All Business Is Local

The Asia Career Times likes “All Business Is Local”

Today’s business leaders are so obsessed with all things global and virtual that they risk neglecting the critical impact of physical place. It’s a paradox of the Internet age: now that it’s possible for businesses to be everywhere at once, they need to focus on what it means to be one specific place at a time. Read More

Book of the Day: Multipliers

Why you should read: Multipliers: How the best leaders make everyone smarter

Are you a genius or a genius maker?

We’ve all had experience with two dramatically different types of leaders. The first type drain intelligence, energy, and capability from the ones around them and always need to be the smartest ones in the room. These are the idea killers, the energy sappers, the diminishers of talent and commitment. On the other side of the spectrum are leaders who use their intelligence to amplify the smarts and capabilities of the people around them. When these leaders walk into a room, lightbulbs go off over people’s heads, ideas flow, and problems get solved. These are the leaders who inspire employees to stretch themselves to deliver results that surpass expectations. These are the Multipliers. And the world needs more of them, especially now, when leaders are expected to do more with less.

In this engaging and highly practical book, leadership expert Liz Wiseman and management consultant Greg McKeown explore these two leadership styles, persuasively showing how Multipliers can have a resoundingly positive and profitable effect on organizations—getting more done with fewer resources, developing and attracting talent, and cultivating new ideas and energy to drive organizational change and innovation.

In analyzing data from more than 150 leaders, Wiseman and McKeown have identified five disciplines that distinguish Multipliers from Diminishers. These five disciplines are not based on innate talent; indeed, they are skills and practices that everyone can learn to use—even lifelong and recalcitrant Diminishers. Lively, real-world case studies and practical tips and techniques bring to life each of these principles, showing you how to become a Multiplier too, whether you are a new or an experienced manager. Just imagine what you could accomplish if you could harness all the energy and intelligence around you. Multipliers will show you how.

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Bookf of the Day: Delivering Happiness

Why you should read: Delivering happiness, a path to profits, passion, and purpose?

In his first book, Tony Hsieh – the hip, iconoclastic, and widely-admired CEO of Zappos, the online shoe retailer – - explains how he created a corporate culture with a commitment to service that aims to improve the lives of its employees, customers, vendors, and backers. Using anecdotes and stories from his own life experiences, and from other companies, Hsieh provides concrete ways that companies can achieve unprecedented success. He details many of the unique practices at Zappos, such as their philosophy of allocating marketing money into the customer experience, the importance of Zappos’s Core Values (“Deliver WOW through Service”), and the reason why Zappos’s number one priority is company culture and his belief that once you get the culture right, everything else – great customer service, long-term branding – will happen on its own. Finally, Delivering Happiness explains how Zappos employees actually apply the Core Values to improving their lives outside of work, proving that creating happiness and record results go hand-in-hand.

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Book of the Day: Disciplined Dreaming

Why you should read disciplined dreaming, a proven system to drive breakthrough creativity?

This book is a 5-part process that will transform your organization  Eor your career  Einto a non-stop creativity juggernaut

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

• Empowers individuals, teams, and organizations to meet creative challenges posed by the marketplace
• Turns the mystery of creativity into a simple-to-use process
• Shows how creativity can be used for everything from innovative, game-shifting breakthroughs to incremental advances and daily improvements to business processes
• Offers dozens of practical exercises, thought-starters, workouts to grow “creative muscles,” and case studies

Disciplined Dreaming shows even the stuffiest corporate bureaucracies how to cultivate creativity in order to become more competitive in today’s shifting marketplace.

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Book of the Day: Rules For Revolutionaries

Why you should read: Rules For Revolutionaries: The Capitalist Manifesto for Creating and Marketing New Products and Services by Guy Kawasaki?

Guy Kawasaki, former chief evangelist at Apple Computer and an iconoclastic corporate tactician who now works with high-tech startups in Silicon Valley, is back in print with his seventh book: Rules for Revolutionaries: The Capitalist Manifesto for Creating and Marketing New Products and Services. Entertainingly written in collaboration with previous coauthor Michele Moreno, it lays out Kawasaki’s decidedly audacious (but personally experienced) strategies for besting the competition and triumphing in today’s hypercharged business environment. The book is divided into three sections, whose titles alone epitomize its thrust and tone. The first, “Create Like a God,” discusses the way that radical new products and services must really be developed. The second, “Command Like a King,” explains why take-charge leaders are truly necessary in order for such developments to succeed. And the third, “Work Like a Slave,” focuses on the commitment that is actually required to beat the odds and change the world. A concluding section is filled with entertaining and inspirational quotes on topics like technology, transportation, politics, entertainment, and medicine that show how even some of our era’s most successful ideas and people–the telephone, Louis Pasteur, and Yahoo! among them–have prevailed despite the scoffing of naysayers.

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Book of the Day: The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur

Why you should read: The tell-it-like-it-is guide to cleaning up in business, even if you are at the end of your roll.

“Never started a company before? Struggling with little or no cash? Have no experience, no baseline to judge your progress against? Thank God! You’ve got a shot at making this work.” So says Mike Michalowicz, author of The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur, a business book that is so uniquely useful, so raw and entertaining, it reads like the brainchild of Steve Jobs and Chris Rock.

The founder of three multimillion-dollar companies, including Obsidian Launch, a company that partners with first-time entrepreneurs to grow their concepts into industry leaders, Mike Michalowicz knows what it really takes to spin your great idea into pure gold.

Whether you’re just starting out or have been at this for years, Mike’s “get real” approach to business is a much-needed swift kick in the pants. In this book, you’ll discover:
* Why a business plan is a total waste of your time.
* Why fulfilling your own needs is the first and last order of business.
* Which three sheets of paper you need to successfully launch, manage and grow your business.
* How to get started in business with little or no money.
* How to find and exploit resources that no one else knows about.
* How to stop procrastinating and take action NOW!

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Book of the Day: Integrated Chinese

Why you should read:  The Integrated Chinese Level?

The Integrated Chinese Level 1 Part 1 Textbook is appropriate for beginning students at the high school or college level, or for anyone seeking to communicate effectively in Chinese wherever it is spoken. This acclaimed, best-selling series is successful because it “integrates” all four language skills–listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Integrated Chinese helps you understand how the Chinese language works grammatically, and how to use Chinese in real life—how to understand it on the street, speak it on the telephone, read it in the newspaper, or write it in a report. The materials within Integrated Chinese’s set of textbooks, workbooks, character workbooks, and audio CDs are divided into sections of listening, speaking, reading and writing. Two types of exercises are used: traditional exercises (fill-in-the-blank, sentence completion, translation) to help learners build a solid grammatical foundation, and communication-oriented exercises (speaking drills, discussion topics, etc.) to prepare them to function in a Chinese language environment. Frequently, authentic materials written for native Chinese speakers and realia (newspaper clippings, signs, tickets, etc.) are used. Notes on language use and Chinese culture are found throughout the textbooks. Textbooks and workbooks are available in simplified or traditional characters.

Interested? Get this book at The Knowledge Store

Book of the Day: Cold Steel

Why you should read Cold Steel:  The Multi-Billion-Dollar Battle for a Global Empire

Corporate takeovers can be as punishing as a heavyweight fight, and Cold Steel chronicles one of the most contentious ever. The high-stakes story reads like a gripping novel, with a rags-to-riches success story, international intrigue, astronomical volumes of money, and electrifying plot twists. With billions in cash and hundreds of thousands of jobs at stake, Arcelor owner Guy Dolle, a cocksure Frenchman accustomed to succeeding in a tough industry and aided by the Luxembourg government, attempted to take over Mittal Steel from rags-to-riches billionaire Lakshmi Mittal, the fifth richest man in the world. The resulting conflict  Ean epic corporate battle that sent shockwaves through the political corridors of Europe, strained the world’s financial markets, enriched 30 hedge funds, and permanently transformed the global steel industry  Eis meticulously detailed in Cold Steel, the riveting story of dueling titans of the business world.

Interested? Get this book at The Knowledge Store

Book of the Day: Enchantment, the art of changing Hearts, Minds and Actions by Guy Kawasaki

Why you should read Enchantment, the art of changing Hearts, Minds and Actions by Guy Kawasaki?

Enchantment, as defined by bestselling business guru Guy Kawasaki, is not about manipulating people. It transforms situations and relationships. It converts hostility into civility and civility into affinity. It changes the skeptics and cynics into the believers and the undecided into the loyal. Enchantment can happen during a retail transaction, a high-level corporate negotiation, or a Facebook update. And when done right, it’s more powerful than traditional persuasion, influence, or marketing techniques.

Kawasaki argues that in business and personal interactions, your goal is not merely to get what you want but to bring about a voluntary, enduring, and delightful change in other people. By enlisting their own goals and desires, by being likable and trustworthy, and by framing a cause that others can embrace, you can change hearts, minds, and actions. For instance, enchantment is what enabled . . .

* A Peace Corps volunteer to finesse a potentially violent confrontation with armed guerrillas.
* A small cable channel (E!) to win the TV broadcast rights to radio superstar Howard Stern.??
* A seemingly crazy new running shoe (Vibram Five Fingers) to methodically build a passionate customer base.??
* A Canadian crystal maker (Nova Scotian Crystal) to turn observers into buyers.

This book explains all the tactics you need to prepare and launch an enchantment campaign; to get the most from both push and pull technologies; and to enchant your customers, your employees, and even your boss. It shows how enchantment can turn difficult decisions your way, at times when intangibles mean more than hard facts. It will help you overcome other people’s entrenched habits and defy the not-always-wise “wisdom of the crowd.”

Kawasaki’s lessons are drawn from his tenure at one of the most enchanting organizations of all time, Apple, as well as his decades of experience as an entrepreneur and venture capitalist. There are few people in the world more qualified to teach you how to enchant people.

As Kawasaki writes, “Want to change the world? Change caterpillars into butterflies? This takes more than run-of-the-mill relationships. You need to convince people to dream the same dream that you do.” That’s a big goal, but one that’s possible for all of us.

Interested? Get this book and more at The Knowledge Store

Book of the Day: Marketing management in China

Why you should read Marketing management in China?

Marketing Management in China brings the landmark work of marketing gurus Philip Kotler and Kevin Lane Keller to China. This edition, adapted by Professor Lu Tai Hong of Zhongshan University, takes a journey into a truly Chinese vista of marketing management. With content, language, and presentation shaped to the demands of the world s fastest burgeoning economy, this is one textbook that the Chinese marketing student of the new millennium cannot do without. Finding quality China-context cases that are current is challenging for most instructors. This adaptation provides hard-to-find and well-researched China cases that offer insights while covering a wide variety of contexts, spanning international companies operating in China to Chinese companies that are beginning to venture overseas.