Book summary: Review of the Dream Society

Review of ‘the Dream Society’

Summary of book Leadership and the New Science

Summary of book Leadership and the New Science

Margaret J. Wheatley wrote the book of Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World in 2006. This book is one of my favourite books I have seen before. As a reader, you can get sums of new concepts from the book and improve your understanding to this new world. The book offers a fresh perspective on leadership and provides the modern administrator with a non-mechanistic model for organizational design and behavior. In the book, Wheatley introduces two topics. One of them is entropy, which indicate the fear factor that closed organizations produce, whereby an excessive amount of energy is expelled to fight its’ own death. The second topic is that of dissipative structure—a characteristic of an open or living organization.

 

Wheatley represents the meaning of “new science” as the branches of quantum physics, chaos theory, and biology that are overturning centuries-old models of science. While the older science reflects the physics of Isaac Newton and the engineering principles developed in the industrial revolution, conceived of the universe as a kind of machine, with its various working parts animated by specific energy sources. It is a mechanistic model of the universe, business and congregational organizations—that remains with us today. Wheatley also removed the “good old boys” concept of networking and supports a more honorable tactic called “relationship building.” It is believed that a study of Wheatley’s book can help grant proposal writers and grants managers in their quest to become effective leaders who influence administration.

 

The language of this book is accessible to non-scientists, the author takes readers on a mind-expanding journey into the center of the new science, examining the findings that are exposing as far too simplistic the old concept of “universe as a collection of moving parts.”

 

The author indicates, as many others have, that the Newtonian efforts to explain the workings of the universe were failure. They were relied on the assumption that the universe was something likes a glorious “Rube Goldberg” device. It is a complicated structure that each step led to the next step in predictable cause-and-effect dynamic. In contrast, quantum physics illustrates that the universe is more complex than a simple collection of physical parts. Things are constant changing, from particles to waves to energy and back again. Apparently, orderly systems respond to new stresses by dissolving and reforming in new patterns. This continuous fluidity of motion makes any attempt at identifying fixed structure completely unwarranted and challenging any notions we may desire to hold about the concept of certainty or reality.

 

For example, based on the assumptions of the machine model, managers have attempted to improve the effectiveness of a business while focused on altering the physical structure of the organization. Consequently, this has led to failure when attempting organizational change. The new physics offers a completely different understanding of change in which change is influenced by working at the level of identity, rather than just isolating and changing one defective part of the organization.

 

In this book, readers can learn three most interesting points. One of them is that, managers establish the ethical and moral tone for their business. It has a clear intent, an expectation and example of how managers expect people to communicate with each other. Managers connect individuals to the identity of an organization so individuals accept responsibility for changing themselves, rather than imposing change by a top-down hierarchy wielding rules.

 

The second one is that the most efficiency and effective organizations are composed of individuals that are valued, given responsibility for outcomes, rewarded for positive outcomes, and encouraged to self-organize to accomplish specific tasks. Managers will encourage their employees to improve quality, and will create a good work condition that allows individuals to succeed.

 

The third one is that once we analyze our organization deeply, we will know more details. However, knowing more details will actually limit our ability to determine and channel how individuals link to each other. In addition, relationships and the flow of new information are the two vital roles that more than any other determine the success or failure of any organization.

 

This book can change people’s worldviews about the way the world works. It is believed that these concepts in the book are especially significant to the Cooperative Extension System as it alters itself to meet the information needs of business in the 21st century. I’m sure that Wheatley hoped that this book could encourage managers to think differently about how to use, evaluate, and structure employees to improve their ability to make a difference in their organisation. She also states that this is just a small step in a new direction for organizational management, but hopes that it will inspire others to apply these concepts and learn new ideas that result in more new leaders.

 

Book summary: “Personal, academic and career development in higher education: SOARing to success”

Personal, academic and career development in higher education: SOARing to success (By Arti Kumar)

This is a guide book for the course organisers and career assistors to set up modules for students in the universities or other higher education faculties as a part of Personal Development Planning regime to prepare themselves coping with studying work and the challenges in the society. It aims to assist them to obtain a satisfactory job and implement a successful career life. This book illustrates the key steps of achieving the goal for this by analysing the characteristics of the job requirements and consider if there are any gaps between the requirements and the applicants themselves. Here another process is involved, which is self-evaluate. On the other hand, how to seek for opportunities and how to take advantage of them is another key aspect. What kind of opportunities should be taken into consideration and which should be neglected are based on the criteria relevant to the personal advantages, interests and preferences, and should be in line with the personal development plan. Moreover, choices should be made after prudent considerations according to the personality and other internal and external factors. The author demonstrates various ways of doing these with detailed guidelines, which are summarised by the personal experiences of the author as well as other literatures. Plenty of assignments for essays, presentations, group discussions and questionnaires can be found in the book that instructors can directly put these into the module.

SOAR is the core theme of the book which stands of Self, Opportunity, Aspirations and Results. “Self” emphases on discovering one’s valuable characteristics and the potential hidden underneath that contain huge power. How to differentiate from other people is also essential. Here “Self-MAP” is introduced, which consists of Motivation, Ability and Personality, and can be used in different stages of life to continually self-evaluate. When armed, seek for “opportunity” in order to advance in the way to the goal. Alternative options often exist and it is inevitable to balance every one of them and choose one which best suits them and get involved to it, where “aspirations” is formed. Finally, make a best attempt to seize the chance with greatest effort, or if failed, examine the reasons and improve next time, which is the part of “result”. How to promote and present to others, especially in the interviewers, plays an important role in this stage. This is not a straight forward process but a cycle with introspection, feedback and questioning that repeats every now and then in our entire lives.

One of the highlights of this book is that it provides detailed settings of assignments with designated contents, instructions, tips and also marking criteria for the instructors to arrange for the students. These exercises are also useful for students themselves to practise in order to obtain the skills which are essential in the current society. The book is also full of tables and charts to illustrate key concepts and help students identify themselves. The second highlight is the statistics given. They enable the students to have a glimpse of the current trend of the employment market so that they can have targeted preparation towards desired opportunities. Another highlight is the experience from the author that makes the models and concepts clearer and easier to understand. He shows the way to cooperate with people who have completely opposite way of thinking. Furthermore, the author uses step-by-step approach, with comparisons to the existing theories from other literatures, to show the enhancement of his models. Last but not least, it contains a lot of extra resources for readers to access via the Internet to deepen the understanding of the related contents.

Although this book looks tiny, the contents inside can be par with an encyclopaedia. It is an extremely useful handbook which is highly recommended for students, module instructors as well as employers. It is really worth reading and it will change you a lot and help you make a large step forward in your way to success.

Reference

KUMAR, A. (2007). Personal, academic and career development in higher education: SOARing to success. London: Routledge.

book summary: strategy safari

Strategy Safari explores the field of strategy and its unique and complex components.  The authors describes ‘strategy’ as an elephant and the practitioners as blind men because it is very difficult to completely understand ‘strategy’ as a whole due to its complexity. However, the field can be broken down into 10 ‘schools of thoughts’ and these components can help us to virtualizes the strategic ‘beast’ as a whole. These schools are as follows: Design School, Planning School, Positioning School, Entrepreneurial School, Cognitive School, Learning School, Power School, Cultural School, Environmental School, and Configuration School (Mintzberg 1998). All these schools represent the evolution of the field of strategy from the 1960s to today.

The first three schools are more concern with how strategies should be formulated than how they are formed and thus these schools are prescriptive in nature (Mintzberg 1998). The design school, first formed in 1960, describes the strategy formation as a process of informal design and conception. The planning school, which was extensively practiced in 1970s, sees strategy as a more detached and systematic process of formal planning. By the 1980s, planning school was subsequently dispatched by positioning school, which was less concern with the process of strategy formation than the content of the strategy itself. It primary explores on the selection of strategic positions in the economic marketplace.

Unlike the three early schools, the next six schools are less concerned with prescribing ideal strategic characteristics. Instead, they describe specifically how strategies are made (Mintzberg 1998).  Entrepreneurial and cognitive schools are the foundation of the strategic visioning. Many well-known writers have associated strategy with entrepreneurship, which describe the visionary process led by the great leader. The cognitive school, on the other hand, is relatively smaller. It seeks to use the messages of cognitive psychology to understand a strategist’s mind.

The four schools that follow then explain the process of strategic formation that is beyond an individual vision and includes other forces and factors (Mintzberg 1998). The learning school believes that the marketplace is too complex for a strategic to be adequately developed all at once and thus strategies must emerge in small steps organizations learn.  Similarly, the power school also views strategy formation as a process of adaptation, but through series of negotiations and conflicts, internally and externally. In contrast, the culture school considers strategy formation to be rooted in the culture of the organization and the process is fundamentally collective and cooperative. The environmental school observes that strategy formation is a reactive process that requires external influences to facilitate change. This school seeks to understand the external pressure imposed on the organization. Ultimately, the configuration school describes an attempt to combine and integrate the different schools of thought into the process of making strategy, the content of the strategies, and the structure of the organization.

In final remarks, Strategy Safari suggests that these clearly categorized ten schools are only convenient for writers, researchers, and consultants, but in practice it is much more ‘wild’ and ‘out of control(Mintzberg 1998).’ The emergences of various hybrids of the schools are encouraging sign that the field is coming of age and that practices are becoming more sophisticated. Again, these ten schools are what we as blind men can grasp on and without them we will have no way to picture what this strategy beast look like. We must understand each of these schools equally and use each of them in conjunction with others to formulate strategy formation for an organization

Reference:

Mintzberg, Henry, Bruce W. Ahlstrand, and Joseph Lampel. 1998. Strategy safari: a guided tour through the wilds of strategic management. New York: Free Press.

Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers

Executive summary written by Nuno Bento

“A picture is worth a thousand words” is a famous quotation trivialised in thousands of contexts and this book is no exception: it really works that way! Stupidly, still are people arguing that the book is huge, and it is…foolishly a massive chunk of usefulness. One page simply breaks down in infinity others that offer uncontrollable new worlds that you never though existing. Yes…”creativity” is the keyword; that vast globe that incorporates yourself and supports your mind to fly with new eyes. Either are blue, green, brown or even black, it will always affect your vision.

“Business Model Generation” is a fantastic hunk of sliced trees that business people must possess. It is based in pictures, some of them real and others mentally reflected by words and schemes. It provides a creative and useful vehicle for examination of business models and consequent strategy called “Business Model Canvas”, the heart of the book. A model that integrates all the permutations between nine elements behind a business:

• Customer Segments: Whom you serve
• Value Proposition: Which problem you solve
• Channels: How you reach the consumer
• Customer Relationships: Which kind of relationship you have with the consumer
• Revenue Streams: Where the revenues come from
• Key Resources: Required assets to create the Value Proposition
• Key Activities: What do you do with the assets
• Key Partnerships: Third parties involved in company’s activity
• Cost Structure: Costs involved

It shows how different real businesses, such as Google and Facebook, fit in the model, providing a real usage and understanding of its practicability without oversimplifying the complexities of how enterprises function.

Book’s through Business Model Canvas

Every year many business books are published, although, to try and show upper status on knowledge, authors use complex models and words to show formal and serious theories, making the reader very serious and focused. It’s essential to “fly” into new realities and this book really provides you “wings” to push to the innovation level, leading to start thinking critically about your business and inspiring you to check your real position and credibility within the market. Moreover, emphasizes the need to become a designer to be innovative, which is essential in today’s 21st century. This is the century of innovation, essential to survive in such savage business environment.

The book is ramified in five parts, presenting to you step-by-step sections: a detailed explanation of the books’ skeleton, the Business Model Canvas, where all the examples fit in the model, representing a map where the nine elements fit, showing its versatility and effectiveness; Patterns describing five important business models, based in well-known business concepts, in “Canvas” language, giving a comprehensible standardised format; how to draw your business story exploring out of boundaries through Design techniques, where you see what the others see, but you think differently from the others, stimulating and helping to flourish creativity on your Business Model (BM); expand a BM into lots more, through the Strategy chosen, creating differentiated opportunities and options. This section gives you tools to comprehend how to analyse the environment around the BM, supported always with pallet of examples, evaluating detailed pros and cons of adapting a certain BM in individual situation; and finally, Process, the step that ties all together, explaining five phases that occur in the BM design process: mobilise, understand, design, implement and manage. This subtle colourful volume is closed by a set of topics to explore in the future and a glimpse into the making of.

Written by Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur, with a co-creation of an amazing crowd of 470 practitioners from 45 different countries, this is a unique opportunity to get a condensed international knowledge and inspiration, with a superb design by Alan Smith being the icing on the cake. Despite the examples used in the book being almost just about technology-based companies, it’s an absolute must-have on your shelf. Take advantage and enjoy it. It will galvanise to pick up a pen or pencil and a paper to design a business plan for something that was, perhaps, skulking in the back of your mind today at work. Fill the void in your mind…

Reference: Osterwalder, A. and Pigneur, Y. (2010) Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons.

Review of ‘the Dream Society’

Summary: Learned optimism: how to change your mind and your life

Learned optimism

Book Summary Open Innovation – The imperative for creating and profiting from technology

1. About the book

Henry Chesbrough wrote this book to send a message of the importance of innovation and there was a big change in the innovation process in the first years of 21^st century, which was the move from closed innovation to opened innovation. Moreover, companies can also utilize and advance innovations in order to make profits or to create a new sustain business.

The book is divided into 9 chapters with plenty of case studies of heading firms. Namely chapter 1, Chesbrough examines the case of Xerox Corporation with its strategy which relied only on the innovations from its famous research laboratory, Palo Alto Research Centre (PARC). It can be defined as the typical of closed innovation company. Author also pointed out the analysis of achievements and limitations that Xerox got when applying that kind of strategy.  In the next two chapters, closed and opened innovation models are analysed theoretically in more detail. In chapter 4, business models are presented as the key instrument to make an idea or a technology valuable. The same technology will have different amount of value if being taken by different business models. Business models refer to the ways that companies realize the market’s problem and how they use internal and external ideas to solve it. It also specifies the necessary components of a good business model. In my opinion, this chapter contain the most valuable information in the book.

Then, the detailed illustrations of opened innovation concepts are analysed practically through three case studies of leading firms in three consecutive chapters. Chapter 5 describes the process that IBM transforms its model from closed innovation to open innovation in order to logically answer the question whether it is necessary when a big established company moves from a closed innovation mind-set to an open innovation mind-set. In chapter 6, in term of Intel, the open innovation is accessed by different approach from previous IBM analysis. IBM accesses the open innovation majorly through its customers’ value chain and ignores its traditional research while Intel still appropriates internal researches besides leveraging the external academic researches and investing in external new start-up companies. Additionally, the other approach that internal technology taken outside is pointed out by analysing the New Ventures Group within Lucent Technologies organization in chapter 7.

After that, Chesbrough mentions about another critically important subject in the innovation process, which is managing intellectual property (IP) in chapter 8. The definition and utilization of IP is illustrated. Moreover, author also mentions the other viewing angle about the external IP and how a company makes profit from it. In the last chapter, the strategies and tactics that companies can use to make a transition to a more open innovation system are mentioned. It explores not only the ability of external technologies to improve companies’ current business but also how internal technologies become a key base for a new venture.

These chapters provide a comprehensive and practical look of the innovation and its role for the success of companies. The analysis always sticks with the practice in heading companies enables readers easier to understand the content of the book. This is also the point that makes this book different from other rough academic ones.

2.    The significance

This book is really significant and should be read by any 21^st century entrepreneur or any professional concerning about innovations. As pointed out by the author that there is a new strong wind of open innovation mind-set that flow in the business environment in new century. The 20^th century is the best time of closed innovation models while if a company does not quickly access to the open one in the 21^st century, it can fail dramatically. It is the fact that the open innovation brings great sustainable and competitive advantages. Thus, with the comprehensive analysis and practical approaches to open innovation, this book completely brings valuable knowledge to every businessman or innovator.

3.    Lessons

I have learned so many things from this book, which are:

• Business model is the key for a new entrepreneur who wants to start a new venture. A consistent and innovative business model will create a great competitive advantage for a firm comparing to other existing competitors in the market. The business model is an innovation by itself. There are plenty of choices of the way a problem can be determined and solved. The more innovative in your business model, the more profit you can make.
• Open innovation is a journey of discovery. You go outside, observing what happening surround and you will find more opportunities which existing as problems. The importance is finding the roots of those problems rather than majorly responding to their symptoms.
• Access the open innovation mind-set is much more important but the closed innovation mind-set should be considered. This will make a company more active in a complicated market.

Student: Viet QuocHoang

Student number: 100033143

 

Book summary: Engagement from scratch

Engagement from scratch

by Danny Iny

website: http://www.engagementfromscratch.com/

In the world today, one of the most popular question is how to make success. People always talk about the reasons and elements necessary in other’s success. what makes people achieve success in their area? Is it skills? Is it knowledge? Or just luck? Why can they get so many people to help them and find all the resources they need?

This is where you start, you are now already one of their audiences.

The book, engagement from scratch gives a third angle of building relationships with audience. It is about how to start your own networking business. The first and the most important step is to build your own audience.

As the title indicates. The book includes two parts, first is engagement, the second is from scratch. How one should build its own relationship when he is nobody? And How can a person make money on this basis?

This book may give you an answer.

In the 21st century, when Internet and computer technology are more and more commonly used, it has already become a significant platform for all kinds of business. So the content of the book about how to start people’s own business on the base of network is apparently quite useful. If used properly, Internet can be a great chance for all.

The book is special and significant also because it is different from those traditional business introduction books, just telling you what you should do,what is right or wrong or how to do something. This book is more like a kind of discussion between different people. In the book, there are a lot of ideas presented by a lot of different members, these people are those who have already achieved success in their own business area and have good experience and advice in these parts. From these people’s experience, one can find out how they can get their success. Also to acquire a better understanding, the book do not use very professional language, it uses easy words that can be understood by everyone who read it. This Makes readers feel that engagement is an easy thing which everyone can achieve.

Just as the book describe and promoted, one of the most interesting thing is that, the book is not just telling you what to do, but how to do. The author believes that there is no certain way to the success, something fits for others doesn’t mean it fits for you, so people should listen, study, and find out their own way.

