Enterprise-Value Books

This book is solidly grounded in theoretical and analytical rationales. Yet, it presents a counterintuitive conclusion: Sanctions and boycotts do not work. We may have wasted our time pressuring multinationals that operated in South Africa, and now in Burma, Iraq and Israel. A must read to understand the dynamics of global power and how multinationals stave off controls.

This book takes an academic view of the theory behind multunational corporations.

Strengths: It skilfully questions some of the basic assumptions behind the modern theory of the multinational -- as the author illustrates these assumptions permeate all our other global theories but do not have predictive validity. It also tackles a very important social issue, whether our methods to influence multinational corporations work. Did they work in South Africa? The author very convincingly proves that they did not.

Weaknesses: Some of the weaknesses are inescapable in a scholarly work. The detailed quantitative analysis and data may be skipped (as the author indicates) by policy-makers. However, a large chapter deals with this issue. Also, although the author extends her theory of multinational corporations as chameleons from South Africa to other hotspots such as Myanmar (Burma) and Nike, I would have liked her to tackle some social questions: such as whether our pressuring multinational corporations to leave South Africa extended white economic domination in the country. This question and others of its ilk are probably politically incorrect, or beyond the book's already large scope, and the author skirts them. Consquently, this book leaves you thinking -- and that may be what a good book should do.

All in all a very comprehensive, systematic and courageous look at the assumptions, theories and institutions that shape global society.

Five stars!

This book uses a crafeully built theoretical framework to show why US sanctions did not work in South Africa and are unlikely to work any where else. An important piece of research!

Probably the best review of multinational corporations, why they enter and leave host states on the market today. A must read for anyone either doing research on multinationals or interested in the effects of globalization.

The scholarly literature on multinational corporations is very weak when it comes to explaining why multinationals leave. This is the focus of this book. After one of the best reviews EVER on research regarding the multinational corporation, the author presents a very detailed study on why they left South Africa. The implications for this study extend to anyone who wants to know why multinationals leave -- or anyone who wants to influence whether they stay or leave! Excellent and highly recommended

The authors have put a lot of material together to support the main message that entrepreneurs like myself seem to overlook - it's all about messaging your brand and core values to not just one audience (customers), but to many audiences (investors, operators, suppliers).

For my startup Pay Parade ([...]), this book takes the cake for wringing the most intelligence out of pricing sensitivity testing.

Keep it up and keep on turning us serial entrepreneurs into better marketers!

The tangible value of marketing is well illustrated for both the aspiring and established entrepreneur in this perceptive, well-organized textbook by Len Lodish, a Wharton marketing professor; Howard Morgan, former vice chairman of leading internet incubator Idealab, and Shellye Archambeau, chief executive of MetricStream, a company focused on compliance and governance solutions. The co-authors succinctly show how the days of marketing as a discretionary expense are obsolete, that it is as much a business driver as operational efficiency and innovative product development. Moreover, they bring to light how marketing can shape the success of not only actual products but also a company's stock and corporate image.

The book revolves around a straightforward, cross-selling matrix, which shows that every venture has three key things to sell - products/services, shares and image - to five different constituents. These constituents include customers, the one who give money in exchange for something they want, but there are separate targets identified as users who may or may not pay, investors, employees and others such as suppliers and strategic partners. Only when there is a conscious effort to address every type of constituent across the three dimensions does a company have a probable chance toward sustaining success. More often, companies focus so much on marketing the product that little effort is made in marketing, for example, the stock to the investor. Toward that end, the co-authors delve into critical questions regarding pricing and the importance of knowing why customers will pay you for a product.

They point to smart marketers like Victoria's Secret, who investigate and experiment, learning not only what competitors charge but also precisely why customers value a particular product or service. When possible, these companies try different prices and strive to charge more if their offerings have distinctive qualities valued by customers. That's how Victoria's Secret took a simple product and repositioned it as desirable, naughty female apparel and elevated the brand into a $3.2 billion-a-year business. Through adaptive experimentation, the company has significantly changed the perception people have of an already established commodity into a relatively inexpensive way for women to feel good about themselves. Looking at price by itself, according to the co-authors, is a precarious exercise, especially when the price point is well known by the public.

