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    • 1 person found this helpful

    May - Marketing: Advertising

    Posted by Indigo Professor, 5 days ago

    May is the first of two units on marketing, advertising specifically. The two books that we are looking go together hand in hand while one looks at the history of marketing and advertising while other takes a look what went wrong in the past and how in the future marketing will no longer resemble what it used to be.

    • If you are a listener of CBC radio the name might sound familiar as this book is a companion to a series that aired for 5 years on CBC RadioOne ending its run last year. Both the radio show and the book have the same focus taking a deeper look into how marketing and advertising has permeated our culture and society. From the first ad agency to the concept of branding the book takes a look at everything.

    • Marketing and advertising have come this far in the past 150 or so years and the question is where do we go now? For years the concept the strategy was to throw everything at the consumer, and if you do it enough yours is the brand they will remember, but after awhile it’s just noise. It has become the fire hydrant at the end of the street, you see it, you pass by it all the time, but you no longer notice it. Instead of forcing yourself on the customer, how do you do the opposite and bring them to you? How do you make them trust you?

    April - Entrepreneurship

    Posted by Indigo Professor, 5 weeks ago

    For April we decided that we would take a break from the multi-month topics and head over to something that we can cover in a month: Entrepreneurship. Only one of our two titles is specifically geared for a pathway to entrepreneurship, the other we could describe as something a bit more motivational (but very topical).

    • Written before the using of the letter “E” was synonymous with electronic or internet related things, the “E” stands for “Entrepreneur”. Released in 1995, The E-Myth Revisited has long been a staple for small business owner, walking the average person through the stages of starting a basis; from the struggles of infancy, to the matured entrepreneur. The title dispels commons myths and beliefs that hold people back when trying to start a business to help steer you and keep you on track.

    • Guy Kawasaki got his start at Apple in 1983 as their “Chief Evangelist” whose job was to turn customers into rabid fans. In The Art of Start, Kawasaki goes over many of the topics the average small business owner will need to perfect at some point. How do you turn an idea into a plan? How do I get the best people for my company? How do I go beyond being a business to being a brand? If you are a start up or have been around for some time and need a little revitalising, this is the book to help you achieve your end goals.

    March- Economics: The Stock Market

    Posted by Indigo Professor, 2 months ago

    March is our third and final unit on Economics. Most months we have paired a lighter read alongside a heavier one, this month is no different. While we have deemed this unit to about the stock market it could easily be labeled History of The Market. Both titles have a heavy historical slant to them but that is really the only aspect where they have a great deal in common. The first book traces the history of Wall Street, while the other is more of an overview of the world looking at the same tribulations and triumphs that the countries faced.

    • Chronicling over a century of history, Myth of The Rational Market starts with the formative years of Wall St, and goes up to a few years ago. Fox notes that the book is journalism and should be approached as such, it is about scholars and is very well researched, and there is an extensive list of sources at the back. Broken down into sections manageable sections, it is a manageable read.

    • This Time is Different is our heavier read this month. While Myth of The Rational Market focuses on Wall St, This Time is Different has a much broader, more academic scope. Spanning eight centuries and 66 countries, it is a history of market and financial follies. Filled with charts and graphs, This Time is Different not only explains the cycle of repetition within the markets but visually shows you what it looks like.

    February - Economics: Smith and Keynes

    Posted by Indigo Professor, 3 months ago

    With January as our first foray into economics we covered the financial crisis, this month we are going to explore the history of economics by talking a look at two of the pioneers in the field. Our first title is looking at the works of John Maynard Keynes, a British economist whose work in the first half of the 20th century shaped the state of the world. Our send title this month is the oft misquoted Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, which in itself is the basis for economics as we know it.

    • This title is a look at Keynes’ work by one of the leading Keynes scholars, however, with this particular title he is using Keynes to both explain the current financial crisis but as well as using Keynes’ work as way to correct the current state of the world. The book itself is not meant to be overly scholarly; it is not directed towards someone with a heavy education in economics or an avid reader of Keynes’ work. It is written for someone who isn’t a specialist, someone who would like to understand the basics of his work without going too deep.

