April « 2004 « 800 CEO Read

April 30, 2004

Free Prizes

Filed under: Marketing — Todd Sattersten @ 12:51 pm

Seth Godin is coming out with a new book and I know you already know. I think that is the amazing part – that you know. There is no one better at creating buzz. You had the milk carton, the “buy 25 books, come to my seminar for free”, and the article in Fast Company for Purple Cow. It sold 100,000 copies, which is considered blockbuster is the business book industry.

Here are a few example of buzz generation for the Free Prize Inside:

Cool News asked readers to “…tell us, in 150 words or fewer, about your best-ever “soft innovation.” 100 readers will receive a copy of the cereal-box edition for the best submissions. Sorry, the deadline was April 23rd
But here is one you can get in on. BzzAgent is running a similar contest.

In 250 words or less, write an explanation of your Free Prize Idea. Describe what your idea is, why it’s a Free Prize, and how it will make something happen in your organization!

The winner gets a phone consult with Seth and a slot in one of his seminars. They are posting the submissions on a special blog. Deadline for this is September 24th.
He’s been in the New York Times (his story behind the story) and mentioned in the Wall Street Journal.
And Seth will be touring the blogsphere on the Business Blog Book Tour starting Monday.

The book drops May 10th.

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Books from Biz Media – Biz 2.0

Filed under: Careers,Information Technology — Todd Sattersten @ 12:14 pm

Here is another feature we are going to try on for size. I thought it might be interesting to see what books the business media is picking up on. In our first installment, we are going to look at the May issue of Business 2.0.

I found three books referenced in the magazine:

Wisdom of the Crowds by James Surowiecki gets a small write-up on page 32. From the book (and magazine):

“under the right circumstances groups are remarkably intelligent, and are often smarter than the smartest people in them.”

Richard Smith and James Citrin are quoted extensively on their The Five Patterns of Extraordinary Careers in the article “How to Get Paid What You’re Worth” (pg. 106).

Creative Commmons creator Lawrence Lissig ends their “Giving it Away (for fun and profit)” article (pg. 116). His new book is Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity. As is mentioned in the article and in various places on the net (most recently at Business Evolutionist), you can download the book for free.

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Biz Books from B-Schools – Part III

Filed under: Lists — Todd Sattersten @ 12:00 pm

Here are a couple more people who were on the 2000 BW list.

Jeff Bezos’ single recommendation was Built to Last by Jim Collins.

And Jim Collins had no shortage of ideas for your reading list:

THE SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY OF ORGANIZING by Karl E. Weick
DIFFUSION OF INNOVATIONS by Everett M. Rogers
THE HUMAN SIDE OF ENTERPRISE by Douglas McGregor
THE SOUL OF A NEW MACHINE by Tracy Kidder
THE PRACTICE OF MANAGEMENT by Peter F. Drucker
OUT OF THE CRISIS by W. Edwards Deming
CREATIVITY IN BUSINESS by Michael Ray and Rochelle Myers
IN SEARCH OF EXCELLENCE by Tom Peters and Bob Waterman
CHIMPANZEE POLITICS by Frans de Waal
THE GUNS OF AUGUST by Barbara W. Tuchman
INFLUENCE by Robert B. Cialdini
IN LOVE AND WAR by Jim and Sybil Stockdale
MEANS OF ASCENT (volume two of The Years of Lyndon Johnson) by Robert A. Caro
TRUMAN by David McCullough
THE PANDA’S THUMB by Stephen J. Gould
THE SECOND WORLD WAR by Winston S. Churchill
TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD by Harper Lee

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Fun Reading List

Filed under: Jack's Thoughts,Lists — Jack @ 9:50 am

In the past–pre-Internet–we used to publish a catalog called the Gazette. One issue we asked Thought Leaders to submit a list of five books on the subject of “What every leader should read in the next 18 months.” After seeing Todd’s listings of BusinessWeek books, I remembered this list.

I ask the Blog world, do you really care what Peter Drucker thought in 1997? BTW, he picked the most interesting titles of all the respondents. They were:

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austin
Middlemarch by George Eliot
The Man who Ruled India by Philip Woodruff (out of print)
My Years with General Motors by Alfred Sloan
this is a brilliant book about creating the Sloan book A Ghost Memoir by John McDonald
Character above All: David McCullough on Harry S. Truman Out of print

Now everybody realize that if you asked Scott Adams, Ken Blanchard, Michael Hammer, Sally Helgesen et al, what books they would pick today, chances are they would pick different titles. But still it is fun to see where people’s heads were at in 1996/1997.

Let me know if you are interested in more listing.

