BUS 101- Business Fundamentals  

"For those executives who may be somewhat skittish about allowing the cracks in their armor to appear, Celebrating Failure is a great tutor. It provides the much-needed reminder that achievement is forged in the fires of failure. If one can stand the heat, the result, like Celebrating Failure itself, is pretty impressive."
--Soundview Executive Book Summaries

"Heath deserves praise for understanding the power of story as a means to capture attention and the necessity of brevity in maintaining attention. Celebrating Failure features short tales that readers can quickly read and ponder over for hours afterward."
--Smart Business

"People from every walk of life can learn something from Celebrating Failure. Encouraging originality, responding to changes, and thinking big are just some of the approaches Heath advocates to help people learn from failure and achieve their dreams."
--U.S. Senator Russ Feingold

We live in an era when business cycles are measured in months, not years. The only way to sustain long term innovation and growth is through creativity-at all levels of an organization. Disciplined Dreaming shows you how to create profitable new ideas, empower all your employees to be creative, and sustain your competitive advantage over the long term. Linkner distills his years of experience in business and jazz — as well as hundreds of interviews with CEOs, entrepreneurs, and artists — into a 5-step process that will make creativity easy for you and your organization. The methodology is simple, backed by proven results.

“Why don’t people publish pamphlets any more. I’m not talking about the slim-jims handed out at trade shows, but rabble-rousing, world-changing works like Common Sense and The Communist Manifesto. John Bogle, the founder of Vanguard, follows in the footsteps of the great pamphleteers…‘Central to the effective functioning of capitalism,’ he writes, ‘was the fundamental principle of trusting and being trusted’—and that is disappearing. The problem now: No one is satisfied with having ‘enough’ money or enough success. … If pamphlets were still the rage, 48 pages distilled from the contents of this book could be something as powerful to our age as anything written by Thomas Paine or Marx and Engels. In our more bookish time, though, Bogle has fleshed his ideas out to an interesting, 266-page overview of his life and his views.”—Barron’s

This proactive, practical guide is unlike any self-help book you've ever read. It's not about simple motivation or inspiration; that stuff only matters if you have a plan. Me, Inc. is designed to help you develop that plan and then execute it to perfection. It's not a generic, one-size-fits-all program, but a personalized system for improving your life and filling it with purpose, meaning, and contentment.

In Me, Inc., business consultant and executive coach Scott Ventrella shows you how to achieve unlimited success by incorporating the basic principles of good business into everyday living. He starts by sharing the ten time-tested principles that guide most successful and enduring companies and shows you how to apply them to your life. Once you understand those principles, Ventrella helps you design your own custom "exceptional living plan"—much like a business plan—that will guide you on the road to an exceptional life.

What if you were the CEO of a mediocre company? Would you just sit back and let the business plod along on a road to nowhere? Of course you wouldn't. Any competent CEO would get proactive and start developing and implementing a plan for success. Now think about your life. Isn't it just as important as any business?

Over the course of twelve "milestones" and accompanying exercises, you'll learn what you want and why, create your custom exceptional living plan based on your ultimate goals, use that plan as an everyday guide to living, and learn how to maintain your momentum and stay on track. You'll take stock of your most important "clients," gather feedback on your actions, set goals and priorities, and implement plans for change and constant improvement. Rather than float through life, you'll take control, be your own boss, and steer You, Inc. into the black.

You only lead one life, so why lead an average one? Me, Inc. will show you how to stop living by accident and start living on purpose. When you embrace your role as CEO of your own life, you'll live with enthusiasm, determination, purpose, and confidence. If you want to achieve your goals and dreams, now is the time to take charge and be the boss.

From Booklist
Ferrazzi grew up in rural Pennsylvania, the son of a steelworker and a cleaning lady, yet his ability to connect with others led to a scholarship at Yale, a Harvard MBA, and a prestigious partnership at Deloitte Consulting. His skills at creating and maintaining a network of contacts are nothing short of those of a serious presidential contender. All business hopefuls seek to enter a sphere of players more powerful than themselves, and Ferrazzi says that sometimes all it takes is asking. The book is dense with suggestions. Seek out mentors to guide you and introduce you to the people you need to know and then become a mentor yourself. Use your initial conversation to show the other person what you have to offer them, and never keep score. Make others feel important by remembering their names and birthdays. And don't be afraid to open up and show vulnerability--it's a great icebreaker. Ferrazzi presents a whirlwind of ideas to widen your circle of contacts that goes way beyond the usual stale concepts of "networking." David Siegfried

Porras, who co-wrote the original Built to Last, teams with successful life coaching company co-founder Emery and top executive coach Thompson, to interview 300 successful people, tagged "builders," to uncover the secrets of their winning life journeys. Though there's a good deal of wisdom here (for example, when faced with failure, builders "let it go not because they're in denial, but because they must keep focused on what they're building"), the book does not skimp on the platitudes ("losers call it failure; winners call it learning"). The early portion of the book overdoes the authors' excitement about the range and depth of the interviews, setting the reader up for disappointment in the long, less-than-profound stretches. The high volume of contributions, however-from Nelson Mandela, Jimmy Carter, Maya Angelou, Jack Welch, Stephen Jobs and a host of other well-known and lesser-known achievers-makes this book better suited for picking and choosing than reading cover-to-cover. Segmented into presentations on meaning, "ThoughtStyles" and action, lessons depend largely on common sense, a willingness to accept responsibility, and the idea that "pain or passion will make you good enough; but pain plus passion will point you to greatness."

