50 Business Classics by Tom Butler-Bowdon


50 Business Classics
Title : 50 Business Classics
Author :
Rating :
ISBN : -
Language : English
Format Type : Audible Audio
Number of Pages : -
Publication : First published April 3, 2018

'50 BUSINESS CLASSICS' presents the key ideas from classic texts such as My Years with General Motors and Michael Gerber's The E-Myth Revisited to contemporary business ideas seen in the rise of the tech giants like Google, Apple and Amazon. It contains revealing biographies of luminaries like Steve Jobs and Katherine Graham, as well as lesser-known stories including creation of publishing giant Penguin and Chinese behemoth Alibaba.

Here you'll find the texts and ideas that matter in:
· Entrepreneurship
· Leadership
· Management
· Strategy
· Business history
· Personal development
· Technology and innovation

Summarizing the smartest thinking for today's professional success, this audiobook will provide inspiration and insights for entrepreneurs, executives and students of business and management alike.




RUNNING TIME ⤇ 17hrs. and 30mins.

©2018 Tom Butler-Bowdon (P)2018 Gildan Media


50 Business Classics Reviews


  • Corey

    Summary:
    This book felt a bit like cheating, it's a summary of 50 classics. I'm glad I delved into it though because it helped me accrue a vast amount of well-distilled information. Lots of which came from dated books that I may not find relevant or palatable in their entirety. The author has a knack for this process of distillation, and seems to have made a career from it. The chapters are bite-sized, well formatted and the books are well chosen.

    I would recommend this book to anyone reading business books who wants to jump the queue or get a feel for what they do and don't want to read.

    The main message I took from this book is the 50 messages below. :P

    Each book in a nutshell:
    - There are no shortcuts to wealth, aside from right vocation, good character and perseverance - and don't forget to advertise.

    - Don't be afraid to be different. On entering any new field or an industry, aim to really shake it up and provide new value.

    - The wealth creator has a moral obligation to enrich the lives of others in whatever way they can.

    - Our civilisation is as much managerial as it is capitalist.

    - Society's interests are best served by giant monopolies which provide quality and lower prices for the consumer.

    - Bigger companies can fall into a trap in which it only makes sense to serve existing customers; but new customers and technologies are where the growth is.

    - Don't be cowed by the big players in your industry, or the people with credentials. The main ingredients in business success are vision, patience, and agility.

    - The measure of a company is not how much it can expand in good times, but whether it is able to withstand downturns and crises and carve out a long-term future.

    - Quality is not the result of an individual worker, but must be part of a system.

    - No one is born effective, just as no one is born a leader. Effectiveness depends on clarity of aims and the desire to contribute.

    - The best negotiators focus on principles, not attempts to manipulate.

    - Artificial intelligence and automation, as well as providing business possibilities, will transform the economic and political landscape.

    - The key to real prosperity in business is to work on your enterprise, not in it.

    - Thinking big is the basis of all great enterprises and fortunes.

    - Nothing really prepares you for leading an organisation and getting it through the inevitable crises.

    - Great products are about art as much as technology.

    - A few good books and practical experience will serve you just as well, or better, than going to business school.

    - Before anything else, the fundamental purpose in starting any new enterprise is to create meaning.

    - To fulfil their potential, people and organisations need higher-level goals that go beyond their own gain or profit.

    - There is always a huge market for things that people want that, with a sudden drop in price, they can now afford.

    - Companies make the mistake of focusing on the competition when they should be focused on creating big leaps in value for the customer.

    - Going into a line business solely to make money is rarely a good idea. Be motivated by the wish to make things better for people in some concrete way.

    - It is the simplifiers, not the innovators, who take the really big prizes in business.

    - It is one thing to survey customers about what they want, but quite another to actually be on their side.

    - Organisations increasingly find that they rise or fall depending on the quality of their teams.

    - Great innovations seem simple and obvious in hindsight.

    - Companies stop growing because they fail to correctly understand what business they are in.

    - Widely shared information and devolution of power can make an organisation unified and powerful.

    - People will naturally want to do their best for an organisation if they feel that their need for personal development is being met.

    - There is a distinct pattern to the acceptance of new products in the marketplace, ignorance of which doom many start-ups.

