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Tag Archives: business
Review – Micro-ISV
Micro-ISV: From Vision to Reality, Bob Walsh. Apress, 2008.Walsh defines a Micro-ISV as a small, self-funded internet business. This book touches on a number of topics, including programming, choosing a domain name, company formation, and marketing. There are interviews sprinkled … Continue reading
Review – Harvard Business Review
Harvard Business Review. (Magazine).This almost-monthly magazine features interesting articles on the challenges of business. I particularly enjoy the case studies, where different experts comment on a situation. I keep an article or two from almost every issue. (This month, I … Continue reading
Review – Systemantics
Systemantics: How Systems Work and Especially How They Fail, John Gall. Pocket Books, 1978. Peter Coffee recommended this in his keynote at Agile ’06, and I can see why. It’s a humorous look at how systems are by nature out of … Continue reading
Tagged business, reviews, systems thinking
Review – Revolutionizing Product Development
Revolutionizing Product Development, Steven C. Wheelwright and Kim B. Clark. Free Press, 1992.Product management can work better by tailoring its approach to the reality of the project. Building a new platform is fundamentally different from creating a follow-on for a … Continue reading
Review – Design Rules, Vol. 1: The Power of Modularity
Design Rules, Volume 1: The Power of Modularity, Carliss Y. Baldwin and Kim B. Clark. MIT Press, 2000.Modularity creates value both at the level of systems and at the level of organizations. Baldwin and Clark describe a number of operators … Continue reading
Review – Designing Organizations for High Performance
Designing Organizations for High Performance, David P. Hanna. Addison-Wesley, 1988. A basic book in the area of Organization Development. Its theories operate at a cultural level as much as a process level. The core is an analysis of tasks, structure, … Continue reading
Review – The Seven-Day Weekend
The Seven-Day Weekend, Ricardo Semler. Portfolio, 2004.“Empowerment” has been a buzzword, but Semler makes it happen in his organization. He encourages people to make their own decisions and take the consequences, and puts that in action in “his” company. By … Continue reading
Review – Marketing High Technology
Marketing High Technology: An Insider’s View, William H. Davidow. Free Press, 1986.The examples are dated, but the message is not: this book is about the importance of market segments and selling a whole product. (Reviewed Nov., 2004)
Review – One-Page Management
One Page Management, Riaz Khadem and Robert Lorber, Quill, 1998. This is clearly in the One Minute Manager family of books, and shares their style of having a good nugget of information wrapped in a story you can read in … Continue reading
Review – Good to Great
Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t, Jim Collins. HarperCollins, 2001.Collins and his team set criteria for how to identify a good company that became great (a transformation sustaining value substantially above its industry). By … Continue reading
Review – The Innovator’s Dilemma
The Innovator’s Dilemma, Clayton Christensen. HarperBusiness, 2000. Companies often get successful by giving customers what they want. New companies may begin with a product that is less functional but better on a dimension valued by non-customers. By the time the … Continue reading