Enterprise-Value Books

Building and expanding on Hofstede's five dimensions of culture, Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner present a model of culture and cultural differences that is both sensible and eminently useful. While Hofstede may be the man who pioneered cultural research in management, Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner are the men who popularized it within the business world.

The six dimensions of culture proposed are simple to understand and relate to. With the numerous examples given throughout the book, cultural encounters suddenly make sense and previously taken for granted 'issues', annoyances, and differences when dealing with other cultures are explained and analyzed. While some of the six dimensions introduced are in some ways similar to Hofstede's, five cultural dimensions (for example individualism vs. communitarism); however, the authors also introduce additional dimensions and sometimes expand Hofstede's in ways that make it easier for the reader to understand the differences among cultures.

While many scholars claim that the authors' research is not rigorously scientific as that of Hofstede for example, however, it remains a landmark in the field of culture research in management. Perhaps more importantly, it is more accessible to managers and trainers due to the simplicity of the writing style and the numerous examples scattered throughout the book. Overall, a highly readable and useful book that should become essential reading for students of International Business.

For people in a hurry and looking for a 'tool box' for dealing with cultural differences; 'Riding the Waves of Culture' by the same authors may be a better option.

Don't be put off by this book's daunting terminology. Beneath the author's unrestrained use of labels like universalism, particularism, individualism, communitarianism, specificity and diffuseness, lies an insightful analysis of cultural differences. After defining various nationalities under a host of polysyllabic headings, authors Charles M. Hampden-Turner and Fons Trompenaars illustrate the differences between them using engaging and easy-to-understand scenarios and stories from popular culture. The end goal of each of these sections is to explain to international business managers how cultural dilemmas can be reconciled.

I have read this book 3 times only to find that the book is rich of information on how we can do business internationally. I am impressed by the comprehensiveness of the writers' survey which covers more than 40 thousand respondents from 50 different countries. The book also gives me new insights on how people of different values, norms and belief can reconcile the inherent cultural differences to build a dynamic relationship whithin a culturally diversed organisation. I recommend this book for managers and everybody who work in multinational business.

Margo's newest book is the BEST! There are tons of good quality, large, color photos! The descriptions in Margo's book are unrivaled! There is no one that can describe these doll's outfits, facial features, hair, and accessories better than Ms. Rana. This is not just a "price guide".....this is a must have book for identifying ANY Mattel made Disney doll that you will ever run across! Can't WAIT for Volume 2 that takes over where Volume 1 left off! WONDERFUL work, Margo! Thanks from ALL the Disney doll collectors for your great effort to help us all out with your vast knowledge of your collectible field!

A TRUE Fan! Michelle :-)

I have been collecting Disney dolls for over 6 years & I found this book to be VERY accurate & fun to read. The pictures are beautiful & Margo does not leave a doll or fashion out. A must have for any doll collector!

Good variety of dolls. Some quite unusual.

About the book

Based on research questioning about 500 executives who took IPOs between 1986 and 1996. So, most IPOs came from companies who had been profitable for a few years. After the collapse of the Internet stocks, the context is similar, but I believe such profit records may not be as important as during 1986-96.

Published in 1999. So, it has comments to imply "being first makes the company valuable without profits".

About the authors and their style

Authors are experienced in their job of bringing IPOs.

This book is not at all in the class of books by Al Ries and Jack Trout, but more like a text book, covering every related point (from text book point of view). There is no prioritization or difference in emphasis of the importance of various issues involved.

Their diagram on cover of book is confusing because they have used 2-dimensions to show a linear 1-dimension process, which essentially are their recommended steps.

Book's Message

1. Define goal/success. IPO may not be the best way to achieve that.

2. Plan and start working on IPO at least one year ahead of the need.

3. Many specific to-do items: · Revise salaries as variable salaries that include stocks rather than just cash. · Plan personal estates. Give gifts before IPOs to family members to minimize future tax liability. Hire CPA for this planning. · Hire Earnst & Young early. · Clean books of accounts-use GAAP. · Build strong executive team. · Start working like a public company at least one year before-that is-create quarter-to-quarter profitability guidance and exceed them. Create reports such as needed by SEC. · Build external Board. Create committees of Board members.

If you want to read just 7 pages, read these: 25, 37, 56, 65, 74, 108, 170

Aimed at executives considering an IPO, the `IPO Value Journey' is also of use to staff in pre/post-IPO companies to understand about market perceptions of companies & ideal "success factors".

