In an age when every business needs to achieve more with fewer resources, Jason Jennings offers the key to ramping up productivity. In this BusinessWeek bestseller, he identifies the world’s most productive companies and reveals their secrets—none of which, surprisingly, include layoffs. The companies he features are truly astonishing, from Ryanair, which generates three times more profit per employee than the legendary Southwest Airlines, to Nucor, a steel firm with annual growth of seventeen percent for the past thirty-one years and the highest paid workers in the industry. Drawing on these and other amazing companies, Jennings presents his readers with solid advice on how to streamline businesses, eliminate waste, and inspire greatness within a workforce

Best Business Books of 2008

Strategy
The Red Queen among Organizations: How Competitiveness Evolves
by William P. Barnett

Life Stories
Basic Brown: My Life and Our Times
by Willie Brown

Marketing
Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies
by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff

Rhetoric
White House Ghosts: Presidents and Their Speechwriters
by Robert Schlesinger

Innovation
Innovation Nation: How America Is Losing Its Innovation Edge, Why It Matters, and What We Can Do to Get It Back
by John Kao

Globalization
The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East
by Kishore Mahbubani

Human Capital
Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns
by Clayton M. Christensen

Capitalism and Community
Creating a World without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism
by Muhammad Yunus

Management
Family Wars: Classic Conflicts in Family Business and How to Deal with Them
by Grant Gordon and Nigel Nicholson

Miscellany
Myself and Other More Important Matters
by Charles Handy

Source: Strategy-Business.com

Suggested Reading by Simon Hemus

1) Visions by Michio Kaku
2) Finishing Well by Bob Buford (wait until you’re over 50)
3) The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive by Patrick Lencioni
4) The 17 Indisputable Laws of Teamwork by John C. Maxwell
5) Execution The Discipline of Getting Things Done by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan

Levi Muller's Top 5 Busines Books

1. Small is the New Big by Seth Godin
2. The Power of Nice by Linda Kaplan Thaler and Robin Koval
3. Never Eat Alone by Keith Ferrazzi and Thal Raz
4. Who Moved My Cheese by Spencer Johnson and Kenneth Blanchard
5. Good to Great by Jim Collins

Best sites for free books

1.Find Popular Public Domain Works With The Gutenberg Project Top 100 List

This site is the oldest producer of free ebooks on the Internet. Their collection, pieced together by thousands of volunteers, now amount to over 20,000 works which have fallen into public domain. With great numbers however, comes the headache of picking true literary gems from the fodder - That’s why this Top 100 page is so valuable.

2. Exchange Used Books With BookMooch

Want a real physical book for a change? BookMooch is a community for exchanging used books. Under a points system, it lets you give away books you no longer need in exchange for books you really want.

3.Get Technical Books With ebookspyder

This site specializes in technical books ranging anywhere from C# to AJAX. Many commercial works can be found here though. This makes the legality of this particular site questionable… but we of course assume you own these books before you download them :)

4. Read the Classics Online with Google Book Search

This service has been giving Google a fair bit of copyright headaches, but has moved forward quite well in spite of the circumstances. It comes with a book-like interface which many people like - I am unfortunately not one of them. Maybe it’s just me, but I like to download my books rather than read it of a website. If you’re going to use this service, select ‘full view books’ under the options page for best effect

5. Download Plain Text Novels With Dwalin

This is as basic as it gets, and consists of an open directory with plain text files for download. Don’t be fooled. Their library is comprehensive, and plain text would be the most portable file format around.

Ram Charan's Books

Featured in the May edition of Fortune magazine, here are the books Ram Charan has collaborated on:

1. Execution: The discipline of Getting Things Done
2. Know-How: The 8 skills that separate people who preform from those who don't
3. Profitable Growth is Everyone's Business
4. What the CEO Wants You to Know

Seth Godin's List

Seth Godin ends All Marketers Are Liars with a list of other books worth reading:

• Crossing the Chasm by Geoffery Moore
  
• Positioning by Trout and Ries
  
• In Pursuit of Wow! and The Tom Peters Seminar by Tom Peters
  
• Blink by Malcolm Galdwell
  
• Selling the Dream by Guy Kawasaki
• Don't Think Of An Elephant!/How Democrats And Progressives Can Win by George Lakoff
• Secrets of Closing the Sale by Zig Ziglar
• Why We Buy by Paco Underhill
• Creating Customer Evangelists by Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba
• Emotional Design by Donald Norman
• The Moral Economy of the Peasant by James Scott
• Creative Company: How St. Luke's Became "the Ad Agency to End All Ad Agencies" by Andy Law

7 Secrets of Marketing in a Multi-Cultural World

You may view my notes from reading the book HERE

Book Description
7 Secrets of Marketing in a Multi-Cultural World offers strategies for applying cultural archetypes and "the logic of emotion" to make domestic and international marketing efforts more effective and profitable. Centering on correct cultural archetypes is the key to developing and realizing corporate marketing goals. Corporate executives, marketing managers, advertising agencies, and individual sales people need to know how to contend with an increasing array of minority cultures at home and different markets, cultures, traditions, perceptions, and customs abroad. This book explains why: Violating cultural archetypes triggers a culture's strong defensive mechanisms against your product; The key to inter-cultural communication and commerce is the ability to decode the culture; When we misunderstand cultural archetypes, we also misunderstand why sales pitches, presentations, and product offerings succeed or fail; We never have a second chance to make a first impression. (purchase book)

Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done

Amazon.com
Disciplines like strategy, leadership development, and innovation are the sexier aspects of being at the helm of a successful business; actually getting things done never seems quite as glamorous. But as Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan demonstrate in Execution, the ultimate difference between a company and its competitor is, in fact, the ability to execute.

