Review of The Eye for Innovation: Recognizing Possibilities and Managing the Creative Enterprise (Hardcover)

Excellent book if you lived in the 70's and 80's. Slow and boring. A blast from the past. The coverjacket design describes the book to a T: A plain white bread book...

Product Description
Innovation is synonymous with problem solving, and the basic elements of innovation apply to any business, says Robert M. Price in this essential guide for managers of organizations large or small. Distilling a set of practical principles from his forty years of experience as a pioneer in the computer industry, the author shows that innovation can be learned and practiced by everyone, that it can offer solutions to everyday problems as well as high-profile ones, and that it provides opportunities to solve business problems while meeting a variety of human needs.

Former CEO of Control Data, Price weaves the history of this uniquely innovative company with fresh thinking about innovation itself-what it means to the people in an organization, the products, and the processes. He avoids simplistic prescriptions and clearly explains seven fundamental principles of innovation beginning with "innovators are made, not born." He illustrates these principles with fascinating real-life examples. His book offers both the practical tools and the inspiration to everyone with an interest in effective management practice and in building organizations that creatively and continuously respond to ever-changing social and market needs.

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Review of Business Resumption Planning, Second Supplement (Loose Leaf)

This is a very comprehensive overview of the entire Business Resumtion planning process.It gives enough detail for you to get started and walk you through the entire process.It is very consistent with other research I have done on the internet in regards to Business Resumption.The book takes you through Business Operations Recovery, Data Center Recovery, and Voice and Data Communications Recovery.I have so far focused on the Business Operations Recovery, but I am sure that the other sections are just as comprehensive.Certainly the best overall resource for Business Resumption that I have found to date.This will be my "go to" manual during this entire planning process.

Product Description
Post 9/11, the focus on corporate disaster preparedness, availability of time-critical product delivery, and customer service is the order of the day. Business Continuity Planning Step by Step presents a top down approach to business process high-availability and continuity planning. It provides the most efficient and effective guidance and methodologies for undertaking current state assessments and for the development, implementation, testing & maintenance, and measurement of organizational continuity planning infrastructures. The text includes checklists and other forms that readers can use to simplify and expedite execution of continuity planning activities and tasks.--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

About the Author
TelLAWCom Labs, Inc., Ovilla, Texas, USA--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Review of Electronic Enterprise: Strategy and Architecture (Paperback)

This book is worth more than its weight in gold! More and more books I read for research, less and less new things I learn and this indeed is frustrating. This book is a rare exception to this experience. I generated much more awareness about what an electronic enterprise can be and learnt much more about strategy for going about it and implementing the architecture. For any one desiring to do so, studying this book is a must. The most important strength of this book is that it offers an ocean of knowledge in a nutshell. Excellent models are presented explaining difficult concepts. Best investment for the time and resources spent on it.

Large organizations no more need to become dinosaurs! This book teaches them how to become agile and dance to the tune of changing environmental factors and serve the mankind! Not only that. The large or aspiring organizations also can make impact on environment. Author's communication skill is so excellent that this book is good both for a novice or an expert in the field of management or in the information technology. No matter how much of expertise an expert may have on the subject, may still learn at least a few new pragmatic things about electronic enterprise!

Despite this book presenting so many ground breaking academic concepts it easily grabs the interest of reader right from the start and retains it till the end. What amazed me the most reading this book is that it discussed concepts in electronic enterprise not in isolation but in totality of the whole world scenario which is only the right thing to do in this global village business that the electronics has helped create!

A must read and study book for all FORTUNE 500 companies and those desiring to become one!

Product Description
The evolution from network-centric commerce (EDI) to e-commerce and e-business up to e-enterprise and virtual enterprise is traced and explained in this discussion of the transformation of a business enterprise from an industrial into an information model. Addressed are the strategy and architecture of an e-enterprise, emphasizing the integration issues and solutions of enterprise information infrastructure, its applications layer, and the whole enterprise. Discussed are the benefits to a company of transformation into an electronic enterprise, such as a better competitive position and increased profitability and productivity.

About the Author
Andrew Targowski is a professor of computer information systems at Western Michigan University and chairman of the Advisory Council of the Information Resource Management Association. He is the author of The Architecture and Planning of Enterprise-wide IM Systems, Global Information Infrastructure, and Enterprise Information Infrastructure. He has contributed to the Journal of Business Communication, Journal of Education for MIS, and The Journal of Information Management, Information Executive. He lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

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Review of Selling Online: How to Become a Successful E-Commerce Merchant [ILLUSTRATED] (Paperback)

I'm a firm believer that the best way to learn about doing something is to consult someone who's done it or to just start doing it yourself. This book really doesn't provide either of these things. The authors don't seem to have had too much success in the e-commerce world (or else choose not to share their expertise with readers in this simple book).

