New Books in Business, Management, and Marketing

Bryan Amaral began his career as an entrepreneur going door-to-door, selling custom-made suits. He learned how to work closely with clients as a therapist might work with their patients. By his mid-20s he was able to establish a brick-and-mortar location and create a showroom. He moved away from simply selling suits to building entire wardrobes for his clients.Soon after, in the early 90s, Bryan began designing customer relations software to expand his business and sell to other companies. His company was acquired by Symbol Technologies, which Bryan describes as akin to being adopted by a dysfunctional family. After an accounting fraud scandal at Symbol in the early 2000s, Bryan purchased his company back and created Retaligent Solutions, Inc. Soon after reacquiring his company, the 2008 financial crisis hit. Bryan was able to weather the storm by "doing more with less," recapitalizing and partnering with Microsoft. Just three years later, his partners sold the company to another Microsoft partner.At this point, having had over 20 years of experience in retail technology and strategy, Bryan founded a consulting company, Clientricity. Clientricity helps retailers develop and grow, much in the way that Bryan first grew his menswear company nearly 30 years ago.Bryan also discusses the soft skills he learned along the way. He emphasizes the importance of company culture, finding the right people, and investing in the education of his employees to advance and succeed in different roles. As Bryan states, "I loved using the organization as a vehicle for people to live out their potential." Bryan's podcast is here. Bryan on Twitter here. Bryan on LinkedIn here. About NBN:The NBN Entrepreneurship and Leadership podcast aims to educate, inform and entertain, sharing insights based on the personal stories of carefully selected guests—all in an informal atmosphere of unscripted conversations and open, personal accounts.Find links to past episodes here.About our Hosts:Kimon Fountoukidis:Kimon is the founder of both Argos Multilingual and PMR. He founded both companies in the mid-90s with zero capital, and both have gone on to become market leaders in their respective sectors. Kimon was born in New York and moved to Krakow, Poland in 1993. He is passionate about sharing his success with others and working entrepreneurs of all kinds to help them achieve their goals. Listen to his story here. Kimon's on Twitter here.Richard Lucas:Richard is a business and social entrepreneur who has founded or invested in more than 30 businesses, including Argos Multilingual, PMR and, in 2020, the New Books Network.Richard has been a TEDx event organiser for years, supports the pro-entrepreneurship ecosystem, and leads entrepreneurship workshops at all levels. He was born in Oxford and moved to Poland in 1991, where he continues to invest in promising companies and helps other entrepreneurs realise their dreams. Listen to his story in an autobiographical TEDx talk here. Richard is on Twitter here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today I talked to Jim Wilson about his book (co-authored with Paul Daugherty) Radically Human: How New Technology Is Transforming Business and Shaping Our Future (HBR Press, 2022).Technology has evolved from device intelligence to data intelligence (big data) to now the new stage of a more human-centric approach where the user/worker’s needs, wants and biases are being taken into account to make technology easier to deploy and more of an equal partner. That’s the progression Jim Wilson champions in this book and on-air conversation. Covid-19 ushered in not only a host of human behavior changes, e.g., hybrid work arrangements and the Great Resignation, the pandemic also spurred the Great Acceleration as companies rushed to adopt technology that will transform their business practices. How to do so in a way that will democratize technology, empowering employees and rewarding customers along the way, is the challenge that Wilson addresses here. After all, technology innovations that don’t also safeguard and enhance trust will instead create “algorithm aversion,” and undercut the promise of how technology can benefit companies, societies and individuals alike.Jim Wilson is the Managing Director of Thought Leadership & Technology Research at Accenture Research. Jim speaks to business audiences worldwide, is a long-time contributor to the Harvard Business Review and has been cited as one of the top 50 Business Innovators by CODEX.Dan Hill, PhD, is the author of ten books and leads Sensory Logic, Inc. (https://www.sensorylogic.com). His newest book is Emotionomics 2.0: The Emotional Dynamics Underlying Key Business Goals. To check out his related “Dan Hill’s EQ Spotlight” blog, visit https://emotionswizard.