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.