Selling Online is better than a lot of the other really, really bad "online commerce" books I've seen out there, but not by a lot really. The overwhelming majority of the information here could be found for free on the Web, as the book does little more than give very, very vague overviews of various aspects of e-commerce and then point the reader off to a series of vendor sites (many of which no longer exist, and which in any case are not very informative and try to take advantage of would-be Internet entrepreneurs).

Do yourself a favor, really. Buy books on HTML and CGI, and then get yourself a computer and fire up Google and search for information about setting up an online business (be specific so as to avoid lots of the scam companies... if there are flashy graphics and the word MILLIONS written all over the site... then leave quickly and avoid the pop-ups that will follow you!) Once you have the technical background to build a website the other technical details of running an online store will all fall into place.

Product Description
Whether your organization is large or small, Selling Online is a perfect resource for any employee or entrepreneur interested in building a successful, profitable, and sustainable online retail business.

In Selling Online, Carroll and Broadhead discuss what makes an online business fail or triumph.From the nuts and bolts of how to build a site to an in depth look at merchant accounts, a systematic business plan walks you through the complex issues of doing business over the Internet.

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Review of The Strategic Project Office: A Guide to Improving Organizational Performance (Center for Business Practices) (Hardcover)

I thought I had a pretty complete library on Project Management and the PMO.However, this is the most authoritive volume I have encountered.There are step by step instructions and direction on establishing a PMO and best practices within that organization.There are also many of the pitfalls and minefields associated with starting this type of office.The chapters are easy to read, and concise.The information is well organized and presented best suited to a mid-level professional involved in PMO or Project Management activities.
I wholeheartedly recomend this to those who have never setup a PMO or best practices organization.Those who have much experience in this fields may be looking for other specialized topics.

Product Description
Describes the initiation, design, execution, and control of a strategic project office. Emphasizes cost management, cultural change, risk assessment, resource allocation, and skills tracking to increase project value, organizational efficiency, and productivity.

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Review of Business Plans to Game Plans: A Practical System for Turning Strategies into Action (Paperback)

I found the worksheets alone in this book worth the price. When you follow the step-by-step instructions, the worksheets cull out only the data youneed.With all the extraneous data out of the way, it's easy to pinpointcritical problems that you might miss otherwise.And it makes developingkey indicators and reports easier as well.I think any CEO who wants tokeep the company's accounting and human resource managers on top of thingsat all times should give them this book tomorrow...if not sooner.

Product Description
"This book does something important: it takes abstract information and puts it in language and worksheets that make sense. This gives everyone-- including top managers-- a complete description of how a company's performing. And there's no better tool for improving performance than understanding."
-- Jack Stack, author of The Great Game of Business

"Know what is vital to the success of your business, enhance skills for confident prediction, and avert crisis management. This book offers all that for the price of lunch."
-- James C. Collins, Chairman Emeritus, Sizzler International, Inc.

"Most small business-related books approach the implementation of business plans and strategic planning in a very traditional fashion. This one is different. It illustrates how to realistically turn a business plan into an action plan. But it does not stop there. The author discusses the most current methods of managing a business, e.g., total quality management techniques, not in textbook style but in practical, everyday language. Her style of 'instruction' is nothing short of excellent. This readable, practical work is useful for all levels."
-- Fred Andrews, Springfield Community Technical College in Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries

"This 'how-to' workbook for small businesses shows how to develop and communicate a vision and how to empower people so they can make the vision a reality."
-- Arizona Business Gazette

Transform your business plan into an action plan

This new revised edition elaborates on the six critical principles of running a small business that helped guide King to success:

• Set standards and give your employees the tools to meet your goals
• Lead by example
• Look to the long term-the very long term
• Find the important details and focus on them
• Watch for variances from expected results
• Face reality when you look at your company and take action

King breaks down complex concepts into simple and effective action plans, helping you profit from her extensive experience and avoid common mistakes. With more than fifty worksheets and exercises to guide your implementation, Business Plans to Game Plans helps you turn your vision into a thriving business equipped to weather any market.

From the Inside Flap
"This book does something important: it takes abstractinformation and puts it in language and worksheets that make sense.This gives everyone - including top managers - a complete descriptionof how a company's performing.And there's no better tool forimproving performance than understanding." - Jack Stack, author of TheGreat Game of Business--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Review of The Loyalty Effect: The Hidden Force Behind Growth, Profits, and Lasting Value (Paperback)

I read this book when it was first published and recently re-read it. Those who have checked out my reviews of other books which address many of the same issues already know that I have a bias with regard to "customer satisfaction" and "customer loyalty", agreeing with Jeffrey Gitomer and others that the former is wholly dependent on each transaction and the latter can end (sometimes permanently) because of a single unsatisfactory transaction. The objective for those who have customers (be they internal or external) is to achieve and then sustain their passion about doing business with you. You want them to become evangelists.