But there are still something they can recommend, then readers can choose what to use.

A lot of interesting points are collected in the book to help people. The author uses blogs, which is seen as the most easy and useful way, encourages people to learn to be attractive by giving ideas. There are some core ideas about the book that are really attractive, like the following three ideas.

First it encourages you that when you are in your blogs or social platform, Learn to be active with the audience, let them in, by asking questions, not just presenting your own ideas without considering what others are saying. Treat them real person instead of comments or something else. You should always focus your content, give something really interesting, useful, and valuable to people.

Second is, earning money is not the only destination of such behavior, you should not always treat it your final goal. This is some kind like a theory in financial strategy that when you do not treat something your goal things will go naturally.

Finally, Do not focus only on quantity, but quality. It is quality that counts. Think that if you have a popular blog, people will would like to listen to you and know you. But even though you have thousands of readers only part of your reader will be your customer,  willing to pay for what you write. So what people should focus about their customer, is not only the widths, but also the depth. This is a way for sustained development.

Besides these, there are still a lot more things in the book deserve to be found by the readers.

The book is quite useful especially in the modern society when Internet are placing a more and more important part all over the world. When you can start your own business and build audience on the Internet, it is an important resources and easy access for you to your own business, Not just fit for the Internet, but also in the real social occasions.

Student Number: 100012484

Jianzhi Wang

FT start up 2013 guide book summary.

FT READING 600 WORDS

Primal Leadership: Learning to Lead with Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis, Annie McKee

The book by Daniel Goleman, Rischard Boyatzis and Annie McKee Primal Leadership: Learning with emotional intelligence (2002) explores the role of emotional intelligence in leadership. The authors of the book emphasize the fact that great leaders are not those genuine people with great ideas, strategic thinking and vision, but those who are able to lead others by using and controlling their emotions. The ability to drive collective emotions in a positive direction and the ability to handle yourself and your relations are essential competencies of emotional intelligence of a leader.

This book might present a great interest for leaders and managers as the authors not only describe why the power of emotions is so important for leaders, but also how to realize this power as for individual leader and also within a team and throughout entire organisations. Solid theoretical framework is based on the research data and analyses of leadership effectiveness. 18 competencies of emotionally intelligent leaders outlined by the authors can help leaders and managers to focus on developing their strengths. Five stages of development of a resonant leader can help the readers to design their own way of becoming an emotionally intelligent leader. A number of real-life examples of how the emotional intelligence works on practice also contribute to the great value of this book for leaders and managers. Hundreds of executives, managers and workers share their experience that can be of great interest for readers.

The book consists of three chapters. In the first chapter the authors describe the power of emotional intelligence. The emotional component of leadership is vital as our brain is an open loop. It means that every human can transmit signals that influence other’s people physiology and emotions. The connection between leadership and brain design is one of the most interesting concepts that can be learnt from the book. The authors state that there is a link between leadership and business performance and climate within a company. Climate influences business performance. Leaders in their turn influence climate by resonant leadership.  It’s very important for leaders to read emotions of other people in order to move them in a positive emotional direction – that means to create resonance. Emotionally intelligent leaders are able to create resonance. The authors outline four dimensions of emotional intelligence, each of which includes several competencies that are of great importance for leaders: self-awareness (emotional self-awareness, accurate self-awareness, self-confidence), self-management (emotional self-control, transparency, adaptability, achievement, initiative, optimism), social awareness (empathy, organizational awareness, service), relationship management (inspirational leadership, influence, developing others, change catalyst, building bonds, teamwork and collaboration). It is pointed out that these competences are not innate talents, but learnt abilities – that’s the second interesting concept that can be learnt from the book. Along with these competencies of emotional intelligence the authors of the book describe six approaches to leadership, four of which are those that create resonance – visionary, coaching, affiliative, democratic; and two approaches that may create dissonance and should be applied with caution. All these approaches when applying properly along with the developed competencies of emotional intelligence described above help the leaders to boost performance of the company.

The second part of the book is about making leaders: how to become a resonant leader. The authors point out that the process of developing a resonant leader implies five stages. That’s the third concept that presents a great interest. First stage is defining your ideal and your plans for future. Second stage is evaluating your real self examining your strength and gaps. Third stage is about making a plan of achieving leadership competencies and setting goals. Fourth stage is experimenting stage when you practice new behaviours and improving you emotional intelligence competencies and it takes quite a lot of time as the emotional centers of the brain are involved. Final fifth stage is learning from people around you (mentors or executive coaches).

The third part of the book is devoted to the how to build emotionally intelligent groups and teams as well as the whole organisations. A group’s emotional intelligence is based on the same capabilities as the emotional intelligent leader should have: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness and relationship management. Leaders who wants to build an emotionally intelligent organisation should create sustainable resonance within the organisation by paying attentions to people’s emotions.

Thus, this book is a must both for those who are in the beginning of the career and for those leaders, executives and managers who has already achieved something in their life, but still want to develop further.

Student number: 100030179

Book Summary : Leading so people will follow

LEADING SO PEOPLE WILL FOLLOW
By Erika Andersen

LEADING SO PEOPLE WILL FOLLOW is written by Erika Andersen who is founding partner of the consultant firm, Proteus International. It is counseling, training and coaching organization emphasized on leader readiness. She had great opportunities to provide leadership knowledge for executives of various large firms, including; General Electric, NBC Universal, Union Square Hospitality Group, Conde Nast, Time Warner Cable and others. In addition, Andersen was the one of top 50 blog of leadership aspect and the most favorite business bloggers at forbes.com.
15 years ago, when Andersen read folktales for her children, she was considering about leadership and how national chose their leaders. She had tried to differentiate between assigned head and accepted leader. She also noticed that being leader is not essential that people are willing to follow. Consequently, using those stories as the guide, the most necessary for leadership and required by followers are explored in six characteristics, namely, farsightedness, passion, courage, wisdom, generous and trustworthiness.
This book is fulfilling with the recent examples from outstanding companies such as Apple, NBC Universal, Union Square Hospitality Group and MTV Network. These firms were suggested to practice self-reflection by following each of the six leadership aspects. Therefore, they can improve themselves and become accepted leaders.

Farsightedness – To be accepted leaders, managers should have ability to see possible futures and/or chances for companies. After that, a method used to achieve those possibilities and accorded to the company’s vision is decided clearly. Also, the previous troubles will be considered for minimizing impossibilities. Participation is vital as well because we work as a team; therefore all members of a team should commit a future and are willing to complete a goal together.
Passion – Followers require passionate leaders who commit to successes and principles of companies. Even accepted leaders confront to difficulties, they will encourage their subordinates and themselves to overcome threats. Moreover, people who work with passionate managers assure that they will not be abandoned when they face to setback and misery.
Courage – Leaders who are courageous make difficult decisions, face with fear and uncertainties, respond to their decisions, accept and apologize for their own mistakes without excuses.
Wisdom – Wise leaders always listen to others for new knowledge, assess self-reflection for improving themselves by using their experiences, share knowledge and information with others and conduct on ethic basis without immoral aspect.
Generous – Positive thinking is vital for managers. Also, they give opportunities to their workers for more autonomy and responsibility, share wanted insight to others, reward them appropriately, and support them to be successful people.
Trustworthiness – Trustworthy leader normally generate safe surrounding that people can trust and feel relax to work with. Their conversations will simpler and more sincere. It is believed that trust environment support success of companies by generating more efficiency and innovation.

Why the book is important for 21st century.
In the 21st century, not only, business competition has increased dramatically but also economic crisis. Consequently, leadership, which is the main factor for being successful firms, needs to play in as a formal role of companies. Managers as leaders are the most crucial factor for guiding companies to survive from tough environment. It is necessary for manager to know how to be followable leaders rather than appointed leaders. Being effective managers, they will lead their subordinates safely, they concern about achievement of firms than their own pleasures. The most importance is they know how to gain full advantage and best efficiency from followers. At the end, enterprises and employees will achieve success together.
This book is not for only managers but also subordinates in any level of hierarchy. At least, someday they will be promoted to higher level. Then, they are able to be accepted leaders and lead fellows on the right way and in the right time. The only task to deal with is self-reflection in leadership aspects. After that, you will know which attributes that you lack so you can improve and fulfill leadership behavior for being a followable leader. However, Andersen stated that “each of six qualities is necessary but not sufficient. In the other words, each is important but it is interplay of all six that make someone truly perceived as a leader.

The three most interesting concepts
Firstly, the book notices readers about difference between accepted leaders and appointed leaders. That means being managers does not mean they are followable leaders. Secondly, managers should consider their behaviors and assess themselves for assuring that they are ‘truly followable leader’ who can generate effective and efficient teamwork and firms that will escape and grow in tough environment. Lastly, Andersen states ““Leadership really is all about the survival of the whole. Being an effective leader not only requires the support of others; it requires support from others.”

Name : Praweewan treratanakulchai
Student number: 6458572

“Brilliant Networking” Book Summary

Executive Book Summary

“Brilliant Networking”

Author: Steven D’Souza

Having a successful networking is vital for individuals for both their personal life and professional career. This book will help you to develop networking skills and guide you through the basics required to become a successful networker. Building up a network is not simply attending events or giving out business cards and only get what you want from people. The author has provided some principles such as setting up goals and mission, changing attitudes and beliefs or building up self-confidence. This book contains fundamental knowledge about networking, how to build a network in practice and how to manage your networking relationship. The book includes some real life examples in many situations that everyone could face in the real world.

To understand the definition of networking is crucial for the first step to develop your networking skills. Thus the first part of the book has explained networking meanings and mindsets, for example, “Good networking is making the most of the people you meet to your mutual advantage” by Carole Stone (D’Souza, 2011, p10). The definition shows the importance of networking and the reasons why managers or professionals should network. Networking can give you the information needed to make decisions as well as expertise and resources though it is not the information you were looking for. Effective networking can also assist in your career move or being promoted or at least create opportunities in getting your dream job. Moreover, in the 21^st century, there are many kinds if networking in practice including social media, blogging, forums and instant messaging. As a result, people and information become integrated and connected therefore it allows you to share your experiences and give to others and that people can use their skills and talents to change the world.

Developing trust is necessary to build a network and effective networking is a cooperative activity. A good way to start networking is to know where you are now and what you want to achieve as a networker. The second part of the book generally discusses about networking goals. Having a set of networking objectives will help people to stay focused on networking and not socializing (Horn, 2009, p446). People should have clear directions in everything they do. The author advises the reader not to aim too low because people can develop new skills and techniques only they aim slightly higher for those goals. External skills maybe required in sports tournaments for example tennis, however, the author points out that players cannot just compete on physical setup alone they also need internal skills such as confidence, resilience, attitudes and letting-go to succeed.

People must believe in what they do and be able change their negative beliefs about networking into positive ones. Besides, having clear values allows people to trust which is vital to any long term relationship. Attitudes and beliefs are critical as they directly shape our actions. This is what leads to either success or failure in networking. Confidence has been mentioned in this book, it is not made from just one thing but from self-respect, self-worth and self-esteem, confidence can be thought as a continuum process. Moreover, motivation drives a person behavior to achieve specific goals as individuals must discover how you are motivated then motivate yourself towards success (D’Souza, 2011, p68).

There many interesting contents concerned by the author about how to find your network as well as how to network in groups or in a virtual community. The author develops networking practices such as giving ideas about the business card, creating first impression, handling rejection, the pitch and the art of conversation. After learning how to network in practice, all of these skills allow individuals to network effectively. The last chapter of the book provides concepts about how to manage a network including how to follow-up, sharing information, growing a network and network in organizations.

In brief, the book contains vital information and interesting contents about brilliant networking. Readers will become a better networker as they can effectively connect to others and the society. Useful guidelines have been given for the audience to follow and use in their real life. For everyone, the best networking practice is to be able to successfully build and maintain long lasting relationship with people.

References

D’Souza, S. (2011). Brilliant Networking. Dorset. Pearson Education.

Horn, R. (2009). The business skills handbook. London, Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development.

Spiral Dynamics : Mastering values, Leadership and Change

Executive Book Summary

 Spiral Dynamics : Mastering values, Leadership, and Change

 Author : Don Edward Beck, Christopher C. Cowan

Name : Toh Hsien Harn   Student No. : 100033526

 

The book of Spiral Dynamics: Mastering Values, Leadership and Change explains a “bio-psycho-social” understanding on how human’s collectively respond to their living condition and how these responses prompt the emergence of latent value systems and thinking capacities (Cowan, Beck; 1996). From using the Spiral Dynamics we could understand how human think about things through their stages in life and our values is affected throughout these conditions life of change. Cowan and Beck discovered eight distinct value systems, which called vMeme too. Each of the eight stages of vMeme is connected by the primary set of values that shape of how do people think, see, solve problems, actions, and other aspects as well. They used eight different colours to represent the vMemes that describes the difference of beliefs, social groupings, motivation patterns, goals and organizational dynamics. Cowan and Beck separated spiral dynamics into two tiers. The first tier that is the Subsistence Tier, it clearly explains life is concerned with toward our survival as human being. It consists of six vMemes, values that form our sense of who we are and inspire our act. First colour that is the BEIGE- Survival Sense (The Instinctive vMeme). It represents that group of people is dominated by nature and basic survival skills, basically they act much like animals where sense of self beginning just only begin to develop. It usually happens at the semi stone age, not active in the modern days. Their basic needs such as food, sex, shelter, water, and physical safety. It is 1% population in the world.

Second is PURPLE- Kin Spirits (The Clannish vMeme). This is much group focused on tribal groupings, they believe in rituals, scarifies and curses. They respect for their older clan leaders and follow by rules. Example groups like guardian angels, voodoo curses, lucky charms. It consists of 10% of world population.

Third is the colour of RED- PowerGods (The Egocentric vMeme). It shows that people put power in priority than others and nature. The weak serve the strong and the strong protects the weak in exchange of loyalty. Examples of groups are feudal kingdoms and rebellious youth. It stands 20% of world population

Forth is BLUE- Truthforce (The Purposeful vMeme). It focuses on strong code where people have to follow. It also considers social groupings that lead people to obey strict order. Reward is occurred when obedient members complying the orders and punishment too. Countries those are in this level such as Taiwan, Thailand and Malaysia. 40% of world populations are being in this level.

Fifth is ORANGE – Strivedrive (The Strategic vMeme). It happens in America today where people concentrate on their personal advantage. They respond to money and things that could give them advantage more than loyalty. Competitive advantages improve productivity and increase growth. It is functioning in the free market economy or multi party democracy. 30% of world population is functioning in this level.

Sixth is Green- Humanbond (The Relativistic vMeme). It focus on humanistic, less focus on competitive advantage. People value caring and feelings and want to feel liked by others. They not only concern about themselves, but they concern things around them like the environment and equality. This is when hierarchy starting to blur out. Example groups from this level such animal and human rights association and environmental group. It stands 10% of the world population.

These colours define the essence of the orienting value. The second tier that is called being tier which represents new values levels are possible to emerge when life continue to change. Colours that includes in the second tier are the seventh colour YELLOW- Flexflow (The Systemic vMeme). This group are motivated by their own learning, they are characterized by system thinking and love dealing with ideas. They are called having an unique talent. 1% of world population in functioning in this level.

The eighth colour TURQUOISE- Global view (The Holistic vMeme). This is a group-oriented perspective that combined feelings, intelligence, work and life together. Individual work must be meaningful and also develop the feelings. They are able to see through all perspectives for the lower vMemes, human intelligence plays an important role to solve problems. Examples are David Bohn and Gaia hypothesis.

I think Cowan and Beck Spiral Dynamic’s idea help us to understand people coming from in term values and thinking, so that we can tailor our communication and find solutions easily. Besides that, the most important is to help us coaching via marketing. The interesting part of the book is the authors clearly enable me to see beyond the colours that lead to a deeper understanding. It helps me to understand more about human thinking and prepare to cope with those differences more efficiently when I am out in the working industries in the future.

Reference :

Beck, Don (Don Edward)

Spiral dynamics : mastering values, leadership, and change : exploring the new science of memetics

BECK, D., & COWAN, C. C. (1996). Spiral dynamics: mastering values, leadership, and change : exploring the new science of memetics. Cambridge, Mass., USA, Blackwell Business.

“how life imitates chess”—-let’s make a right move by Yaqiong Wang

The purpose of this book is to inspire explorers. We can all look at our own personal maps and cast off for unknown domains where we will encounter new challenges. We can accept that failure is necessary part of success. What we make of the future is defined not only by our past but by how well we understand and make use of that past. About all, we must be conscious of every decision we make. Not only in evaluating each future course of action but in looking back to analyze our past choices and the effectiveness of the process by which we made them. This is the book all about. Your life is your preparation. Therefore, let’s make a right move.

Every single move reflects a decision and, with enough time, it can be analyzed to scientific perfection whether or not each decision was the most effective. The author, Garry Kasparov who is the greatest chess player and world champion at the age of twenty-one, tell us how the strategy using on chess is similar in life. Every right move makes your life easier and how to make a right move is the most important priority. Even if you are blessed with talent it may never be realized unless many other factors are present, and it is more worth to focus on the factors we can better observe and influence. Therefore, what makes someone a better manager, a better writer, a better chess player? For there can be no doubt that not everyone performs at the same level or has the capacity to do so. What is critical is to find our own paths to reach our peaks, to develop our talents, improve our skills, and to seek out and conquer the challenges we need to push us to the highest level. And to do all this we first need a plan. Garry Kasparov has his own team to do lots research before every tournament, the more you know your competitor, the more you has the chance to win. Garry Kasparov write his own experience which is how he use the strategy on chess championship, and also this is the most interesting point that I can understand how the chess strategy is useful for real life.

Every leader in every field, every successful company or individual, has got to the top by working harder and focusing better than someone else. The top achievers believe in themselves and their plans and they work constantly to ensure those plans are worthy of their belief. It becomes a positive cycle, work reinforcing desire that spurs more work. Garry Kasparov is a hard worker indeed that is the key character for every managers and professionals. At the same time, questioning yourself must become a habit, one strong enough to surmount the obstacles of over-confidence and dejection. It is a muscle that can be developed only with constant practice. He said that asking yourself why before you make every step, focusing on yourself before you fulfilling your plan.