The lightly referenced, well structured chapters span: the CEO's journey; the journey's early vital steps; chart your transaction strategy; chart your personal strategy; create the winning team; complete your IPO platform; be the public company; the IPO event; and deliver the value. Useful appendices span: outline for a business plan; selecting the stock market; registration exemptions and resale restrictions; overview of the SEC and SEC rules and regulations; simplified registration under the small business disclosure system; and glossary.

Strengths include: the concise factual (dry) writing style; good use of exhibits and checklists; and useful easily-accessible content addressing legal, accounting, reporting, board issues (amongst others).

Weaknesses include: need for more sidebar success story anecdotes (which integrate the steps); mostly US focus; and relatively superficial analysis evidence supporting the success factors and `journey' metaphor.

Overall, a very useful working book, to be read with something like `Confessions of a Venture Capitalist' (ISBN 0446526800) or `E-boys' (ISBN 0812930959), for a fuller life-cycle, energetic view of the IPO journey.

I found this book had just the right amount of detail for the CEO without becoming tiresome. It gives a very good overview of the IPO process and provides plenty of recommendations to guide you along the way.

This is an excellent book. As with all these types of books you read them and take from them what will work for you. Would recommend as a good read and good pointers.

Comprehensive and clear. If you own a finacial advisory practice, this is must read.

A clear and concise volume. I used it to successfully substantiate my expert witness testimony.

From how to create complete rich client applications using the platform to handling plugins, no serious developer's library should be without RICH CLIENT PROGRAMMING. Paul C. Brown's SUCCEEDING WITH SOA: REALIZING BUSINESS VALUE THROUGH TOTAL ARCHITECTURE is for any information technology library beyond the beginner's level. Both business and computer collections receive a definitive guide to service-oriented architectures and how they may be understood and implemented. With an emphasis on reasons for common failures, the author draws important connections business managers and IT architects need to know for optimum results. Perfect for setting realistic goals in the business/IT environment.

This book is really the next generation of SOA books. We all know how to slap WSDL on top of Java/C# class, now what? Too many organizations approached SOA as technological novelty and now have a wild assortment of unversioned, undescribed, un-reusable Web Services lying around.

This book really explains how to turn this mess into a real architecture. It points out, with case studies, abundant diagrams, and in easy to read language, how to plan, organize and architect SOA projects.

Brown emphasises here what he calls the total architecture. A unified view of business processes and information systems within a company. He suggests that getting this view and then using it to implement a Service Oriented Architecture is far more conducive to succeeding, than by merely focusing on the information systems. Implicitly, there is a contrast between this approach and those offered by earlier SOA books, like Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA): Concepts, Technology, and Design (The Prentice Hall Service-Oriented Computing Series from Thomas Erl). It and several others that appeared in the last 2 years tended to focus on the XML nomenclature for instantiating an SOA. Important, but the tendency was to emphasise what are essentially lower level details.

In Brown's book, there is no overwhelming you with scads of XML. Actually, there are no XML examples. He stays at a higher level of design, not implementation. One perhaps better suited to business managers. The book also stresses an ongoing Total Architecture Synthesis. Where this synthesis is often evaluated as the implementation of SOA proceeds. So that rather than large discrete steps, like a waterfall approach, it tends to be smaller, agile-like re-evaluations. He suggests that this is more likely to work.

Plus, there is a real added benefit that it can keep a top level, nontechnical manager closely involved as the SOA is built out. Reducing the chance of a drifting apart of the business and IT aspects. Risk reduction is vital.

This book is good. It helps us to grasp reality the manager in multi National Corporation face. Based on effective theory of growth of the firm, empirical analysis implicates internal organization forms influence competitive advantage of multi National Corporation. (It support lundvall influential book on enational system and innovationf) It is interesting.

This book may treat as contiuation of Managing Across Borders. However it's more academic in content. Most content appeared in academic journals. It's valuable for whose interested in MNC management, organizational theory. Besides, focus on western MNCs, it's a great work.

Being the author's daughter, I was there from the inception of the idea of "A New Beginning," to the publication of it. I am proud to see it in print, and think it is a wonderful book. I believe it provides a glimpse into the lives and situations that children have faced throughout time. The book is well written and easy to understand lending itself to reading aloud if desired. It is a great family book with creative characters, and I look forward to reading it to my children when they are old enough (now 4 and 1). My mom poured her ideas and love into this book; I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did. Great job mom!

