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The Best Business Books Ever: A book review by Bob Morris

First Friday Book Synopsis

The Best Business Books Ever: The Most Influential Management Books You’ll Never Have Time to Read Basic Books (2011) Note: This review is of a book published earlier this year. It is a sequel to one published in 2003. What we have here is a series of brief discussions “the most influential management books you’ll [.].

Books 85
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Four Things to Get Right When Starting a Company

Harvard Business Review

In technology companies, engineering talent needs the balance of a business and operations team. Engineering departments fetishize the theory that if you build a better mousetrap, the rest takes care of itself. Twitter 2006-2011) and vice versa (e.g., Crystal Pepsi; MySpace 2003-2007).

Company 16
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The Ultimate Productivity Hack Will Be Robot Assistants

Harvard Business Review

In 2003, DARPA contracted SRI International to lead a reported $200 million, five-year project to build a virtual assistant. In 2008, with the agreement of DARPA, a private company co-founded by three of the engineers from SRI International was spun out of the CALO project. The company was registered as SIRI Inc.

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IT Doesn't Matter (to CEOs)

Harvard Business Review

Data breaches are on the rise, with a 44% increase in the number of records exposed from 2011 to 2012. For a brief period, as they were being built into the infrastructure of commerce, all these technologies opened opportunities for forward-looking companies to gain real advantages. million passwords), LinkedIn (6.5 million records).

CEO 8
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Getting Collaboration Right

Harvard Business Review

Daimler's engineers in Germany could not work with their Chrysler counterparts in Detroit , leading to the sale of the latter at a loss of some $35 billion. As we discuss in our next HBR article (coming in July 2011), collaborative leadership is a poorly understood yet crucial new leadership skill.

CIO 15
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Why China Loves the Internet

Harvard Business Review

Already in 2011 the Chinese spent more time on the Internet than watching TV , while in the U.S. For example, in 2013 there were 315 people in China who had more than a billion dollars , up from zero in 2003. This is partly because engineering costs are low and partly because there is less of a fear of failure.

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How Investors React When Companies Announce They’re Moving to a SaaS Business Model

Harvard Business Review

Autodesk, a longtime market leader in computer aided design and engineering software, added a perpetual licensing option to all of its subscription offerings over a 15-year transition period before going all in with the SaaS model in 2016. For example, consider Zynga’s decision, announced in 2011, to build its own datacenters.