The three most interesting idea in this book is that Garry Kasparov has illustrated three keys to the strategy evaluation which could be used into every area not only on chess but also life. The three key things is Time, material, quality. Firstly, timing is important no matter what kind of plan you do. Keeping every step on time is the first key and rooting stone to make plan successful. There is no universal formula for evaluation. We get caught up in standardized rhetoric and end up with something that doesn’t fit our unique needs. For the most part we all know what we like and make decisions accordingly, but under pressure we can easily be confused and lose sight of our goals. The little things are hard to keep in mind when there are so many big things, so it’s no surprise that it’s the so-called “small stuff” that cause the most problem. Therefore, where many fail is by over-dependence on the areas they best understand. Most if the time we will have to balance exchange and evaluate over and over. If we do this well enough to blend material, time and quality into a multi-dimensional evaluation, we gain a clear idea of what we want and can plan on how to achieve it. This book is brilliant. I do like the detail he described about how to make your own strategies and how to achieve it as I mentioned above. Apart from that, he mentioned “The Attacker’s Advantage” which is the one of best part I like. While everyone has a unique way to remain motivated, we thrive on competition and that means beating someone else, not just setting a personal best. Olympic runner who breaks who breaks his personal record or even the world record never leaves the place to let himself in the second stage. At the end, I want to say that we should work harder, run faster, when we know someone is right on our heels, and get our heels back by using beautiful strategies.

Summary of ‘What Money Can’t Buy’

1. Description of the book

‘What Money Can’t Buy’ is a study of “the moral limits of markets”. The author Michael J. Sandel offers a good opportunity to examine the moral convictions, and their distaste for the market.

This book brings several biggest ethical questions of our time, which are the hard moral questions we confront in our everyday lives. Now, in What Money Can’t Buy, he provokes an essential discussion that we, in our market-driven age, need to have: Is there something wrong with a world in which everything is for sale? If so, how can we prevent market values from reaching into spheres of life where they don’t belong? What is the proper role of markets and how can we protect the moral and civic goods against that markets don’t honor and that money can’t buy? What are the moral limits of markets?

In recent decades, market values have crowded out nonmarket norms in almost every aspect of life—medicine, education, government, law, art, sports, even family life and personal relations.

 For example, nowadays, it is easy to find that life has been measured by money in every corner. It can be seen that news like ‘paying 82 dollars to enjoy quiet room in prison of California ’, when unfolding newspapers. Turn on the TV news, ‘a 500,000 dollars investment in United States for a green card’, even when getting in traffic jam, ‘8 dollars can help you enter the fast lane’.

2. Description of the significance and contribution

Without quite realizing the change, Sandel argues that we have drifted from having a market economy to being a market society

Meanwhile, there exists different argument. Mankiw is a classic economics textbook authors, famous of ” Mankiw economics” in worldwide, teaching out the Peking University Fang Gang professor of economics, as well as the central bank’s monetary policy committee member Li Daokui.

However, instead of criticism queue-jumping, Mankiw analyzes the advantage of the free market, revealing that the behavior to measure things by money is the result of market, which is an efficient allocation of resources. He advocates that let the people who are willing to pay enjoy the convenience.

For the debate, Sandel uses rigorous sentences to argue in his book. There are two reasons to oppose the idea. One of them is unfair; meanwhile, another one is that money may change the original nature of policy or activity.

Firstly, it is not equal for the poverty. These transactions will bring unfair consequences when money can buy anything, as a result, life will be tougher for the poverty. On contrary, the rich will gain more. This may lead to a condition that people are treated according to their economic conditions.

Moreover, some activities will be interfered by money (such as chance for ordinary people to participate in congressional hearing). Professional Lobby Firms hired people queue to raise admission, As a result, the right of ordinary people to participate in public affairs is often deprived.

Secondly, the influence of money may change the original nature of policy or activity, and even above other values. For example, originally, priority of passenger vehicle to go express is to encourage convenience and efficiency. However, making payment for express changed the original objective. Money will dominate everything eventually.

Except for preferential treatment, money also becomes the cause of human behavior. According to Sandel, many people use money to encourage children to learn, to encourage people who have obesity to lose weight and to put carbon emission on sale. However, apart from unfair, the author also argues that material will induce people to make any decisions, contributing to changes of the original implication. As carbon emissions can be purchased from the international market, it will become the economic costs to do environmental protection, rather than responsibility.

3. Description of learning

Things learned from this book are two aspects. Firstly, measuring everything by money will lead to unfair condition for the society. It is not sustainable to let the gap between the rich and the poverty to be wider; as a result, there will emerge more conflicts in the society.

Another one is that when money permeates through life and society becomes a market, the moral value will lose its bottom-line. In an Israel childcare centre, parents who came late to pick the children may feel sorry. However, things changed after implementation of penalty system, as the latecomers have to pay a fine. More parents become the latecomers and have no remorse. Thus, money can not buy anything. Many things should be supported by morality.

name: YI ZHAN

student number: 100024418

 

Power listening: Mastering the most critical business skill of all

Bernard T. Ferrari is the chairman of Ferrari Consultancy and a leader of the North American Corporate Finance and Strategy Practice. Working as a leading expert in administration field during his successful career, Bernard shares his own valued experiences for readers over the world in his book named “Power Listening: Mastering the Most Critical Skill of All”. This book receives significant appreciations as one of must-read books.
Bernard T. Ferrari’s book tells about the power of listening in the modern business as a crucial skill for managers. Listening skill is evaluated as the key factor may lead to failure or success. A research presents that in an organization, the main reason of bad decisions normally is the weak listening skill. Listening not also helps to make the speaker feel comfortable in the communication, but also provides the precise information for the listener. For managers, bad decisions which could affect to business seriously may be decided because of the inadequate and imprecise information. Ferrari states that listening could be learned, practiced and applied by everyone. He also believes that wrong steps could be prevented if we have the consistency and completeness process to practice and upgrade the listening skill. Therefore, Ferrari offers step-by-step procedure that is helpful to become a good listener in any conversation.
On the perspective of a business man, Ferrari considers listening is a critical and hard work. He presents four reasons to support his view. Firstly “listening is purposeful”. It means that when entering the conversation, listeners have to clearly understand what field the content will relate to, what information speaker tends to transfer. Secondly, listeners need to filter the raw information to extract the necessary sources for the final purpose. The third reason is that listening requires listeners concentrate and contribute to the conversation. The conversation is formed from both sides: listeners and speakers. As a result, listeners should focus on the content; generate the necessary interruption to advance the conversation more attractively and effectively. Last but not least, listening normally provides incoming sources for making decisions process. Listeners need to set up a making decision process clearly to get the highest effectiveness.
Ferrari also classifies six types of bad listeners including the Opinionator, the Grouch, the Preambler, the Perseverator, the Answer Man and the Pretender. The Opinionator is who only listen to determine whether or not the knowledge they posses are true. They enter the conversation with the bad attitude of not receiving any information else. The Grouch is who listen to prove the speaker’s point of views are wrong. They underestimate others’ ideas. The Preambler is someone who always tries to make questions in order to control the conversation in their purpose. The forth type, the Perseverator, is who talk so much, however they keep talking repetitions without the contribution to conversation. Those people who give the solution for a matter before it would be discussed are classified in the Answer Man group. And those people listen actively to impress or not really be interested in the conservation belong to the last group (the Pretender).
Ferrari suggests some vital principles of listening. In a conversation, the first and foremost thing is to keep quite. Ferrari offers an 80/20 rule which means that you should use 80 percent of time to listen and the remaining to ask questions in the conversation. It is better if you ask as much as possible than play a role as an observer and hold your opinions during the conversation. Speakers are willing to answer those questions like “would you tell me more about it?” because they realize that their talk is interesting enough to attract listeners. The second one is the attitude in the conversation. When you enter a talk, respect your partner. Consider that everyone is unique; they have something useful to listen. This attitude makes the speaker more willing to share their ideas. Keep focusing on the conversation and challenge all the assumption. It contributes to upgrading your listening skill.
In his book, Ferrari also gives numerous examples to support his opinions. Readers effortlessly catch the idea of what Ferrari is saying.
So why is this book useful for 21st century professionals, leaders and societies? Whether you are the businessman of normal individual, Ferrari’s book is a good selection for reading. World is multidimensional. Conversation could happen at any time with anyone at anywhere. Thus, listening skill is very critical in current century due to the reason Ferrari presented before. Especially in business, for a leader who has to manage a group of people, good listening is one of the key factors to make a successful business.
Ferrari’s book made an impression to me because of the unique ideas it transfers. It taught me a lesson that everything can be successful if you practice hard even though it is a “soft” skill. It also helps me to realize my weakness of being a “Pretender” listener sometimes. Additionally, an 80/20 rule is really useful for me in my daily life. Thanks to it, many people want to share their ideas to me.
In conclusion, if you want to raise your money and become rich in business, Ferrari’s book is worth to reading. This book will definitely widen your mind by the importance of listening skill.

Executive Summary for Mind Maps: Improve, Concentrate, Communication, Organization, Creativity, and Time Management By Ken Arthur

In this book, the author, Ken Arthur, describes an innovative way, mind maps, to absorb and memorize new information. The new technique fits the natural process of learning and memorizing in the human brain. The purpose of this book is to improve people’s skills in learning process, problem solving and communication in everyday life. Ken provides examples to elucidate how to use the mind map app to take notes. This includes the use taken notes to write essays and reports, do research, collect thoughts, set goals, write plans and lists, etc.

There are several distinctions of this book which differentiate the book from other books introducing mind mapping program. One of the distinctions of this book is the examples and details provided, moreover, it contains a list of mind mapping programs and explains their advantages and disadvantages. The second distinction of this book is the writing style. It is conversational, simple to read and easy to learn. Moreover, the author provides plenty of tips and tricks using mind mapping program. In section IV, Ken also includes other visual tools like flow charts and concept maps, which the other books generally lack.

The most significant thing I have benefited from this book is how to use Mind Map to take notes of written materials. Ken explains in details how to apply this skill into reality and even gave examples to help readers learn this. With the overloaded information nowadays, people have some trouble in stay concentrating. Therefore, people will benefit from this book by using mind map apps to sort out the thesis of tremendous information. From my perspective, after reading this book, I actually can use mind map to take note of the entire lecture. Besides, it also helps me sort my disordered ideas and collect thoughts from others. When discussing with colleagues, group mind mapping would be a perfect tool for collecting, modifying in time and further developing ideas.

The other thing I did not expect is using this app can enhance the ability of memorizing. For the human brain, it is easier to memorize images than words. The way the mind map presented is much more visual than traditional notes, easily grabbing people’s attention. At the beginning of the book, it explains how human brain work in memorize and the reason why mind maps can help to enhance it. There is a similarity between these two and that is how a mind mapping program works.

The third thing I found it interesting is that using a mind map can help people develop their creativity. There is an entire section illustrating how to teach children using mind mapping programs at right and fun ways in order to show them learning could be fun and easy. Ken also encourages readers to use concentration and creativity to individualize their own learning process. There are also other aspects that I did not expect. For example, using a mind map to plan a wedding and even create efficient shopping lists.

At the end of the book, the author tells us he intends to help people to be a better reader, writer, note taker, learner, and user of information. He spends tremendous time on researching each discipline and applying mind mapping program to meet and excel those disciplines. There is no doubt that he successfully conveys his aims and deliveries his information. I firmly believe that a person from any background will find this book very useful.

Book Summary: Innovator’s Dilemma – When Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail

Why good companies go badly? Innovative dilemma is about the failure of good companies. Why good companies have good management, stay close to customer, continuously improve products, everything is right but still fail. They don’t fail of doing bad things; they fail because they keep doing better. They only listen to crucial customer and strike to support competition. But their effort of doing right things is wrong. If normal books discuss how firm to beat the marketplace by doing the best thing; however, in this book, the right thing does not make sense and wrong thing is worked. And companies struggle with this understanding, and fail.

The main subject matter in the book, Innovation, contains two forms, sustaining and disruptive innovation. Sustaining innovation improve in establishing products, they deliver in improved performance based on existing customer value. They intend to produce products becoming bigger, better and more powerful. Disruptive innovation change value proposition in market which are low performance, inexpensive, simpler, and easier to use. However, disruptive innovations provide new attributes for customer value, then create new market for these changes. Disruptive innovation itself and firms focus on improve something they already have, ignore the threat. Overtime, under sufficient investment, disruptive technologies take over the old markets by delivering full old attributes and adding new ones. Established company’s effort to commercialize disruptive technology often joins in too late. This book exemplifies disruptive innovations in disk-drive, excavator, steel and automobile industries which replace older products.

The book is essential for 21^st century managers who deal with the varied types of success and failure in the market under the advancement of technology. Innovator’s Dilemma describes the reasons for leader firms miss opportunities due to disruptive technologies, since then and proposes solutions to overcome these fails. Company pursuing growth from disruptive innovation must find new markets outside the existing customer based and value the disruptive technology for what it delivers. Understanding the concepts of disruptive technology in marketplace, managers can fully exploit the change to organization; together with appraise the capabilities and disabilities of firm.

Innovator’s Dilemma discusses process of transformation from older technologies to disruptive innovations and forces within company that make them find it difficult to implement these technologies. Professor Christensen provides a four Principles of Disruptive Technology to explain why firm succeed in applying existing technologies but fail to exploit disruptive technologies. Those are four of the most interesting concepts included in this book. Each principle is the background knowledge for the modern managers in 21^st century. First principle, companies’ resources depend on the desire of customers and investors. Disruptive technologies are low margin opportunity, thus most profitable firms do not want it. Secondly, focusing on bigger markets ensure for growth needs of large firm. Increasing on new revenue from huge market maintains growth rate. Next, it is not necessary to analyze the inexistence market. Lastly, technology supply may not equal market demand. Normally, the progress of technology change exceeds the customer wants. Consequently, current products jump over the market demand, while disruptive innovations which underperform will be competitive in the future. Some products meet the adequate performance will look for criteria for selecting that tend to reliability, convenience, cheap price.

In sum, firms need to understand the concepts of disruptive technology, its impacts and significance today to avoid missing opportunities in market.

BOOK SUMMARY OF POOR DAD AND RICH DAD

Shanmei Xia (100031817)

The author is trying to make a contrast with these two dads. Rich Dad, Poor Dad refers to the two men who have influenced the author-Robert when he was a child. Most of this book is based on the perspective of the author learning from his “rich dad” about the way to make money – and seeing how his “poor dad” made huge money mistakes and why his own farther struggles with financial problem for the whole life. The author is trying to find a way out of the lifelong monetary problems experienced by the people like his “poor dad” (whose weekly paychecks, while respectable, were never quite sufficient to meet family needs) and also illustrates the characters of “rich dad” (that “the poor and the middle class work for money,” but “the rich have money work for them”).

 In the 21st,the world is filled with various types of entrepreneurs, and also many people are making efforts to become one of this group. Setting up a profitable and sustainable business is not easy thing to do, but there are ways to do it. This book is a kind of tooI to help people who desire to become self-employed or financial independent or an entrepreneur in the long term. In this book the “rich dad” regarded as experts – my Rich Dad Entrepreneur Coaches – work with career beginners to understand what you need to know to build a successful business.

The poor dad is his own farther worked as a teacher for a living, while the “rich dad” who is the father of his friend ran his own multitude of businesses. Two thirds of the book includes 6 important lessons taught to Robert by his rich dad.

The Rich Don’t Work For Money

The author means that rich people do work very hard. The proper way the title should be read is that the rich do not work for money. They work to learn things, and at the same time things they learn can easily be applied to make money over and over again and keep a sustainable growth in the long run. I strongly agree with this sentiment entirely. It means that good ideas are always more valuable and essential than good labor, because you can keep mining good ideas, while good labor is spent the second when doing the job.

Another part I liked so much in this section is that  “rich dad” is quite frugal. Even although he is very affluent, he still drives a cheap car and lead a simple life. Nowadays many people equate rich with material things, so I like it when it is shown that being rich often has little connection to material possessions. Being rich means never worrying about payment of your bills – it is not necessary meant driving a luxury car(well, at least not until you can pay cash for it and not break a sweat).

Undoubtedly, this was one of my favorite parts of the whole book, even with the short, out of place rant about the gold standard (actually a misnomer, because the only way the book makes any sense in terms of time is if the rich dad is actually talking about the Bretton Woods system and not the true gold standard) and how the United States was doomed if they abandoned it.

 Why Teach Financial Literacy?

In this section, the book redefines the entire word. The author hold a view that an asset is something that generates income, while a liability is anything that has costs to pay. In other words, by this definition, your primary residence is not an asset any more but a kind of liability. Although It may have cash value, it does not generate any income in future. Instead, assets are forms of passive income that you control, like a rental property or intellectual property.

Mind Your Own Business

The maim point of this section is that a financially healthy person must be spending their spare time not spending their paychecks, but investing as much of it as possible in assets. This is another part I really agree with: pay off your debts and start investing as soon as you can into things that can generate revenue in the long term.

Work to Learn – Don’t Work For Money

Everyone should strive to learn as much as they can when they work, because it can transform your understanding of the world and perhaps build into methods of starting your own business and being self-employed. However, to look down at people who choose to be employed for a living as “hamsters” is ridiculous. Is Jack Welch a “hamster”? He was employed by General Electric for forty years.

While I agree in general with the lesson, the tone here was extremely insulting towards people who choose to be employed, referring to them as “hamsters.” Using this logic, the majority of the millionaires in the United States (as described in The Millionaire Next Door) are “hamsters.” That’s ridiculous and insulting.

I would recommend Rich Dad, Poor Dad is an excellent way to challenge your thinking about work and money, only if you combine it with other books that make tactical recommendations of financial issues.

Positive Organizational Scholarship

Positive Organizational Scholarship

 

Foundations of a New Discipline

Kim S. Cameron, Jane E. Dutton, and Robert E. Quinn, Editors

These days there are many books that are based on the idea of how to make a company perform effectively, paying more attention to the environment in the organization. It is obvious that success of the company greatly depends on the employees’ attitude to work. If they are satisfied and find their job interesting and motivating, the company is likely to succeed. However, most of studies put emphasis on negative psychology. It is considered that people are likely to have various psychological problems. These theories have intention to prevent and solve these problems.