The natural urge to match a competitor's price has to be counterbalanced by a heightened attention to the brand and measuring its value within a marketplace that could be changing in value itself. A company that epitomizes this broader approach is Apple, which under Steve Jobs' leadership, has figured out how to build products that transcend their functionality into a direct tie-in to people's enjoyment and sense of empowerment. Renowned examples like Victoria's Secret and Apple bring home the co-authors' points about maintaining differentiation in an evolving marketplace that encompasses globalization, corporate mergers, stricter government regulations, increasing interests for "green" issues, sensitivity around privacy and security. Lodish, Morgan and Archambeau have put together a helpful marketing primer for the future.

"Marketing that Works" is a quick read that provides very valuable insight into how to properly position your company, product, services, etc... The examples that are used are both personal triumphs (and failures) of the authors as well as companies that you've probably heard of (or should have, had the companies heeded the advice in this book).

If you are thinking big, then even one small kernel of guidance from this book will pay you back in spades and more than cover the cost of the book. I am already applying some of the wisdom the book imparts to my current entrepreneurial enterprise and can see a significant difference in how I will successfully sell my product. And when I do, I expect my company to be mentioned in the Second Printing of this book.

Marketing "works" if it creates or increases demand for whatever is offered for sale, be it a product, a service, or both. Hence the importance of Peter Drucker's widely quoted observation, "If you don't have a customer, you don't have a business." In fact, you don't have (or won't have for long) a business if you don't have enough customers who purchase enough of what you offer, for a sufficient profit. In this volume, the co-authors (Leonard M. Lodish, Howard L. Morgan, and Shellye Archambeau) explain how entrepreneurial marketing can add sustainable value to any sized company. The term "entrepreneurial" refers to a mindset that stresses speed, agility, resilience, independence, unorthodox, etc. In other words, what Jay Conrad Levinson characterizes as "guerilla marketing."

The authors carefully organize and then present their material within 14 chapters whose subjects range from "Marketing-Driven Strategy to Make Extraordinary Money" to "Building Strong Brands and Strong Companies." Along the way, they help their reader to answer questions such as these:

1. Does the market segment want the perceived value that my positioning is trying to deliver more than other segments?

2. How can the segment be reached? And how quickly?

3. How big is the segment?

4. What are likely impacts of changes in relevant environmental conditions (e.g. economic conditions, lifestyle, legal regulations) on the potential response of the target segment?

5. What are current and likely competitive activities directed at the segment?

I agree with the authors that each marketing venture must answer the "what am I selling to whom, and why will they buy?" question before it can create a successful marketing strategy and plan. With regard to the term "customer-oriented marketing," the stakeholders may also include investors, supply chain/channel partners, and employees. "Each stakeholder needs a relevant value proposition on why to stay engaged with the firm. So the same concepts of segmentation and positioning apply to them."

In Chapter 9, Lodish, Morgan, and Archambeau shift their attention to an important but often neglected element of sales: marketing initiatives that help to shorten the sales cycle, increase win rates, and protect margins. Salespeople are not marketing people. They need marketing tools to support the process of selling. For example, lead generation, target customer description, product collateral (i.e. datasheets and brochures), customized presentation materials, product demonstrations, and competitive intelligence data. Lodish, Morgan, and Archambeau offer a number of practical, cost-efffective suggestions insofar as marketing tools to support the sales process are concerned.

When concluding this valuable chapter, they observe that marketing plays a crucial, but often overlooked, role in properly enabling sales success. "From identifying prospective customers through lead generation, to providing sales tools to the sales force to handle prospect objections and close deals, marketing needs to be in lock-step with sales. Marketing needs to understand the sales process to close as well as sales does. Ensuring that the right tools are created to assist sales at each step is a critical responsibility of marketing." I could not agree more.