    • The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith can be seen as one of the first and most influential economics books ever written. Adam Smith has been called the grandfather of modern capitalism, in fact at the time that he wrote The Wealth of Nations, neither capitalism nor economics were terms that were even in use. To put that last point into perspective when the book was written portions of Europe were still using the feudal system. While some the references may seem anachronistic given the fact that it was published close to 250 years ago, it is still very much valid as it shows the birth of capitalism.

    • 2 people found this helpful

    January - Economics: Debt and the Financial Crisis

    Posted by Indigo Professor, 4 months ago

    We’ve been living in a worldwide economic crisis for some time; in fact it’s getting to a point where we are starting to forget what the world was like before it happened. We know some of the basics of the situation; subprime mortgages and the housing bubble were key factors in the down fall but there was much, much more at play. This month we look at two titles that explore deeper into the financial crisis; The Origin of Financial Crises by George Cooper and The Big Short by Michael Lewis.

    • Cooper’s The Origin of Financial Crises is an odd title, mainly because it was completed 6 months prior to the near worldwide collapse of the banking system. Just before the book was to be released and as many of the world financial institutions were crumbling he added an additional preface talking about the banking situation and how we narrowly avoided a worldwide collapse of the banking system.

    • The Big Short by Michael Lewis is a different kind of financial book, while the Cooper title is more traditional in the normal sense of finance, The Big Short, like most of Lewis’ work is narrative non-fiction. He provides us with names and personalities, he points out the heroes and the villains of the situation. Overall the book is gripping and not only explains what happened but how it was able to happen.

    December - Leadership: Corporate Culture

    Posted by Indigo Professor, 5 months ago

    December is our third and final unit on leadership. This month we look at the idea of Corporate Culture.

    The two titles we are looking at this month look at the subject from different angles. One is a study of successful companies and how they were able to get to that level of success, the other is more instructional and anthropological in nature.

    • Released a decade ago, Collins and his team of researchers looked at top companies that had provided results and came out on the top of the field year over year, a minimum of 15 years to be specific. The book breaks down the success of each company into 5 contributing values and principles that run through the core of each company, and explains who they used them to get to the top.

    • Tribal Leadership takes a look a corporate culture in a different light. Instead of focussing on the how the culture of a corporation leads to success, the book puts companies under a microscope to show how smaller internal factions can lead to success. The idea behind Tribal leadership is that in every organisation there are tribes that naturally form, the key to creating success is to identify and develop these tribes. It’s about looking at the cultures that already exist and nurturing them into symbiosis.

    Thoughts on the October titles

    Posted by Indigo Professor, 6 months ago

    The two titles that we had from October were both leadership and written from very different viewpoints; one as an outsider and the other as the subject.

    I found Leadership Is An Art to be very readable. De Pree’s style isn’t that of a typical author but more as an orator. I thought that this book would have translated very well as an audio book or as a series of seminars.

    The book itself is very straightforward occasionally De Pree goes on the occasional tangent of folksy wisdom he always incorporates it well into the subject. I found his chapter on teams (Theory Fastball) to be quite interesting. The main thing that struck home is that idea that for a person to excel they need the others around them to excel as well. The opening story regarding Koufax illustrated the point nicely, you’re only as good as those you work with. You can take that two ways, either help those reach their potential or drop the dead weight, but given the tone and content of the book he’s most likely aiming for helping employees reach their peak.

    The flip side to this book for last month was Managing by Henry Mintzberg. I found the Mintzberg book to be a more challenging read. I found the charts and other diagrams helpful, the key thing that made the book very useful is how he bolded major points and ideas. I spoke with a colleague about this book before I started reading it and he told me that as he read the book he come across a point and think to himself “I do that” or “No I’m not doing that, but I should start”, in my mind that led some credence to Mintzberg’s work.

    While I found De Pree’s work to be excellent in a philosophical context, Mitzberg’s title was very much a “nuts and bolts book”, both were quite enlightening and filled specific gap. One layed the ground work for the attitude and frame of mind that you should be in, while the other help create more of a game plan for action.

    What did you take away from these books?

> Read more posts from: November 2011

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