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At the age of 18, Jonathan Little opened an online poker account with a $50 deposit. By age 21, he had about $350,000 in his account.In this episode of the Entrepreneurship and Leadership Podcast, Jonathan Little explains how he was able to parlay his poker hobby into a profession by keeping his expenses low and saving his winnings. This frugality allowed Jonathan to play in bigger games and maintain a margin of safety that has lasted his entire career. Now 37 years old, Jonathan continues to play poker professionally, recently ranking as high as the 24th best player in the world. He has written several books on poker strategy and teaches at https://pokercoaching.com. At first glance, poker and entrepreneurship might appear to be very different activities; however, seasoned pros like Jonathan show how poker at its highest level is akin to investing. Each hand is like an investment opportunity. Playing a great hand is like finding an asymmetric investment opportunity. With each win, you can choose to reinvest or take the profits. Both activities rely on the power of compounding and risk mitigation. And, perhaps most significantly, both poker and entrepreneurship require humility and patience in the face of constant uncertainty.Follow Jonathan Little at:https://twitter.com/PokerCoaching_https://twitter.com/JonathanLittlehttps://pokercoaching.com/homeAbout NBN:The NBN Entrepreneurship and Leadership podcast aims to educate, inform and entertain, sharing insights based on the personal stories of carefully selected guests—all in an informal atmosphere of unscripted conversations and open, personal accounts.Find links to past episodes here.About our Hosts:Kimon Fountoukidis:Kimon is the founder of both Argos Multilingual and PMR. He founded both companies in the mid-90s with zero capital, and both have gone on to become market leaders in their respective sectors. Kimon was born in New York and moved to Krakow, Poland in 1993. He is passionate about sharing his success with others and working entrepreneurs of all kinds to help them achieve their goals. Listen to his story here. Kimon's on Twitter here.Richard Lucas:Richard is a business and social entrepreneur who has founded or invested in more than 30 businesses, including Argos Multilingual, PMR and, in 2020, the New Books Network.Richard has been a TEDx event organiser for years, supports the pro-entrepreneurship ecosystem, and leads entrepreneurship workshops at all levels. He was born in Oxford and moved to Poland in 1991, where continues to invest in promising companies and helps other entrepreneurs realise their dreams. Listen to his story in an autobiographical TEDx talk here. Richard is on Twitter here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today I talked to David Livermore about his book Digital, Diverse & Divided: How to Talk to Racists, Compete with Robots, and Overcome Polarization (Berrett-Koehler, 2022).While the author argues that cultural intelligence (CQ) begins where EQ leaves off, in truth key attributes of EQ like understanding another person’s motivations and figuring out how to address them matter in both cases. Nowadays the challenge of connecting well only becomes harder, of course, given how social media means we often occupy echo chambers that merely reinforce what we already know and believe, as opposed to achieving a better understanding of how a person from a different place, or of a different race, gender, faith or political persuasion might see the matter at hand. This episode delves into how organizations must live up to their espoused values, plus instances where that fails to happen and what the corrective steps might be.David Livermore is the president and cofounder of the Cultural Intelligence Center in East Lansing, Michigan, and a research fellow at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He’s held a variety of leadership positions in nonprofit organizations around the world and taught at numerous universities in addition to being a speaker and advisor to Fortune 500 companies and governments in over 100 countries.Dan Hill, PhD, is the author of ten books and leads Sensory Logic, Inc. (https://www.sensorylogic.com). His newest book is Emotionomics 2.0: The Emotional Dynamics Underlying Key Business Goals. To check out his related “Dan Hill’s EQ Spotlight” blog, visit https://emotionswizard.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Say Thank You for Everything: The Secrets of Being a Great Manager (Harriman House, 2022) is a bullshit-free guide to management that shows you the right way to lead a business, inspired by Jim Edwards’s experience of helping to transform a small unread blog into a business with 200 million readers and hundreds of employees, which finally sold for $442m.Based on a legendary internal email that distilled 19 things a new manager might find helpful, Say Thank You for Everything will show you:- the ‘whales and fails’ method of decision-making that systematically improves your team’s results- the incredible power of being slightly better than average- why good hiring is 80% of everything- how to increase productivity and reduce burnout at the same time- why your teams should never be bigger than five people- the importance of taking your enemies to lunch- the surprising places great ideas actually come from- the dark arts of successful management- and much, much more.You might be a brand-new boss unsure where to start, or a struggling supervisor thinking of throwing it in, or perhaps someone who just doesn’t want to lose their humanity on the way to the executive suite. Say Thank You for Everything will help you look after your people, get results for your business, and be the kind of boss you always wanted to have yourself.Jim Edwards won the Neal award for business journalism in 2005. He is the former editor-in-chief of Insider’s news division and was the founding editor of Business Insider UK. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In The New Goliaths: How Corporations Use Software to Dominate Industries, Kill Innovation, and Undermine Regulation (Yale UP, 2022), James Bessen explores the idea of how software can actually slow innovation. He makes the case that big companies in one industry after another have built "complex" software systems for managing their sales, marketing, operations and product offerings that are essentially moats against competitors. This mastery of software by major corporations, he argues, helps explain the "myth of disruptive innovation", rising economic concentration, increasing inequality and slowing innovation.James Bessen, an economist and technologist, serves as Executive Director of the Technology & Policy Research Initiative at Boston University School of Law. He has also been a successful innovator and CEO of a software company. His profile in the New York Times is here.Bernardo Batiz-Lazo is currently straddling between Newcastle and Mexico City. You can find him on twitter on issues related to business history of banking, fintech, payments and other musings. Not always in that order. @BatizLazo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Steve Jobs called Jony Ive his "spiritual partner at Apple." The London-born genius was the second-most powerful person at Apple and the creative force who most embodies Jobs's spirit, the man who designed the products adopted by hundreds of millions the world over: the iPod, iPad, MacBook Air, the iMac G3, and the iPhone. In the wake of his close collaborator's death, the chief designer wrestled with grief and initially threw himself into his work designing the new Apple headquarters and the Watch before losing his motivation in a company increasingly devoted more to margins than to inspiration.In many ways, Cook was Ive's opposite. The product of a small Alabama town, he had risen through the ranks from the supply side of the company. His gift was not the creation of new products. Instead, he had invented countless ways to maximize a margin, squeezing some suppliers, persuading others to build factories the size of cities to churn out more units. He considered inventory evil. He knew how to make subordinates sweat with withering questions.Jobs selected Cook as his successor, and Cook oversaw a period of tremendous revenue growth that has lifted Apple's valuation to $2 trillion. He built a commanding business in China and rapidly distinguished himself as a master politician who could forge global alliances and send the world's stock market into freefall with a single sentence.Author Tripp Mickle spoke with more than 200 current and former Apple executives, as well as figures key to this period of Apple's history, including Trump administration officials and fashion luminaries such as Anna Wintour while writing After Steve: How Apple Became a Trillion-Dollar Company and Lost Its Soul (William Morrow, 2022). His research shows the company's success came at a cost. Apple lost its innovative spirit and has not designed a new category of device in years. Ive's departure in 2019 marked a culmination in Apple's shift from a company of innovation to one of operational excellence, and the price is a company that has lost its soul.Tripp Mickle is a technology and corporate reporter for the Wall Street Journal.Caleb Zakarin is the Assistant Editor of the New Books Network (Twitter: @caleb_zakarin). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Head ninja. Top strategist. Main innovation engine. Chief optimist.Sören Stamer wears a lot of hats, and it’s one of the main reasons he wears the CEO hat at CoreMedia so successfully.CoreMedia markets an open, best-of-breed, API-driven solution that combines a headless content repository with an advanced web-based UI. It allows editors to access content from any source and preview front-end customer experience in real-time.From the very beginning, Sören has played multiple roles in the company’s growth. As one of CoreMedia’s co-founders, he did everything it took to build the company’s CMS from a great idea into what has become a multimillion Euro business today.His entrepreneurial journey, however, didn’t start in the technology sector. It began on his family’s farm. Growing up on a farm exposed Sören to entrepreneurship ever since he can remember—the good side and the challenges—in addition to the hard and dedicated work it takes to succeed.Sören’s story is a fascinating lesson for anyone who not only wants to become an entrepreneur, but also wants to live a full and satisfying life.As he says, “I never regret things I did. I regret things I don’t do.” Tune into our episode to learn more.About our guest:Sören Stamer is CEO and Co-founder of CoreMedia, a strategic digital experience platform used many iconic online brands. He is also an award-winning author and speaker.Sören's primary interest is in the power of massive networks to bring about enormous change. A pioneering social media advocate, he is a recognized thought leader on web content strategy, digital rights