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April 29, 2004

Correction: B-School Biz Books

Filed under: Uncategorized — Todd Sattersten @ 4:53 pm

I have been misquoting the date of the survey. The second survey was published in April 2003.

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Biz Books from B-Schools – Part II

Filed under: Lists — Todd Sattersten @ 3:18 pm

When I told Jack about the series, he proudly pointed me to the same exercise BusinessWeek did in 2000. The panel then was a combination of practioners and professors. Along with Mr. Covert, they talked to Jim Collins, Jeff Bezos, Durk Jager, and Bob Pittman to name a few.

Here were/are Jack’s recommendations:

THE AGE OF UNREASON by Charles Handy
COMPETING FOR THE FUTURE by Gary Hamel with C.K. Prahalad
COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE by Michael E. Porter
EFFECTIVE EXECUTIVE by Peter F. Drucker
LEADERSHIP IS AN ART by Max DePree
OUT OF THE CRISIS by W. Edwards Deming
SERVICE AMERICA by Karl Albrecht and Ron Zemke
TEAM HANDBOOK by Peter Scholtes
THE ONE TO ONE FUTURE by Don Peppers and Martha Rogers

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T.O.C. of The Seven-Day Weekend

Filed under: Human Resources/Organizational Development — Todd Sattersten @ 2:40 pm

We are going to try out different content features over the next couple of months. Some authors are going to stop by and chat. We are going to bring in outside reviewers to talk about books they like and dislike.

This is the trial installment of the T.O.C. We are going to post the table of contents from a randomly chosen business book. We know this is often a method used to quickly evaluate a potential purchase.

The Seven-Day Weekend by Ricardo Semler is our first book. It is being released in May by Portfolio.

Contents

Any Day
Sunday
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Everday

Semler and the book have been featured in Inc. Magazine. You can read the first chapter of the book online and there was an interview with Semler appeared in the April issue.

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April 28, 2004

Biz Books from B-Schools – Part I

Filed under: Lists — Todd Sattersten @ 1:09 pm

Thanks to a post at vazhiambalam, I was alerted to a feature over at BusinessWeek. BW recently asked over 30 business school professors what books they would recommend to readers.

The layout is a little clunky. You can only look at each professor’s selections individually. You also need to look at the professor’s field of study to appreciate the recommendations.

I decided to do a little analysis. I pulled together all of the recommendations and I am going to spend a couple of entries talking about it.

Stats
Number of Professors – 38
Total Number of Recommendations – 218 books
Number of Books Recommended – 205 books

I was amazed that only 13 books were recommended more than once by the panel.

Here is a list of those books and the number of recommendations received:

THE INNOVATOR’S DILEMMA by Clayton M. Christensen – 4
INFORMATION RULES by Carl Shapiro & Hal R. Varian – 3
THE PRINCE by Nicolo Machiavelli – 3
BRAND LEADERSHIP by David A. Aaker and Erich Joachimsthaler – 3
CLICKS AND MORTAR: PASSION DRIVEN GROWTH IN AN INTERNET DRIVEN WORLD by David S. Pottruck and Terry Pearce – 2
CLOCKSPEED by Charles Fine – 2
MANAGEMENT CHALLENGES FOR THE 21ST CENTURY by Peter F. Drucker – 2
OUT OF THE CRISIS by W. Edwards Deming – 2
THE MARCH OF FOLLY by Barbara W. Tuchman – 2
THE PRINCIPLES OF SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT by Frederick W. Taylor – 2
COMPETITIVE STRATEGY by Michael E. Porter – 2
IN SEARCH OF EXCELLENCE by Thomas Peters and Robert Waterman – 2
THE WINNER’S CURSE by Richard H. Thaler – 2

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A Few Changes at the Blog

Filed under: The Company — Todd Sattersten @ 12:03 pm

I just wanted to point out a couple of new features we have added to the site. They all have to do with the RSS feeds.

First, we have changed the feed so you get the full entry with all of the links and images.

Second, we have created additional feeds based on categories. Over time, we are going to be providing more and more content here, and we wanted to give people the option to only subscribed to the topics they were interested in.

The final change is subtle and very cool. With this blog being authored by a number of people, I wanted to provide a way for readers to see who was saying what. I think it is very confusing if you don’t have that piece of information. Looking at the feed, you will now see the title followed by the author’s name.

Let us know if any of the changes cause problems on your end.

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Creative Class Controversy

Filed under: Human Resources/Organizational Development — Todd Sattersten @ 11:45 am

I am familiar with Richard Florida’s The Rise of the Creative Class, but was unfamiliar with the controversy that his ideas have generated. Florida writes a piece over at The Next American City providing data and refuting his detractors.

[via Bookslut]

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