Remember a time when life was less complicated? A time when you could play more and work less. A time when you learned valuable lessons from family members and created happy memories with friends. Now you can revel in that time, while reading The Pottsville Chronicles with your children. Join sixth grader, Alexander, and his family as they begin a new life in the town of Pottsville. Change is never easy. However, Alexander meets some very special people who help him understand the importance of being true to yourself and others. While he is learning this valuable lesson, his sister Joey is learning some lessons of her own!
Thank goodness she has a patient and loving mother to help her find her way as a five-year-old. This book is a classic feel good story that all children can relate to. The language is simple, but it creates such wonderful pictures in your mind. So, pull up a cozy chair and escape back to childhood.

At first glance, Tech-Venture seems like a nostalgic flashback to early 2000. A quick skim through its pages reveals statements like: "Old economy valuation methods, such as discounted cash flows and comparable company multiples, are ineffective for New Economy companies." But don't be fooled, this book is more than just an obsolete relic of the bubble. Once you get past the sections devoted to high-tech start-ups, you'll find a thoughtful examination of technology's role in such critical 21st-century business mainstays as customer relationship management and supply-chain management. For this intelligent analysis, along with equally interesting chapters identifying technologies likely to spawn future revolutions, we from getAbstract recommend this book to managers in business development and technology.

TechVenture packs more insightful analysis into every chapter than any other book I've read recently. The chapters on Value and Wireless E-Business alone are worth the price of the book. It's good to see a realistic look toward profitability (at last!) and to have that realism temper a forward-looking work like this is a pleasure indeed. Bravo!

I read 2 Kiyosaki books before this one so it was a good change of pace. He provided a lot of examples but but I wish there was a little more "how-to". Overall a good read.

This was a great book by someone who had great market results. He clearly states his objectives and how to do it. he gives great examples so we can follow his footsteps. However he used to have amazing returns (even better ROI than Warren Buffet). But since I got the book, almost 2 years ago, he has not been doing well at all in his fund. So I am not sure yet that his system works in the longer term. Right now he is way down this year.

The Dhandho Investor was recommended by a colleague who knew of my interest in money management and I had fairly high expectations. The book provides a decent introduction to value investing by applying simple valuation techniques to a variety of situations. It also provides resources to get you started as a value investor.

However, I found the first 5 chapters on Dhandho concepts superfluous. In fact, the Dhandho concepts and the examples from Hindu mythology were more distracting than illuminating, notwithstanding some entertainment. The Dhandho concept itself, explained as an original or unique style of business principle followed by Indian immigrants, is vacuous. The idea of starting and running a family business as the low-cost producer (through very low overheads) with borrowed money is not limited to "Patels" but has been known and practised by many immigrant communities across the US - Korean grocers, Chinese laundromats, and Vietnamese doughnut shops, to name a few. It is not the idea that is valuable, but the adoption and execution of the risks as few people are willing to live a life of penury exemplified by immigrant entrepreneurs. I would also add that I find the "lattice theory" overdone in general in the investing world lately. The concluding pages of the book urged the reader to improve the world through charity and altruism, a reference I found both irrelevant and condescending.

Still the value investing concepts of Graham, Buffett, and Munger, are very well illustrated and one gets a good insight into a successful value investor's mind. I found the thread of the story an interesting one particularly with Mr Pabrai's development into a value investor after being a successful entrepreneur early in his career.

Overall, I would recommend this book with the above caveats, but would urge that you read Benjamin Graham's books first.

An easy read but essentially trivial. A hotelier example and a few other vignettes are used to make the case that there's a free lunch (no risk, high reward). As if it was that easy. Actually the hotelier example (investing a couple of million in a hotel in the middle of the So Cal desert, after 9/11, that just happened to work out) makes the case there is no free lunch. A better book is by Dreman, on contrarian investments, or "Fortune's Formula" by Poundstone, if you're into this thesis of a free lunch.

Avoid this book like the plague.

