Forbes Best Business Mistakes

Forbes Best Business Mistakes
Author: Bob Sellers
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2010-06-17
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0470768339

Today's top business leaders reveal how to make even the biggest mistakes work for you Forbes Best Business Mistakes reveals practical lessons from some of today's most successful business leaders to show you how to turn a bad business situation into a success. Based on exclusive sit-down interviews with some of today's most successful men and women, author Bob Sellers shares their stories to provide valuable insights and lessons that can help you can learn from their mistakes. Those profiled in Forbes Best Business Mistakes include the likes of Wall Street guru Peter Lynch, larger-than-life media personalities Jim Cramer and Suze Orman, legendary CEO Jack Welch, and newcomer Jason Kilar, CEO of Hulu, who is poised to change the movie and TV industry landscape as we know it forever. Other names include PIMCO's Bill Gross and Mohamed El-Erian and Home Depot Founder Arthur Blank. Reveal how top business and financial leaders turned their biggest mistakes into success stories Based on exclusive interviews with some of today's most successful professionals, from Jason Kilar of Hulu to Suze Orman Contains practical lessons on how you can turn a bad business situation around As Malcolm Forbes put it, "Failure is success if we learn from it." Forbes Best Business Mistakes shares the missteps of others so you can learn from them, be inspired by them, and succeed where you may not have seen opportunity before.

Why Startups Fail

Why Startups Fail
Author: Tom Eisenmann
Publisher: Currency
Total Pages: 368
Release: 2021-03-30
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0593137035

If you want your startup to succeed, you need to understand why startups fail. “Whether you’re a first-time founder or looking to bring innovation into a corporate environment, Why Startups Fail is essential reading.”—Eric Ries, founder and CEO, LTSE, and New York Times bestselling author of The Lean Startup and The Startup Way Why do startups fail? That question caught Harvard Business School professor Tom Eisenmann by surprise when he realized he couldn’t answer it. So he launched a multiyear research project to find out. In Why Startups Fail, Eisenmann reveals his findings: six distinct patterns that account for the vast majority of startup failures. • Bad Bedfellows. Startup success is thought to rest largely on the founder’s talents and instincts. But the wrong team, investors, or partners can sink a venture just as quickly. • False Starts. In following the oft-cited advice to “fail fast” and to “launch before you’re ready,” founders risk wasting time and capital on the wrong solutions. • False Promises. Success with early adopters can be misleading and give founders unwarranted confidence to expand. • Speed Traps. Despite the pressure to “get big fast,” hypergrowth can spell disaster for even the most promising ventures. • Help Wanted. Rapidly scaling startups need lots of capital and talent, but they can make mistakes that leave them suddenly in short supply of both. • Cascading Miracles. Silicon Valley exhorts entrepreneurs to dream big. But the bigger the vision, the more things that can go wrong. Drawing on fascinating stories of ventures that failed to fulfill their early promise—from a home-furnishings retailer to a concierge dog-walking service, from a dating app to the inventor of a sophisticated social robot, from a fashion brand to a startup deploying a vast network of charging stations for electric vehicles—Eisenmann offers frameworks for detecting when a venture is vulnerable to these patterns, along with a wealth of strategies and tactics for avoiding them. A must-read for founders at any stage of their entrepreneurial journey, Why Startups Fail is not merely a guide to preventing failure but also a roadmap charting the path to startup success.

The Future of Work

The Future of Work
Author: Jacob Morgan
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 261
Release: 2014-08-25
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1118877241

Throughout the history of business employees had to adapt to managers and managers had to adapt to organizations. In the future this is reversed with managers and organizations adapting to employees. This means that in order to succeed and thrive organizations must rethink and challenge everything they know about work. The demographics of employees are changing and so are employee expectations, values, attitudes, and styles of working. Conventional management models must be replaced with leadership approaches adapted to the future employee. Organizations must also rethink their traditional structure, how they empower employees, and what they need to do to remain competitive in a rapidly changing world. This is a book about how employees of the future will work, how managers will lead, and what organizations of the future will look like. The Future of Work will help you: Stay ahead of the competition Create better leaders Tap into the freelancer economy Attract and retain top talent Rethink management Structure effective teams Embrace flexible work environments Adapt to the changing workforce Build the organization of the future And more The book features uncommon examples and easy to understand concepts which will challenge and inspire you to work differently.