On the contrary, the authors of this book are one of the first who have started considering organizational environment focusing on positive processes that happen in people’s lives and organizations. The book opens a whole new world of a positive organizational psychology, which is highly connected to the prosperity of the organization. The perception of the organization is in our minds. On the one hand, we can think that almost all organizations are based on selfishness, manipulation, secrecy, and employee’s focus on their own goals. On the other hand, we can have a belief, that there are organizations that can be characterized by appreciation, collaboration, virtuousness, vitality, and meaningfulness (Cameron et al., 2003). The authors concentrate on the second type of organizations and study the aspect of positive organizing.

This book consists of the three main parts. The first part, “Virtuous Processes, Strengths, and Positive Organizing”, explains that virtuousness is the feature of organizations that contribute to the fulfillment of its members (cf. Peterson & Seligman, 2003). Members of such organizations tend to appreciate their job. If employees are treated like individuals they are likely to be innovative. Positive organizing accepts the existence of error. The authors stress that gratitude (thankfulness) is a source of trust that can be a characteristic of positive organizational performance. In authors opinion companies should pay much attention to developing the strengths. This can be reached by improving employees’ talents, knowledge and skills. In terms of such phenomena as ‘Courageous Principled Action’, people act according to what they think is right.

The second part, “Upward Spirals and Positive Change”, describes how positive emotions such as joy, interest, pride, gratitude and love, can stimulate upward spirals toward optimal functioning of individuals and organization. Positive emotions can help organizations to avoid downturn and reach harmony, energy and even prosperity. Positive change is an important aspect, however, new skills and values may not guarantee an employee that he can easily apply it in an organization with norms that are unaffected by his changes. ‘Positive Deviance’ means an extraordinary behavior that can help an organization to become extraordinarily positive. The authors draw reader’s attention to a term of Authentic Leadership, and consider authentic leaders to be confident, hopeful, optimistic, resilient, transparent, moral, future-oriented.

In the third part “Positive Meanings and Positive Connections”, the emphasis is put on The Power of High-Quality Connections. “A five-minute conversation can make all the difference in the world if the parties participate actively” (Hallowell, 1999). People should find Positive Meaning in Work, as work can be a source of pain and boredom, or a source of joy, energy and fulfillment.

Despite the fact that this book is quite difficult to read because of scientific style, it gives the readers a chance to look at the psychological aspects in organizations from the positive point of view. Authors give many examples, which can help to understand theoretical information better.

Currently, many organizatios have started to pay attention to what is happening inside the company. They try to cultivate a better working environment for the employees. However, they need some help in understanding how to do it more effectively, and this book is a very useful guide for top-managers or even owners of companies. They can build their company culture based on this book, because positive organizational scholarship can become an instrument which will help to achieve a competitive advantage. Moreover, job seekers can broaden their knowledge and skills with help of this book, and change their way of thinking. Employers may find such applicants attractive for the company.

I have discovered several interesting things from this book. Something that is traditionally considered to be ”positive” (such as competence or independence) may slow down new knowledge creation; meanwhile “negative values” (such as failure or dependence) can facilitate new knowledge creation (Cameron, et al., 2003). This means that managers should be very careful with terming something positive or negative. The second interesting idea is that employees with high quality connections at work have more energy, zest, vitality, and learn more and at a faster rate. Organizations should develop high quality connections within the company, they should create necessary environment. Finally, social networks can collect and distribute not only information and resources but also positive energy. Positive energy may help an organization to become prosperous.

Book: The Right-brain Business Plan

Book: The Right-brain Business Plan

Xinyu Li 100026955

Section 1

The book is “the right-brain business plan”, which is written by Jennifer Lee, the founder of Artizen Coaching. She spent a decade climbing the corporate ladder before pursuing her creative dreams. Through her popular workshops, coaching practice, and writing, she empowers others to follow their passions, and get success in their own field. This book is for right-brain entrepreneurs who are courageously pursing their creative passions. It consists of nine parts, from physical structure of brain to encourage us writing a plan for real actions from the introduction. We can see there is significant difference between the right brain and the left brain: right brain buddies with our artistic, visionary right brain while left brain tales control of statistics, logic and so on. To be specific, this book is born for those tend to use their right brains. Also, if someone lacks of planning, this book helps to establish career plans. The difference between this book and other books is that it is just written for a peculiar group of people, not suitable for everyone. This book is full of instructions and cheering words, if you read it in detail, and follow the instruction, the outcome would be quite good, but if not, it is only can be regarded as the normal book with plain suggestions.

Section 2

As we all know, left-brainers usually successful as they are strong in solving problems, sequencing steps and hashing out the details, but right brainers nowadays can access to the world of success, as we free our minds to see creative options, explore and find patterns and purpose, we dream big and connect emotionally with our visions, it is the characteristics of right brainers, so we are good at drawing, playing instruments but not detailed work. This book is a different type of business book, at least in the way it is presented. In place of complex numbers and numerous words, the book uses a visual approach to demonstrate various business concepts. The book is full of sticky notes，illustrations, colors, pictures and boxes that help the creative or visually oriented entrepreneur get started with their business plan. This book told us it is important to have a plan. You need to be very clear about your business: what you stand for, what you want to accomplish, and what you bring to the table. In this way, you can focus your energies wisely to help achieve your version of success. It offers insights into how to map out a financial plan without becoming intimidated by the numbers. It also offers practical advice on identifying the right people to work with, finding the right customers and effectively marketing to them, painting your business strategies, drawing out goals and mapping steps to take. Through a series of color-filled assignments, readers are taken through the steps of launching and managing a successful business. The Right-Brain Business Plan is the business plan for those who think visually. Instead of writing down a formalized plan, these individuals are encouraged to illustrate their vision in other more visual ways. In seeing their plan, they can then tweak the results until they have a viable vision for their work. The result is a formal business plan given a different media. For people who find a traditional business plan intimidating, this might just be a useful alternative. In particular, artists or other visual thinkers will be able to use their talents to clarify their vision. I personally tend to think in words, so I actually enjoyed creating a more traditional business plan and found this creative approach more challenging.

Section 3

Three interesting things about this book are obviously: have a plan; know how to make full use of right brain, and just follow the instructions, you need to just follow your heart when reading this book. It can be regarded as the invention book for the right brain, it contains the skills such like imagination and quiet down, likes Qigong in China, which is a kind of activity like yoga, in this way to relax and concentrate, then you can be hypnotized by this book, but until now I have not been hypnotized, so I do not know what would happen if it succeed, it might have magic to some extent. I will admit that this book is not for everyone, and also if I do not follow it all the time, I will fell asleep for a while. Nevertheless, it does a good job of showing entrepreneurs the importance of a business plan and that it does not all have to be drudgery. Overall, this is a fun read for those looking for a different approach to traditional business plan writing. However, the book could use additional tangible explanations on how to execute the pictures and boxes in the real world.

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team

This is the observation from “The five dysfunctions of a team” that I have read. This book is a page-turner and engrossing. In particular, it mainly describes about how to make teams work effectively but the one thing that makes the book different from the others is it was written as a fable. The writer has written this story from his working experience – that is to say, his theories had been misused by applied only in individual leaders but actually to teams as well. This book is really powerful story, it was set in the big company that has become increasingly troubling even there was the most experienced and expensive executive team, however the executives are not working as a team, negating the advantages of the company innovative products and talented people. In addition to this, the main point of discussion is how to get people in a team aligned and rowing in the same direction, for example, “if you could get all the people in an organization rowing in the same direction, you could dominate any industry, in any market, against any competition, at any time”(Lencioni, 2002).  It means that the most important and difficult thing to build an efficient team is how to organize the member of a team to come together and consciously work toward the end goal as a team. Because of the fact that teams are made up of imperfect human beings-that is to say, they try to protect themselves or their weakness and their reputation by avoiding a confrontation with others and not having to deal with the issue altogether. So there are five dysfunctions of their team to make the team work unsuccessfully : 1.Absence of Trust , 2.Fear of Conflict , 3.Lack of Commitment ,4. Avoidance of Accountability and 5.Inattention to Results. All of these guide the readers with instructions to overcome human follies that tent to corrupt teams.

In my opinion, this book is significant for every leader, professional or executive in 21^st century. I would strongly recommend that is must-read for any leader and everyone who is interested in teamwork because this story is about the real situation in automotive world and all problems basically can happen in every organization, for example, some problems come from personal habits or behaviours of the team members, such as interrupting other’s conversation in a meeting and never be on but these problems seem to be small and unimportant things in the company but it can cause bigger and more serious problems later. However, this book consist of many business theories and some example cases, described by the fable so it is easy and allows readers to learn more effectively by losing themselves in a story. It also helps leaders or managers to understand how these principles can be applied in their real world also these theories are applicable for anyone interested in teamwork too even you are the leader or simply member of a team but you can improve your team to get a goal together.

There are 3 interesting issues that I have learned from this book. Firstly, the failure that exist in many organizations due to the absence of trust in organization. Essentially, Trust is the heart of a real teamwork and it allows team members to understand and open up to one another. In this case Trust means the confidence of team members’ abilities that there is no reason to be protective or careful around the group.  Whereas  if the members do not trust one another then it seems that everybody is to protect their weaknesses and mistakes, on one ask for help and offer help outside their areas of responsibility. As a result, the team cannot produce high-quality work because staff only focus on individual success. The way to overcome this problem is share experiences and talking about their strengths and weaknesses. Secondly, according to the trust is the heart of great teams and it also makes conflict possible so the second dysfunctional of a team is “Fear of conflict“. Teams that fear conflict, the members are unable to productively deal with problems. However, productive conflict is necessary for teams to become functional,  people are open to share without feeling fearful of criticism. The efficient teams must accept that conflict is a normal part of being in a team to learn with it. Thirdly, I think the last important thing that makes team dysfunction is “Inattention to Results“. It is the tendency of the team members to care of their own interests, rather than the team goals. This problem can make teams fail to grow. The way to address these dysfunctions is the leaders have to make the team results clear for all to see and make a real contributions to the achievement of the group goals.

Reference

Lencioni, P., (2002) The  Five Dysfunctions of a Team. San Francisco, the United State of America : Jossey-Bass, pp.5

Summary of Buzzing Communities How to Build Bigger, Better, and More Active Online Communities

Summary of Buzzing Communities: How to Build Bigger, Better, and More Active Online Communities

 

The book is written by Richard Millington, who is the founder of FeverBee Limited, an online community consultancy. Richard Millington is skilled at managing communities and has clients including Oracle and AMD. The purpose of Richard Millington to write this book is to help community managers build a bigger, better and more active online communities.

 

The core message of this book is developing a new method of managing a community. In the book, the author suggests community managers should measure the results of their work and the development of communities based on data analysis. The essential concept of the book is to establish data consciousness in the mind of community managers. This concept is not only useful for community managers but also helpful for all the managers in any fields. This book contains two major parts: how to manage a community and how to manage the members in a community, which help the community managers to improve their management both in the macro-environment and the micro – environment. Richard stressed the significant importance of data analysis in the book by launching his own experience of losing the job. Managers lose their jobs as they cannot show their value in a measurable way. According to the study in the book, not a single manager who lost their jobs can tell their own ROI. Comparing with other books which also give some suggestions for managers, this book is more focused on quantity method and introducing some scientific theories into management. Through these methods, the quality of managers’ work and the development of a community are going to be measurable and visible.

 

The significance of this book is to establish a quantity management approach instead of the traditional qualitative management approach. The 21st century is called “Information age”. The development of the internet has led to the explosive growth of data. Managers have an access to every individual’s personal data through Facebook, Twitter and other social networks. Besides, since the power of analyzing software has been sufficient for a company to deal with vast amounts of data. Therefore, companies can use data to optimize every facet in the management. Management based on the data will be far more efficient and effective than traditional qualitative management methods. The author also mentioned two specific advantages of applying data-based management approach for community managers, which I thick are also beneficial to managers in other fields. One is to find unseen (potential) problems. Without the deep analysis of data, managers can not notice the unseen problems such as the loyalty issues. The other advantage is to spend time and money on valuable customers. Through the analysis of data, managers can find the most valuable customers and distribute time and time on them. The common problem of dealing with customers is that managers prefer to spend most of their resources on customers who complain most rather than valuable customers. The analysis of data can help managers to avoid this problem. Furthermore, the concept is not only applicable in the process of dealing with customers; it can also be extended to other management aspects.

 

The first significant concept I found is this book is to apply science theory, especially the quantitative concept, into management. As we can see from the development of other subjects, all the subjects are in the process of moving from quality study to quantitatively study. Management as part of the science should also follow the steps. Managers should adjust their mind from traditional qualitative approach to quantitative approach. The second interesting concept is the concept of ROI. The author mentioned 8 common “advantages” of an online community. However, none of them has shown a significant ROI. Online business has been a trend nowadays; therefore, many companies start their own online business. But only few of them have a positive ROI and have a clear revenue model. Richard suggests that managers should consider the financial return on their investments behind the “advantages” of online business. That is what an online business lack of. The last breakthrough is to enhance the resource distribution process by applying data analysis. For example, for the purpose of doubling the sales of an online business, managers can analyze every process leading to the final purchase, which including advertising, registration, trial process and other aspects. Through data analysis, managers can find out which process is easy to improve and reach the purpose with least resources. Through data analysis, managers can distribute resources and time more efficient and effective.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reference:

Millington, R. (2012) Buzzing Communities: How to Build Bigger, Better, and More Active Online Communities. London: FeverBee.

“BUSSNESS RESEARCH: A Practical Guide for Undergraduate & Postgraduate Students” by Jill Collis and Roger Hussey

“Business Research: A Practical Guide for Undergraduate & Postgraduate Students” is one of the outstanding research textbooks which was written by two professionals, Jill Collis and Roger Hussey. Jill is a senior lecturer in the faculty of Business and Law at Kingston University, London, UK. Roger is also a professor of International Accounting at the Odette Business School, University of Windsor, Canada. The information in this book originates from both expert writers and external academic information in which references are properly provided. This book is the third edition which was published in 2009. The success of the previous two editions, which were reprinted almost twenty times, inspires Jill and Roger to improve this new edition. There are fourteen chapters including Understanding research, Making academic decisions, Dealing with practical issues, Identifying your research paradigm, Choosing a methodology, Searching and reviewing the literature, Writing your research proposal, Collecting qualitative data, Analyzing qualitative data, Collecting data for statistical analysis, Analyzing data using descriptive statistics, Analyzing data using inferential statistics, Writing up the research and Troubleshooting respectively.

The core message of this book emphasizes that business research is an essential tool for any thriving business. The aim of research is to find the various outcomes from business’s targets. It can be simply classified into Exploratory, Descriptive, Analytical and Predictive research. The research process should begin by choosing the topic and reviewing the literature. This can help researchers define the problems and research questions. Designing the research and writing the proposal are the next two steps. Both are a framework that guides how research should be conducted such as how to select research methods which will be used in the research. Then, collecting the research data in the fieldwork is the most interesting process that researchers should undertake. After that, analyzing and interpreting the research information by focusing on the result which researcher want to discover. Lastly, researchers have to write the dissertation, report or thesis to present the information (Collis and Hussey, 2009).

In the 21st century, the demand of students requires to study in business degree is rising. Those students, particularly in the UK, have to learn and sometimes undertake with business research. A basic problem is many students think that conducting business research is difficult for them. Hence, Collis and Hussey solve the problem by using this book, which clearly guides them through each obstacle. It is extremely beneficial for students, as it provides the tools that are needed to victoriously embark on research projects and adapts theories to real life scenarios, from the beginning to the end of this book provides everything that the students who have to conduct the research needs. This book is not only useful for research students, but also for those who are responsible in teaching research methods as it provides a companion website which is useful for students and lecturers. The website includes data sets, interactive revision questions and PowerPoint slides.

This book is a straightforward and concise guide for undergraduate and postgraduate students undertaking a research project for the first time. It amplifies the entire research processes, from reviewing the literature to presenting the results. Besides, the unique of this book is its features, a superior glossary and practical troubleshooting part, which examines the inherent obstacles that new research usually faces with and provides appropriate resolutions. This is an outstanding and up to date textbook in the 21st century.

There are three most interesting ideas available in this book, which are useful for the current researchers. Firstly, finding a precise overview of the range of research methods is difficult, however a general topic is crucial if students are to make rational options about the pertinent approach needed to answer their especial research questions. Secondly, it usually confuses researcher to distinct between methodology and method. Hence, understanding the difference between them is paramount importance. Methodology is the rules or theories for using a particular research method. On the contrary, method is a simple research tool, a component of a research, such as interview or questionnaire (Collis and Hussey, 2009). Finally, in order to achieve the qualification of academic research, researchers need to focus on the academic regulations and rules at an early stage. There are no international rules that dominate what universities and other institutions of higher education are (Collis and Hussey, 2009). Thus, researchers should decide the country and institution that they wish to study, then try to understand their agreements in terms of dissertation or research.

Reference:
Collis, J. and Hussey, R. (2009). Business Research: A Practical Guide for Undergraduate and Postgraduate Students (3rd Edition). New York: Palgrave McMillan.

A Summary of Understanding Michael Porter: The Essential Guide to Competition and Strategy

Michael Porter is famous for his idea of competitive strategy. His theories are widely used in most business schools and companies in the world. For some readers, Porter’s books are too professional to read and understand. Without knowledge of competitive basis, some Porter’s description in his book is hard to be managed. As there are other barriers like time consuming and language difference existing, misunderstanding is always happened during reading.

 

Joan Magretta, former editor at Harvard Business Review, has written the book Understanding Michael Porter to help readers understand Porter’s theories quickly and correctly. The book uses intelligible words and good structures to explain those theories and lead readers to the right direction. The book can be divided in two main parts: Competition and Strategy, which are the two key aspects in all Porter’s work. In these two parts, the five forces, competitive advantage, value chain, differentiation, industry structure and relative cost have been discussed intelligibly. Author also put some examples in chapters to guide reader implementing Porter’s theories in the correct way, especially for managers who have misused those concepts in the actual business decisions.