    - We waste too much energy trying to fix our weaknesses. Successful people single-mindedly work to amplify their strengths,

    - It's senseless trying to go head to head with an established leader of a product or category. Instead, develop a new product or service that you can be first in.

    - If you believe in your idea so much, be willing to be proven wrong on it by relentless testing and iteration. Whatever survives of the process you will know has a market.

    - More women at the top is not just good for its own sake; companies will only succeed if they are properly representative of half of their market.

    - Only by creating a culture of learning and innovation will you attract the right people to your enterprise.

    - Time, discipline, and focus are the most important ingredients in building a fortune.

    - Huge enterprises can be built by giving people a small moment of joy in their day.

    - Great companies are communities in which there is a genuine commitment to every member's potential being realised.

    - A person or organisation only really succeeds in a big way when they arrive at a crystal clear awareness of their purpose - what they are doing to advance others and the world.

    - The first rule of business is to create a real business that can be constantly ratcheted up and used to fund future growth.

    - A big company does not have to be bloated. With good management it can react quickly to changing market conditions.

    - Even when it loses you money in the short term, a radical desire to please the customer builds loyalty that makes for long-term success.

    - Willingness to fail frequently, while absorbing the lessons of failure and making constant adjustments, is the only real path to success.

    - Increased efficiency allows workers as well as managers and owners to prosper.

    - Competition is overrated. The most successful businesses are those which create a natural monopoly through the brilliance of their product.

    - The key to great corporate performance is not employing great people, as conventional wisdom says, but letting your existing people flower.

    - To succeed in business, balance boldness and promotion with patience, caution, and flexibility.

    - The visionary entrepreneur is not content to create a business, but must shape the future.

    - Never underestimate ow far you can go by just being yourself.

    - New practices in manufacturing and management have saved vast resources and brought higher-quality goods.

  • Diego Leal

    Some summaries of some really good books.

    Introduction

    1. P. T. Barnum – The Art of Money Getting (1880)
    There are no shortcuts to business success; good character is everything… and it helps to advertise

    2. Richard Branson – Losing My Virginity (1998)
    Don’t be afraid to be different. On entering any new field or an industry, aim to really shake it up and provide new value

    3. Andrew Carnegie – The Gospel of Wealth (1899)
    The wealth creator has a moral obligation to enrich the lives of others in whatever way they can

    4. Alfred Chandler – The Visible Hand (1977)
    It is not entrepreneurship but management that has brought the greatest advances in business

    5. Ron Chernow – Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. (1998)
    Society’s interests are best served by giant monopolies which provide quality and lower prices for the consumer

    6. Clayton Christensen – The Innovator’s Dilemma (1997)
    Businesses must purposefully engage in “disruptive innovation” if they are to survive and prosper

    7. Duncan Clark – Alibaba: The House That Jack Ma Built (2016)
    Don’t be cowed by the big players in your industry. Vision, patience, and agility can see you outpace them

    8. Jim Collins – Great by Choice (2011)
    Great companies outperform even in turbulent times

    9. W. Edwards Deming – Out of the Crisis (1982)
    Enterprises with an extreme focus on quality, better systems and constant improvement have the edge

    10. Peter Drucker – The Effective Executive (1967)
    Effectiveness at work depends on clarity of aims and the desire to contribute

    11. Roger Fisher, William Ury & Bruce Patton – Getting To Yes (2011)
    Successful negotiation is based on principles, not pressure

    12. Martin Ford – Rise of the Robots (2015)
    Automation and artificial intelligence will change the landscape of work and production forever

    13. Michael E. Gerber – The E-Myth Revisited (2001)
    The key to real prosperity in business is to work on your enterprise, not in it

    14. Conrad Hilton – Be My Guest (1957)
    Faith in your idea and thinking big are essential to building a great business

    15. Ben Horowitz – The Hard Thing About Hard Things (2014)
    Nothing really prepares you for leading an organization and getting it through the inevitable crises

    16. Walter Isaacson – Steve Jobs (2011)
    A great vision can require shocking intensity to realize

    17. Josh Kaufman – The Personal MBA (2010)
    You don’t have to spend a fortune getting a good business education

    18. Guy Kawasaki – The Art of the Start (2004)
    The fundamental purpose in starting any new enterprise is to create meaning

