Business & Economics

In 1975, Ray Dalio founded an investment firm, Bridgewater Associates, out of his two-bedroom apartment in New York City. Forty years later, Bridgewater has made more money for its clients than any other hedge fund in history and grown into the fifth most important private company in the United States, according to Fortune magazine. Dalio himself has been named to Time magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people in the world. Along the way, Dalio discovered a set of unique principles that have led to Bridgewater’s exceptionally effective culture, which he describes as “an idea meritocracy that strives to achieve meaningful work and meaningful relationships through radical transparency.” It is these principles, and not anything special about Dalio—who grew up an ordinary kid in a middle-class Long Island neighborhood—that he believes are the reason behind his success.

In Principles, Dalio shares what he’s learned over the course of his remarkable career. He argues that life, management, economics, and investing can all be systemized into rules and understood like machines. The book’s hundreds of practical lessons, which are built around his cornerstones of “radical truth” and “radical transparency,” include Dalio laying out the most effective ways for individuals and organizations to make decisions, approach challenges, and build strong teams. He also describes the innovative tools the firm uses to bring an idea meritocracy to life, such as creating “baseball cards” for all employees that distill their strengths and weaknesses, and employing computerized decision-making systems to make believability-weighted decisions. While the book brims with novel ideas for organizations and institutions, Principles also offers a clear, straightforward approach to decision-making that Dalio believes anyone can apply, no matter what they’re seeking to achieve.

In this, the first hard-hitting examination of ExxonMobil—the largest and most powerful private corporation in the United States—Steve Coll reveals the true extent of its power.

Private Empire pulls back the curtain, tracking the corporation’s recent history and its central role on the world stage, beginning with the Exxon Valdez accident in 1989 and leading to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.

The action spans the globe—featuring kidnapping cases, civil wars, and high-stakes struggles at the Kremlin—and the narrative is driven by larger-than-life characters, including corporate legend Lee “Iron Ass” Raymond, ExxonMobil’s chief executive until 2005, and current chairman and chief executive Rex Tillerson, President-elect Donald Trump’s nomination for Secretary of State. A penetrating, news-breaking study, Private Empire is a defining portrait of Big Oil in American politics and foreign policy.

As technology has continually evolved in the last several decades, marketing has had to change with it, evolving through four significant stages that build on the strategies and tools of the previous era. What happens next in the fifth stage, or Fifth Paradigm, will not be an evolution, but a revolution. Almost everything about how marketing is done today, including the very notion of a brand itself, will require a complete re-imagination.

As Chief Marketing Officer of Mastercard—one of the world’s most recognizable and decorated brands—Raja Rajamannar shares the forward-thinking ways all businesses must rethink their entire marketing landscape to remain relevant and be successful.

Readers will:

• Understand the evolution of marketing and how to be at the forefront of future change.
• Get clarity on the right marketing strategies and tactics to pursue amidst an ever-evolving industry.
• Achieve breakthroughs in innovative thinking in order to compete in modern business.
• Gain perspective from top marketers across industries.

Quantum Marketing is for all business people who seek to understand how rapidly marketing is evolving, what some of the smartest people in the discipline are doing to get ready for this dramatic shift, and what the new world will look like for companies, consumers, and society at large as the race to develop revolutionary marketing strategies reaches a whole new level.

In the last decade, we’ve learned to harness the power of iteration to innovate faster—we’ve invested in a fast car, but our ability to set a clear destination and navigate to it hasn’t kept up.

When we iterate without a clear vision or strategy, our products become bloated, fragmented, and driven by irrelevant metrics. They catch “product diseases” that often kill innovation.

Radical Product Thinking (RPT) gives organizations a repeatable model for building world-changing products. The key? Being vision-driven instead of iteration-led. R. Dutt guides readers through the five elements of the methodology (vision, strategy, prioritization, execution and measurement, and culture) to develop a clear process for translating vision into reality, and turning RPT skills into muscle memory.

This book offers refreshing solutions to the shortcomings of our current model for product development; be prepared to toss out everything you know about a good vision and learn how to measure progress to create revolutionary products. The best part? You don’t have to be a natural-born visionary to produce extraordinary results.

Why do some businesses thrive while many more struggle? In this age of disruption, a key reason is the failure of many leaders to realign all the moving parts of their enterprise, including its business strategy and how it is organised, to best support its enduring purpose. Thousands of enterprises globally are operating below their potential simply because they are not well aligned or fail to realign to reflect the new realities of their changing business environment. This book aims to change that.

This book is about strategic realignment, a leadership process to overcome disruption and secure high performance on a sustainable basis. Given that change is a constant and disruption to the business environment ever more likely, strategic realignment must become a core competency in order that all enterprises and leaders can succeed in the future. Most executives recognise this but lack a robust system of thought to execute strategic realignment effectively and realise its full benefits. But once mastered, strategic realignment offers a means of turning disruption into an advantage.

In Re:Align, Jonathan Trevor provides a blueprint to help leaders ask good questions, have better conversations and make the best possible choices to realign their enterprise to be fit for purpose. Drawing upon active research at the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School (with contributions from the joint works of Dr Jonathan Trevor and Dr Barry Varcoe), the book also provides practical case studies and evidence-based insights. Re:Align offers both a thoughtful and compelling message as well as an effective toolkit to help leaders everywhere to overcome disruption and improve enterprise performance.

It’s the common habit shared by many successful people throughout history. It’s responsible for unlocking limitless creativity and influence. It’s known to reduce stress, improve decision-making skills, and make you a better leader. What is it? Reading. And it’s the single best thing you can do to improve yourself professionally.

Reading more and better books creates opportunities for you to learn new skills, rise above your competition, and build a successful career. In Read to Lead you’ll learn

– why you need to read like your career depends on it
– the five science-backed reasons reading will help you build your career
– how to absorb a book into your bloodstream
– a technique that can double (or triple!) your reading speed
– tips on creating a lifetime reading habit
– and more

If you want to lead a more satisfied life, have more intelligent conversations, and broaden your mind, you need to read to lead!