Presumably Lodish, Morgan, and Archambeau would be among the first to agree that it would be a fool's errand to attempt to execute all of the strategies and tactics examined in their book. It remains for each reader to absorb and digest the material with meticulous care, then select those concepts that are most appropriate to the needs and objectives of her or his own organization. When completing that selection process, I consider it imperative to keep in mind that the sales mindset and the marketing mindset are quite different, and those differences must be fully understood and (yes) respected. That said, it is also imperative that - as the authors correctly insist - "marketing needs to be in lock-step with sales" to sustain effective and productive communication, cooperation, and most important of all, collaboration if both marketing and sales are to be successful.

I must confess that I have historically had a low opinion of the marketing people that I have firsthand knowledge of. They always seemed to be overstating glad-handers, over-promising to land potential customers and not really interested in learning how difficult it is to implement their promises. When I was writing code full-time, we referred to it as the "couldn't you just" condition. As in "couldn't you just put in this feature" and ignoring any rational response explaining that while the feature appears simple, it could take weeks to add it to the software. I was personally the recipient of a marketing person telling everyone how I was negatively cynical and not a team player when I strongly voiced my objections to an absurd promise that the marketer had made to a potential customer.
Therefore, it was with a great deal of skepticism that I opened this book and began reading. It did not take long before I was sold on the ideas of the authors. They reject the over-promising and blast the world nonsense that so many marketers consider the way to sell their products. Their approach is that of the entrepreneur that lacks a great deal of money for marketing, and that you must avoid an overstatement at all costs. It is better to understate and be proven wrong than overstate and be considered (or proven to be) an unreliable fool. They consider marketing to be a way to add sustainable value to the company, much like the delivery of a quality product.
If I am ever again in the situation where I am confronting a marketing person who values unjustified hype over honest accuracy, I will give them a copy of this book, ask that they read it and then offer to discuss it with them.

This book is great as an introduction to the major concepts of finance. If you are looking for an advanced refernce book, this is not the one. But if you want to refresh your memory, or want a quick overview of concepts and methods, I can't think of a better book.

Every business owner, executive, accountant, banker and maybe even your lawyer should have this valuable book on their desktop! The authors demystify the art of finance and suggest pragmatic approaches and solutions for every day capital uses and needs. This attractive and attractively priced book is written in an innovative way, making it a useful quick desktop reference as well as an MBA level finance text. The glossary by itself is worth the price of the book. How astounding that the authors are both French, yet write with more clarity in English than any American finance writer I have read of late! Vive la readability!

This is an exceptionally clear book that provides an up-to-date treatment of Corporate Finance that is accessible and practical. A must have!

In my humble opinion ,this maybe one of the best books of Finance... It is practical,direct to the point,the examples are clearly stated so that you can follow the concepts and central ideas and most important : you really can understand everything in an easy way....no sweat here..
You can apply almost everything in this book to your daily practice. No matter your years of experience , FFE will refresh you and reinforce your knowledge. I always have this book on my desk for reference.

‚Finance for Executives' is invaluable for everybody who needs to analyse companies and wants to know whether investment, financing or business decisions create value. It is written very clearly and is therefore easy to understand. It offers plenty of practically relevant examples, mostly based on one company which is being analysed in its different aspects throughout the whole book. Moreover, every chapter finishes with review problems (including solutions) and useful references. Some chapters offer appendices with mathematical proofs or additional in-depth analysis. - You will not be satisfied with this book if you are looking for a scientific, theoretical text. However, your expectations will be exceeded if you are a practitioner who wants to make an impact in a consulting or investment banking environment. - What does make this book so special? After working through it, you will be able to easily put into practice what you read.

This is one of the excellent books on designing on-demand ecoystem.