 

Porter’s theories are based on the competitive environment for most markets. One of the discussions in Joan’s book is that blue ocean strategy is a dangerous and narrow strategy which can only be used in specific circumstance. The key argument is that every market will become the perfect competition market, which makes the blue ocean strategy cannot be a good strategy for company’s long-term profiting. This argument reflects that the most important concepts in Porter’s theory is competitive environment in every market and industry. The key idea of the book is that keeping competitiveness among competitors can lead company to success. So, the first chapter mainly introduces what is competition and makes the reader clear about the core concept for Porter and the book. The following chapters in the former part bring some Porter’s models to help reader understand and learn about the competition.

 

The second part of the book gives an explanation of strategy. It has discussed that how company identified a good strategy and its key elements. Unique value proposition and tailored value chain can’t be separated and affect strategy and company performance together. Competitive advantage can be sustained if the company can target its market and customer successfully. For a good strategy, all activities that happened during operation need to connected. This fit idea also challenges the concept that most manager used: core competitiveness.

 

The best part of the book is the interview of Michael Porter. After reading the former part of the book, readers must have some questions and thoughts. They may find answers and understand it better in the interview. This interview makes the book different from other books. It gives the readers a feeling of official and makes the book more reliable. Joan uses some competition concept and strategy on her book, which makes it unique and alive.

 

The book is published recently. It means the concepts that the book describes are still widely used in the modern business. The cases are fresh and support the Porter’s theories. As the competition of market is stronger than it before, more and more mangers or business starters want to use Porter’s theories to benefits their business. The book can be used as a quick reference in the daily discussion. As the time is limited in the modern life, this book can provide a reliable and clear description of Porter’s concepts, less consumed time with great knowledge.

 

The book is telling readers that being unique is the most important things to make company competitive. The three interesting ideas I have learned from the book are: Competition is a contest over profit not a battle; Target market and target customer will benefit company better than consider all the customers; The connection between value proposition and value chain is one of the most important things that company to be successful in competition. The first idea is a correction for me on understanding Porter’s competition concept. This idea gives me a different way of thinking the competition. After reading this book, I want to rebuild the competitive system in my mind. The second idea enhances my understanding the concept of targeting market and customers. It offers more evidence to support the marketing theory and explain it in intelligible way. The last idea has put my old knowledge and new learning together to let me know the importance of value. In a strategic view, this two concept affects each other in a equal weight.

 

Summary of the Leadership Challenge

NAME:XIA HU                         STUDENT NO:100005212

What motivate people voluntarily to make a remarkable achievement in the organization? How to make a great leader? The Leadership Challenge is the book written by Kouze James and Barry Posner, the America’s best managers and educators. It focuses on helping people to strengthen their abilities to lead subordinate to make predominant achievements. In twenty-first Century, leadership is a kind of positive interaction. It exists in the government, enterprises, schools, hospitals, military, social groups.The so-called leadership is a special kind of interpersonal impression. Each person will impact others, also have to accept others’ influence in real life. This book is different from other books.The book is also deeply analysised the five leadership behaviors, by using a large number of illustrations, surveies, and charts, which involving all aspects of each field. After reading this book, it makes people gasp in admiration, no matter wide applications of its conclusions, or the thoeries are both superb. It can become a guide series exergy, and not only limited to leaders.

There are five leadership behaviors existed in the outstanding leaders, which are Model the Way, Inspire a Shared Vision, Challenge the Process, Enable Others to Act, and Encourage the Heart. Firstly, Model the Way. This part of the book is discussed how important to set a good example, because the leader will through the example to win power and respect. Leaders not only stand for themselves, but also they represent the entire organization. Secondly, Inspire a Shared Vision.  “Leadership is a dialogue, not a monologue.” it is a two-part practice. The one is leaders should have visions and dreams. For example, they have to put their heart and soul into their own dreams, also they have confidence to realize these dreams by their own ability. Every organization and social movement originated from a dream. The other is through the demands of the common desire for contribution to shared vision endorsed by others. In order to obtain the approval of others, the leader should understand the followers’ needs. Thirdly, Challenge the Process, every case was collected in the leadership challenge containing a tpye of challenge. For instance, sometimes is a kind of innovative products, sometimes is a bold legislation, sometimes is to open a new plant or new enterprises. Fourthly, Enable Others to Act. The great dream to become a reality is not rely on the actions of one person, but is rely on the efforts of teamwork. To build trust and relationships between facilitate collaboration is extremely significant. The leader needs others to feel more powerful, and more investment. If the leader admits the followers to perceive weak, feeble, or not reflect immaculate performance, the followers will not following for a long time. At last, Encourage the Heart. “Recognize contributions by showing appreciation for individual excellence”. This is a leader’s job to create cultural values and celebrate victory. We found that leader in every place. It is encouraging people to find a hope. This means, as a leader, only dream is not enough. Leaders must be exciting to communicate with the ideal, inspiring people to enforce the dream.

By studying this book, I made ​​a deep impression. Because of the selection of the many outstanding leaders’ cases, I have learned a great deal of experience. When you become a department leader, it is your duty to create the greatest benefits to the company. Meawhile, as a leader, in order to lead teams to victory, you need more time to accumulate experience. Try, fail, learning, which is the leader of the spell.The leader are learners.They not only learn from success, but also learn from failure. In addition, perhaps we do not have the opportunity to command a powerful army, but each of us has an opportunity to lead a family, or to lead a small team. As long as we continue to practice the leadership, happy life and work satisfaction will be easily under your “leadership”. Capacity and contribution of a person is limited, as a result, it needs to improve from the concrete work, to spread out the experience technology, then to lead team to work together. Above all, everyone should learn and adapt how to be a leader. When you through your own efforts to make the team improve, you will feel satisfied.

Summary of ‘Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour’

It takes me some time to read this book, actually, at the beginning, I wondered if it is a boring book because of the word  ‘rules’ in the title, but it makes me so amazing that it is much more interesting than what I thought. It is a bestseller in the UK, Watching the English is a biting, affectionate, insightful and often hilarious look English Society. Putting the English national character under her anthropological microscope, Fox finds a strange and fascinating culture, governed by complex sets of unspoken rules and bizarre codes of behavior.

In this book Kate Fox, an anthropologist, has set out to discover the ‘rules of English behaviour’, a project which she explains will provide us with something called ‘a grammar of Englishness’. Although the book is advertised as an anthropological study, which might put some readers off , it is in fact extremely readable and amusing.

The book seems to have been written for foreigners who wish to visit England, but it is likely the majority of readers are likely to be English. The book takes the form of a series of chapters in which Fox takes up a position in a variety of locations—-the workplace, the pub, the bus, the home, the garden, and then observes the English in action. Her aim, as she states it, was ‘to identify the commonalities in rules governing English behaviour, the unofficial codes of conduct that cut across class, age, sex, region, sub-cultures and other social boundaries’. The book concludes that at the heart of being English is an awkwardness or ‘dis-ease’ with social interaction. Unfortunately, Fox does not attempt to explain why this is so.

It’s a proper academically rigorous book, with footnotes and everything, but the language and writing style is fun and easy to get through, with lots of first-person comments from the author herself. The book is peppered with anecdotes about the research Fox did, and how she went about it. Favourite among these is her story about her hands-on experiment to do with the natural tendency of the English to apologise for almost anything. The section was called, with clinical precision, ‘Bumping Experiments and the Reflex-Apology Rule’. Fox’s goal with the experiment was to see how many apologies she could elicit from people she had intentionally bumped into on the street. That is to say, how many people would say ‘Sorry’ to her when she bumped into them.

The English in the book look in a particularly like division ‘class’. And other social similar, the English middle class to class the most sensitive, the top and the bottom of the class is not too care about, a class of adjacent class the most sensitive, and to distinguish. English class is not wealth by decision, the pursuit of justice fair features on the one hand, on the one hand, to maintain class image, so all the occasion for the most, not surprisingly, in detail place, often to comprehensive various can identify class. But anyway, at least read this book, all have rules to follow.

The most noticeable and important ‘rule about humour’ in English conversation is the dominance and pervasiveness. It permeates every aspect of English life and culture. The real ‘defining characteristic’ is the value we put on humour. Most English conversations will involve at least some degree of banter, teasing, irony, understatement, humourous, self-deprecation, mockery or just silliness. Humour is the ‘default mode’ of English.

A little thing that makes me confused is that the identification of the ‘English’, is it just people who live in England or including Wales and Scotland. The reason why I take this word into consideration is that I think maybe they have some unique culture and character that is not totally similar with people geographically live in England. But Kate did not give me the answer in this book.

As you progress, you’ll find that at times the book gets a bit repetitive, but that’s to be expected as the rules of Englishness pervade every aspect of their life and so, as each one is covered, you’ll find the same ‘culprits’ will pop up over and over again. But what makes the book such a wonderful read is the witty and funny writing style. The self-deprecating humour so typically English pervades all of it. Overall, this is a wonderful read for everyone who wants to understand better the English people. Now I wish we had a book like this for every country and every people.

 

Book Summary for The Art of Possibility: Transforming Professional and Personal Life

Qiao Li   Student No.100030651

Rosamund Stone Zander is a family therapist and a landscape painter. Benjamin Zander is the conductor of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra and a professor at the New England Conservatory of Music.

The Art of Possibility offers a set of breakthrough practices for creativity in all human enterprises. Infused with the energy of their dynamic partnership, the book joins together Ben’s extraordinary talent as a mover and shaker, teacher, and communicator and Rosamund’s genius for creating innovative paradigms for personal and professional fulfillment. Through a series of practices and supporting stories from their life experiences, the authors provide us with a deep sense of the powerful role that the notion of possibility can play in every aspect of our lives.

The practices presented in this book are not about making incremental changes that lead to new ways of doing things based on old beliefs, and they are not about self-improvement. They are geared instead toward causing a total shift of posture, perceptions, and beliefs and though processes. They are about transforming your entire world. Each practice has its own catchphrase. Once you are in the habit of using them, the practices will reliably land you “back in the boat”, reoriented in a universe of possibility.

The common thread running through all twelve is that powerful word in the title: possibility. It’s hard for me to easily explain it, but the essential element here is being able to be mentally and emotionally open to the world, and to see it as a world of abundant opportunity. Each of these 12 practices is a facet of that, a specific way of looking at things that opens up possibility in ways, places and circumstances you might not expect it.

Each of the 12 chapters communicates an idea – a new way of opening up possibility within your life, providing an evolving and additive view as the reader progresses through the book.

First, the Zanders talk about “It’s all invented” where humans tend to focus on very few things, missing most of what is going on around them. By shifting focus, you will see many opportunities for the first time. You will examine the nine dot square (not new for most readers I would guess) and be reminded that connecting all of the dots in four lines without lifting your writing instrument from the paper requires you to go outside the box that we mentally draw at the circumference of the dots. The message of course is to be careful about your assumptions – they can fence you in!

Second, measurements can cause us to focus too narrowly on where we are today and encourage “scarcity thinking” – the glass is half empty. The Zanders encourage thinking about the glass as half full, citing the well-known perspective of optimism as being empowering. This can help you to ‘step into a university of possibility.’

Third, if you assume that people will do well and help them to see how they can, they will. Mr. Zander gives every student an “A” in his class, and simply requests that the student write a paper to tell what they will do to deserve that A. This gets the students focused on excellence, and takes away the tension that gets in the way of real results.

Fourth, as a mindset, think of your role as “being a contribution – you are a gift to others”. How could that change what you do – to focus on the external perspective?

Fifth, lead from any chair. This is a reference to involving everyone. Benjamin Zander asks his players to write down how he could improve practices and performances, and pays attention to the suggestions genuinely viewing leadership from all levels

Sixth, follow rule number six – “don’t take yourself so seriously – to lighten up”. Examples show, how in taking this on in organisational settings, a new culture can emerge, enabling fabulous creativity and new ideas.

Seventh, be present to the ways things are. Many of us are disconnected from reality. By getting back to it, we can see more possibilities.

Eighth, give way to passion. Going with your strong feelings allows you to be more authentic, and to go to new heights of accomplishment. Allow yourself to let go.

Ninth, light a spark. See you role as creating a spark of possibility to be lit that others can see. Act as a catalyst for yourself and others.

Tenth, be the board of the game you are playing. Instead of defining yourself as a playing piece or even a strategist in the game you are playing, see yourself as the framework for the entire game.

Eleventh, create a vision that generates “frameworks of possibility” for others and work on enrolling them into what is right for them.

Twelfth, tell the WE story. Focus on being inclusive and considering what is best for all. Move from I to We, from independence to interdependence.

Executive Book Summary: ‘How to Argue’ – Alastair Bonnett

Section 1: Book description

‘How to Argue’ by Alastair Bonnett (2011) is one of eight books in the series Smarter Study Skills of Pearson publication. Each book in the series provides useful techniques and strategies that can boost students’ ablilities and performance in different areas. ‘How to Argue’ constitutes a guide to one of the most common areas where many students need help which is argument building process and the act of engaging with arguments of others. The book has been organised and designed to be a user – friendly handbook with each chapter deals with a particular aspect of writing, presenting or assessment/exam technique. At the start of each chapter, there is brief paragraph of summary of the whole chapter along with a key topics list that helps readers to have an overview of the content. In addition, pratical tips and exercises sections add in the exciting feels for readers, as they do not only have valuable theoretical concepts but also the opportunity to actually put what they have learnt into practice.

Section 2: Significance and contribution of the book

An academic argument is a tool of learning and understanding, a type of exchange based on a sharing of knowledge, facts and opinions. This is the reason why arguing ability are considered crucial factor for professors and lecturers to evaluate good students as they can see who are able to participate in debate, express their ideas clearly and effectively. However, having said that does not mean arguments are solely to estimate the ability of students but they are also important to many people in other aspects of life. As a consequence, leaders, managers or organisations can also find useful advices on how to make plausible arguments to fit in with particular situations as there are arguments for all occasions: from presentation of a business plan or promotion decision to written reports, all need to be equiped with reasonable elements that can assure readers or listeners the validity and the necessity of information mentioned, if not they might wonder where is the point of this idea or that decision and so on.

Section 3: Interesting concepts from the book

The fact that I find the author’s approach to develop argument interesting because I used to be someone having intimidating thoughts towards debates. I found it hard to conduct a convincing argument. But after reading the book, I realised that the step-by-step guidelines of Bonnett are really helpful. They are easy to follow and really effective to improve the ability to produce strong arguments with evidences and supporting ideas.

According to Bonnett, in order to deliver an argument whether it is written or presentation, there are a few steps needed to be prepared. Firstly, we need to know how to develop a substantive argument. To help us do that, the book introduces six types of argument. We have to identify which purpose we are going to make the argument for and choose the most suitable type to deploy then think of a rough one – sentence summary of our argument. The next step is to structure the argument by sketching out stages of the argument in a logical way and putting them all together with a clear arrangment so that listeners or readers can follow and understand the argument with ease.

Another thing that is valuable from the book are six suggestions on producing original analysis, making your argument stand out:

• starting your argument from new topics, new comparisons and new contexts;
• pursuing minor themes can provide insights into a field that is not necessarily fresh but contains potential ideas for further exploration;
• listening for absences, unspoken assumptions and marginalised facts, can provide powerful critiques and enable the identification of substantive new areas of enquiry;
• giving proper consideration the the identification of the existing theories in your area and to the nature of the ‘theoretical import’ you are comtemplating, this approach provides an exciting and relatively simple way of saying something new and important;
• being able to identify and challenge an existing and dominant assumption about causality and to explain why the reasoning behind this assumption is back to front;
• doubting everything to pose questions in order to understand in depth the ideas and terms that are given.

To sum up, ‘How to Argue’ is a great book aiming to not only students of higher education but people who are in working envinronment, especially professionals such as leaders and managers. It implies the fact that arguments do not come from within, they arise from an engagement with issues surrounding us. To argue is to be in the world, to be involved, having something to say, participating in a debate is to show that you are able to express your thoughts and this book is useful in helping you making your ideas flow in its best logical and convincing way.

Reference:  

Bonnett, A. (2011). How to Argue. Third Edition. Essex: Pearson Education

Executive summary of ‘Start Your Own Business’ —-the journey of brainstorming and reflection

Ibsen said ‘If you doubt yourself, then indeed you stand on shaky ground’ .it is the first feeling I had after I scanned through my book. Maybe I do not have a deep understand of the most important meaning of the book and cannot digest all the valuable knowledge I got confidence. To take actions and begin preparation of having our own business is not something unrealistic not alone to come up with an idea of it. But I do need an excellent idea and prepare from now on to accumulate experience if I want to have a try.
The book ‘Start Your Own Business’ is mainly about the process of how you can begin your business including some instructions and remainders. The reason why I prefer this book is because it is an interesting one with rich information which can transfer some positive energy to me. Though it provides a guideline of starting a business which can be very complex, the book divides the process into simple, clear and complete steps. It also updates the latest information of some popular trading methods such as the e-commerce. In this book, I find some short but special tips, pictures, quotations and some links of resource; these details prevent the book from being too boring. Some tips can always attract my attention as they are just like teachers who would like to share their own experience with us.

The book is not too difficult to use and to be understood. As this book covers relatively complete stages of doing our own business from the planning stage to specific running stage therefore people with different levels of business knowledge even though those who have a little business background and limited resource can take advantage of it . In each stage the authors give readers some examples as well as options so that people can learn from this information, make their own conclusion or choices. After some steps there may be a checklist or a Q&A sheet which, I believe, can give readers an opportunity to make arrangement and reflection so that we can get a clear route towards to the goal.

