Ford Library

Ford Library will be closing at 8PM on Friday, February 27 due to winter weather conditions.

Please follow our Twitter feed for the very latest updates on the Library’s operating hours during winter weather conditions.

Feel free to direct any questions or concerns to us at reference-librarians@fuqua.duke.edu.

Ford Library remains closed today, Thursday, 2/26/15. 

UPDATE: Ford Library has plans to open at 10AM on Friday, 2/27/15 .

Please follow our Twitter feed for the very latest updates on the Library’s operating hours during winter weather conditions.

Feel free to direct any questions or concerns to us at reference-librarians@fuqua.duke.edu.

Here are the remainder of our new DVD titles for the month:

John Wick
The Judge
Lucy
Masters of Sex, season 1
Men, Women & Children
A Million Ways to Die in the West
Miss Meadows
My Old Lady
Open Windows
White Bird in a Blizzard
The Zero Theorem

You may browse the entire DVD collection via the library catalog.

Ford Library will be closing early at 5PM today (Tuesday, February 24) due to winter weather conditions.

Please follow our Twitter feed for the very latest updates on the Library’s operating hours during winter weather conditions.

Feel free to direct any questions or concerns to us at reference-librarians@fuqua.duke.edu.

Winter is prime time for business journalists to announce the best books of the year.  Forbes, Inc., Business Insider, Amazon, Goodreads – and now a new journal in the Ford Library, strategy+business by PwC – all publish lists of the best books for business people.

The books cited in this post are from PwC’s strategy+business list.  Readers who want to read complete reviews by business writers (editors, authors, columnists) in print can find them in strategy+business in the Leadership & Management journal section of the Ford Library.   The books below are available in various formats (ebooks, audiobooks, print) through the Duke libraries online catalog. Click the the title to see the available formats.

Topic: Strategy

Business strategy: managing uncertainty, opportunity, and enterprise by J.C. Spender

Fewer, bigger, bolder: from mindless expansion to focused growth by Sanjay Khosla and Mohanbir Sawhney

Accelerate: building strategic agility for a faster-moving world by John P. Kotter

Topic: Marketing

Tilt: shifting your strategy from products to customers by Niraj Dawar

Connected by design: 7 principles for business transformation through functional integration by Barry Wacksman and Chris Stutzman

Romancing the brand: how brands create strong, intimate relationships with consumers by Tim Halloran

Topic: Self-Improvement

Left brain, right stuff: how leaders make winning decisions by Phil Rosenzweig

Moment of clarity: using the human sciences to solve your toughest business problems by Christian Madsbjerg and Mikkel B. Rasmussen

It’s not the how or the what but the who: succeed by surrounding yourself with the best by Claudio Fernandez-Araoz

Topic: Organizational Culture

Joy, inc.: how we built a workplace people love by Richard Sheridan

The moment you can’t ignore: when big trouble leads to a great future by Malachi O’Connor and Barry Dornfeld

The circle by Dave Eggers

Topic: Innovation

The second machine age: work, progress and prosperity in a time of brilliant technologies by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee

Social physics: how good ideas spread – the lessons from a new science by Alex “Sandy” Pentland

How Google works by Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg

Topic: Sustainability

Responsible leadership: lessons from the front line of sustainability and ethics by Mark Moody-Stuart

How the poor can save capitalism: rebuilding the path to the middle class by John Hope Bryant

The big pivot: radically practical strategies for a hotter, scarcer, and more open world by Andrew S. Winston

Topic: Economics

Capital in the 21st century by Thomas Piketty

Age of ambition: chasing fortune, truth and faith in the new China by Evan Osnos

Stress test:  reflections on financial crises by Tim Geithner

© Meg Trauner & Ford Library – Fuqua School of Business.
All rights reserved.

Here are the first of our new DVD titles for the month:

The Americans, season 1
Before I Go To Sleep
The Best of Me
The Book of Life
The Counselor
Dear White People
Downton Abbey, season 5
The Drop
Fury
Gone Girl
Homeland, season 2

You may browse the entire DVD collection via the library catalog.

Schmidt, Eric and Jonathan Rosenberg. How Google Works. Grand Central Publishing, 2014.