Of course, Reichheld fully understands all this. In a brilliant essay which recently appeared in the Harvard Business Review, he shares new research which (again) shows that companies with faithful employees, customers, and investors (i.e. capital sources which include banks) share one key attribute: leaders who stick with six "bedrock principles": preach what you practice (David Maister has much of value to say about this in his most recently published book, Practice What You Preach), play to win-win, be picky, keep it simple, reward the right results, and finally, listen hard...talk straight. In this book, Reichheld organizes his material within 11 chapters which range from "Loyalty and Value" to "Getting Started: The Path Toward Zero Defections." With meticulous care, he explains how to devise and them implement programs which will help any organization to earn the loyalty of everyone involved in the enterprise. He draws upon a wealth of real-world experience which he and his associates in Bain & Company, a worldwide strategy consulting firm. Reichheld heads up its Loyalty Practice. In his most recently published book, Practice What You Preach, David Maister explains why there must be no discrepancy whatsoever between the "talk" we talk and the "walk" we walk. Reichheld agrees, noting that the "key" to the success of his own organization "has been its loyalty to two principles: first, that our primary mission is to create value for our clients, and second, that our most precious asset is the employees dedicated to making productive contributions to client value creation. Whenever we've been perfectly centered on these two principles, our business has prospered." It is no coincidence that the world's most highly admired companies are also the most profitable within their respective industries. I wholly agree with Reichheld that loyalty is critically important as a measure of value creation and as a source of profit but that it is by no means "a cure-all or a magic bullet." Loyalty is based on trust and respect. It must be earned, usually over an extended period of time and yet can be lost or compromised at any time with a single betrayal.

Here are three brief excerpts:

"One common barrier to better loyalty and higher productivity is the fact that a lot of business executives, and virtually all accounting departments, treat income and outlays as if they occurred in separate worlds. The truth is, revenues and costs are inextricably linked, and decisions that focus on one or the other -- as opposed to both -- often misfire."

"Companies cannot succeed or grow unless they can serve their customers with a better value proposition that the competition. Measuring customer and employee loyalty can accurately gauge the weaknesses in a company's value proposition and help to prescribe a cure."

"While every loyalty leader's strategy is unique, all of them build on the following eight elements: Building a superior customer value proposition, finding the right customers, earning customer loyalty, finding the right employees, earning employee loyalty, gaining cost advantage through superior productivity, finding the right [capital sources], and earning [their] loyalty."

Who will derive the greatest value from this book? Decision-makers in any organization (regardless of size or nature) which has been weakened by defections among customers and/or employees. If the primary objectives are value creation and partnership, decision-makers in these organizations must never betray or neglect any of the fundamentals of loyalty-based management: "partnership builds incentive; incentive builds value; value builds loyalty; loyalty builds even greater value." It's as simple and (yes) as difficult as that.



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Review of The Definitive Guide to Business Resumption Planning (Artech House Telecommunications Library) (Hardcover)

This is an informative book, and is reasonably interestinggiven the dry subject.I found it more helpful than the Jon Toigobook.It has an emphasis on telecom recovery and redundancies that was missing from Toigo.The book is weaker on IS recovery, and the author is not really well-acquainted with computer security topics, although he discusses them.In spite of this, the book has an excellent little LAN security policy.

The references to Qmodem and Procomm are hints that although this is a 1997 book, it is based on earlier material.

Wrobel includes a number of helpful checklists and interview guides.His "Sample Operating and Security Standards" in Appendix F is a useful section that could serve as a standard for data center physical security.END

Product Description
Discusses the security measures for telecommunications systems. Topics include common exposures in recovery planning, sizing the project and defining the phases, developing operating and security standards and more. DLC: Telecommunication systems - Security measures - Planning.

About the Author
Leo A. Wrobel, Jr. is president and CEO of Premiere Network Services, in Dallas, Texas. He holds degrees in telecommunications systems technology, electronic systems technology, and business and public policy. He has over 20 years of experience in areas including the design and regulatory approval for the largest and most technologically advanced telecommunications network in North Texas. The author of nine books and dozens of articles, Mr. Wrobel is a recognized technological futurist. He is currently mayor for the City of Ovilla, Texas.