Execution is "the missing link between aspirations and results," and as such, making it happen is the business leader's most important job. While failure in today's business environment is often attributed to other causes, Bossidy and Charan argue that the biggest obstacle to success is the absence of execution. They point out that without execution, breakthrough thinking on managing change breaks down, and they emphasize the fact that execution is a discipline to learn, not merely the tactical side of business. Supporting this with stories of the "execution difference" being won (EDS) and lost (Xerox and Lucent), the authors describe the building blocks--leaders with the right behaviors, a culture that rewards execution, and a reliable system for having the right people in the right jobs--that need to be in place to manage the three core business processes of people, strategy, and operations. Both Bossidy, CEO of Honeywell International, Inc., and Charan, advisor to corporate executives and author of such books as What the CEO Wants You to Know and Boards That Work, present experience-tested insight into how the smooth linking of these three processes can differentiate one company from the rest. Developing the discipline of execution isn't made out to be simple, nor is this book a quick, easy read. Bossidy and Charan do, however, offer good advice on a neglected topic, making Execution a smart business leader's guide to enacting success rather than permitting demise. --S. Ketchum (purchase book)

Never Eat Alone

From Publishers Weekly

The youngest partner in Deloitte Consulting's history and founder of the consulting company Ferrazzi Greenlight, the author quickly aims in this useful volume to distinguish his networking techniques from generic handshakes and business cards tossed like confetti. At conferences, Ferrazzi practices what he calls the "deep bump" - a "fast and meaningful" slice of intimacy that reveals his uniqueness to interlocutors and quickly forges the kind of emotional connection through which trust, and lots of business, can soon follow.

That bump distinguishes this book from so many others that stress networking; writing with Fortune Small Business editor Raz, Ferrazzi creates a real relationship with readers. Ferrazzi may overstate his case somewhat when he says, "People who instinctively establish a strong network of relationships have always created great businesses," but his clear and well-articulated steps for getting access, getting close and staying close make for a substantial leg up.

Each of 31 short chapters highlights a specific technique or concept, from "Warming the Cold Call" and "Managing the Gatekeeper" to following up, making small talk, "pinging" (or sending "quick, casual" greetings) and defining oneself to the point where one's missives become "the e-mail you always read because of who it's from."

In addition to variations on the theme of hard work, Ferrazzi offers counterintuitive perspectives that ring true: "vulnerability... is one of the most underappreciated assets in business today"; "too many people confuse secrecy with importance." No one will confuse this book with its competitors. (purchase book)

Small is the New Big

From Publishers Weekly

In what's likely to be the next in a string of bestselling marketing guides (after Purple Cow), Godin compiles entries from his popular blog. Many are only a few paragraphs long, though he also adds longer entries, from his Fast Company column, to the mix.

The pieces are arranged alphabetically by title rather than chronologically, leading to occasional choppiness, but Godin's ability to hone in on key issues remains intact. Following up on the themes of his earlier books, he reminds readers that the first key to successful marketing is to produce something remarkable and let it grow. "If your idea is great, people will find you," he advises. "If your target audience isn't listening, it's not their fault, it's yours." He urges people to take control of their creative lives by taking responsibility for tough decisions and pushing themselves to make bolder choices. (His advice to McDonald's, for example, includes free wireless Web access at every restaurant.)

The appendix contains two lengthy essays on Web design and blogs that were previously distributed as e-books. These are a more polished than the casual main entries, but still exhibit the spontaneous energy that has earned Godin so many loyal fans. (purchase book)

Blue Ocean Strategy

from Wikipedia.com

Blue Ocean Strategy is a business book written by Professors W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne, from the INSEAD business school. The book offers retrospective examples of how successful businesses captured uncontested market space, and thereby made competition irrelevant. This was formerly described as "Value Innovation," in 5 articles for the Harvard Business Review by Kim & Maubourgne before they released the book in 2005.

The "ocean" refers to the market or industry. "Blue oceans" are untapped and uncontested markets, which provide little or no competition for anyone who would dive in, since the markets are not crowded. A "red ocean", on the other hand, refers to a saturated market where there is fierce competition, already crowded with people (companies) providing the same type of services or producing the same kind of goods.

Their idea is to do something different from everyone else, producing something that no one has yet seen, thereby creating a "blue ocean". An essential concept is that the innovation (in product, service, or delivery) must raise and create value for the market, while simultaneously reducing or eliminating features or services that are less valued by the current or future market. The authors critique Michael Porter's idea that successful business are either low-cost providers, or niche-players. Instead, they propose finding value that crosses conventional market segmentation and offering value and lower cost. (read more) (purchase book)

Good to Great

from Wikipedia.com

Good to Great is a management book by Jim Collins that describes how companies transition from being average companies to great companies and how companies can fail to make the transition. Collins, already established as one of the most influential management consultants, further established his credibility with the wildly popular Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...and Others Don’t, originally published in 2001. The book went on to be one of the bestsellers in the genre, and it is now widely regarded as a modern classic of management theory.

Collins takes up a daunting challenge in the book: identifying and evaluating the factors and variables that allow a small fraction of companies to make the transition from merely good to truly great. ‘Great,’ an admittedly subjective term, is operationally defined according to a number of metrics, including, specifically, financial performance that exceeded the market average by several multiples over a sustained period of time. Using these criteria, Collins and his research team exhaustively catalogued the business literature, identifying a handful of companies that fulfilled their predetermined criteria for greatness. Then, the defining characteristics that differentiated these ‘great’ firms from their competitors were quantified and analyzed. (read more) (purchase book)