If having our own business is somehow an ideal thought, I think I can use IDEAL to sum up what I have learned from this book. ‘I’ stands for the word imagination. Imagination can help me to collect thoughts about business before I really want to begin my company. ‘D’ represents for determination, I need to set up my minds because to do a business can take much time and energy. ‘E’ refers to evaluation, to know myself, to be familiar with the environment., ‘A’ stands for awareness, that is, I need get awareness of what I am doing ,what I need to do, what kind of skills I need and which part I’d better to pat attention to. ‘L’ means links, to run a business I need to build my own social network, such as communication with customers, suppliers, and the link with latest information.
I think that we live in the world which is changing at a amazing speed .Challenges, pressure as well as failures are the things sometimes we have no choice but to face and to deal with them if we want to stand out. On the way to start a dreaming business, in my opinion, we can meet lures, confusion. We may feel misleading or uneasy because starting our business, to some extent, can be treated as a challenge especially for me .Currently, I do not get enough essential business skills, I have no money, no experience, no clear goals. Perhaps I even do not have any typical personalities which are mentioned in many books. But these are not the biggest problems. The first step for me is to make an objective and comprehensive evaluation of my own ability.
The other discovery is that our unique idea can be very important .Sometimes we get an inspiration, implement it in a logical way and then we succeed even without spending a great deal of time on market research.

In conclusion this is a book suitable for those who are interested in setting up business by themselves. I have benefited from it as I have a better understanding of the business and also it helps me make preparation of the business. Just to have a try, with passion we may find the way to success.

Executive Book Summary-The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness By Stephen R. Covey

Main idea:

The core message of this book is “to find our voice and inspire others to find theirs.” For individuals and organizations, effectiveness is seen as a requirement for success. This sense of effectiveness is contributed by Stephen R. Covey‘s “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”. Since world has being changed from the Industrial Age to the Knowledge Worker Age, we must move beyond effectiveness to greatness. However, to access and involve in this new world with the higher level of human genius and motivation, new habit is required. It is called the 8th habit. It represents another dimension of effectiveness which will enhance the performance of each of the other. This book is about change the way you think about yourself, your purpose in life, your organization and other people.

This book is divided into two parts: find your voice and inspire others to find their voices. Find your voice is to recognize and develop your true nature, to better understand yourself, and express your voice through vision, discipline, passion and conscience. Once you’ve found your own voice, the way you can continue to increase your feelings of achievement is to inspire others to find their voices. This is the leadership challenge in an organisation, it not only manage things, but also lead people, because it requires leader recognise, respect and create meaningful opportunities for others to express their voices.  This book introduced several ways to help leaders to better understand their people and inspire others to find their voice as below:

Focus:

1. Expand your influence          2. Be trustworthy                                                

3. Build trust                              4. Blend other’s voices

5. Create a common vision

Execution:

1. Align goals and systems;  2. Empower others

 Recommendation

There are several the significance and contribution from this book significant for 21st century professionals, leaders, societies and the world. The power of “voice”, the sense of “find our voice and inspire others to find theirs”, will contribute leader to be greatness by realize your full potential and achieve lasting fulfilment. The 8th Habit will provide leader has their own power to constantly find the potential in people. This kind of leadership communicates to people their own worth so clearly that they come to see it in themselves. In addition, the understanding of the balanced scorecard provided leaders to not only concern about profits, but also contribute good relationships with all stakeholders. Moreover, the ways to increase leaders’ influence can be a significant contribution for leaders. The win-win thinking is also will help leaders to understand the importance of listening. Finally, the link between leadership and success also attracts leaders to understand.

 

Three interesting ideas

The Pain, the Problem and the Solution

The story of Muhammad Yunus we really touch me. Started with brought bamboo, an idea with small loans is to help them to improve their lives, finally he opened Grameen bank. He found this voice is to become entrepreneur is to help their home and neighbourhoods to become rich and successful. Think about these great people, all find and use their voice, and keep it, and then inspire other to find theirs. It is not hard to find your voice, but to use it and inspire others even facing a trouble or disease.

This is reason why some people became greatness and some people just success.

 

Find your voice

When I first was these three words, I simply thought this means just listen to your heart and follow it. But when I go through it, the meaning of find your voice is not only to listen and follow. Sometimes we complaint, we feel disappointed the current life was not your want but we continue accept. Maybe it is the time to find what is your really want. But finally we are wrong. We should listen to my heart, to better understand what we are. But we also need to develop our nature, to be better than before.

 

 

The Freedom of Choose

This is a gift we’re born with. We have a right to choose what we want. We cannot change or determine in things happened to us. But we can choose our response. Everyone has experienced some bad things, we cannot change, but we can choose our response, is to be happy or continue being suffered. When I was young, I don’t like face a failure. I was fully being suffered and cannot recover after a setback. However, I was growing up day by day, I being to learn how to forgive and forget. To be happy or sad is a choice of our response. I really like the sentence“In our choices lie growth and our happiness.” Growing up, we will understand and recognise what is our really happiness. So never complaint life, every good or bad thing will give you a experience and chance to you recognize what is your nature and your happiness.

 

Business Model you: A one page method for reinventing your career

‘Business Model you: A one-page method for reinventing your career’ is a book written by Tim Clark, in collaboration with Alex Osterwalder and Yves Pignuer, the authors of global bestseller, ‘Business Model Generation’. As Many people lack a structured way to think about the components of changing their career. ‘Business Model You’ was published in order to provide the specific but simplified structured method for reinventing yourself. This single-page blueprint is aimed for those who are experiencing boredom and uncertainty in personal and organizational life. An example of a case study which made use of this method, is a computer programmer named ‘Sean Backus’, the computer programmer, who was frustrated with his back-end programming jobs. After using this approach, he became aware of his skills, potential abilities and personality, and decided to change his career

 This fantastic methodology is derived from the concept of business model. From the fact that, in the real world today, organizations and people are affected by environmental and economical factors beyond their control, the business model is used to respond to needed necessary changes for organizations to survive and thrive. The business model canvas is used as a visualization tool to describe the components of business models. The writers then came across a model that could be used to design personal as well as organizational life in order to maintain success and satisfaction. Therefore, as a result, a personal business model, the way to engage the strength and talents to grow personally and professionally, was created in order for people discover and identify their values, the key activities they can do and the resources they can use. In this approach, the readers are considered as a one-person business focused on “you” as a key resource, different from the organization’s methodology. It will need the reader to carry out the process of the canvas, self-reflecting, revising then acting, in order to build the career based on their strengths and personality. This book is distinctive, as it is like a playbook for designing a possible fulfilling life, as when you implement the one-page tool from Business Model You, it seems like you create a game-changing business model for your life and career.

This book is significant in the 21^st century world for everybody because the book provides the best way for the readers to adapt properly to a changing world by using business model thinking methodology. It demonstrates the readers in understanding the business model thinking frame of mind and how to map out personal business models. It also teaches the readers to recognize their business skills and capabilities and how it can be fully utilized in the marketplace. In addition to this, readers also learn how to express their visions for change, by enabling the readers the ability to design business models that corresponds to their vision, which can be used for not only their careers, but also for their personal lives. Therefore, this book benefits to everybody in work life especially the person, who has a thought in changing a career. This book will give them a distinct advantage from others.

The thought of changing careers always happens but is difficult to start. In order to change a career, a structured method is required, through using a personal business model. It is a useful technique to assess who you are, what you can do and what you want to be. As over time we may distances ourselves further away from our goals due to our surroundings and environment. This will help the readers to gain more distinctive advantages than others and have more possibilities to improve their working life and satisfaction with their jobs. This is essentially a self-help book, which that allows the readers to assess their attitudes, feelings and skills in life. The assessment method, which is in the visual form of a structured canvas, helps to reflect and discover our true selves and dreams.

Thatchakon Chaisathitporn

                                                                                                                                                                                                          100033192

 Reference:

Clark, T., Osterwalder, A. and Pignuer, Y., 2012. Business Model You: A One-Page Method for Reinventing Your Career. New Jersy: Wiley.

Executive Book Summary–Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative

Executive Book Summary

Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative

                                        Written By Ken Robinson

 As Robinson (2011) mentions in《Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative》, “Creativity is the greatest gift of human intelligence”. And creativity is the essential element for science, art and literature even one basis of all aesthetics in the human life. To meet the developing challenges in the future, many people believe that they need to be more creative. But on the other hand, they wonder if they have enough creativity or not. In this book, Mr. Robinson (2011) tries to answer three questions about creativity. Why is it essential to promote creativity? What is the problem? And what can be done about it? He wants to help people to understand and gain their own creative abilities. He argues that existing educational systems are considered to be the main reason why people cannot fulfil their creative potential. And he believes that the educational policies and academic standards were designed to match the social and commercial demands in some certain periods. Therefore, these current standards and systems cannot face the complex changes for now and future environment. It is not only a bad thing for our personal development, but also a negative effect for the whole society and world. Ken Robinson is a famous expert and leader in the development of creativity, innovation and human resource. In last ten years, he has researched and discussed these questions with many managers, politicians and educators. These experiences let him deepen his core ideas in this book about creativity. He uses many real cases and data to support his ideas and let this book more lively and up-to-date. He considers that “education and training are the keys to the future, they are, but a key can be turned in two directions”, it means sometimes education cannot help us to be creative even destroy our creative potential. In addition, not only the educational system should be improved to achieve people’s creativity, but also organizations should create an effective condition to develop their own performance and creativity to survive in the complex competition. (Robinson, 2011) And then he gives out some his suggestions about learning to be creative and how to be a creative leader.

 

To face the complex challenges of living and working in 21^st century, we should gain creativity. And as science and technology have been developing, the global economy is changing every minute. For almost organizations, they have to find and hire the people who are intelligent, able and creative to survive in “extraordinary challenges”; however, sometimes it is very difficult to find suitable persons. In this book, Robinson (2011) not only tells managers how to be a creative leader, but also gives them nine principles to create a systematic creative company culture. Robinson believes that imagination, creativity and innovation are three processes of an innovation culture, “each of which is related to the others”. Although every creative culture is unique as Robinson claims in this book; however, he also mentions that a creative leader can rely on the differentiation or uniqueness to create the culture of innovation. He figures out that people are not machines or components and should be motivated and have rights to share their feelings and opinions so a leader should pay more attentions to relationships with staff and enhance employees’ creative abilities. (Robinson, 2011) Managers or leaders also should involve essential roles in three parts, “personal, group and cultural” and follow the nine principles to build the culture of creativity and innovation. The principles focus on how to achieve every employee’s creative potential and boost the team or organization structure of collaboration, diversity and fairness. He uses some real evidences and cases to support his approach such as Pixar (a famous film studio) and IBM. (Robinson, 2011)

 

The three most interesting things in this book, I think, are three concepts about individual creativity. Robinson (2011) not only gives some solutions to help organizations to build creative culture and relationships, also tell us how to be creative individually. Firstly, it is about knowing your mind. Sometimes we cannot evaluate ourselves hundred percent actually or really. As Robinson (2011) said, the intelligence that we have always much much richer than we have known by education. So realizing ourselves potential talent, we cannot rely on just academic education. Secondly, it is about “Feeling better”. Our feeling is very important to be creative, and it is one source of creativity. The better feeling can help us to understand others more effectively, and find out our real power to be creative. Finally, “You are not alone”. In this book, Robinson (2011) also discusses “Individual creativity is almost always stimulated by the work, ideas and achievements of other people”. Human is one kind of social living beings, they work and live together. The human culture is created in the human interaction process. It also can be seen the outcome of human creativity.

 

Reference:

Robinson, K., 2011. Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative. Chichester: Capstone Publishing Ltd.

Internet Stock Trading and Market Research for the small Investor

Book Description
Internet Stock Trading and Market Research for the small Investor presents a new point of view on the online trading which is cut off the investment traditional belief that the investor must have knowledge about technical charting and the foundation of the stock formulation when the investor decided to buying and selling the stocks. Fresh perspective is mainly focusing on corporate news which is the key factor to drives the market.
This book separated into two parts the first part of this book will provide elementary knowledge about dynamic and terminologies to new user and explanation the online trade regulations which is including where the investor can be find the market database and how to use the information in a daily short term investment positions.
The investment method which is mainly use in this book first of all it is focusing on the growth trend of the online investors secondly novice trader who does not has a special technique to trading in the stock market and lastly concentrate on short term investment
For the second part of this book, it presents basic information of the chart trend and a common technical indicators and overlays. Nonetheless the main target of the second part is discussing about alternative financial database subscriptions software called SMART (an acronym for stock-data for market Analysis and Research Tools)
SMART’s interface is a software create by the authors for collects and share financial market data which is public company share on public area in order to enable market researchers received the financial information such as pricing and volume each day to testing the market model. Normally the financial information which is on sale the price is too expensive for the single investor but the aim of this project is widely the data accessible and to encourage individual investor by the interest in market research

The significance and contribution
In the past for make an investment in the stock the investor need to contact with the financial broker to create an account and also when try to do any transaction need to do over the broker which take a several step and waste of the time. In the 21st century the internet is completely influence on the human race. The stock investment is not as complicated as before it has an internet trading system which is very simple and easy to use and especially the commission for trading on the internet is lower than trading by broker. The money to create an account is also lower than before which can persuade the new investor coming to the stock market. As a result this book is very useful for the people who want to invest online because it provides the basic knowledge which is can use in the real market.

Concepts
This book use a good structure and a simple content, which makes it easy for the reader to follow up the main ideas especially for the beginner trader or new investor to gain overall knowledge about the online trading including specific and financial technical name. From this book the most interesting things Firstly is the writer show the impact of news which is can be adapt to use in the stock trading strategies and give a suggestion that what corporate news should be avoid because at this stage the fake news is always come out to lead to investor to make a wrong decision. Secondly it is all about the market research. The authors did deep analyses on the market and explain very clearly in the small part one by one for example charting style and chart patterns. Lastly is the indicators analysis which is contains advantages and disadvantages of each indicator.

Reference:
Moubarak, P and Steele, A.2012.Internet stock Trading and Research for The Small Investor. Bloomington: iUniverse.

summary of the book Purple Cow

Summary of The Book Purple Cow

 

The book of Purple Cow which was written by American marketing guru Seth Godin in 2002 has become one of the most classic bestseller in current society. Seth Godin is a professional writer, speaker and editor. His magnum opuses include Permission Marketing, Unleashing the Ideavirus and Survival to name just a few which are the four worldwide bestsellers. Moreover, Seth Godin is also a columnist at Fast Company magazine.

Seth Godin described the book of Purple Cow as “the essence of the Purple Cow is that it must be remarkable (p2)”. To be more precise, Godin proposed a new ”P” in this book which is called “Purple Cow” on the basis of the traditional “Ps” such as product, price, promotion, positioning and others. Refer to “Purple Cow”, it means the product or service that is attractive, noticeable, exceptional, new and interesting. As Godin stated in this book, only the firm which provides remarkable product or service is able to be the leader of the market. The most efficient way to separate you from those “boring ordinary cow” is being innovative. Additionally, Godin also viewed a new point as gone are the times that the TV and mass media could be the secret weapon ever. Godin said 90 percent of advertise in wall street journal (a full-page ads cost more than a million dollars in this journal) are ignored by readers. Consumers are so busy that they have no time to pay attention on those mediocre products and commercials. Hence start innovating instead of advertising. About how to become a purple cow, Godin thought marketers should seek out the edges and your competitive advantages such as pricing, packaging and so on, and then test which one is the most beneficial to your market expansion and financial performance.

 

With the rapid development of the world economy and the increasing competition in the market, traditional marketing concept and marketing model have outlived its usefulness. The marketing current situation which is the increasingly choices and limited time makes professionals and leaders under heavy pressure. Meanwhile, the increasingly higher selection criteria makes customer prefer to not recommend a product actively. And what with the decrease of advertising power and relentless competition, the traditional marketing has been changed forever. The appearance of Purple Cow just had vital implications and guiding signification for the marketers. By reading this book, the innovation capability of business managers could be enhanced. And either leaders or job seekers will receive numerous creative inspirations through the detailed analysis of the takeaway ideas from different case studies, which could also be very beneficial for them to become a “Purple Cow”. Above all, after finishing the final page, strong recommendations that I prefer to give to the managers by using four slogans in Purple Cow, which are “do not be boring”, “safe is risky”, “design rules now” and “very good is bad”.

 

Godin put forward an interesting model called “Idea Diffusion Curve” (see the chart as follow) in purple cow. Refer to innovators, they prefer to try new things although they do not really need. Right next to innovators are the early adopters who are the real beneficiaries and willing to pay money on new products or service. Early adopters might be a new investment device, or even a new TV show. The early adopters are closely followed by the early and late majority who pay no attention on new products or services in usual only when their peers talk too much about them. The last ones are the laggards. These kinds of consumers never try new products other than the old ones cannot work at all. From this curve, Godin told us it is essential to produce remarkable products to attract early adopters, and then the early adopters will be the efficient “advertisement” to spread your products to the rest of the curve. (From the chapter “getting in”)

 

 

Another two more interesting concept I found in Purple Cow is called “Ideavirus” and “Sneezers”. Ideavirus refers to new ideas, and sneezers refer to the people who are sensitive to new ideas and tend to spread them. In general, Sneezers are always early adopters while early adopters may not be sneezers. Hence your new idea will be failed if your early adopters are not sneezers as they do not spread your idea at all. Thus we can get a critical point from “Ideavirus” and “Sneezers”, which is targeting to sneezers instead of all of the customers could get twice the result with half the effort.   

 

 

Reference

Seth Godin (2005), Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable.

Summary of “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”

Core Message:
“ This is the single most powerful investment we can ever make in life-investment in ourselves, in the only instrument we have with which to deal with life and to contribute.”
~Covey, S. R., 2004, The 7 habits of highly effective people
The quote from the author simply points out the importance of the book and why we should read. We should all be highly effective professionals in the workplace, and the book aims to enhance our personal characteristics and relationships on business environment to help us achieve success. In this book the author gives many examples which are not all related to the business, however, once we understand the concepts they are all very useful in business world.

Main Contributions:
“Our character, basicly, is a composite of our habits. Habit is the intersection of Knowledge (what to, why to), Skills (how to) and Desire (want to).”
~Covey, S. R., 2004, The 7 habits of highly effective people
The quote above simply outlines the book. The author lists 7 habits to move people from dependence to independence, and from independence to interdependence eventually. To success in this world that is interdependent, this is necessary and the two steps of progressing could be working simultaneously.
This book might be seen as a bible for management, but the biggest difference between this book and others is that it emphasis how to become a better person to cooperate with others instead of just teaching how to be a leader. One very point of view the author mentions before he discusses about the 7 habits is to have “a new level of thinking.” “ The way we see the problem is the problem,” says the author. Personally I think this is as important as the 7 habits. To have a new level of thinking can help us face difficulties. We can come up with better solutions with lower cost, and it also can be the source of innovation, which is very important for every business.

