Career Strategy

Each year, Americans start one million new businesses, nearly 80 percent of which fail within the first five years. Under such pressure to stay alive—let alone grow—it’s easy for entrepreneurs to get caught up in a never-ending cycle of "sell it—do it, sell it—do it" that leaves them exhausted, frustrated, and unable to get ahead no matter how hard they try. Full of stories of other successful entrepreneurs, The Pumpkin Plan guides you through unconven­tional strategies to help you build a truly profitable blue-ribbon company that is the best in its field.

Charlie Munger, Berkshire Hathaway's visionary vice chairman and Warren Buffett's indispensable financial partner, has outperformed market indexes again and again, and he believes any investor can do the same. His notion of "elementary, worldly wisdom" - a set of interdisciplinary mental models involving economics, business, psychology, ethics, and management - allows him to keep his emotions out of his investments and avoid the common pitfalls of bad judgment.

From Jordan Belfort, The Wolf of Investing offers “concrete insights and advice” (Booklist) on when to buy, sell, hold, and cash out; how to make smarter (and safer) investments; and how to build significant wealth over both the short- and long-term. Unlike traditional investment books, Jordan’s lessons, colorful stories, and principles entertain you with the charismatic swagger portrayed so famously on the screen by Leonardo DiCaprio. Belfort teaches you everything you need to know about savvy investing—even if whatever stock you’ve touched has turned to yesterday’s trash.

The Failure of Risk Management provides effective solutions to significant faults in current risk analysis methods. Conventional approaches to managing risk lack accurate quantitative analysis methods, yielding strategies that can actually make things worse. Many widely used methods have no systems to measure performance, resulting in inaccurate selection and ineffective application of risk management strategies. These fundamental flaws propagate unrealistic perceptions of risk in business, government, and the general public.

Build resilience in your company to weather the greatest crises. We've combed through hundreds of Harvard Business Review articles and selected the 10 most important ones to help your company prepare for and overcome disruption, social upheaval, and disaster.

We've combed through hundreds of Harvard Business Review articles and selected the most important ones to help you combat new competitors and define the best strategy for your company. With insights from leading experts including Michael E. Porter, A. G. Lafley, and Clayton M. Christensen, this book will inspire you to: choose a strategy that meets the demands of your competitive environment; identify the signals of disruption and take steps to avoid it; understand lean methodology and how it is changing business; and more.

Visionaries like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos have demonstrated the power of reimagining what's possible. Now, this transformative new guide taps into the mindsets and strategies of today's boldest innovators - showing you how to challenge assumptions, unlock creative breakthroughs, and execute world-changing visions.

In industry after industry, data, analytics, and AI-driven processes are transforming the nature of work. While we often still treat AI as the domain of a specific skill, business function, or sector, we have entered a new era in which AI is challenging the very concept of the firm. AI-centric organizations exhibit a new operating architecture, redefining how they create, capture, share, and deliver value.

Two-thirds of executives say their organizations don't have the capabilities to support their strategy. In Strategy That Works, Paul Leinwand and Cesare Mainardi explain why. They identify conventional business practices that unintentionally create a gap between strategy and execution. And they show how some of the best companies in the world consistently leap ahead of their competitors.

Over a stellar career, Roger Martin has advised the CEOs of some of the world's most successful companies. From the beginning, he noted that almost every executive he talked to had a "model"—a framework or way of thinking that guided their strategy and activities. But these models tended to become automatic, so much so that when one didn't work, the typical response was just to apply it again—with greater enthusiasm.

Work with data like a pro using this guide that breaks down how to organize, apply, and most importantly, understand what you are analyzing in order to become a true data ninja.

In Ruthless Consistency, Michael Canic identifies the three surprising reasons most strategic change initiatives fail: Leaders unwittingly send mixed messages that demotivate their people and undermine those initiatives; leaders focus on what they do instead of what their people experience; and leaders are not as committed as they think they are or need to be. The book then introduces an intuitive yet comprehensive model for success.

Jordan Cohen started out selling entry-level houses in Southern California over thirty years ago. Always working alone as an individual agent without a partner or a team, he consistently sets new sales records year after year, including 2021 where he closed over $314 million in residential real estate. In The Agent’s Edge, he teaches agents of all levels how to win listings, take advantage of every opportunity and make your fortune in the fast-paced, exciting world of real estate sales.

The second global downturn in a dozen years is upon us - but do lessons learned during the Great Recession still apply? What must you and your business do, now, to ensure you come out the other side intact? Global Recession: Insights You Need from Harvard Business Review will help you understand the smartest ways to cut costs intelligently, find opportunities amid upheaval, and reshape your business to seize advantage in the upswing.

Management teams and boards are facing disruption on all sides, from morphing customer preferences to the COVID pandemic to climate change. At the same time they are floundering in strategy confusion with too many concepts and not enough clarity. In this book, strategy expert and regular Harvard Business Review author Graham Kenny releases managers and directors from their strategy haze. His simple and effective framework allows managers to navigate the current maze of ideas and approaches and maximize their competitive advantage.

Bruce Greenwald, one of the nation's leading business professors, presents a new and simplified approach to strategy that cuts through much of the fog that has surrounded the subject. Based on his hugely popular course at Columbia Business School, Greenwald and his co-author, Judd Kahn, offer an easy-to-follow method for understanding the competitive structure of your industry and developing an appropriate strategy for your specific position.

Imagine running a business without a strategy. It would be akin to driving blindfolded, to building a house without a blueprint. The concept of strategy changed all that, paving the way for the creation of the modern corporate world. The Lords of Strategy provides listeners with a deeper understanding of the world they compete in, and a sharper eye for what works — and what doesn’t — when forging strategy.

Peter Senge's groundbreaking ideas on building organizations have made him a household name among corporate managers. His theories help businesses to clarify their goals, to defy the odds, to more clearly understand threats, and to recognize new opportunities. He introduces managers to a new source of competitive advantage, and offers a marvelously empowering approach to work.

Gary Vaynerchuk—the inspiring and unconventional entrepreneur who introduced us to the concept of crush it—knows how to get things done, have fun, and be massively successful. A marketing and business genius, Gary had the foresight to go beyond traditional methods and use social media tools such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube to reach an untapped audience that continues to grow.

Why is profitable growth so hard to achieve and sustain? Most executives manage their companies as if the solution to that problem lies in the external environment: find an attractive market, formulate the right strategy, win new customers. But when Bain & Company's Chris Zook and James Allen researched this question, they found that when companies fail to achieve their growth targets, 90 percent of the time the root causes are internal, not external.