*Starred Review* Unbelievably, over 10,000 business books are published each year, creating a dizzying array of choices for the budding entrepreneur or executive manager seeking solutions. In some circles, the genre may have a reputation for being dull, but the best written have much to offer to a wider audience. A great business book can encompass inspirational writing, biography, engaging narratives, even mystery and suspense. Covert and Sattersten operate 800-CEO-READ, a specialty business-book retailer. Out of the countless business books they have read every year for a quarter century, they have culled 100 of the best and presented them in review format. Of course, you get the classics, like How to Win Friends and Influence People, by Dale Carnegie (1936), and The HP Way, by David Packard (1995), but you also get the whimsical (Oh, the Places You’ll Go, by Dr. Seuss, 1990); historical (Never Give In, speeches by Winston Churchill, 2003); artistic (The Creative Habit, by Twyla Tharp, 2003); and philosophical (The Monk and the Riddle, by Komisar and Lineback, 2000). This list and the fine reviews are proof positive that business books can offer a rich treasure of stories and inspiration.

In this startlingly frank account of Buffett's life, Schroeder, a former managing director at Morgan Stanley—and hand picked by Buffett to be his biographer—strips away the mystery that has long cloaked the word's richest man to reveal a life and fortune erected around lucid and inspired business vision and unimaginable personal complexity. In a book that is dominated by unstinting descriptions of Buffett's appetites—for profit, women (particularly nurturing maternal types), food (Buffett maintained his and his family's weight by "dangling money")—it is refreshing that Schroeder keeps her tone free of judgment or awe; Buffett's plain-speaking suffuses the book and renders his public and private successes and failures wonderfully human and universal. Schroeder's sections detailing the genesis of Buffett's investment strategy, his early mentoring by Benjamin Graham (who imparted the memorable "cigar butt" scheme: purchasing discarded stocks and taking a final puff). Inspiring managerial advice abounds and competes with gossipy tidbits (the married Buffett's very public relationship with Washington Post editor Katherine Graham) in this rich, surprisingly affecting biography.

Comprehensive coverage of all major aspects of business and finance in American history, covering the full breadth of American business history in 478 alphabetically arranged and easy-to-understand articles. Designed and written for high school students and college undergraduates, "Historical Encyclopedia of American Business" offers an inviting alternative to works on economic history aimed at graduate students and scholars. The coverage of this set is carefully constructed to include almost every facet of American business history on which students would most likely seek information. Scope and coverage: The coverage in this set is broad and addresses the full breadth of American business history. There are long overviews on different sectors of the economy, such as agriculture and banking; individual industries such as advertising and electronics; and general topics as business cycles, labor strikes and outsourcing. There are also overviews on broad legal topics such as antitrust legislation, bankruptcy laws and patent laws. Also covered are significant economic depressions and 'panics' as well as such events as the Boston Tea Party, the Dust Bowl of the 1930's, and the Energy crisis of 1979. Although the main thrust of this set is on broad topics and historical trends, it also offers brief biographies of 35 individual persons who have played exceptional roles in American business. These figures range from founding fathers Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, and George Washington, to some of the giants of twenty-first century business, such as Bill Gates, Indra K. Nooyi, and Martha Stewart. Other essay topics cover individual companies, corporations, labor unions, and government agencies. Among individual businesses that are subjects of essays are Apple Computers, Bell Labs, Coca Cola, eBay, and General Motors. Labor unions rating essays include the AFL-CIO and the Teamsters. In addition, there are several essays on the roles of journalism, literature, radio, television and films in business history, as well as essays on individual business publications and broadcast programs. Organization and format: Like Salem's many other works, "Historical Encyclopedia of American Business" is organized and formatted to be student friendly. Essays are arranged alphabetically under the headings students are most likely to check, and every essay begins with a brief summary of its topic's significance. All essays at least 500 words in length have 'Further Reading' lists, and bibliographical citations in longer essays are annotated. Special features: Volume 3 offers several helpful finding aids, including a complete category list, an annotated general bibliography, a glossary of business terms, and a time line. An index of personages, and a general subject index complete this comprehensive work.