Major Components:
Private Victory
The first 3 habits help depend people become independent in terms of physical, mental, emotional and financial, the “private victories.” The three habits are: being proactive, beginning with end in mind and put first things first. Being proactive is straightforward and the author explains that it is having the freedom to choose and being responsible. Beginning with end in mind means that we must have a vision or set some targets before we take actions, and the vision or the targets are those motivate us. To put first things first means to exercise an effective “self-management.” Comparing to the two previous habits, this is more a “physical” action, to actually exercise what you have planned previously. Therefore, the habit 3 would only work based upon the foundation of the previous habits.
Public Victory
“Private Victory precedes Public Victory,” says the author. Public Victory, defined as “success in working with other people” by the author, is what needed to be achieved in the second stage. After the first 3 habits, we become independent, and in the second part of the book we learn the other 3 habits to know how to cooperate with others. The first habit is to “think win/win.” This means to “see life as a cooperative, not a competitive arena,” says the author. When we make a decision, we seek not which is best for me or for you, but for both us, and this decision must be the best one, better than one is beneficial for me or for you. The second habit is to “seek first to understand, then to be understood.” The author emphasizes that the only way to interact effectively or to influence other people is to understand that people first. He calls that “the empathic communication.” The third habit is “synergy.” This habit could also be seen as an application or a physical action based on the foundation of previous two habits. The synergy is the result that is greater than the summary of individual parts. This is the best alternative because it is in the interest of the team or the group, not for any individual. The synergy will be achieved through the highest level of trust and cooperation, which are gained from the previous two habits.
Renewal
The seventh habit is to “sharpen the saw.” It basicly means to enhance and enrich us and our 6 habits. The author thinks that this is a process of renewal, and it contains four dimensions, physical, mental, spiritual and social/emotional.

The Insight of the World Café

The Insight of the World Café

The review of The World Café: Shaping Our Futures through Conversations That Matter.

 

‘We can be wise only together.’ by Margaret J. Wheatley. This is the first thought given by the author of the book The World Café: Shaping Our Futures through Conversations That Matter. The author has clearly showed the core related issue around an intention to build a new meeting mode called the World Café. The driver of the meeting is to gather thinking and wisdom to found a process of thinking in common during the period of globalization. The World Café is a creative process guiding collaborative dialogue, sharing knowledge and creating possibilities for action and can be applied to organizations of all sizes. People are usually limited by the past learning or experience they have owned, and an organization or a company is usually limited by the accomplished culture and values, so if the structure of people is more likely, the less possible people will create new ideas. The meaning of this dialogue meeting is like a flowing in the stream between people. It makes all people during the dialogue are able to participate and share their knowledge in this river, and it makes every possibility can be happened to initiate a new understanding in the group.

In this book, the environment of the World Café is laid out like in the real café, like a table for four, tablecloths, flowers, light music and possibly some candles and desserts. Four people sitting around the table begin to talk, and the conversation should concentrate on one or two meaningful subjects on personal problems lasting about 20-45minutes. At the end of each round, there is a person remaining on this table as moderator, and three other people jump into other table. The moderator of the table should welcome the new participants and shares the essence of the previous meeting, and the new participants describe their meeting clues. The meeting will keep proceeding and with the new round of discussion, the content of the dialogue will deepen.

After the end of the second round, due to the design of the café, participants should return to their original table, or continue to go to the other tables to start a new round of discussion. As in the afterwards round of discussion, people can explore the new problems or dig deeper into the original problems. After three or more rounds of discussion, the whole group of people get together to share and explore emerging themes, comprehension and learning results through tables, charts or other methods so that the entire group of people can obtain the common wisdom in the café, and they can think about every question they have raised. Here, the meeting can come to the end and also can start a new one.

The authors state 7 principles to follow to achieve the value of the conversational meeting.

1.        Set the Context

Clear communication goals, number of the participants and the location of hosting the meeting

2.        Create Hospitable Space

Provide a warm, safe and functional environment

3.        Explore Question That Matter

Special attention to the most important issues for the participants

4.        Encourage Everyone’s Contribution

Encourage everyone to participate meaningfully and have realistic expectations

5.        Cross-Pollinate and Connect Diverse Perspectives

Encourage different points of view and explore different view linkage

6.        Listen Together for Patterns, Insights, and Deeper Questions

Review the points of view of all passionate participants and resonate internalization

7.        Harvest and Share Collective Discoveries

Externalization of the common wisdom of the group

In this book, the three most attractive ideas are the successful cases, the environment of hosting the meeting and the derivative of the World Café. The book introduces many successful meetings among big companies and organizations. The book is not analyzing the data. It uses living reality to make people dream about participating the meeting and imagine how passionate it is if can be invited. The core thinking of the World Café is to share different thoughts between various people in one comfortable environment. As the organization can invite the intellectual, the environment can break the deadlock becomes one of the most important factors to let people start to talk. The meaning of the World Café is not only this learning method itself, but also the derivatives it brings to. Many advance-thinking organizations and companies are using this method to interview applicants. The leadership and performance shown during the World Café activity help them to store talented person for the future World Café as the representatives of the company or even the internal innovation. The World Café is a mechanism should be established firstly between different stakeholders’ conversation, and collecting any format of wisdom has become the trend during globalization. It is a great step during the society progress.

Summary of the book Managing Across Cultures The Seven Keys to Doing Business with a Global Mindset

Summary of the book Managing Across Cultures The Seven Keys to Doing Business with a Global Mindset

Summary of “Living an Extraordinary Life”

The purpose of the writer, Robert White, to write this book is trying to help the reader find happiness and fulfillment within his personal life. Therefore “Living an Extraordinary Life” is not about extraordinary people at all, instead, it is for every normal people who want to create their own extraordinary life. With years of observing and working with successful people in different areas, White has found out there are certain methods that could help people enhance themselves in almost every area and create an extraordinary life. And the key factors to achieve this goal were summarized and written in a framework of three concepts that need to be worked on. These concepts are: Awareness, Responsibility and Communication. Nevertheless, an extraordinary life cannot be achieved easily as the definition of the three concepts. White has discovered that an extraordinary person can be going through a rough time, but how they process what they are going through tends to be very different from ordinary people. Therefore, extraordinary people usually keep themselves at a higher level. The most significant aspect of this book is that it can be considered as a torch that lightening the successful path for everyone who wants to improve his life and the life around him.

 

Living an extraordinary life is definitely an excellent book for the 21^st century professionals and societies. In this book, varied examples have been given compared between the extraordinary person and the normal one, which are significant resources that can stimulate the reader to strive for his own life. This book does not contain any universal truths. Instead, it simply suggest reader to take some time think about his own life and how can it work better, in the relationship with family and friends, in the workplace as well as in the community. All of which can be summarized as the relationship in professionals, leaders, societies, in everywhere of a person’s own life. As Robert White has mentioned in the introduction part of the book, the power of the book is quite limit and it cannot help the reader to create an extraordinary life without the reader’s effort. Thus, the reader should always emphasize in the relationship with the most important person in his life: the reader himself. Therefore, every person who wants a better life must start with the premise that White suggested, to be more control of the life.

 

The unique feature of this book is that it gives lots of examples that provide a varied handles and experiences for the readers when they are in the similar situation. It offers readers the ability at least to look introspectively why you didn’t become as successful as the extraordinary people in the book. Therefore, for those people who just start to strive for their new career or seek for a dream job, this book surely make a correct direction for their future career. Meanwhile, for those leader or manager, this book can also be an alarm clock which point out the mistakes they haven’t realized yet.

 

There are a thousand Hamlets in a thousand people’s eyes. Each person who read this book will get something different as well. As I’m a student who will graduate this year and begin a new life career, for me, the book is quite useful. A good example can be used in this book in the “commitment” section, White gives us a new concept of it, commitment to something doesn’t always means people have to commit to it forever. For some people, there is always a confusing between commitment and responsibility and that may lead to existing on what they have committed. However, commitment and responsibility are two different concepts and are exactly not same. Sometimes wrong commitment may lead to fail and thus it should be abandoned. This is definitely a switching idea when things don’t go as what we expected because changing a new idea is much wiser than insist something wrong.

 

Another great example I preferred in this book is about the importance of emotional intelligence. Some high IQ person who made excellent score in school didn’t perform well in their own life after graduation, and they didn’t know why. White illustrated this reason and explained that IQ didn’t influence too much in a person’s real life. Due to we live in a real world with complex relationships between professionals and societies, actually emotional intelligence is much more crucial compared with IQ. Self-awareness, self-control, zeal, persistence, corporation, all of which are emotional characters that will strongly influenced a real person life.

 

Finally, the eight power principles in this book pointed out the elements that people can apply in all areas of the life. They are:

• · Decide clearly, specifically and positively what you want
• · Gain the ability to live your truth
• · Be responsible
• · Express yourself
• · Take risks
• · Participate 100%
• · Be in partnership
• · Get and stay committed

“Living an Extraordinary Life” is a good keeper rather than just a book. It will attract you to read it again at many points in your life!

the end of poverty

The summary of <The end of poverty> from Jeffrey D. Sachs

Poverty is the biggest problem faced by today’s whole world, even the most developed countries still can not be excepted. There are many causes of poverty, such as the land barren, lack of resources, people quality is not high enough, or management loopholes by the government or other management. And how to end the poverty, is working by economists all over the world.

Jeffrey D. Sachs, one of <The New York Times> best-selling author, he is also the dean of the Columbia University Earth Institute, professor of sustainable development themes and health policy management topics and Senior Adviser of the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. To Jeffrey Sachs, the “shock therapy” is one of his most compelling reason, even though he is not a doctor. In the mid-1980s, Jeffrey Sachs introduces this medical terminology to the economic field, and create an economic miracle. To put forward the viewpoint of ‘Shock therapy’ is also the core reason of why the book <The end of poverty> is so famous. This view is not only saved a lot of patients in medical, but also saved the economic distress.

When faced with a severe economic crisis in Bolivia, Jeffrey recommend abandon expansionary economic policy, monetary and fiscal tightening, liberalization of prices, implement of free trade, to speed up the pace of privatization and give full play to the role of the market mechanism. Although this approach is unconventional, in short term will cause severe economic shock, just like the patient get into a state of shock. With the balance of supply and demand in the market, the economy return to normal economic operation, Bolivia eventually solved the economic problems.

Different from the economists and those institute who simply immersed in the figures and charts. From Jeffrey, geographical factors, financial trap, government failure, cultural barriers, political and demographic issues are the real root cause. The key of ending poverty is to enable the poor to embark on the development ladder, which requires investment in infrastructure, public building, human capital, and need the support and assistance from the developed countries and international agencies. And after that, he proposed different for each problem. Some people said that he is a super dreamer, because he is very sanguine, he even think human are able to eradicate extreme poverty in 2025, but it is not far-fetched. While today’s economy continues to expose the problem, but this means after solve these problems, the potential problem is less and less. The problems encountered in developed countries, also provide experience to developing countries , so that they can avoid detours.

In my opinion, Jeffrey is a very bold and innovative economists, he made a lot of innovative and practical point of view. These ideas play their role in solving many economic problems and crises. He proposed a seemingly dangerous but effective method of handling the economic crisis, His method after the actual proof, laid the foundation for his status in the world economy. Even though I am not optimistic like him, to eradicate extreme poverty in 2025 is a big challenge, that might happen in America, the most development in the world, but think about Africa and other un-development countries in Asia, from not we just have 12 years, which seems not enough. To achieve end of poverty, only receive substance is not enough, it needs a wide range of support, such as education, political system, social environment and so on. Even the problems encountered in the development process of developed countries , are very good experience for developing countries, with the changing times and the development of science and technology, developing countries have encountered a growing number of new issues. Old experience and solutions may not suitable for the difficulties encountered in the development process of today.

To sum up, In today’s era，development is rapidly, even poverty still exist, but it becomes fewer and fewer. Economists combined old experience with today’s technology, also raised a number of innovative and practical point of view, which will be very useful for ending the poverty. What is more, even though Jeffrey’s method seems very early, it is not old and useless. It was a new beginning of solving economic crisis, the contribution for future generations will not be forgotten. I believe that under the joint efforts of the whole world, although it may need longer time than Jeffrey proposed, poverty will ultimately be ended.

student number :100020634 module code: NBSLM32YModule Title:MANAGEMENT SKILLS＆PERSONAL DEVELOPMENTAssignment Due Date:14/02/2013

Assignment Title::the summary of <The end of poverty> from Jeffrey D. Sachs

Assignment Actual Word Count:746

Module Organiser / Seminar Leader: Fahri Karakas

The Book Club Summary- Who Moved My Cheese

The Book Club Summary- Who Moved My Cheese

Executive Book Club Summary :The Fifth Discipline

Executive Book Club Summary

The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization was written by Peter Senge, who is a senior lecturer at MIT Sloan School of Management. The book mostly focuses on five disciplines in order to convert companies into learning organizations by mainly using the systems thinking method. The five approaches illustrate the way to developing three core learning capabilities.

1. Personal mastery is the step that uses for the discipline of personal development and acquire the knowledge. The ability to create the outcome in life that people actually desire could find in people who have high degree of personal mastery. This phase is clarifying on our personal vision to increase capability for better success and set goal of our life.
2. Mental models. The ways how we understand the world and how we take action are influenced by assumptions, pictures or even images. The rule of working with this stage (Mental model) starts with changing our perspective; trying to carefully understand everything in every point of view and foster creativity.
3. Building shared vision is a practice of opening up pictures of the future that everyone in the organization will fully engage rather than compliancy. As a result, the organization might build on a same commitment for long run outcomes.
4. Team learning is phases that focuses on work and learn as a team because teams are the basic learning unit in organizations. Peter Senge claim that “Unless teams can learn, the organization cannot learn. the learning is moved on from the individuals to teams.

1. Systems thinking is a conceptual scheme to make the patterns more obvious to understand, and to help us find the way to change things more efficiently because it is difficult for individuals to seeing the whole pattern. Commonly, we lend to concentrate on only small part of the systems, and not understand why the problems never seem to get solved.  This step needs to integrate the other 4 disciplines to make the whole patterns clearer.

The other important point it is that the book also tell us about a description of some learning disabilities which are frequently responsible for organizational lack of success such as “the parable of the boiled frog”,” the enemy is out there” and “the myth of the management team” and indicate how the disabilities can be defeat by truly understand the disciplines.

This book is said to be one of the most influential book in management area which we could outline some advantages of the book. Firstly, the book helps organization to clarify their aims, to realize and understand both threats and new opportunities. Secondly, the book introduces leaders to a new source of sustainable competitive advantage as Senge sate that “competitive advantage is your organization’s ability to learn faster than the competition.” and also enables managers to overwhelm the obstacles of organization to growth. Furthermore, the knowledge about leadership which contain in the book also shows many ways of managerial practices. Finally, we could apply the principle to develop both individual and organization to change its to the learning organization and could also adopt to use in anyone life

Three interesting things which I have learned from this book are: First, difficult to maintain thing sustainably especially organization which normally have great mount of employees. Second, to solve problem we should look it carefully in every aspects including big picture. Lastly, even wide spread theory sometime the ideas are certainly hard to put into practice.

Executive book summary: Linked – The New Science of Networks

 

The book I choose to review is entitled Linked – the New Science of Networks by author Albert Laszlo Barabasi (2002). In this book, the author uses his professional knowledge in computer science to conclude that ‘the entire world is a network’. In the early 21st century, scientists have found that the network has an internal and deep order in terms of a simple but powerful rule to run. The knowledge in this field can assist us have a better understanding of the operation and function of networks as well as guide us to the insider of network innovation.

 

This book is different from other social network books. Because it analyses the deep level of social networks based on the science. It is full of vivid narrative and insights which made ​​the reader recognize a range of modern society cartographer who are drawing the network map in a number of scientific fields. With the help of supercomputers, they reveal the social network, businesses and firms, biological cells all have amazing similarity in fact which beyond the differences among themselves. These findings provide us a new perspective to understand the world.

 

During my reading of this book, there are several stories that impressed me a lot. The author uses the Hotmail viral marketing to illustrate the network economy. Hotmail enhances its propagation rate by removing the impact of personal threshold. Firstly, the registration in Hotmail is free. Then, the registration time is short. What is more, the effective use of the message in the end automatically with the advertisements. By combining the free services, low learning path and the interpersonal communication in consumer market three elements together, the product is placed above the threshold. There are also other companies commit Hotmail but failed which indicate that Hotmail mode cannot be simply copied.

 

Another interesting story is about the complexity of network. In 1965, there is a huge scale of power failure in the majority of northeastern US which is a classical cascading problem. This case shows that the connectivity can result in vulnerability. Scientists found that the collapse of network is not a gradual process, however, there is a threshold that exist in the random network. If we only delete several nodes by random, the impact is little and can be ignored. Because there will be other central nodes to maintain the integrity of the network. Until this threshold is been exceeded, the network will collapse.

Pareto creates a classical theory which is called the ‘80/20 Rule’. He intends to indicate that principles do exist in the economics. He found that 80% of the beans was produced by 20% of the pods, and 20% of people occupy 80% of the land. Several years later this rule developed into a famous management principle – Murphy’s Law which means 80% of the profits are created by 20% employees. Therefore, the practical sense of this rule is to find out what is the 80% and focus on the majority to improve efficiency.

 

The author studied a variety of seemingly unrelated transactions such as the spread of religion, the network structure of the Internet, the spread of AIDS virus, the human genes and their acting mechanism, the organizational structure of terrorists, the emerging company’s business model with the outsourcing of main business and so on. And the focus is network structure of the Internet. Finally he summarise that the Internet, social network, even the cell network in an organism is in line with power-law scale-free networks.

