A significant view of young urban business opportunities
936203
A useful and important book for understanding urban 20-somethings and 30-somethings. But if you're in your 50's like me the book requires you to know more about fads, trends, hipster world view, and social media saturation to make sense of it.
3184847
This book offers a lot of insight into the future of successful business. It contains invaluable suggestions and advice for both existing companies as well as new businesses. This is one of the few books that are written with a focus on the future, providing the reader with numerous innovative ideas and strategies. This guide will undoubtfully be useful to businessmen and students alike. Highly recommended!
4661680
I definitely enjoyed reading the book. It definitely an eye opener for me to be a young future business owner.
1085762
In this book, Gotz puts in evidence the quick evolution of the world we live in and the need for organizations to adapt to this new reality. Values of the Y generation, the internet of things and a rising consciousness all push towards a new business model prioritizing the development of employees potential. This book acts as a seed that triggers a reflection on what organizations could be.
2264237
In July 2013, the city of Detroit declared bankruptcy, causing many in America to ask what happened. How could the city that put America in motion only a century ago meet such a dire fate? In this new book, released only four months later, Larry Taylor, a son of Motor City who has moved up and on into the boardroom, provides some compelling clues.

Dont judge "The New Breed of Independent Corporate Directors" by its cover. Yes it focuses on boards, but it delivers much more. This unique manifesto contains candid reflections on corporate governance, keen insights on broad social issues, and inspiring personal memoirs.

The tone at the bottom sounds out in all dimensions as Taylor, a highly educated and accomplished board member, identifies three main groups beneath the board and C-Suite  those at the bottom of the corporate structure (i.e., employees, supervisors and managers), those at the bottom of society (welfare recipients, unemployed, and others dependent on government support), and those at the bottom of the world economies (i.e., Third World economies).

Each of these can have an impact on the long-term sustainability of the corporation, says Taylor. For example, within the company, decisions made at the bottom levels of an organization create risks and opportunities. Similarly, broad social and global economic trends make a difference to companies in the U.S. Spotting these trends requires a new level of understanding and engagement from the new breed" directors. It's good that Taylor is among them.
644670
"Degraded Work" is an ambitious attempt to debunk certain conventional wisdom about "place-bound, local serving industries" and the role they play in degrading the quality of jobs. Traditional views of economic growth and development--at least views commonly encountered in the United States--tend to look at export-oriented industries like manufacturing as sophisticated, dynamic ones that offer good jobs, while local-serving industries like residential construction and retail are portrayed as static, competition-constrained industries that have no choice but to pay low wages and "sweat" their employees in order to survive. Through the use of in-depth case studies of two local serving industries (food retail and residential construction) in Chicago, the book shows how wrong the conventional thinking is.

Overall, "Degraded Work" is a fresh take on a problem of great importance and it serves an important role in showing how degraded work is not a natural feature of service industries but rather a problem that is produced through human agency and so is a problem that can be addressed through human actions.

(Note: the book's author is an acquaintance, and we share mutual friends.)
2296339
This book is a very valuable study of family business which covers its emergence during the First Industrial Revolution and its widespread development in other emerging economies such as Korea, Hong Kong, and countries in South East Asia after the Second World War. The theoretical premise of this book is that family business is not a sclerotic, static, and homogenous organizational form and its evolution is highly influence by an array of political and institutional factors such as technological push, cultural patterns, structure of the capital markets, and governments policies and legislative framework in different spatial and temporal contexts. Professor Colli dispels the widely-held belief that family business cannot last long due mainly to the so-called Buddenbrooks effect and the presence of finance capitalism where bankers and professional managers. He adopts evolutionary theory, transaction theory, embeddedness theory, and trusted-based institution and network theory with a plethora of evidence to reveal that family business can become an efficient caterpillar and butterfly.

This book is highly relevant to readers and research students who intend to advance their understanding of the nature and evolution of family business since the nineteenth century. This book contains all key economic and management theories germane to family business study and the bibliographical essay section is a very useful roadmap for readers to identify seminal scholarly works (overview and sourcebooks, conferences and colloquia, national cases, and historical alternatives, and theory and current debates) on this subject.
4863683
Author Adam Cohen presents the story of eBay in a clear, flowing style, depicting the growth from a modest beginning to the giant the company has become.  What I enjoyed the most, unexpectedly, were the many stories of businesses that spawned from eBay, such as the gal who generated a business selling packaging materials to eBay sellers.  Without fail, these spawned business germinated, not from a grandiose scheme with a formal business plan, but rather from the seed of a slightly creative idea, which, once put into practice, gained momentum.  Perhaps a valuable paradigm can be found here for the self-help crowd, most of whom maintain that success must start with a grand, large-scale idea.
4110392
OutSmart! provides clear and useful examples of companies that have successfully uncovered business opportunities by identifying asymmetry and complexity.  It also provides a gentle reminder that astute thinking and swift execution are major advantages in our "complex, volatile and demanding" business world.  Mr. Champy does this through a series of readable studies of eight exemplary companies.  Each study is concluded with actionable thinking exercises and questions that can be applied across industries and business opportunities.

A primary reason why OutSmart! is a worthy business book is its distinct avoidance of prescriptive modeling.  Each business success profiled is unique to that company.  The book's examples are of companies that thought differently when confronted with unique business circumstances and uncovered monetizable opportunities.  Champy reminds us that true competitiveness is uniqueness and this uniqueness is not discovered or established once, but must be continually updated and adapted to meet ever-changing customer needs.  There is no way of fixing, modeling or formalizing uniqueness in such a way that will ensure competitiveness.  What Mr. Champy demonstrates in OutSmart! is that companies who operate outside tradition, and remain flexible enough to not become tradition, will dominate the future.

