Small Business Management

What entrepreneur or founder doesn't aspire to build the next Amazon, Facebook, or Airbnb? Yet those who actually manage to do so are exceedingly rare. So what separates the start-ups that get disrupted and disappear from the ones who grow to become global giants? The secret is blitzscaling: a set of techniques for scaling up at a dizzying pace that blows competitors out of the water.

For more than 40 years, The Boston Consulting Group has been shaping strategic thinking in business. The Boston Consulting Group on Strategy offers a broad and up-to-date selection of the firm's best ideas on strategy with fresh ideas, insights, and practical lessons for managers, executives, and entrepreneurs in every industry. Here's a sampling of the provocative thinking you'll find inside.

Geoff Smart and Randy Street offer a simple, four-step method for hiring with confidence, designed for everyone from the CEO on down. Who shows you how to avoid the most common pitfalls of hiring, how to identify "A Players" - people who can perform their job better than 90 percent of the candidates in their field - and how to make sure the best candidate will be excited to join your organization.

In 2008, Howard Schultz, the president and chairman of Starbucks, made the unprecedented decision to return as CEO, eight years after he stepped down from daily oversight of the company to become chairman. Concerned that Starbucks had lost its way, Schultz was determined to help it return to its core values and restore not only its financial health, but also its soul.

From the time we learn to speak, we're told that if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all. When you become a manager, it’s your job to say it--and your obligation. Author Kim Scott was an executive at Google and then at Apple, where she developed a class on how to be a good boss. She has earned growing fame in recent years with her vital new approach to effective management, Radical Candor. Radical Candor is a simple idea: to be a good boss, you have to Care Personally at the same time that you Challenge Directly.

This special edition of A Book of Five Rings contains one hour of traditional Japanese flute (shakuhachi) and 43 minutes of music by traditional japanese ensemble. The music appears track by track at the end of the two and a half hour audiobook and is included as wonderful compliment to this dynamic and elegant listening experience. Legendary 17th-century swordsman Miyamoto Musashi’s exposition of sword fighting, strategy, and Zen philosophy.

Author Bedros Keuilian, founder and CEO of Fit Body Boot Camp and known as the "hidden genius" behind many of the most successful brands and businesses throughout multiple industries, will teach you how to break out of the sea of mediocrity, get singularly focused on your purpose, and do what it takes - not only to achieve but dominate your goals.

The exact qualities that bring an individual to found a start-up company (their brilliance and expertise) are what prevent them from achieving the success they are looking for - this is the paradox that is entrepreneurship. What starts out as freedom and financial independence turns into grueling hours and added stress and bills. But successful five-time entrepreneur Curtis Morley is here to help. He shares that every entrepreneur is typically doing the same 15 things wrong or just not doing them at all - regardless of industry or business type.

As CEO, most everything that Rich O'Connor did had something to do with at least one of the four disciplines on his famed "yellow sheet." Rich never suspected that it would become the blueprint of an employee's plan to destroy the firm. Best selling author Lencioni brings us a fable that focuses on a leader's crucial role in building a healthy organization.

The new question: Ten years after the worldwide bestseller Good to Great, Jim Collins returns to ask: Why do some companies thrive in uncertainty, even chaos, and others do not? In Great by Choice, Collins and his colleague, Morten T. Hansen, enumerate the principles for building a truly great enterprise in unpredictable, tumultuous, and fast-moving times. The new study: Great by Choice distinguishes itself from Collins’s prior work by its focus on the type of unstable environments faced by leaders today.

A one-stop start-up guide from an accountant-turned-restaurateur. Ninety percent of all restaurants fail, and those that succeed happened upon that mysterious X factor, right? Wrong! A man of many hats - money-guy, restaurant owner, and restaurant consultant - Roger Fields shows how a restaurant can survive its first year and keep diners coming back for years. Featuring real-life start-up stories (including many of the author's own), this comprehensive how-to walks listeners through the logistics of opening a restaurant: concept, location, menu, staff, and, most important, profit.

Elon Musk fait partie de ceux qui changent les règles du jeu. Largement considéré comme le plus grand industriel du moment, il porte l'innovation à des niveaux rarement atteints au point d'avoir servi de modèle pour Tony Stark, alias Iron Man. À 44 ans, il a monté en quelques années une entreprise, Tesla, qui révolutionne l'industrie automobile, une autre, SpaceX, qui concurrence Arianespace. Il a auparavant bouleversé le marché des paiements avec PayPal. Son objectif ultime : coloniser Mars.

Would you like to be able to draw people towards you like a magnet? This book is NOT just another communication book and is NOT just a book of tips. This is the ultimate communication system for talking to anybody, anywhere, and in any situation. Using the scientific principles of communication and ©POWER2MIND technology, it will have you talking and communicating to anyone with confidence, charm, and conviction, rapidly and naturally.

In this, his first audiobook, Tony Hsieh - the widely admired CEO of Zappos, the online shoe retailer -explains how he created a unique culture and commitment to service that aims to improve the lives of its employees, customers, vendors, and backers. Using anecdotes and stories from his own life experiences, and from other companies, Hsieh provides concrete ways that companies can achieve unprecedented success.

There can be no doubt about the credentials of Bill George, former Chairman and CEO of Medtronic, who has been named one of Business Week's "Top 25 Managers". In Authentic Leadership, George lays out his plan for improving corporate America's flaws through responsible leadership.

Tailored for small-business owners and entrepreneurs like yourself who are looking for long-term financial planning and wealth management, The Business Owner's Guide to Financial Freedom reveals the secrets behind successfully investing in your business while bypassing Wall Street-influenced financial planners.

Attorney and CPA Mark J. Kohler targets the leading tax and business issues among small business owners, across all stages of business, and delivers a practical guide to the fundamental tax and legal conflicts faced by new and established entrepreneurs. Coached by Kohler, business owners are armed to seek out the right professionals relevant to their concerns, confidently ask the right questions, and ultimately, save time, money, and in many cases, potential heartache.

Scaling People is a practical and empathetic guide to being an effective leader and manager in a high-growth environment. The tactical information it puts forward—including guidance on crafting foundational documents, strategic and financial planning, hiring and team development, and feedback and performance mechanisms—can be applied to companies of any size, in any industry.

If you’re at all responsible for your company’s success, you can’t just be a hard-charging entrepreneur or a motivating, encouraging leader. You have to be both! If you’re at all responsible for your company’s success, you can’t just be a hard-charging entrepreneur or a motivating, encouraging leader. You have to be both! This book presents Dave’s playbook for creating work that matters; building an incredible group of passionate, empowered team members; and winning the race with steady momentum that will roll over any obstacle.

To become a millionaire, you have to think like one. The Millionaire Mind shows you how. Also available: The Millionaire Next Door.