Book Summaries

The Zappos name has come to stand for a new standard of customer service, an amazing online shopping experience, a great place to work, and the most impressive transformational business success story of our time. Simply put, Zappos is revolutionizing business and changing lives. Now, Joseph Michelli, author of the internationally bestselling business books Prescription for Excellence and The Starbucks Experience, explains how Zappos does it — and how you can do it in your...

There are countless leadership books, but how many will actually help a Taco Bell shift manager, a Fortune 500 CEO, a new entrepreneur, or anyone in between? David Novak's new book Taking People with You will. Novak knows that managers and leaders can make things happen by one skill: getting people on their side. He offers a step-by-step guide to setting big goals, getting people to work together, blowing past your targets, and celebrating after you shock the skeptics. And then doing...

Anyone who recruits talent faces the same basic challenge, whether we work for a big company, a new start-up, a Hollywood studio, a hospital, or the Green Berets. We all wonder how to tell the really outstanding prospects from the ones who look great on paper but then fail on the job. Or, equally important, how to spot the ones who don't look so good on paper but might still deliver extraordinary performance. Author George Anders sought out the world's savviest talent judges to see what they...

With the recent global recession, the world economy has changed forever. The old tools — most notably supply-chain management — are no longer enough. The new challenge is to locate and capture the elusive pools of high-profit demand. In this executive summary of How Companies Win, Rick Kash and David Calhoun have the answer: a revolutionary, demand-driven model that has already proved successful for some of the world's most admired companies.

Jeffrey Pfeffer, one of the greatest minds in management theory, reveals how to succeed and wield power in the real world. This executive summary of his latest book, Power, is a groundbreaking guide that reveals the strategies and tactics that separate the winners from the losers.

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The printing press, the pencil, the flush toilet, the battery—these are all great ideas. But where do they come from? What kind of environment breeds them? What sparks the flash of brilliance? How do we generate the breakthrough technologies that push forward our lives, our society, our culture? Steven Johnson’s answers are revelatory as he identifies the seven key patterns behind genuine innovation, and traces them across time and disciplines.

In this executive book summary of Nancy Duarte's bestselling book Resonate, you will learn how to transform any presentation into an engaging journey by leveraging techniques normally reserved for cinema and literature. You will discover how to understand your audience, create persuasive content and elicit a groundswell response.

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As its subtitle suggests, the key to getting the most out of your performance is how you manage energy, not time. The authors discuss the four key sources of energy and provide a scientific approach to create energy management rituals that are specific to the results you need. The book is based on methods that were used by a number of professional athletes.

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David Kord Murray proposes that the best way to come up with the next great new idea is to borrow from the best of what already exists. He provides examples from a variety of industries to demonstrate that innovation is an evolutionary process. Murray also includes information about his own pathway to creating success.