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Review of Mission Critical: Realizing the Promise of Enterprise Systems (Hardcover)

Davenport does a brilliant job of explaining what enterprise systems are and what they can accomplish in any organization. He suggests, however,that they are worthless "unless they lead to better information or betterways of doing business. I think that enterprise systems are without doubtan impressive technical feat, but I am primarily concerned thatorganizations get business value from them." Throughout his book, headdresses key issues such as these:

1. What enterprise systems are andwhy they are important

2. The promise and the perils involved

3. How todecide whether or not to implement enterprise systems

4. How to integrateenterprise systems with strategy and organizational structure

5. How tointegrate enterprise systems with business processes and information

6.How to achieve value while implementing enterprise systems

7. How totransform the practice of management with enterprise systems

8. How touse enterprise systems to manage the supply chain

9. The future ofES-enabled organizations

As Davenport explains in Chapter 1, "Enterprisesystems offer the first great opportunity to achieve true connectivity, astate in which everyone knows what everyone else is doing in the businessall over the world at the same time. And because they represent the firstgreat opportunity for connectivity, they pose one of the greatest threatsto the status quo that companies have ever faced." Hence the importance ofone of the the book's most valuable sections, the Appendix, in whichDavenport provides "A Technical Overview of Enterprise Systems." Those whofeel threatened by an enterprise system will seize any and allopportunities to point out its technical flaws. At best, enterprise systemsare complex, difficult to install, and inflexible. However, Davenportpoints out, they "will remain the most capable, integrated systems in thehistory of the world. They may have their flaws, but they are also theanswer to our information systems prayers." I agree.

Product Description
A No-Nonsense Guide to the Benefits and Pitfalls of Enterprise-Wide Information Systems

How many organizations would doubt the promise of an integrated enterprise system (ES)? Not many, judging by a $15 billion industry. The combination of an ES as a platform for organizational information and Internet technology for gaining access to it adds up to the ideal solution for company-wide data sharing in real time. Not surprisingly, small and large companies worldwide are either considering an ES, in the process of implementing one, or living with the results. Yet, says Tom Davenport, unless managers view ES adoption and implementation as a business decision rather than a technology decision, they may be risking disappointment

Mission Critical presents an authoritative and no-nonsense view of the ES opportunities and challenges. Suggesting ESs are not the right choice for every company, the author provides a set of guidelines to help managers evaluate the benefits and risks for their organizations. To be successful, argues Davenport, an organization must make simultaneous changes in its information systems, its business processes, and its business strategy. Such changes are described in detail with extensive examples from real organizations. Bolstering his contention that ESs should be viewed as business vs. technology projects, Davenport spells out the specific business change objectives that should be formulated in advance of ES adoption and monitored throughout its implementation.

The first strategic guide to the ES decision, Mission Critical will be indispensable to general managers and information technology specialists at all stages of the implementation process.

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Review of Transforming Your Go-to-Market Strategy: The Three Disciplines of Channel Management (Hardcover)

I really enjoyed this book by Harvard Business School professor Kash Rangan.The authors advocate a disciplined approach to channel strategy that could generate superior returns in almost any industry.In my experience, most manufacturers neither develop careful channel maps nor do they assign executives senior enough to make significant channel resource commitments.As a result, the returns to channel stewardship should be available for any company willing to invest the time and effort.

A major strength of this book is the detailed examples provided in each chapter.Most business books simply provide very short case studies that always leave me wondering what really happened.Here, Rangan and Bell combine company stories with market data.Some of the examples are a bit dated, but that has the advantage of allowing the authors to describe the actual outcomes.The examples include both retail (B2C) and business-to-business channels, showing the strength of channels thinking. They even provide fresh insights into overdone examples such as Dell and Wal-Mart.

The only shortcoming is an over reliance on box-and-arrow diagrams.These are helpful when showing product and information flows within a channel system, but much less interesting when simply summarizing points made in the text.

I highly recommend this book to anyone with channel management responsibilities.This dense and challenging book will reward careful study.

Product Description
Most distribution channels are outdated and unwieldy, serving neither customers nor channel partners adequately. Despite new technologies that have streamlined many transactions and processes, a general lack of leadership combined with flawed and deeply ingrained structures make distribution channels exceedingly difficult to change.

What companies need, says V. Kasturi Rangan, is a new approach to going to market-"channel stewardship"-that simultaneously addresses customers' best interests and drives profits for all channel partners. In Transforming Your Go-to-Market Strategy, Rangan shows how any member of a distribution channel can adopt this role and learn how to shape an effective, constantly evolving, and mutually beneficial channel strategy.

This book outlines three disciplines that companies must master to navigate the complex distribution environment successfully: map the industry channel, build and edit one's own channel continuously to best serve customers, and align and influence one's channel value chain to ensure that all parties reap appropriate rewards. Rangan also provides guidance on managing multiple channels, integrating the Internet into a channel strategy, and overcoming common barriers that impede transformation.

A fresh approach to designing and managing channels for the long term, this book will help firms expand value for customers, partners, and the bottom line.

About the Author
V. Kasturi Rangan is the Malcolm P. McNair Professor of Marketing at Harvard Business School.

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