Great book on leadership, entrepreneurship, business planning and inspiring to anyone considering starting a business. Many academics agree that any college aged kids considering starting a career may want to read this book first if they don't have a background in business. This book is written for the general public as a practical how to guide in steps that make it possible for anyone, no matter where they are in their career to get some valuable insight.

Killing Giants unveils practical strategies for overtaking larger competitors in any market, looking at companies like that started out small but quickly dominated by using their opponents' size to their advantage. Baidu has beaten Google at search in China, and the Boston Beer Company took on Budweiser with Sam Adams Boston Lager. Stephen Denny shows how even behemoths like Nike and Coca Cola are susceptible to small, even tiny, competitors, because of their size. Using a range of fresh case studies he explains how, by taking a fresh approach, you can carve out a larger chunk of any marketplace.

How maverick companies have passed up the growth treadmill — and focused on greatness instead. It’s an axiom of business that great companies grow their revenues and profits year after year. Yet quietly, under the radar, a small number of companies have rejected the pressure of endless growth to focus on more satisfying business goals. Goals like being great at what they do, creating a great place to work, providing great customer service, making great contributions to their communities, and finding great ways to lead their lives. In Small Giants, veteran journalist Bo Burlingham takes us deep inside fourteen remarkable companies that have chosen to march to their own drummer. They include Anchor Brewing, the original microbrewer; CitiStorage Inc., the premier independent records-storage business; Clif Bar & Co., maker of organic energy bars and other nutrition foods; Righteous Babe Records, the record company founded by singer-songwriter Ani DiFranco; Union Square Hospitality Group, the company of restaurateur Danny Meyer; and Zingerman’s Community of Businesses, including the world-famous Zingerman’s Deli of Ann Arbor. Burlingham shows how the leaders of these small giants recognized the full range of choices they had about the type of company they could create. And he shows how we can all benefit by questioning the usual definitions of business success. In his new afterward, Burlingham reflects on the similarities and learning lessons from the small giants he covers in the book.

Get from Idea to Product/Market Fit in B2B. The world has changed. Nowadays, there are more companies building B2B products than there’s ever been. Products are entering organizations top-down, middle-out, and bottom-up. Teams and managers control their budgets. Buyers have become savvier and more impatient. The case for the value of new innovations no longer needs to be made. Technology products get hired, and fired faster than ever before. The challenges have moved from building and validating products to gaining adoption in increasingly crowded and fragmented markets. This, requires a new playbook. The second edition of Lean B2B is the result of years of research into B2B entrepreneurship. It builds off the unique Lean B2B Methodology, which has already helped thousands of entrepreneurs and innovators around the world build successful businesses. In this new edition, you’ll learn: - Why companies seek out new products, and why they agree to buy from unproven vendors like startups - How to find early adopters, establish your credibility, and convince business stakeholders to work with you - What type of opportunities can increase the likelihood of building a product that finds adoption in businesses - How to learn from stakeholders, identify a great opportunity, and create a compelling value proposition - How to get initial validation, create a minimum viable product, and iterate until you're able to find product/market fit This second edition of Lean B2B will show you how to build the products that businesses need, want, buy, and adopt.

Two top specialists in profitable growth and innovative customer-supplier relationships show companies of all sizes how to compete with the tech giants—by choosing and providing peerless value to the right customers for long-term success. Every year, managers at companies large and small are finding it harder to compete with the likes of Google and Amazon, who are muscling into their businesses, stealing their customers, and cornering every conceivable market and service. There is, however, a way for companies to survive—and win—in this era of digital behemoths. Choose Your Customer is a powerful, consumer-targeted guide that can help managers level the playing field against their biggest competitors. Written by Jonathan Byrnes, the legendary MIT-based expert on profits, pricing, and strategy, and John Wass, a key member of the team that made Staples a major national brand, Choose Your Customer shows managers how to: Identify the customers who are the most profitable—and focus on them. Provide services and experiences that can’t be replicated by the tech giants, no matter how much data they have, or how much automation they use. Support your chosen customers’ diverse and rapidly evolving needs to accelerate profitability and growth. These customer-driven strategies enable leaders to build a uniquely targeted business that the digital giants just can’t match. From unbeatable customer service to superior pricing and product selection, Choose Your Customer provides detailed and actionable advice on how to compete successfully with the big guys and how to increase profits as a result.

Considers economic concentration within the U.S. automobile industry and its impact on consumers, competition, and technological progress, and its response to Government regulations.

A compelling profile of an emerging Chinese competitor Chinese firms are reinventing their business models, their corporate cultures, and themselves, becoming global competitors who increasingly offer knowledge rather than cheap labour in their quest to join the ranks of the "world's best" companies. This book offers a compelling profile of the most ambitious of these emerging Chinese competitors, the Haier Corporation (the world's largest manufacturer of home appliances), and shares insights on how one organization has repeatedly reinvented its business model and corporate culture in an effort to sustain its success. Reinventing Giants provides an exclusive look within the Haier Corporation and shows how managerial accountability and responsibility have been repositioned at every level of the organization, with the core value of market-centricity, while aligning strategy on each level of management. It includes actual work reports that show this process in detail from the ground up. The authors emphasize how a belief in the liberation of employee talent has consistently been the driving force underlying Haier's success. Includes the remarkable story of Haier's turnaround and how these lessons can be applied to other organizations Contains information for any company grappling with competition in the global marketplace Shows how to liberate employees' talent to drive business success Written by Bill Fischer, Professor of Innovation Management at IMD in Switzerland, Umberto Lago, Professor of Management at Bologna University, Italy, and Fang Liu, Research Associate of IMD Reinventing Giants helps global managers rethink their own business models and accompanying corporate cultures in order to be able to apply Haier's lessons directly to their own organizations.

Sunderland was once one of Britain's industrial giants. Famous for its shipyards, mines and glass-making, it thrived at a time when its country needed it most. After the Second World War the town saw incredible change, as the heavy industry that seemed so permanent, faded and died. How do you cope with the loss of centuries of working tradition? These are the stories of the people who worked through this evolution, watched their town change around them and become a city – the people who saw the end of one era and the beginning of a challenging new one.