In 2014 Google captured the #3 spot on Fortune’s list of most admired companies worldwide. The previous year, Google was ranked #2 but somehow the company dropped a position, overtaken by Amazon.com, a company despised for its shabby treatment of employees and predatory business practices. How this happened to a company with a “Don’t be evil” mantra is a mystery.

Google itself has been somewhat of a mystery, but in recent years, several books have been published that illuminate the practices of the company and the principles of its founders. A new book by former CEO Eric Schmidt and former VP for products Jonathan Rosenberg, How Google Works, provides a guarded look at the company as they dispense Google-style ideas and tools to managers on how to create a company where revenues grow exponentially and a work environment where employees thrive.

Schmidt and Rosenberg both began at Google in 2001-2002 when the start-up was three years old. Their book covers the early years at Google and discusses the launch of many of its popular products. Today both authors remain connected with the company. Eric Schmidt is executive chairman and Jonathan Rosenberg is an advisor to Google CEO and co-founder Larry Page.

Many stories in How Google Works are engaging, especially those about the authors’ personal experiences with founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin and other industry icons like Steve Jobs. Also interesting are discussions of Google’s operating principles and corporate culture, especially ideas that run contrary to accepted business thinking. For example, the chapter on strategy introduces the concept of “technical insights,” the standard for Google’s most successful products. The authors advise managers to create product plans with technical insights rather than to analyze the company’s competitive advantage as taught in MBA Strategy courses.

Yet the writing in this 250+ page book is uneven and could have been improved by more careful editing. Some the topics are obvious, “Firing sucks,” for example; Be clear in your email; Say “yes” to employees. The list of Google’s Hiring Dos and Don’ts includes this advice: “Hire people who get things done” and “Don’t hire people who are political or manipulative.” With tighter editing, readers would not miss the weakest 50 pages and the book would be better overall. Despite its faults, this book is recommended for anyone interested in working at Google or reading about technology companies.

Also available in Kindle, Overdrive eBook, Overdrive Audiobook, and Audio CD formats.

© Meg Trauner & Ford Library – Fuqua School of Business.
All rights reserved.

Here are our newest DVD titles:

You may browse the entire DVD collection via the library catalog.

Heath, Chip. Decisive : how to make better choices in life and work. Crown Business, 2013.

Chip and Dan Heath, authors of the new book, Decisive, have long been associated with Fuqua.  Dan lives in Raleigh and is currently a fellow at CASE, the Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship.  Chip was once a faculty member at Fuqua, in the management area, before he defected in 2000 to become a professor of organizational behavior at Stanford.

Chip and Dan are also the authors of two best selling books, Made to Stick (2007) –  a guide to creating ideas that thrive — and Switch (2010) – a guide to implementing transformative change.  These thought-provoking books present academic research illustrated with anecdotes from corporate and everyday life. The authors break down complicated ideas into simple parts and show how to apply them to real world situations, both at work and at home.  Sprinkled with humor throughout, these books present strategies and practical tools.  Their new book, Decisive, follows the same formula and is already on its way to becoming their third best seller.

At Fuqua, Decisive won the vote among Fuqua staff as the featured text for the Ford Library discussion group, which gathered last week to share ideas about the book.  Participants considered the decisions that they were making in real time and how they were applying the principles that they learned in Decisive, including widening their options and testing their assumptions.  Concepts considered especially valuable were “opportunity cost” and the  10/10/10 principle developed by business journalist Suzy Welch – what impact will a particular decision have 10 minutes from now, 10 months from now and 10 years from now.

Fuqua staff members who would like to be included in future emailings for the next book discussion should contact me at mtrauner@duke.edu

© Meg Trauner & Ford Library – Fuqua School of Business.
All rights reserved.

Please pardon our noise between Wednesday and Friday, January 14-16. While things aren’t as bad as in the photo, a plumbing mishap in the spaces above the Library requires the services of sheetrock work and an industrial dehumidifier.

We are also replacing some defective lighting in the main reading room ceiling that calls for the use of a large, mobile scaffold which does make noise while operating.

We sincerely apologize for these disruptions to the Library environment; and hope to welcome everyone back for the Spring Term to a dry and well-lit Ford Library.

Photo courtesy of shorpy.com.