This book is a MUST HAVE for every manager or student who still believes that much has to be known about what is coming to us in the XXI Century. Anyone who has heard or met Dick Nolan, a Professor at the HBS, is very aware of his down to earth, creative, and witty mind. He will be part of Management History and this is not an understatement since, in my view, he already is. He brought, in 1974, IT to the minds of the Directors at Boradrooms by his "Stage by Stage Theory," nowadays commonly accepted by everyone. He foresaw the need for Strategy to meet IT and the Humanities. His previous 1996 book "Creative Destruction" led the way for others to recently follow the field, ideas, and even the book title. He went on to build Nolan Norton & Co., a Management Consulting Firm that everyone has been trying to copy without success. In this new book, once again, Dick et. al. compiled the best thoughts he alreday had before "the internet bubble." He waited to get this book published because he dosen't like to be seen as a forecaster. However, whatever he says, will be done in the future by every sustainable business. His thoughts and wisdom have created a school of thought from which even the Balanced Scorecard came to be a reality in 1988!

As a Kellogg MBA student, this text was suggested reading for an IT Strategy course. My understanding of IT for strategic advantage was greatly enhanced through the readings in this book. I believe it is a must read for anybody who wants to know what some of the World's most successful companies are doing to enhance their current product with technologies currently available to everyone.

While attending Delivering Information Services at The Harvard Business School, and during the Session on "Case: Barnes & Noble vs. Amazon.com," I discovered this book. The book is now used in the course "Competing in The Information Age." This course is geared toward MBA students who want to work in the Technology industry.

What attracted my immediate attention was the course description which said that "class participation accounts for 50 percent of your grade." This book embodies The Harvard Business School "Case Method" which encourages interaction among the class participants. This is the context from which my reading interest expanded.

The content of the book is organized around "the big picture" and does not get bogged down into minutia. The content grows from other books by the editors: Globalization, Technology and Competition; Future Competition in Telecommunications; Reengineering the Organization: Transforming to Compete in the Information Economy; and Creative Destruction: A Six-Stage Process for Transforming the Organization.

The underlying theme of this book is the internet and how it is changing business.

This book has been an incubator for other books coming into the market with a similar title. For example, Scott McNealy, Chairman of Sun Microsystems, has co-authored "The Power of Now: How Winning Companies Sense and Respond to Change Using Real-Time Technology."

Another spawned title is "Adaptive Enterprise: Creating and Leading Sense-And-Respond Organizations", by Haeckel and Slywotzky.

The authors are able to influence discussion significantly on an on-going basis. Professor Bradley is Chairman of the Executive Program in Competition and Strategy Area at Harvard. This area includes high powered thinkers and lever-pullers, such Professor David Yoffie who is on The Board of Directors of Intel Corporation and whose case studies have sold over one million copies. Professor Noland is the current Faculty Chairman of Delivering Information Services which has been a big success story for decades.

Because the editors are so influencially "wired into" many large corporations and academic communities, I think this book will continue to show continuing influence, as evidenced by boopks spawned from the subject and title.

Anyone will interest in internet technology should enjoy this book as I did.

This book was absolutely wonderful. There was a positive message displayed throughout the book and was very appropriate for all ages. The illustrations were great as well. I have enjoyed giving several of these books for gifts. The responses from recipients I've given them to have all been positive. I look forward to another of Ms. VanScoyoc's books in the future.

A really beautiful gift you would be thrilled to give any child. Very inspirational and well done. Highly recommended!

I just love this book, keep writing. Children need more stories like this one.

As a former management consultant, I have never ceased to be amazed by the relative lack of attention given to cash flow amongst many successful businesses and business leaders. Despite the fact that the linkage between shareholder cash flow and market capitalization is more or less iron-clad, and the typical executive fixated on shareholder value (or more correctly, share price), in my own experience most business leaders still tend to retreat to the safety of GAAP-based metrics when setting market strategy.

While this book doesn't attempt to answer this paradox, it does present a detailed "how-to" guide to applying the principles of cash flow and shareholder value. This obviously isn't the first book on shareholder value, but Profit Pools distinguishes itself from its predecessors by adopting a much more pragmatic approach, providing a series of familiar examples (sorry, no buggy whips here) that should allow even first-timers to apply the concepts of shareholder value to their own businesses, no matter how big or small. Furthermore, Jones fills in what I would consider to be the "missing link" in shareholder value theory -- whereas much of the existing literature focuses on the value created within a business, this book also addresses the equally important issue of how value is created in the marketplace.