Power Ambition Glory

Power Ambition Glory
Author: Steve Forbes
Publisher: Crown Currency
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2010-06-01
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0307408450

Based on an extraordinary collaboration between Steve Forbes, chairman, CEO, and editor in chief of Forbes Media, and classics professor John Prevas, Power Ambition Glory provides intriguing comparisons between six great leaders of the ancient world and contemporary business leaders. • Great leaders not only have vision but know how to build structures to effect it. Cyrus the Great did so in creating an empire based on tolerance and inclusion, an approach highly unusual for his or any age. Jack Welch and John Chambers built their business empires using a similar approach, and like Cyrus, they remain the exceptions rather than the rule. • Great leaders know how to build consensus and motivate by doing what is right rather than what is in their self-interest. Xenophon put personal gain aside to lead his fellow Greeks out of a perilous situation in Persia–something very similar to what Lou Gerstner and Anne Mulcahy did in rescuing IBM and Xerox. • Character matters in leadership. Alexander the Great had exceptional leadership skills that enabled him to conquer the eastern half of the ancient world, but he was ultimately destroyed by his inability to manage his phenomenal success. The corporate world is full of similar examples, such as the now incarcerated Dennis Kozlowski, who, flush with success at the head of his empire, was driven down the highway of self-destruction by an out-of-control ego. • A great leader is one who challenges the conventional wisdom of the day and is able to think out of the box to pull off amazing feats. Hannibal did something no one in the ancient world thought possible; he crossed the Alps in winter to challenge Rome for control of the ancient world. That same innovative way of thinking enabled Serge Brin and Larry Page of Google to challenge and best two formidable competitors, Microsoft and Yahoo! • A leader must have ambition to succeed, and Julius Caesar had plenty of it. He set Rome on the path to empire, but his success made him believe he was a living god and blinded him to the dangers that eventually did him in. The parallels with corporate leaders and Wall Street master-of-the-universe types are numerous, but none more salient than Hank Greenberg, who built the AIG insurance empire only to be struck down at the height of his success by the corporate daggers of his directors. • And finally, leadership is about keeping a sane and modest perspective in the face of success and remaining focused on the fundamentals–the nuts and bolts of making an organization work day in and day out. Augustus saved Rome from dissolution after the assassination of Julius Caesar and ruled it for more than forty years, bringing the empire to the height of its power. What made him successful were personal humility, attention to the mundane details of building and maintaining an infrastructure, and the understanding of limits. Augustus set Rome on a course of prosperity and stability that lasted for centuries, just as Alfred Sloan, using many of the same approaches, built GM into the leviathan that until recently dominated the automotive business.

Seeing What Others Don't

Seeing What Others Don't
Author: Gary Klein
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2013-06-25
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1610392752

Insights -- like Darwin's understanding of the way evolution actually works, and Watson and Crick's breakthrough discoveries about the structure of DNA -- can change the world. We also need insights into the everyday things that frustrate and confuse us so that we can more effectively solve problems and get things done. Yet we know very little about when, why, or how insights are formed -- or what blocks them. In Seeing What Others Don't, renowned cognitive psychologist Gary Klein unravels the mystery. Klein is a keen observer of people in their natural settings -- scientists, businesspeople, firefighters, police officers, soldiers, family members, friends, himself -- and uses a marvelous variety of stories to illuminate his research into what insights are and how they happen. What, for example, enabled Harry Markopolos to put the finger on Bernie Madoff? How did Dr. Michael Gottlieb make the connections between different patients that allowed him to publish the first announcement of the AIDS epidemic? What did Admiral Yamamoto see (and what did the Americans miss) in a 1940 British attack on the Italian fleet that enabled him to develop the strategy of attack at Pearl Harbor? How did a "smokejumper" see that setting another fire would save his life, while those who ignored his insight perished? How did Martin Chalfie come up with a million-dollar idea (and a Nobel Prize) for a natural flashlight that enabled researchers to look inside living organisms to watch biological processes in action? Klein also dissects impediments to insight, such as when organizations claim to value employee creativity and to encourage breakthroughs but in reality block disruptive ideas and prioritize avoidance of mistakes. Or when information technology systems are "dumb by design" and block potential discoveries. Both scientifically sophisticated and fun to read, Seeing What Others Don't shows that insight is not just a "eureka!" moment but a whole new way of understanding.

Rock Bottom to Rock Star

Rock Bottom to Rock Star
Author: Ryan Blair
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2016
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1101980559

Can you remember that one time you got recognized or someone thanked you for your contribution to their life? You were a rock star, even for just one second. This book isn't about a charmed path to success or some untouchable fairy tale that nobody can relate to-this is about going from rock bottom to rock star, something that everybody can relate to. In his first book, Blair shared the brutally honest story of how he went from an at-risk youth, sleeping on a mattress on the floor of a shack, to a self-made multimillionaire by his early twenties. As his story became a national sensation, fans started asking him how they too could become entrepreneurs, take their careers to the next level, and achieve financial freedom. Rock Bottom to Rock Star answers those questions. Blair has battled extreme obstacles: life as a former gang member, balancing a demanding career with single parenthood, building and selling multiple companies, and making and losing tens of millions of dollars (sometimes all in one day). He wants to help others avoid the mistakes he made in the school of hard knocks, so he has compiled his unique advice for going from rock bottom to rock star in whatever field you chose to pursue. Much of his advice is counterintuitive, and definitely not what you would learn in business school. Here's one example: "Don't believe your own hype. The moment you start celebrating, you've left the stage. It wasn't celebration that made you a rock star. It was hard work." If you're serious about making the most of your life and you're ready to become the "rock star next door" instead of just looking up to them, this may be the most rewarding book you'll ever read.

