad Stone is an entertaining read filled with stories about the short and yet amazing histories of Airbnb and Uber. In his newest work, Stone chronicles events influencing the sharing economy and the founders’ attitudes.  He quotes Brian Chesky who says, “Every great start-up starts as a side project that isn’t anybody’s main priority. Airbed & Breakfast was a way to pay our rent.” As Stone describes them, the more volatile personality belongs to Uber’s Travis Kalanick, in the news this past week due to his decision to leave Trump’s advisory business board.

Stone devotes part of THE UPSTARTS to firms (e.g., HomeAway, VRBO, TaxiMagic) in the competitive space that did not succeed to the same extent, although they, too, had the potential to be a disruptive force. And he quotes others describing the creativity, adaptiveness, and mental toughness of entrepreneurs: “the ability to overcome the hurdles and negativity that typically accompanies something new.” A senior executive editor for technology at Bloomberg News, Stone also wrote an award-winning The Everything Store about Jeff Bezos and Amazon. Kirkus says Stone’s THE UPSTARTS is “highly useful reading for budding entrepreneurs” and we will certainly recommend this book to our Business classes and other interested readers.

If you prefer the focus to be exclusively on one company, THE AIRBNB STORY will be published in mid-February. Written by Leigh Gallagher from Fortune magazine, this work seems more analytical and less chronological.  She includes some fascinating facts, though, like the statistic that 1.8 million people were staying in an Airbnb hosted property on a single night in August 2016.  That certainly illustrates Airbnb’s growth and speaks to the power of connection across the internet, although Gallagher explores debates over increasing regulation, too. 

She writes about three phases of Airbnb’s development from couch-surfing, to quirky locales like igloos and castles and then on to the “Gwyneth Paltrow” phase with something for everyone and only a quarter of the business in the United States. Amongst the chapter titles are “Building a Company,” “Airbnb Nation,” and “What’s Next” – that’s where Gallagher describes the recently announced Trips option designed to provide special excursions and help guests to live more like a local. THE AIRBNB STORY tells readers “How Three Ordinary Guys Disrupted an Industry, Made Billions … and Created Plenty of Controversy.”

2 Billion Under 20 by Stacey Ferreira and Jared Kleinert

2 Billion Under 20 is sub-titled “how Millennials are breaking down age barriers and changing the world” and shares the story of 75 young entrepreneurs and innovators in a variety of fields like business, medicine, athletics and the arts.  The authors themselves certainly have an impressive set of credentials: Stacey Ferreira is CEO of AdMoar and was a cofounder of MySocialCloud (receiving over $1 million in funding from sources including Richard Branson) while Jared Kleinert is a teenage international public speaker who has been featured in  numerous business publications. A couple of other examples of people who are profiled in this book include Sam Mikulak, who's represented Team USA in the Olympics and is a seven-time NCAA champion in Men's Gymnastics, and Jack Andraka, who developed an early detection test for pancreatic cancer at fifteen. In sections labeled “Start,” “Risk,” “Journey,” “Learn,” and “Succeed,” the contributors each offer reflections and valuable suggestions for their peers. To learn more about 2 Billion Under 20, visit the website or take part in the book tour which will be virtual in part.

It is great to see the impact that the profiled young people are having, but I am not sure if I can call this work truly inspirational. With almost 30% of the world’s population under 20, these 75 individuals are by any definition beyond exceptional, as the above examples show. And while I do not mean to detract from their many accomplishments, my first impression in reading 2 Billion Under 20 was that it would, in some ways, just add unrealistic pressure for young people to excel. This feeling was reinforced by this article, “Campus Suicide and the Pressure of Perfection,” in yesterday’s New York Times (and another, “Schools Face the Teen Cutting Problem,” in today’s Wall Street Journal). All this while professors and employers say high school grads are not adequately prepared.  2 Billion Under 20 does take a global approach and so, too, must we encourage a holistic, supportive attitude if we are to buoy all of our kids in an increasingly complex world.