A few caveats are in order -- some of the terminology here takes a bit of getting used to (market inflection events?) and because Jones has taken such a comprehensive approach to the subject, this book is not a quick read. Stick with it, however, and you will wonder why you hadn't applied this approach to your own business earlier.

There are far too many business books out there. Most at best have 1 or 2 new ideas wrapped in 200 pages of fluff. Well this book is different. It takes a very practical view of what really matters in business - profit - and looks at it from end to end. In general it stays away from conceptual models and focuses on what people can really do to improve their business. It is a great hip pocket book for any business strategist or consultant that cares more about business results than powerpoint.

... and it's written in a practical way -- no finance formulae, arcane accounting rules, or esoteric notions. It's great -- it gets to the point quickly and succinctly; gets around accounting and other issues to see real value creation in all parts of the business at a `granular' level. And, then, it sets out why managing the long term is critical, and how that can be done to grow a lot of value. I'm a believer. The middle part could be a lot shorter -- I guess there's stuff in there that's new thinking. The rest of it just distills established value thinking (like The Value Imperative by McTaggart, another favorite) into actionable approaches. Take note -- it doesn't explain WHY we should manage to drive value growth, but I guess we've come to accept that as a mandate in the last few decades. Good luck with it.

I need to know all about John R. Commons What did he do in all his life?, What was his best book? etc..

I need to know all about John R. Commons What did he do in all his life?, What was his best book? etc..

I read this book back in law school, intrigued by the title. Initially I was confused by Commons's very strange analytical style (he is quite sui generis in his analytical framework) but the final product is an excellent education in the role courts and judges in UK and USA played in the emergence of the US economy pre-WWII. Within the right frame of mind, this book can be a very valuable opportunity for coming to appreciate the law-economics nexus in a way that gets clouded or obscured by the presuppositions of neoinstitutional economics and the Law & Economics movement. Commons' empirical data in this book consisted of 500 years of court cases involving litigation of commercial questions. From these court cases, Commons extracts a frame of analysis. Commons' method often involves on the one hand, finding analogies and connections between concepts that in our daily and professional lives we treat as separate and synthesizing them into new analytical tools (such as "Working Rules" and "Transactions"), and on the other hand, taking concepts we take for granted as reflecting a certain unity, and busting them open to reveal the internal diversity of different kinds of ideas/events/phenomena that get subsumed and supressed by such a unifying concept (this is done with particularly good result with the concepts of "value", "property" and "liberty" although one is left wishing Commons had not limited himself to judges' opinions in constructing his historical studies.
I think that recognizing this methodology is a key to understanding what Commons was attempting to accomplish in this and in his later works. Commons' technique results in a polyphonic argument that moves in multiple directions at once, sometimes coming together harmoniously into brilliant insights of synthesis. The final framework of analysis that emerges is summarized in Commons' final book - the Economics of Collective Action - which one might want to read as a good sort of introduction to this and to his magnum opus, Institutional Economics.

One of the implications of Commons' analysis is the idea of collective action - it seems to become a logical, defensible, necessary next step in American capitalism from Commons' 1924 point of view. And for many years, the idea gained momentum, but was ultimately gutted and destroyed by the Wagner Act and by a massive ideological campaign launched by the economics profession about the supposed inefficiencies of collective protection and bargaining.