    19. John Kay – Obliquity (2010)
    Companies that put profits before mission inevitably falter in the long-term

    20. Stuart Kells – Penguin and the Lane Brothers (2015)
    Build an enterprise that uplifts people or opens up knowledge to millions

    21. W. Chan Kim & Renée Mauborgne – Blue Ocean Strategy (2005)
    Companies make the mistake of focusing on the competition when they should be focused on creating big leaps in value

    22. Phil Knight – Shoe Dog (2016)
    A great businesses can be the result of a personal passion writ large

    23. Richard Koch & Greg Lockwood – Simplify (2016)
    It is the radical simplifiers of products and services, rather than the innovators, that win the big prizes in business

    24. Terry Leahy – Management in Ten Words (2012)
    Simplicity and clarity are the most powerful advantages in business, but you only arrive at them by being radically customer-centric

    25. Patrick Lencioni – The Five Dysfunctions of a Team (2002)
    The best teams trust each other, welcome conflict, are accountable, and focus on results

    26. Marc Levinson – The Box (2006)
    How a simple innovation, the shipping container, transformed world trade

    27. Theodore Levitt – Marketing Myopia (1960)
    Truly understand what business you are in, and you have a chance of shaping your future

    28. Stanley McChrystal – Team of Teams (2015)
    Transparency of information enables people to make good decisions and creates unity of purpose

    29. Douglas McGregor – The Human Side of Enterprise (1960)
    People will naturally want to do their best for an organization if they feel that their higher personal development goals are being met

    30. Geoffrey A. Moore – Crossing the Chasm (1991)
    Attracting early adopters to your product does not mean you will capture the mainstream market

    31. Tom Rath & Barry Conchie – Strengths Based Leadership (2008)
    Maximizing your strengths, not trying to correct for your weaknesses, is the key to work success

    32. Al Ries & Jack Trout – Positioning (1981)
    Successful companies don’t simply sell products, they occupy very specific spaces in people’s minds

    33. Eric Ries – The Lean Startup (2011)
    A lack of resources can be a boon in creating new enterprises, with experimentation and analysis replacing grand strategy and capital

    34. Sheryl Sandberg – Lean In (2013)
    More women at the top is not just good for its own sake, companies will only succeed if they are properly representative of half of their market

    35. Eric Schmidt & Jonathan Rosenberg – How Google Works (2014)
    Only by creating a culture of learning and innovation will you attract the right people to your enterprise

    36. Alice Schroeder – The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life (2008) Time, discipline, and focus are the most important ingredients in building a fortune

    37. Howard Schultz – Pour Your Heart Into It (1997)
    Huge enterprises can be built by giving people a small moment of joy in their day

    38. Peter Senge – The Fifth Discipline (1990)
    ​Great companies are communities in which there is a genuine commitment to every member’s potential being realized

    39. Simon Sinek – Start With Why (2009)
    Average companies are focused on “what” they produce. Great business leaders inspire people to take action by galvanizing them behind a compelling reason, a “why”

    40. Seema Singh – Mythbreaker: Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw and the Story of Indian Biotech (2016)
    Advanced industries can emerge in unlikely environments

    41. Alfred P. Sloan – My Years with General Motors (1963)
    A new breed of huge corporation required a different kind of management

    42. Brad Stone – The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon (2013) Relentless innovation to please the customer and a very long-term view created a dominant online retailer

    43. Matthew Syed – Black Box Thinking (2015)
    Willingness to fail frequently, while absorbing the lessons of failure and making constant adjustments, is the only real path to success

    44. Frederick Winslow Taylor – The Principles of Scientific Management (1911) Dramatic increases in productivity benefit capital and labor alike

    45. Peter Thiel – Zero To One (2014)
    To grow faster, the world needs transformative technology and business models

    46. Robert Townsend – Up the Organization (1970)
    People are most motivated and successful at work when they are left to do their thing and treated as human beings

    47. Donald Trump – The Art of the Deal (1987)
    To succeed in business, balance boldness and promotion with patience, caution and flexibility

    48. Ashlee Vance – Elon Musk (2015)
    The visionary entrepreneur should not just create a business but shape the future

    49. Jack Welch – Jack: Straight from the Gut (2001)
    Never underestimate how far you can go by just being yourself

    50. James P. Womack, Daniel T. Jones & Daniel Roos – The Machine that Changed the World (1990)
    New practices in manufacturing and management have saved vast resources and brought higher quality goods

  • Richard

    Business books carry, maybe, one good idea each. You then get a lot of real life examples trying to push that idea as the one true condition in which you will get the desired result. This is the first issue with these books.