Leading Change

Leading Change
Author: John P. Kotter
Publisher: Harvard Business Press
Total Pages: 210
Release: 2012
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1422186431

From the ill-fated dot-com bubble to unprecedented merger and acquisition activity to scandal, greed, and, ultimately, recession -- we've learned that widespread and difficult change is no longer the exception. By outlining the process organizations have used to achieve transformational goals and by identifying where and how even top performers derail during the change process, Kotter provides a practical resource for leaders and managers charged with making change initiatives work.

Forbes Book of Quotations

Forbes Book of Quotations
Author: Ted Goodman
Publisher: Black Dog & Leventhal
Total Pages: 1399
Release: 2016-04-05
Genre: Reference
ISBN: 0316310050

Revised and updated, this bestselling collection of business wit and wisdom is the ultimate desk reference for the cube and corner office, by one of the world's most popular business publications. Forbes is one of the world's most trusted, recognizable, and growing brands in business news and information both in print and online. This comprehensive collection of business quotations gathers more than 10,000 apt, astute, and motivational remarks on scores of topics, organized alphabetically, from "Ability" to "Excellence" to "Salesmanship." First published in 1997, this all new edition is updated with hundreds of new quotations, from the likes of Steve Jobs, Sheryl Sandberg, and Oprah Winfrey that pertain to modern business culture. Forbes Book of Quotations is the perfect gift or reference tool for students, budding entrepreneurs, and seasoned professionals alike, or anyone looking for a sharp-witted way to make a lasting impression.

The Facts of Business Life

The Facts of Business Life
Author: Bill McBean
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 368
Release: 2012-10-09
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1118094964

IF YOU BELIEVE THAT: Being your own boss can be a great career choice Success is what you decide it is Doing what you have a passion and talent for can be very profitable Monetary risk, hard work, and new ideas should be financially rewarded Understanding the business basics every successful owner focuses on—and in what order—would be beneficial Success works for you only after you’ve worked for it Marketplace battles are won before they are played Knowing what owning a business is really like would make ownership success a lot easier Change can create great opportunities Knowing when to exit a business is as important a life and business decision as becoming an entrepreneur in the first place THEN THE FACTS OF BUSINESS LIFE IS FOR YOU! Written by a successful business owner with four decades of experience, The Facts of Business Life is full of real-world concepts that owners must use and embrace if they want to become and stay successful. This multiple award-winning book has been endorsed by some of America’s top business leaders, like Steve Forbes and Ken Fisher, and has been recognized as “one of the best five business books of the year” and “a must read for entrepreneurs or those wanting to be one.” McBean begins with clear explanations and real-life examples of the seven Facts of Business Life that every successful business owner knows and executes consistently, including exactly what they are as well as how and when to use them. He then goes on to show how those facts impact on the five levels every successful business passes through, from “Ownership and Opportunity” to “Moving On When It’s Time to Go,” explaining that while the facts themselves remain the same, as a business becomes successful and moves through its life cycle, the way they are applied must change to fit changing circumstances. But there are even more reasons why this breakthrough business book is a must read, including: Its principles are based on the author’s own experience in starting and running successful businesses in a variety of industries. It shows that the most successful businesspeople create profitable opportunities rather than wait for them to present themselves. It enables readers to analyze the likelihood of their own success based on the characteristics most successful owners have. It reveals the #1 priority for all owners and their employees, and why every owner needs to continually focus on it (Hint: it’s not being profitable). It emphasizes that becoming successful is no guarantee that success will last, and that success itself can be a trap that eventually leads to failure. It shows that a business’s culture isn’t just a mission statement but also the processes created to operate the business and the employees who implement them. It discusses the steps that must be taken even before a business is started to increase the odds of its becoming a lasting success. It covers every step in a business’ life cycle, including the last one, showing that the best time to exit a business is when you don’t have to, and that unless you pick that time, someone else will. MANY BUSINESS BOOKS INCREASE THEIR READERS’ KNOWLEDGE—THE FACTS OF BUSINESS LIFE NOT ONLY INCREASES THAT KNOWLEDGE, IT SHOWS YOU HOW TO TURN IT INTO PROFITS.