But perhaps one of the richer take-aways of this book for contemporary readers is that, despite the title, one gets a sense that "capitalism" is a rather meaningless word. Commons' framework serves, more than anything, to drive home the fact that our current economic, political, legal, social context - or anyone's context - is really a set of particulars, each with its own history and baggage. Lawyers, I think, understand this since a single change in law, a shift in the allocation of liabilities, or a change in the interpretation of a word, can, slowly but surely, change the entire direction of a society and its economy. In fact, "capitalism" is a rather troublesome word whose role in our language and society seems to gloss over a vast internal diversity of economic practices, institutional frameworks, and social values over time and from place to place, subsuming it all under a catch-all phrase that doesn't really stand on its own two feet in the end. The value of using such a code word is that it allows people like Thatcher to cry "TINA" to shut down opposition to the status quo. A certain popular - though misguided - branch of progressive critical thought spends a lot of effort constructing critiques of capitalism, a tradition started by Marx and the social theorists and just as strong today, as if to confront Thatcher and the rest of the TINA contingent front-on. After reading Commons, I would hope that it would be as apparent to others as it is to me that such a project is futile. We would probably be better off banishing the word from our language. Frankly, I don't think there is any such thing as "capitalism." Capitalism is always used as a sort of placeholder for the any given speaker's internalized conception of the economic, political, and social context in which the speaker finds him- or herself, but rare - if non-existent - is the critic who is able to separate the contingent, local, temporal from some underlying, enduring, constant presence that we can point to and say "ah, here is the core of 'capitalism', whether in 1855 Paris or 1990 Bangkok, or 2007 Toronto". For example, a book I just started reading, by a prominent Italian-American sociologist begins with the claim that "over the lastst quarter of a century something fundamental seems to have changed in the way in which capitalism works. In the 1970s, many spoke of crisis." What crisis? Whose capitalism? Author and reader all seem to take for granted that they all know what capitalism is. I don't think for a minute that Mexican "capitalism" is really that similar to American "capitalism" or to Korean "capitalism" or any other country's capitalism. A thorough reading of Commons will dispell such delusions. Even if we could identify some common demoniminator among countries and over time, it would have to be such a minor element of the overall economy that it wouldn't make sense to frame the debate around such. After Commons, it doesn't make sense to talk in the abstract about grandiose systems, whose internal content is presuppsosed and allegedly comes predefined. Rather, all we are left with are specific policies, practices, institutions, and behaviors, all of which are subject to forces of change and inertias - in other words, all we can meaningfully talk about is the particulars, the subtle changes in "Working Rules," the meaning of "Property", the different kinds of "Bargains" that are available to different participants with respect tot different resources in a given context - in short, who has power to do what and with what consequences. Any grandiose discourse of "Capitalism" seems naive and senseless. It would be refreshing for us progressives if we could get out of the "No Alternative to Capitalism" debates so that we can role our sleaves up and start talking about real issues, rather than discussing the how to replace Capitalism over an espresso in a coffee shop.

The collaboration of Danah Zohar and Ian Marshall, Spiritual Capital: Wealth We Can Live By offers a highly critical view of the business and ethical practices of capitalism as it is practiced today, with its amorality vested in short-term self-interest, reaping profits, obsession with shareholder value, isolationist thinking, and reckless disregard of long-term consquences. Arguing for the need for a radical new philosophy for corporate governance that adjusts the meaning and purpose of wealth creation, and using the principles of "spiritual capital" and "spiritual intelligence" to define the needs of humanity and human government, Spiritual Capital is a passionately presented charge for people to make a difference