    Then you get an extra 300 pages with, just, words. Most of them only try to flatter the people who read them.

    And these are business books (self help books in reality) in a nutshell. This one proves it.

    Also why is Trump's book included here? Εμετός.

  • Trish Honch

    Greetings and hello!

    I am an interstellar talent scout of the Castor Moving
    Group Network. You may call me Glorbalorbl. My
    home is in the Zubenelgenubi system, a multi-star
    neighborhood which lies conveniently close to your
    home system's ecliptic plane. As a result of this
    geometric convenience, us Zubenelgenubians have
    long been capable of analyzing your home planet
    using techniques like the TTV method familiar to
    you, and we are even fully capable of direct
    spectroscopic analysis of your atmosphere, but even
    if we were limited to your primitive methods, or
    limited to one star system, we would still have
    known about your biosphere since long before your
    particular species showed up on the scene, because
    we are a much older civilization that has migrated
    into the area from elsewhere in the galaxy.

    We have occasionally glanced your way in curiosity
    since before the first campfires began dotting the
    dark side of your planet. Upon observing your
    behaviors as you developed your unique identity
    among the lifeforms of your world, we quickly knew
    that you showed a lot of promise, but also
    possessed many problematic qualities. As for these
    troublesome characteristics, you seemed apparently
    unable or unwilling to recognize and remedy them in
    as timely of a manner as we have come to expect
    from most species that we consider to be developing
    toward true intelligence.

    We have long wanted to give you the benefit of the
    doubt, noting that your home planet is as dynamic
    as it is beautiful. The challenges faced by the
    evolution of life on your world presented you with
    many harsh realities and many long threads of
    intergenerational trauma. We get it, you grew up in a
    tough neighborhood. You did not have the benefit of
    growing up slowly on a fully-stable paradise planet
    orbiting neatly in a flare-free band of space around a
    fully-convective star with an extremely long main-
    sequence lifespan, like my species originally did... or,
    in fact, like most of the intelligent species in the
    galaxy did.

    Nonetheless, it was frustrating enough watching the
    constant setbacks that resulted from your
    stubbornly persistent myopia that we decided to
    stop paying much attention to what was going on
    over here. The last time anyone in our network took a
    serious peek must have been a few hundred Earth
    orbits ago. Upon reflection, I must say this appears
    to have been a significant oversight on our behalf,
    as you have experienced a surprising amount of
    change in that time interval.

    During a normal shift break on a routine research
    mission through the local void, my colleagues and I
    were recreationally surfing the plasma veil on the
    edge of your Sun's magnetic field when we
    happened upon a small craft of yours containing
    some cute cartoons and a record that appears to be
    titled "THE SOUNDS OF EARTH THE UNITED STATES
    OF AMERICA PLANET EARTH" - as lovers of music
    and recording arts ourselves, we immediately threw
    that shit onto the decks and put the needle down.
    While the sound was a little bit primitive and mostly
    contained what seemed to our sensibilities like under
    -produced source material captured from a single
    linear timeline, we had to admit it had some pretty
    good tracks on it. Even Greglorbalor the Horrible was
    delightedly clapping his digits at times.

    As the resident talent scout on our mission, it was
    incumbent upon me to reach out to you. Our team
    quickly analyzed the current state of your common
    languages and colloquialisms, as well as the state
    of your science. Using that information I was able to
    write you this message, and even select a few
    anthems of my alien nation to share with you, which
    I hope you will enjoy. My home system, after all, is
    renowned for pumping out the phattest beats in the
    Orion Arm.

