As a manager, you have the opportunity to inspire those under your purview to the point where they feel privileged to have you as their leader. It may be a lot of work to get there, but it can be done. In Managing through the Entrepreneurial Fog, author Tim Koprowski Sr. addresses the necessary steps for successfully managing people toward a common goal. It begins by delving into the world of management by presenting a new philosophy called “Play by the Rules.” Sharing anecdotes that give the rationale behind its foundation, Koprowski describes a unique and complete approach to managing people based on twenty-three key concepts. He then discusses how this philosophy was used to strengthen the foundation on which a start-up company was built. He traces the story of a software company for the healthcare industry that began with virtually nothing and later became a formidable force for well-established companies to contend with. Providing candid accounts of the various challenges the business faced, Koprowski explains how the concepts from “Play by the Rules” played an integral role in examining the company’s failures and turning them into successes. A practical tutorial for potential, current, and new managers, Managing through the Entrepreneurial Fog illustrates the application of an effective management philosophy put into practice in the workplace.
Thinkers50 Top 10 Best New Management Books for 2022 A distinguished Harvard Business School professor offers a compelling reassessment and defense of purpose as a management ethos, documenting the vast performance gains and social benefits that become possible when firms manage to get purpose right. Few business topics have aroused more skepticism in recent years than the notion of corporate purpose, and for good reason. Too many companies deploy purpose, or a reason for being, as a promotional vehicle to make themselves feel virtuous and to look good to the outside world. Some have only foggy ideas about what purpose is and conflate it with strategy and other concepts like “mission,” “vision,” and “values.” Even well-intentioned leaders don’t understand purpose’s full potential and engage half-heartedly and superficially with it. Outsiders spot this and become cynical about companies and the broader capitalist endeavor. Having conducted extensive field research, Ranjay Gulati reveals the fatal mistakes leaders unwittingly make when attempting to implement a reason for being. Moreover, he shows how companies can embed purpose much more deeply than they currently do, delivering impressive performance benefits that reward customers, suppliers, employees, shareholders, and communities alike. To get purpose right, leaders must fundamentally change not only how they execute it but also how they conceive of and relate to it. They must practice what Gulati calls deep purpose, furthering each organization’s reason for being more intensely, thoughtfully, and comprehensively than ever before. In this authoritative, accessible, and inspiring guide, Gulati takes readers inside some of the world’s most purposeful companies to understand the secrets to their successes. He explores how leaders can pursue purpose more deeply by navigating the inevitable tradeoffs more deliberately and effectively to balance between short- and long-term value; building purpose more systematically into every key organizational function to mobilize stakeholders and enhance performance; updating organizations to foster more autonomy and collaboration, which in turn allow individual employees to work more purposefully; using powerful storytelling to communicate a reason for being, arousing emotions and building a community of inspired and committed stakeholders; and building cultures that don’t merely support purpose, but also allow employees to link the corporate purpose to their own personal reasons for being. As Gulati argues, a deeper engagement with purpose holds the key not merely to the well-being of individual companies but also to humanity’s future. With capitalism under siege and relatively low levels of trust in business, purpose can serve as a radically new operating system for the enterprise, enhancing performance while also delivering meaningful benefits to society. It’s the kind of inspired thinking that businesses—and the rest of us—urgently need.
The most comprehensive, global guide to business model design and innovation for academic and business audiences. Business Model Innovation Strategy: Transformational Concepts and Tools for Entrepreneurial Leaders is centered on a timely, mission-critical strategic issue that both founders of new firms and senior managers of incumbent firms globally need to address as they reimagine their firms in the post COVID-19 world. The book, which draws on over 20 years of the authors collaborative theoretical and rigorous empirical research, has a pragmatic orientation and is filled with examples and illustrations from around the world. This action-oriented book provides leaders with a rigorous and detailed guide to the design and implementation of innovative, and scalable business models for their companies. Faculty and students can use Business Model Innovation Strategy as a textbook in undergraduate, MBA, and EMBA degree courses as well as in executive courses of various designs and lengths. The content of the book has been tested in both degree and non-degree courses at some of the world's leading business schools and has helped students and firm leaders to develop ground-breaking business model innovations. This book will help you: Learn the basics of business model innovation ̄including the latest developments in the field Learn how business model innovation presents new and profitable business opportunities in industries that were considered all but immune to attacks from newcomers Learn how to determine the viability of your current business model Explore new possibilities for value creation by redesigning your firm's business model Receive practical, step-by-step guidance on how to introduce business model innovation in your own company Become well-versed in an important area of business strategy and entrepreneurship Authors Amit and Zott anchored the book on their pioneering research and extensive scholarly and practitioner-oriented publications on the design, implementation, and performance implications of innovative business models. They are the most widely cited researchers in the field of business model innovation, and they teach at the top-ranked Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and the prestigious global business school IESE with campuses in Barcelona, Madrid, Munich, New York, and São Paulo.
As a manager, you have the opportunity to inspire those under your purview to the point where they feel privileged to have you as their leader. It may be a lot of work to get there, but it can be done. In Managing through the Entrepreneurial Fog, author Tim Koprowski Sr. addresses the necessary steps for successfully managing people toward a common goal. It begins by delving into the world of management by presenting a new philosophy called “Play by the Rules.” Sharing anecdotes that give the rationale behind its foundation, Koprowski describes a unique and complete approach to managing people based on twenty-three key concepts. He then discusses how this philosophy was used to strengthen the foundation on which a start-up company was built. He traces the story of a software company for the healthcare industry that began with virtually nothing and later became a formidable force for well-established companies to contend with. Providing candid accounts of the various challenges the business faced, Koprowski explains how the concepts from “Play by the Rules” played an integral role in examining the company’s failures and turning them into successes. A practical tutorial for potential, current, and new managers, Managing through the Entrepreneurial Fog illustrates the application of an effective management philosophy put into practice in the workplace.
In the spring of 2010, Harvard Business School’s graduating class asked HBS professor Clay Christensen to address them—but not on how to apply his principles and thinking to their post-HBS careers. The students wanted to know how to apply his wisdom to their personal lives. He shared with them a set of guidelines that have helped him find meaning in his own life, which led to this now-classic article. Although Christensen’s thinking is rooted in his deep religious faith, these are strategies anyone can use. Since 1922, Harvard Business Review has been a leading source of breakthrough ideas in management practice. The Harvard Business Review Classics series now offers you the opportunity to make these seminal pieces a part of your permanent management library. Each highly readable volume contains a groundbreaking idea that continues to shape best practices and inspire countless managers around the world.
Most startups fail. But many of those failures are preventable. The Lean Startup is a new approach being adopted across the globe, changing the way companies are built and new products are launched. Eric Ries defines a startup as an organization dedicated to creating something new under conditions of extreme uncertainty. This is just as true for one person in a garage or a group of seasoned professionals in a Fortune 500 boardroom. What they have in common is a mission to penetrate that fog of uncertainty to discover a successful path to a sustainable business. The Lean Startup approach fosters companies that are both more capital efficient and that leverage human creativity more effectively. Inspired by lessons from lean manufacturing, it relies on “validated learning,” rapid scientific experimentation, as well as a number of counter-intuitive practices that shorten product development cycles, measure actual progress without resorting to vanity metrics, and learn what customers really want. It enables a company to shift directions with agility, altering plans inch by inch, minute by minute. Rather than wasting time creating elaborate business plans, The Lean Startup offers entrepreneurs—in companies of all sizes—a way to test their vision continuously, to adapt and adjust before it’s too late. Ries provides a scientific approach to creating and managing successful startups in a age when companies need to innovate more than ever.