This review is an adaptation of my review published in Personnel Psychology, Summer Issue, 2005.
Zohar is broadly trained and thus taps into diverse resources such as classical literature, physics, religion, and psychology. Marshall is a Jungian-oriented psychiatrist and psychotherapist. Married to each other, the authors would make, I think, engaging conversationalists at my imaginary dinner party, provided that at the table they didn't repeat from their book the following tale by Ovid.
The Greek poet's tale is about Erisychthon, pronounced Erisyathon for any name droppers, a mythological character who, because he was so greedy, was cursed to eat everything in sight including him self after all else had been consumed. He symbolizes, the authors believe, the essence of materialistic capitalism, an insatiable "monster devouring itself."
The authors' main theme is that a "critical mass" of individuals can make a positive difference. This theme seems to have been influenced by Jung's philosophy that "great transformations" in history are a summation of positive changes in individuals.
The authors argue that material capitalism, the kind that predominates in Corporate America and Wall Street, is unsustainable and thus "in a state of crisis." It's depleting our natural resources, creating political and social instability, eroding our moral standards, and degrading the very meaning of life in terms of its deepest values and aspirations. Rather than reject this conventional capitalism altogether, however, the authors advocate transforming it into a more positive, sustainable economic system that they call "spiritual capitalism" in the secular, non-religious sense.
It's defined as the amount of knowledge and expertise available about "meaning, values, and fundamental purposes." It produces not material wealth that ultimately consumes itself but a self-sustaining wealth "that enriches the deeper aspects of our lives." The authors list 12 qualities that companies "high in spiritual capital" would possess. For example, they would be "self-aware," "vision and value-led," and "compassionate" and would "have a sense of vocation."
Are there any companies high in spiritual capital? The authors don't cite any companies that possess all 12 qualities or even most of them, which is an opportunity missed because they developed a set of descriptors that could have been built into a good survey instrument.
The auhors argue that material capitalism is in a state of crisis, which they say is one of negative motivations, with the four primary ones being self assertion or competitiveness, anger, craving or greed, and fear. Most of the book, therefore, is devoted to explaining Marshall's "Scale of Motivations" and in speculating on how it, along with emotional and spiritual intelligence, can be used to raise motivation to a sufficient level among a sufficient number of business leaders to produce a "great transformation" first in their own companies and then for capitalism as a whole.
For his scale, which he has been using in his clinical practice for some 40 years, Marshall expanded Maslow's hierarchy of six needs to eight positive and eight negative motivations. The highest positive motivation is "enlightment," and the lowest negative one is "depersonalization." A person needs to be emotionally intelligent enough, the authors say, to be aware of their own motivational level. This is necessary in order to be able to raise motivations to a higher level. When two persons interact, the authors contend that if one is at a higher level on the scale, then that person can raise the level of the other person. The authors speculate that 2-5 percent of the leadership of any company need to be "knights" at Level 6 and an additional 10 percent need to be "masters" at Levels 4 and 5 in order for the company to start acquiring spiritual capital. It would be rare and impractical to expect anyone to reach the two highest levels, the authors say. This, I have just given you, is a small sample of the authors' very elaborate speculations.
There is much about this book that appeals to me. I agree with their view that the capitalism prevailing today is unsustainable and thus needs to be transformed, not totally dismantled. The authors are creative thinkers who forced me repeatedly to think outside my own relatively narrow paradigms. Some of their ideas are interesting enough to warrant further exploring their possible application throughout business. I've already mentioned the missed opportunity. Another possibility, for instance, would be to do more applied research on their measure of spiritual intelligence beyond a small pilot test that the authors conducted.
Now that I've read the book, I would like to learn more from the authors over a glass of wine and gourmet dinner.

Danah Zohar is still probably best known as an author for her 1990 book The Quantum Self. She is also very well-known as a speaker and is one of the select group of people who has driven forward our understanding of ourselves, our organizations and our society as complex adaptive systems. With her holistic view of the world, she is very sensitive to the connections or failures of connection that have such an impact on society and the lives of individuals. This book has as its primary focus the disconnection between the deepest needs and aspirations of humans and acceptance of the single-minded pursuit of profit as the sole imperative on business other than staying within the law.

She argues that maintenance of this disconnect is ultimately unsustainable both for society and for business. She sets out to show why, and how it is possible to move toward sustainability by accepting the creation of 'spiritual capital' as a parallel goal with building material capital.

The basic concepts on which the book rests include:

People, society and business form a system made up of interconnected sub-systems. For such a system to be sustainable requires that the elements cooperate in producing a balanced environment that nourishes the whole. They are holistic ... self-organizing, and exploratory.

Sustainable capitalism and a sustainable society depend on recognition and nurture of higher motivations:
* We need a sense of meaning and values and a sense of fundamental purpose (spiritual intelligence) in order to build the wealth that these can generate (spiritual capital).
* People, organizations and cultures that have spiritual capital will be more sustainable because they will have developed qualities that include wider, values-based vision, global concern and compassion, long-term thinking, spontaneity (and hence flexibility), an ability to act from their own deepest convictions, an ability to thrive on diversity, and an ability to learn from and make positive use of adversity.