management, and enterprise 2.0.He holds a Master of Business Administration degree from the University of Hamburg, and ahs extensive startup and leadership experience In addition, he is passionate about early childhood education and solutions for society’s challenges in the age of A.I.About NBN:The NBN Entrepreneurship and Leadership podcast aims to educate, inform and entertain, sharing insights based on the personal stories of carefully selected guests—all in an informal atmosphere of unscripted conversations and open, personal accounts.Find links to past episodes here.About our Hosts:Kimon Fountoukidis:Kimon is the founder of both Argos Multilingual and PMR.He founded both companies in the mid-90s with zero capital, and both have gone on to become market leaders in their respective sectors.Kimon was born in New York and moved to Krakow, Poland in 1993. He is passionate about sharing his success with others and working entrepreneurs of all kinds to help them achieve their goals. Listen to his story here. On Twitter. On LinkedIn.Richard Lucas:Richard is a business and social entrepreneur who has founded or invested in more than 30 businesses, including Argos Multilingual, PMR and, in 2020, the New Books Network.Richard has been a TEDx event organiser for years, supports the pro-entrepreneurship ecosystem, and leads entrepreneurship workshops at all levels. He was born in Oxford and moved to Poland in 1991, where continues to invest in promising companies and helps other entrepreneurs realise their dreams.Listen to his story in an autobiographical TEDx talk. On Twitter. On LinkedIn. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How do you value something? It seems simple enough. Since the beginning of commerce thousands of years ago, people have been asserting the value of enterprises. Yet, the math and specific logic of that exercise is only about a century old.For thirty of those years, Tim Koller and his colleagues at McKinsey, the consultancy, have been in the forefront of how to think about value and how to measure it. The first edition of Valuation: Measuring and Managing the Value of Companies (Wiley) came out in 1990; this is the seventh iteration, so Koller has been through numerous ups and downs.His calm and cool reasoning should be required reading for all business managers and investors. Daniel Peris is Senior Vice President at Federated Investors in Pittsburgh. Trained as a historian of modern Russia, he is the author most recently of Getting Back to Business: Why Modern Portfolio Theory Fails Investors. You can follow him on Twitter @HistoryInvestor or at http://www.strategicdividendinvestor.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listeners who have tuned in to my most recent episodes here on Systems and Cybernetics will be familiar with what seems be a current running theme. So, as I grapple with what it takes to bring systems thinking to life, I couldn't help but be intrigued when I came across Systems Inspired Leadership: How to Tap Collective Wisdom to Navigate Change, Enhance Agility, and Foster Collaboration (CRR Global, 2021). The book's authors Marita Fridjhon and Frank Uit de Weerd start by acknowledging that today’s twenty-first-century leaders face tremendous pressure in an increasingly complex and fast-changing world, where traditional leadership models have become outdated and ineffective.Systems Inspired Leadership (SIL) is a powerful alternative for modern leaders. Instead of a top-down, leader-knows-all style that results in stress, pressure, and anxiety, SIL offers a fresh, proven approach for achieving optimal results for organizations. With meaningful collaboration at its core, SIL taps the collective wisdom of the system rather than telling people what to do, and builds shared leadership at all levels of the organization.I recently had a chance to talk to Marita Fidjhorn, co-author of Systems Inspired Leadership, as well as co-owner and CEO of CRR Global and mentor to an ever-growing community of practitioners in the field of relationship systems work. We spent of most of our time going deep on what it takes to “create from the wisdom of the system rather than react”; this is much of what it means to practice systems inspired leadership. Marita is an expert in and is passionate about relationship systems—and asserts strongly that the kind of leadership needed to address today's "wicked problems' requires a deep Relationship Systems Intelligence (RSI), including the vital acknowledgement that "relationship systems are in a constant state of emergence" (one of the 5 RSI principles described in depth in the book).This episode could have been much longer—Marita and I barely scratched the surface. I encourage any listener interested in the intersection of systems and leadership to have a listen, then read the book for a deeper dive into areas we didn't have time to get to. Here's a little something from the book as an invitation:“Part of the challenge of being a systems inspired Leader is to hold awareness of the nature and flow of systemic evolution. What wants to be left alone or to be put to rest? What is viable and wants to grow. These are the moments to remember that leadership is a role that belongs to the system". Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices