BOOK REVIEW: “The Art of Choosing” by Dr. Sheena Iyengar

In a magazine interview, Catherine Zeta-Jones, the Welsh actress and wife of Michael Douglas, describes one of her daily chores, which involve making choices. 

“It is,” she said, “deciding whether to buy that beautiful little dress she had found while shopping in California, knowing full well that the shoes that she needed to go with it were in one of her homes in the Caribbean or in Europe.”  

Pity the rich and famous!

We have more choices today than we have ever had in history and yet making countless decisions each day may be a burden rather than a pleasure.  In this excellent book, which brings in scientific research and personal examples, Dr. Sheena Iyengar, Professor at Columbia University, describes just why some of these choices are so difficult. 

 

BOOK REVIEW : “This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly” by Carmen M. Reinhart & Kenneth S. Rogoff (2011)

A few weeks ago this book would have been read quickly, given an A+ with a little gold star and a request from the teacher for a “Show and Tell” from two of her best pupils. Thomas Herdon, a graduate student at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst has dented the myth though by identifying the errors in their calculation. This has coincided with increasing criticisms of the current policies even in academic circles. Mark Blyth at Brown University has just published “Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea.” In this context, “This Time is Different” is certainly worth another critical read.

BOOK REVIEW: “The Art of the Sale” by Philip Delves Broughton (2013)

Philip Delves Broughton made quite a name for himself by writing a book, which was highly critical of Harvard Business School and the MBA system in general.  During his time at HBS, he was surprised that sales was not part of the curriculum.  He expected it to be very present in MBA programs and yet found that, in general, they looked down upon such mercantile procedures. 

BOOK REVIEW: “Reorganize for Resilience” by Ranjay Gulati (2010)

 

Back in the carefree days before 2007, companies looked at growth as their major challenge.  In those days, obtaining a 15% increase on yearly growth seemed to be the most important thing for them to achieve, to keep their stockholders happy.  Since then, with the collapse of firms such as Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, survival has become the key element to business.  In Reorganize for Resilience, Ranjay Gulati shows some of the things that resilient companies do, both in good times and in bad, to ensure that they don’t end up being a case study on what companies shouldn’t have done.

BOOK REVIEW: “Making Strategy Work: Leading Effective Execution and Change” by Lawrence G. Hrebiniak (2005)

“Making Strategy Work” is a fairly long, but easily readable book, by Lawrence Hrebiniak, a professor at Wharton University, and consultant.  The book draws on the author’s 25 years’ experience of teaching senior executives, and the underlying premise that runs throughout it is that, while setting a strategy is a good thing, it is the execution that is crucial for the success of an organization.  Successful execution requires that a company looks very closely at such things, as power within the firms, and how to manage change. 

BOOK REVIEW: “Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation” by Jean Lave & Etienne Wenger (1991)

In the past decade, there’s been a great deal of talk about how the education industry is going to be revolutionized, and that we can do away with classrooms and universities altogether.  There is nothing new about this.  However, the revolution that has been predicted some many times has never really come. People learn efficiently because they are together, because they can have a discussion about their ideas, because they are with a professor who can adapt to their learning style. This book gives some background ideas to this debate and to why the bricks and mortar university is not quite dead yet.  

BOOK REVIEW: “From Higher Aims to Hired Hands” by Rakesh Khurana (2007)

This book caused quite a stir when it was first published and perhaps not surprisingly since it is an “insider’s account” of why business schools have never gained the respectabilty they have searched for over the past century. Rakesh Khurana is a Harvard Business School professor whose book came at an end of a decade of a great deal of criticism of business schools that came mostly from within. That was just before the current financial crisis. Since the beginning of this crisis those criticisms have continued to grow.

BOOK REVIEW: “The Future of Business Schools: Scenarios and Strategies for 2020″ by Thomas Durand & Stéphanie Dameron (2008)

Written and coordinated by two French professors, The Future of Business Schools for 2020, sets out some of the challenges and external pressures on business schools today and the impact that may have for the coming years. Many of the European countries are dealt with individually; there is also an essay on the U.S.A, a more general one on business education in Latin America, and another one on management education in Asia.

BOOK REVIEW: “HBR’s 10 Must Reads on Strategy” by Harvard Business Review (2011)

Business schools contain the word both business and school.  These ingenious little books written by Harvard show that one of the world’s most known business schools is pretty good at doing both of them.  The title of the book gives you essentially all that you need to know.  These are a collection of the ten most read articles that have been published by HBR on strategy. 

BOOK REVIEW: “The New Age of Innovation: Driving Co-Created Value Through Global Networks” by C.K. Prahalad & M.S. Krishnan ” (2008)

The New Age of Innovation is one of C.K.Prahalad last works. The central theme lies around what they define as N=1; R=G. Increasingly today business is having to adapt to the logic of the individual needs of each customer (N=1). At the same time, they are finding their resources on a global scale (R=G).