Some of the topics covered by Mr. Champy in OutSmart! may seem obvious, especially immediately after reading it.  However, it is important to read the book with a healthy skepticism of your own hindsight bias.  For example, all of the companies profiled in OutSmart! have a strong relationship with their customers and focus relentlessly on improving customer service.  Most companies today habitually tout that staying attuned with customers (customer service) is their strength, a source of competitive advantage.  If customer service is so apparent, why do so many companies fail at the obvious?  OutSmart! provides an apt reminder that just knowing something intellectually is not enough;  we need to successfully execute and continually improve on this knowledge for it to be a source of competitive advantage.

I look forward to the next volume; this book is the first of a four volume series.
3585746
The rowhouse is far more common in Baltimore than other US cities, and these authors have documented its history and development up to the present day. Every nuance of design change is thoroughly discussed, and the amount of detail allows a street-by-street discussion at times. We're told about the various developers who, parcel by parcel, converted old elite estates into street grids covered with rowhouses of varying quality. The book ends as an advertisement for new urbanism, in which dilapidated old rowhouses are renovated and run-down neighborhoods undergo renewal.
The quality of writing is particularly high. There are approximately 140 b&w photos, which for the most part are grouped together so they can be printed on high-gloss paper. This is an awkward arrangement that requires the reader to flip back and forth to the glossy photo pages. There are approximately ten cross-sections and floor plans. There are very few maps, and a detailed knowledge of Baltimore geography is assumed. Because of the highly specialized nature of this book, it is unlikely to appeal to anyone outside Baltimore, but it would probably be a delight to architectural enthusiasts within the city.
3341914
The research and authorship of this book were funded by a grant from the Land Economics Foundation of LAI. It began as a way to organize the papers of Byron R. Hanke, a member of LAI, whose work as Chief Land Planner for the Federal Housing Administration, and authorship of The Homes Association Handbook, published by ULI, the Urban Land Institute, and Planned Unit Development with a Homeowners Association, Federal Housing Administration Land Planning Bulletin 6, and founding member of the Community Associations Institute, were the hallmark efforts that started the rapid growth of housing development where a homeowners, condominium, or other forms of common interest community associations were used to own and manage common areas and facilities.
Community Associations traces the historical roots of common property from medieval feudalism, the New England town, various communal and utopians ideas and examples to earliest contemporary prototypes in England and the United States. It then explores the decades after W.W.II, when rapid suburban growth made the provision of common areas and facilities a desirable and much needed part of large scale communities that outstripped the capabilities of the public sector to provide parks and ballfields, swimming pools, other recreation facilities, and, perhaps most critically, common open space to preserve woodlands, streams, historic structures, that were envision by land planners and developers as a better living environment that could be created if there were a means to commonly and privately own and maintain such features.
Unlike most previous literature that advocate the use of community associations, this book seeks to dispassionately explore the rise of community associations, their economic impact on communities, their strengths and weaknesses, and their evolution from a means to ensure maintenance and operation of common ownership elements into a private governance system that both protects the common interests of property owners and restricts their freedom of action beyond those restrictions imposed by local, state, and national government.
An invaluable resource for all professionals in the related fields of land economics.
Recommended reading from Frank Spink and Jo-Ann Neuhaus of George Washington Chapter of LAI in Washington, DC
4433171
Very interesting look at redefining urban space to meet the needs of humans.
2726200
The reason why I mentioned that this kindlebook of The Geography of Jobs by Enrico Moretti is worthwhile to look at even for people who already have their mind made up on where they want to live long-term is this; the author goes into how certain job availabilities and job industries can shape the quality of life and job opportunities in an area. There is also informative details on the Moving to Opportunity Program. The Moving to Opportunity Program was listed to have been considered an ambitious social experiment because it is written in this kindlebook that from 1994 to 1998 the federal government gave thousands of public housing residents in Baltimore, Chicago, Boston, New York and Los Angeles vouchers to leave their current modest neighborhoods and move to private housing in the same area but in what was considered much better neighborhoods (1,788 families). Ten years later researchers followed up with the families who received better vouchers and found that many of them were in better physical shape, exercised more, and had lower rates of fitness and more depression-free than before.
499134
A very interesting book with important insights into urban ministry.
331607
This books presents some clear ideas of how to make a city livable and safety. With some concrete examples of bad and good urban policies in North American cities it shows the importance of diversed land-use neighborhoods for the 'life' of urban areas.
4262665
Very often we see ourselves categorizing people, places, communities and cultures based on assumptions, which in many cases are a result of some stories we read in the paper or the image that we get from some TV shows. In Startup Rising, Chris shows the potential of the region from the inside. It's incredibly inspiring and eye-opening to see how these entrepreneurs really have the commitment, spirit, creativity and skills to change things, go above and beyond and embrace the responsibility of bringing development to their communities. Inspiring!
1621520
In this text, Gratz and Mintz set out to establish guidelines and tips for city leaders, community activists, businesspeople, and regular citizens who seek to improve the status of their communities. They carefully outline what works, what does not work and why. Anyone interested in revilatizing downtown areas, setting up shop in a city, or running for office in an urban area should read this book as it will undoubtedly be helpful in creating a better understanding as to how cities can thrive in a new modern era.