 

This kind of network has many benefits. Firstly, the opportunity of this network is unequal and the current hot spot is easier to attract more attention. Then, through central node, the non-central node can find other non-central nodes easier. The most famous theory is the ‘six degrees of separation’. What is more, if there is no centre, the network can be more robust because it is not easy to bring down the network due to the failure of some node. However, on the other hand it is not easy to control either.

 

The practical significance of this book is that it gives instructions about how to control business more efficiently. For instance, companies which intend to produce products outsourcing need to be aware that the entire product chain is not as easy to control within the company.

 

To conclude, the author uses unique vision to illustrate the social network and its inner characteristics, which is interesting and give some useful and practical inspiration for modern companies and business transactions.

 

Reference:

Barabasi, A. (2002) Linked – the New Science of Networks. Cambridge: Perseus Publishing.

Executive Summary of Turning to One Another: Simple Conversation to Restore Hope to the Future

As the development of social economy, our living circumstance is filled with high technology, competition, mistrust and pressure. People are more alone and isolated from one another than ever before. Actually, the entire world is lack of pure communication which gives a chance to talk about our real thoughts and yearnings with each other. “I believe we can change the world if we start talking to one another again.” With this strong declaration in the book Turning to One Another: Simple Conversation to Restore Hope to the Future, Wheatley (2009) points out that, most of the world’s significant changes are caused by human conversation through the ages. People band together with their colleagues and friends to find solutions for each difficulties they are facing. Every change, even powerful change in social life will not be made by individual or any independent corporation, Wheatley argues, but from the ageless process of thinking and talking with one another. The book mainly demonstrates how the simple act of holding a conversation can help promoting human interaction and creating a more hopeful future. It has three sections, Part one explores the power of conversation and the conditions of good conversation. Part two is a place to pause and reflect with some quotes and images. Part III provides twelve “conversation starters” that may lead people to begin meaningful conversations and share their deepest beliefs, fears, and hopes. In addition, this book can be regard as an effective tool to motivate personal development .It is also different from other similar books as it provides a vast number of inspirational ideas and makes them easy to understand by translating philosophical concepts into action items. Some quotes, poems and little stories are also the feature of this book. They are able to help people think deeply and put into practice.

This book doesn’t directly tell people how to become a successful managers or professionals. Instead, it teaches individuals how to develop out cultivation and, as a result, increase the probability of success. In fact, the book points out an approach for people to become a rational human that can help them solve different type of problems. So it is important for us to keep positive attitude when we read this book. When the cultivation of managers or professionals reaches a certain level, the opportunities will come to them and play a significant role both in their life and work. This book can be used to encourage and support managers in starting conversations among employees about their hopes, lives, feelings and fears. It also recommends professionals improve themselves through conversations. In particular, it suggests that, people need to listen to one another during the conversations. It’s not an easy thing to learn from others. People may be undignified even though they are pretty sure they have right answers. In addition, listening by heart is quite difficult because different people care about different issues. Therefore it is necessary to practice empathy when listening to one another. The book also recommends facing fear. Fear makes professionals and managers become irrational, which is bad for work. They need to control fear, rather than vice versa. Then, the rationality will help them get more benefits, which can’t be taken place without fearless.

With the development of the time, many of the elite are no longer focus on the enhancement of self-cultivation. However, the self-cultivation is the essential quality for achieving success. This book emphasizes two concepts which are used to improve cultivation. The first one is conversation. Through the conversation, people can share their experience as well as find the defects. They could also deeply look at themselves from the eyes of others. As a result, people can learn best in others and correct their own shortcomings. The second one is fearless. The fearless means learning how to face the fear. As we all know, fear always controls our work and life. It is a manifestation of fear that individuals don’t want to take too many risks. However, there will also be no profit without risk. Therefore the fearless could help people make rational analysis. It is necessary to take as much good risk, which has more benefits than harms, as we can. Another significant thing I have learned from the book can be summed up as a sentence which is “Thinking is the place where intelligent action beings.” Critical thinking like why does it occur, how does it influence, always lead to revolutionary changes. Therefore, thinking is as import as doing and it is the basic of starting a meaningful conversation. All in all, this book teaches us the methods of starting the conversation which may have power to change our world.

Reference
Wheatley, Margaret J. Turning to One Another: Simple Conversation to Restore Hope to the Future. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2009

Like A Virgin: Secrets They won’t Teach You at Business School Author: Richard Branson, 2012

1. The Author

The Author Richard Branson dropped out of school when he was 15 years old because he has dyslexia and attention deficit disorder. But now he is the well-known founder and chairman of Virgin Group. A business empire that contains airlines, cellphone companies, banks, hotel, health clubs that about 400 companies.

2. Essential contents

“Like a Virgin,” reveals the large gap between the real business world and the courses in school. The book is extracted the questions from Branson’s blog and email that shows the contemporary business questions which annoying business people; then Branson replied the questions below to all the people have same questions. The book includes several examples from his real situation when he operating Virgin. A good entrepreneur should be a good planer, good listener, dreamer but realist, innovator and sustainable, even HR expert and so on. Hence, topics contain be clear what success is; how to draw an achievable business blueprint; success in a smart way; builds branding awareness; motivating employees; earn customers’ trust; recognising errors; marketing, sales and advertising; but transmitting by Virgin’s philosophy. The writing style is conversational, inspiring, brief, and approachable. It is difficult to close the book when starting to read.

3. Three Memorable Topics

“The 4Ps – people, product, price and promotion – are often cited as the keys to a successful business. Yet this list omits a vital ingredient that has characterized Virgin companies throughout our forty years: Fun, with a capital F.” (p.34)

I was learning marketing last term, and studying brand leadership this term. There are no references that recommend fun could be a serious business tool. Branson have gained huge benefits since he started to run business with fun. Virgin just likes Branson himself with humorous personality; what he does that is to entertain people related with Virgin. For example, he created some funny, highly topical advertisements to grab the public’s attention, to entertain customer by providing cutting-edge technology and so on. I cannot image successful business could be treated less seriously and I have no picture that delight customer could associated with fun atmosphere before. So, I have learned the importance of not being earnest.

“More walking and talking, less typing and griping.” (p.133)

 

Technology play an important role in modern business, technology make us handle business communication easily. Virtually, Branson points out people use texts or emails instead of phone calls and face-to-face meeting. Consequently, the quality of business communications has become poorer and weaker. The reason is that people pursue some unwise ways for efficiency. I admire that Branson encourages employees ‘going walkabout’, the real relationship based on the real connection after all. Back to my experience, my HRM group got conflicts last term since we discussed online, then we became more passive and aggressive. After finish the HRM report, we never ever speak to each other again. In this term, my Brand leadership group create fresh ideas, resolve problems and make decisions when we are eating and drinking. I benefit from the face-to-face harmonious meeting atmosphere, different people’s personalities and real friendship.

“Some businesses will view 50,000 employees as nothing more than a cost to be managed, but at Virgin I see 50,000 passionate brand ambassadors.” (p.305)

I suppose Branson has dealt with a controversial issues that how to order shareholders, employees and customers in terms of business strategy. He believes that employees is the one of the main reasons for success; so, at all the Virgin Group companies employees come first, then customers, finally shareholders. To be more specific, if there has passionate and empowered employees in the workplace, it may create happy and well-motivated atmosphere so as to enable customers to be happy as well, which means companies could have strong sales and generate large profit to meet the demand of shareholders. Branson’s philosophy taught me that focus on stakeholders value could establish long-term benefits and profound influence on the business.

4.Significance and Contribution

Richard Branson establish his Virgin Empire without any business degree or certification, but he delicates his life to learn business all the time. People tend to be more cautious when people recognise more and more. Branson recalled his life that what his life and career might be if he learned all the conventional business dos and don’ts of starting a business. Hence, Branson suggests that do not do business if you do not enjoy it. Moreover, Virgin grows up and down, but they are the entire journey for success. I think we all know that business cannot success without taking risks; this book provides numerous excellent examples of wise solutions in terms of Virgin’s failure business.

5. Implications and Recommendations

It seems that start business is an enjoyable and easy thing after reading his book. Branson had no specific strategy or great plan when he started establishing Virgin. However, it is an extremely risky beginning in fierce business environment currently. Branson can success because not only luck, but also he has very bright goals. Another recommendation is how to implicate ‘fun’ into your work. He runs business with ‘fun’ sprit throughout, and there is much coverage reported that he has a luxury, pleasure and exciting lifestyle. However, that is the way he branding himself. Imitating what other organisation has done that cannot always success; it is better to think critically. For example, do the opposite of what Branson did with Virgin.

Book Summary of Instant MBA

Book Summary of Instant MBA

 

Instant MBA was written by Nicholas Bate, an MBA professor of WarwickUniversity and also famous in the marketing field, in 2008. Some basic and underlying concepts of MBA were given in this book and divided into 52 chapters to present 52 brilliant ideas which could help readers think like an MBA graduate. The main concepts in this book including New World of Work drivers, there are seven elements of change, some valuable advice from six thought leaders, such as Michael Porter who is the “man of strategy, man of the value- chain” (Bate, 2008) and Gary Hamel, Daniel Goleman etc. Meanwhile, other independent ideas, for example, stop advertising and start telling stories, act as if you are the CEO, get a personal development plan and risk management etc. For the whole book, the significant difference compared to other business book is engaging and powerful, it has the power to exhorted people to think in a new way such as acting as a decision-maker and do something from a boarder perspective. Meanwhile, this book is easy to understand for non business background people, there are many examples and stories to help people understand the concepts clearly and vividly. In addition, each chapter is independent so that the reader could choose the beneficial and vital chapter for them to read and no need to read the whole book by chapter order.

 

The concepts of this book act as a significant role, especially in 21st century. With the development of the economy and global business, the importance of management of a company become much more apparent. The managers, leaders even the employees who have or not have the MBA background all would like to learn it as deeply as possible. It also could help organisation develop competitive advantages and soft skills in order to gain sustainable competitiveness. Based on this book, there are many concepts and ideas for managers, leaders and job seekers. Each chapter of this book is independent so that people could select the chapter which is more useful for them. For instance, managers and leaders are the decision-maker of an organisation or department, therefore, the essential concepts of MBA, which are showed in this book are more valuable for them as a result of it could provide direction and guidance for making sensible decisions and managing company. For employees and job seekers, it also plays a significant role, because it helps people think from a new way and a broad perspective so that the personal skills, especially soft skills could be improved significantly. Furthermore, there are some recommendations for managers and professionals, for example, creating enlivening experience for customers, telling true stories in order to obtain more customers trust instead of advertising, how to find suitable employees and motivate them and keep talented people is more crucial thing as well.

 

This book gives a condensed analysis of the key concepts covered in an MBA  course and how readers can use the information to develop themselves and their career. There are three most intriguing and valuable concepts I learned from this book. First is about the experience which means creating a good environment in order to bring customers an enlivening experience so that they might come back and back. Such as Disney, Starbucks and M&S etc. (Bate, 2008) Starbucks gives customers an enjoyable experience relies on they create a lovely and well-designed environment and the Howard Schulz’s ‘third place’ experience occurred because of the integration of staff, music and environment etc. (Bate, 2008). Moreover, there is also an indispensable concept about New World of Word drivers, which gives an overview of the background to the new management, leadership and strategy practices. (Bate, 2008) There are seven factors of change and also lead to the new method to work, meanwhile, some significant changes are occurring.  For example, acceleration is the first element which means the rate of change. As the author written, people like change, but recently, the most notable thing is humans speed of thinking is much lower than the rate of change compared to the past when the humans are the fastest thing in the old work world. Meanwhile, there are also others elements, such as automation, alternative shores and adrenaline etc. In addition, the idea of “act as if you are the CEO” is also significant, readers are encouraged to think like a decision-maker so that they could think and do something in a new way, from a new perspective. It suggests people shake off the previous fetters and less consider of the actual responsibilities, on the contrary, from a broader perspective and consider the overall situation. All in all, there are also many valuable ideas of MBA in this book much more than words.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reference:

BATE, N. (2008). Instant MBA think, perform and earn like a top business-school graduate. Infinite Ideas: Oxford.

the book review of appreciative Inquiry

book summary

The Summary of Predictable irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape Our Decisions

After reading the Predictable Irrational: The Hidden Forces that shape Our Decisions, I have interest in studying customer behavior and want to know much about this topic.

Establishment of Traditional economic theories are based on the customer is rational. However, customers get used to follow their emotion purchase that it is irrational. Dan analyses phenomenon of customer behaviors which were unable to analysis by traditional economic theories. For example, there are three types of buying the Economist which is a magazine namely 59 dollars for web subscription, 125 dollars for print subscription and 125 dollars for print and web subscription. Even though most of customers are unnecessary to buy the print subscription,   they still choose the last one. Customers get used to compare the same functional but different price product in their daily life such as research in the website and they will choose the most “valuable” product by their relatively advantage. What if products lack of comparative? Smart businessmen would provide relatively among products. In above case, when the last selection was removed, more than half of customers would choose the first one because they recognized that print and web subscription were more expensive than the first one. In general, companies would provide a decoy which is convenient for customers to compare the product. Adopted this strategy, it is easy for customers to fall into the trap companies setting.

Furthermore, all customers are attracted by something free. Due to this characteristic, customers will buy a more expensive car for free engine oil or buy an unnecessary book for free delivery. People not only like free stuff but discount. Most of companies adopt the discount strategy to attract customers for improving brand awareness such as Wagamama, a Japanese restaurant in UK. Feared to lose opportunity to discount, customers would purchase a lot, even some product they don’t need. This book teaches businessmen how to promote or advertise their product. Actually, traditional economic theories cannot analysis most of situation in daily life and is not applicable in the 21st century.

The most interesting thing in this book is three regular pattern of customer behavior which is benefit for selling product. Firstly, people still want to buy what they own. For example, those who have iphone4 still want to buy iphone5 even through there are a little difference between both products. Secondly, people always concentrate on what they lose rather than what they own. People fear to loss and this emotion will lead people to make a wrong decision. Once companies promote their product with discount and customers loss this opportunely, they would feel unhappiness. Based on this condition, limited strategy came out. Coca-cola Company designs a set of special bottles for 125^th anniversary and limited sell which set a high price. Thirdly, people always believe that what other people think is the same as what they think. Because of it, it is easy for customers to fall into the free-trying trap. Taking advantage of three above regular pattern, product could be able to sell a large amount.

To sum up, traditional economic theories assume that all customers decision-making is rational. Actually it is not. However, customer irrational behavior is regular and predictable. They always do the same thing. If economy theory is build on the basis of people actual behavior not basis of how they should do, it is more meaningful and interesting. People gain some interesting knowledge about human resource behavior that helps them correct their mistakes. It also benefit for them to make a right decision in the future.

Book Summary: The Opposable Mind – How Successful Leaders Win Through Integrative Thinking

Essential Message: Successful leaders always have integrative thinking. It is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in their minds at once and then come to a best new idea which contains elements of both but improves on each.

The book is Roger Martin’s research of `high level’ thinking skills. It contains interviews between him and more than fifty great managerial leaders over 6 years with some interviews lasting more than 8 hours. The people are selected based on their striking and exemplary success records. Most of them were struggling at a point of time but they found solution to surpass it and become success. At the end, Martin found out that it is because they have Integrative Thinking. People can be taught to use their opposable minds but integrative thinking is untaught.

Martin discussed many interesting real-life cases in his book such as how Michael Lee-Chin rescued his money management firm (AIC Limited) from bankruptcy in 2009. During the dot-com bubble, they started losing customers who wanted more aggressive investments. They were faced with the choice of abandoning their business model and broadly buying tech stocks, or having to sell and risk a vicious cycle. Instead, they chose to double down by buying heavily into another stock (Mackenzie), which avoided the poor tradeoffs, and turned out to be a winner. Other case shows how Lafley reformed P&G in 2000. Consumer products are typically either commodities and cheap or innovative and premium. P&G sought to be both innovative and low-cost at the same time and he won. Both of these successful entrepreneurs didn’t use “either – or” options that they had. What they did was creating a new direction and went for it. Their integrative thinking has brought them to where they are today.

This book is helping the readers to walk through a journey of life in different time of the business history. It is different from other books in the way it delivers the essential message to the readers. All the theories are given from the entrepreneurs based on their real life experiences. It helps the readers to understand easier and get a little bit taste of the business world.

Integrative Thinking is always needed for any century professionals, leaders, societies and the world, especially for the 21^st century.  Nowadays, the business world is changing day by day; the technology is developed rapidly with many innovations and the customer demand is rising. The successful leaders are those who have integrative thinking. They will need to think complex and always search for creative resolutions of tensions, rather than accepting unpleasant trade-offs. Leaders/managers/professionals need to keep the entire problem in mind while working on its individual pieces. They need to believe that better models are always existed and they need to keep searching. They need to give themselves time to create a better model.

This book is really suitable for the use of leaders/ managers/ organizations/ job seeker. Leaders/ managers use the book as examples for their company. Leaders need to carefully make the right decisions which the whole company need to follow. Managers will need to understand their employees in order to make sure that they are on the right direction. Organizations need to put a high standard for their selection and recruitment. They will need to have a test which can check employees mind before joining the organizations. People with opposable mind will tend to have more opinions and participations for the organization. Job seeker will want to know more about the leaders of the organizations. If leaders have integrative thinking which shows through the way they lead the organization, the organization will be survived and successful for a long time. This will help the employees have their jobs secured.

I found the book really interesting in its clear outline and in-depth description of how to develop the thinking skills to a deeper level. From reading the book, I have learnt:

1^st – “Thinking OUTSIDE of the BOX” – A problem is not solved by just two solutions; there’s always a third or fourth solution. If the solutions are not great, we can take the good point of each solution and create a better new solution to solve the problem.

2^rd – Integrative thinking is like mind creative. We all need creative in order to create something new to adapt to the changes in our life.

3^rd – Improving personal skills – Being patience is key! We should know how to reserve judgment, accept criticism as valid and improve a little bit everyday. After mastered what we need to know, we then act and the result will be more likely successful.

Reference:

Martin, R. 2007. The Opposable Mind – How Successful Leaders Win Through Integrative Thinking. USA: Harvard Business School Press.