    Now, to get more serious. Some of the things I say
    may feel to you like harsh criticisms, but I want you
    to keep in mind that if I didn't see potential in you, I
    would not bother to send you this message. With
    that in mind, there are some things I would like you
    to consider. In order to apply for galactic citizenship
    and be liberated from your current state of
    quarantined containment, you are going to need to
    meet the following requirements:

    1) You must cease your habitual engagement in
    avoidable conflict. This includes conflict within your
    own species as well as conflict between your
    civilization and its environment. Amongst nearly all
    enlightened interstellar civilizations, this is the
    primary measure by which the relative intelligence of
    a life form is established. Any civilization with a
    tendency toward violence, duplicity, sabotage, and ill
    -will is simply not considered mature enough to
    populate beyond their native star system. As long as
    you avoid making the breathtakingly obvious
    decision to work in harmony with the world you are a
    part of, then I must woefully inform you that you and
    your music will not be welcome at any of our public
    parks, or on any of our relativistic highways, or in
    any of our universally-acclaimed utopian garden-
    metropolis sanctuaries, or at any of our Galactic
    Music Awards ceremonies.

    2) You must eliminate poverty. Mismanagement of
    resources is generally considered a bad sign when
    analyzing the inhabitants of any world. By our
    standards, as long as any one member of your
    civilization is involuntarily unable to meet their basic
    needs, including access to food, shelter, information,
    and care, the title of "intelligent" will continue to
    elude your species.

    3) You must transmit a new collection of your best
    music in the direction of my home system, the star
    system you know as Alpha Librae, from between the
    longitude you call 100°W and 110°W, at the time you
    call 12:08 AM, on the date you call June 21, 2038. I
    repeat: new mixtape, right ascension 14h 52m 07.6s,
    declination 16°08'06.0", at the moment of the
    solstice closest to your aphelion, sixteen orbits from
    the time of this message, and from the part of your
    planet facing most directly away from your Sun at
    the time. This isn't an intelligence test like the other
    two items I have listed, I simply want a more up-to-
    date demo from you. We will have a
    receiver/transmitter in position to then distribute
    your message rapidly to the Zubenelgenubi system
    and, from there, to my colleagues in the Castor
    Moving Group Network.

    To put it lightly, a good demo is a great first step
    toward building your rapport with the rest of us, and
    would make your application for galactic citizenship
    much more likely to be approved. If your demo is
    good, and you've met the other two requirements I
    mentioned, then we might be able to finally invite
    you to the party. If your application is indeed
    approved, you will then have access to the collective
    knowledge of the various networks tangling their
    way around the Milky Way. That includes an
    abundance of helpful information about travel,
    communication, computation, longevity, and
    spacetime itself, to name a few points of interest.

    Good luck, Earth People.

    Kindest regards,
    Glorbalorblorlbrrgkjegrlkust6;l9[-t67/0

  • Zacaro Caro

    I’m halfway through the audiobook currently and have just bought a copy of the book for myself my business partner and our sales manager. I’ve read several of the books in here and love the summaries of the books I have read, and introduction to the books I haven’t read. I highly recommend this book already even if the last half of the book sucks. Which I’m sure it won’t.

  • Mesti Baca

    Bukunya bagus, tetapi dengan segudang ide yang bisa ditangkap membuat buku ini sedikit berat dan juga tidak cocok untuk dibaca secara cepat.
    Idenya berpindah secara tidak beraturan dan melompat-lompat, mungkin cukup keren jika digunakan untuk referensi membaca buku bisnis

  • Santosh Panda

    Fantastic book to be aware of the business leaders, their strategy, management, philosophies, success, failure, and life!

  • Vahagn Grigoryan

    This book is like a glossary for other business books. Very interesting to know about so many books in a nutshell.

  • Talita Sefa

    If you're looking for a guide to read which book for a specific insight or category of business, this book provides 50 helpful and concise book summary to narrow down into the book that will be suitable for you. The book provides 3 categories of: Entrepreneurship & Innovation, Management & Leadership, Strategy & Marketing. All those 50 book summary is claimed to be Business Classic because based on the author they remain relevant despite of the book's age and the business landscape that is constantly changing. Overall, this is also a nice book to read and to add more insights, even though you are not looking for any business tips or business good case practice.

  • William Budihardjo

    If you read nothing else on Business, start with this book. This book will guide you exploring important topics on business whie giving you stellar insight from the world's best mind.

    Some key points standout to me:
    1. Great companies often times are not the most innovative ones, but research shown that the characteristic of great enduring companies is by being innovative enough, having discipline/self-control and maintaing risk averse so they could withstand economic downturn.
    2. To be continued