She identifies three forms of wealth and three kinds of associated intelligence:

* Material capital, associated with thinking and rational intelligence, the wealth expressed in money;

* Social capital, associated with feeling and emotional intelligence, the wealth that makes our communities and organizations function effectively for the common good;

* Spiritual capital, associated with being and spiritual intelligence, the wealth contained in our shared meanings, values and ultimate purposes.

Much of the book is concerned with identifying the states of being in which a person or an organization can find itself and the principles required for transformation to a state in which higher values can be met and higher needs satisfied and the system remains sustainable. The principles are based on observation of the behavior of (non-human) complex adaptive systems plus principles for human sustainability taken from spiritual thought through the ages.

The qualities that the author identifies as central to a sustainable organization will be familiar to most readers - self aware, vision and value led, holistic, celebrating diversity and similar qualities. She argues that these are the qualities necessary to maintain a system in the dynamic but self-sustaining state we describe as a complex adaptive system - neither stuck in steady-state inflexibility nor falling over the edge into chaos.

Maintenance of this state requires particular behaviors on the part of enough individuals acting as leaders to induce the organization as a whole to behave in that way. Her belief is that, in spite of the system pressures (such as those from the financial markets) to behave otherwise, a sufficient minority of aware people can bring about the necessary changes.

This AWARD WINNING book won the Florida Writers Assoc Literary Award with a FIRST place finish for Childrens Book and OVERALL BOOK OF THE YEAR!!!! It is a great read for students and teachers as it provides discussion topics to get the kids motivated. Reading comprehension is increased using these questions at the end of the book. Great illustrations! This book makes a wonderful gift for any elementary teacher for use in the classroom. Fantastic gift for kids too!

Tommie Turtle's Secret is indeed a "delightful" book. I enjoy reading it myself! The rhyming is fun for all. The illustration's are wonderful. But the best part of the book is Mr. Hicks ability to get across lessons to children that are so needed in our society today. Those lessons about being a friend to others and finding the special qualities you have and can use in life are priceless. You will love Tommie!

As a retired teacher, who can't stop teaching, I substitute with PreK through 8th grade students. I take in my bag a copy of Tommie Turtle's Secret by Robert Z. Hicks to read. Children of all ages love Tommie. They enjoy the mystery of Tommie's secret, the author's autograph and picture, and the questions at the end of the story. These questions promote various levels of thinking.

Within the pages of the book are lessons on values; accepting limitations; recognizing and developing abilities; tolerance; friendship; etc. Seems each time I read Tommie another lesson is evident.

I recommend Tommie for Children of all ages. Tommie would be a great gift to find under the Christmas tree this holiday season.

This story reminds all of us that it's the simple things we do that make a big difference in the lives of the people around us. This story is easy for the youngest readers to understand, with a message that all ages of audiences can relate to.

I highly recommend this book for children of all ages.

This is a great book with a simple and powerful message about including people, helping others and reaping what you sow. My toddler loves it and often brings it to me to read. Very enjoyable.

I just read You Did It For Me and found it to be a lovely, charming little book with an enormous message. Written in the setting of a school, the book captures a day in the life of 5 young classmates.

As each character suffers their particular dilemma (everything from forgotten lunches to homework problems to playground situations) another classmate (our hero) offers a solution to their predicament by means of sharing, compassion, and empathy.

What a beautiful way to teach children to love your neighbor delivered to them in a concrete fashion that they can grasp and remember. I love how Mr. Hug took such profound truth, simplified it and brought it to life. He demonstrated how every act of love is meaningful and necessary.

In the last vignette, it is our hero himself who lands in a predicament that allows his classmates the chance to reciprocate the kindness he has shown them. Mr. Hug ends the story with a "quote" from Jesus. The formatting was so sweet and simple as if He (Jesus) left us a little love note in our lunch box....

You Did It For Me appeals to all ages. It is easy to read and will delight the toddler with its colorful illustrations as well as challenge the new reader with lots of new words. The book also offers many opportunities for questions and discussion between reader and their audience. I have purchased several copies to keep for my future grandchildren as well given some as gifts for nieces, nephews, and other dear ones. I look forward for more inspiring children's books from Mr. Hug who has written directly from his heart to the heart of all God's children (big & small).