I am not trying to hate on this book - I saw a review of this on CNBC and they selected one passage and I was really intrigued by the idea of "heads i win, tails i dont lose much" (by the way, the book repeats this north of 20-30+ times and I got extremely sick of this as I went half-way through the book) and decided to read this on my own time. I have always found a lot of credibility in analysis driven by limited downside risk or "value" investing in the sense of investing at close to book value or when the probability of success is high given entry cost is low.

However, I could not help but loathe Pabrai's seemingly infatuated mindset with Buffett. This book is essentially 1) very rudimentary cash flow and financial background (if one can even call a few tables of numbers cash flow analysis), 2) half of the book is a ra-hash of either direct quotes from Buffett or how difficult Pabrai finds to mask his vague attempt to almost equate his investing style to that of Buffett's, and 3) largely a promotion of Indian-Hindu concepts as they relate to very prevalent and hardly insightful financial concepts.

I would not recommend anyone read this book. I usually don't leave reviews and this is the first one I have done - I promptly threw the book out after I read it that's how much I could not stand wasting 2-3 hours reading this guy's writing.

Twelve-year-old Ernie had a brilliant idea, he was going to sell MacDonald's hamburgers to the students in his lunch room. It was working well until the principal got ahold of him and called his father. Ernie's father told him if he ever started another business, he would be grounded.

While talking to his father about the cost of his mother's funeral, an idea popped into Ernie's head, he would go into the funeral business. Kids were always losing pets.

Ernie hired an artistic kid, named Dusty, to make the pet-size caskets. He hired Tony, the boy with the shovel, to dig the graves. Something was missing. He needed some emotion to get the mourners going. Dusty suggested a tomboy named Swimming Pool.

Ernie interviewed Swimming Pool, trying to find a soft spot. "Have you ever lost a pet."
"No".
"Had a bad report card?"
"No."
"Had someone leave and not know if you'd ever see them again?"
Finally a tear threatened as Swimming Pool thought of her older brother leaving home.

The day of the first funeral, Swimming Pool, wearing her red sneakers and an awful purple dress, tried everything to bring about tears. She pinched herself, punched herself in the eye and still no tears. But, finally the tears came.

Ernie ran funerals for pets including rabbits, turtles, and an iguana, but he drew the line when it came to an earth worm. He was a hard boss, who would rather lose his business than to give his crew a raise.

Will his dad stumble upon his funeral business? If Ernie is grounded, who will run the business? Will he be able to make his partners happy? Will the pets keep dying?

This is a fun book about friendship and smart business sense.

Jill Ammon Vanderwood
author: Through the Rug
Through The Rug: Follow That Dog (Through the Rug)

I highly recommend "The Beloved Dearly" by Doug Cooney.
The words in the book are really clear and describing.

The book is about a boy named Ernie. He is always looking for quick bucks. This time he gets into a money making bonanza: PET FUNERALS!
He hires Dusty to design the mini burial boxes for the pets and Tony to dig the holes, but his best find is a tomboy who can cry on cue.

My favorite scene is when the gang finished working on the funeral yard.
You'll have to read the book to find out what the yard looks like.

My favorite character is Dusty because he always has ideas and a good imagination, also he seems very smart.

The book theme is that your friends are more important then a business.

I love this book because it has so many things that are entertaining: it has some humor drama, sadness, and joy. It makes you feel all theses emotions, happy, sad, funny, excited, and joyful. You will like this book!

this book is about a 12 year old guy named Ernie who is a natural salesperson guy. He starts a buisiness with pet funerals...woot.
This book was okay...But I just didn't like it. But that dosn't mean other people won't like it. I suggest you check it out of a library before you buy it.

Ernie comes upon another money making sceme. With the help of Dusty, someone to decorate the "coffins", Tony, the hole digger, and Swimming Pool, a tomboy who can cry on cue, they start a great business for pet funerals. This story is full of exitement and suspense when some things go wrong for the team of four. A great book.... I have read it a lot!!

My daughter has a list of books to read for a type of competition in her school. I order them for her at the library and she reads them. Every once in awhile I pick one up and read it to be sure they have decent content, etc. This one just looked good to me from reading the back cover and also the illustration. I read it and laughed and laughed. It was very enjoyable. It had serious moments in the book that helped round out what was happening in the story. It was well written. I would have to say that the author, although writing this for children, put in things that adults would chuckle over and enjoy; things you would understand if you watch old black and white movies. It's so enjoyable that I ordered a copy for our family to own. We have 8 children and I think all of them will enjoy this one!