Business

'We fed the monster until it blew up ...' While Wall Street was busy creating the biggest credit bubble of all time, a few renegade investors saw it was about to burst, bet against the banking system - and made a fortune. From the jungles of the trading floor to the casinos of Las Vegas, this is the outrageous story of the misfits, mavericks and geniuses who, against all odds, made the greatest financial killing in history.

The original and bestselling leadership book! Sun Tzu's ideas on survival and success have been read across the world for centuries. Today they can still be applied to business, politics and life. The Art of War demonstrates how to win without conflict. It shows that with enough intelligence and planning, it is possible to conquer with a minimum of force and little destruction. This luxury hardback edition includes an introduction by Tom Butler-Bowdon that draws out lessons for managers and business leaders, and highlights the powe... read more

How can entrepreneurs predict what the next revolution will be? And how does a new idea, product, or service spread through society to spark 'the next big thing'? This title uses analysis of more than two-dozen revolutions in business, sports, science, and politics to offer an understanding of the revolutionary process.

'We must reject the idea - well-intentioned, but dead wrong - that the primary path to greatness in the social sectors is to become "more like a business".' So begins this astonishingly blunt and timely manifesto by leading business thinker Jim Collins. Rejecting the belief, common among politicians, that all would be well in society if only the public sector operated more like the private sector, he sets out a radically new approach to creating successful hospitals, police forces, universities, charities, and other non-profit-maki... read more

Buy now with one-click. Amazon's business model is deceptively simple: make online shopping so easy and convenient that customers won't think twice. Yet Amazon's success is largely down to CEO and founder Jeff Bezos, a man described as both a 'happy-go-lucky mogul' and a 'notorious micromanager'. His high energy, passionate approach to retailing has driven Amazon to the top. Jeff Bezos is smart. Originally a computer geek, he had the vision to capitalise on the untapped online market for books. He's also a calculating machine who c... read more

What's the question every business should be asking itself? According to Jeff Jarvis, it's What Would Google Do? If you're not thinking or acting like Google - the fastest-growing company in the history of the world - then you're not going to survive, let alone prosper, in the Internet age. To demonstrate how to emulate Google, Jarvis lays out his laws of what he calls the new Google century, including such insights as: Think Distributed, Become a Platform, Join the Post-Scarcity, Open-Source, Gift Economy, The Middleman Has Died, ... read more

You're either a Purple Cow or you're not. You're either remarkable or invisible. Make your choice. What do Apple, Starbucks, Dyson and Pret-a-Manger have in common? How do they achieve spectacular growth, leaving behind former tried-and-true brands to gasp their last? The old checklist of P's used by marketers - Pricing, Promotion, Publicity - aren't working anymore. The golden age of advertising is over. It's time to add a new P - the Purple Cow.<br><i>Purple Cow</i> describes something ph... read more

This book is about potentially great business leaders: often people thought to have, and indeed having, great skill, charm and determination. It is about people often initially feted to be high flyers; talented or those with potential who get noticed and promoted. Nearly all derailed leaders have an impressive CV: a history of achievement and success. But something went wrong. To rise to the top of any organization takes ability and effort: it often takes great determination and great skill. Leaders of organizations need to be cour... read more

What do Howard Hughes and 50 Cent have in common, and what do they tell us about our desires and consumer choices? Why did Sean Connery stop wearing a toupee, and what does this tell us about American customers for any product? What one thing did the Beatles, Malcolm Gladwell and Nike all notice about Americans that helped them win us over? Which current consumer trend may explain the plights of Krispy Kreme, Ford, and GM, and the risks faced by Starbuck's? To paraphrase Don Draper's character on the hit show Mad Men, "What do peop... read more

Experienced readers of Warren Buffett's letters to the shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. have gained an enormously valuable informal education. The letters distill in plain words all the basic principles of sound business practices.

By day he made thousands of dollars a minute. By night he spent it as fast as he could, on drugs, sex, and international globe-trotting. From the binge that sank a 170-foot motor yacht, crashed a Gulfstream jet, and ran up a $700,000 hotel tab, to the wife and kids who waited for him at home, and the fast-talking, hard-partying young stockbrokers who called him king and did his bidding, here, in his own inimitable words, is the story of the ill-fated genius they called... In the 1990s Jordan Belfort, former kingpin of the notoriou... read more

Most people want to be successful in life. And of course, everyone wants to be happy. When it comes to the pursuit of success and happiness, most people assume the same formula: if you work hard, you will become successful, and once you become successful, then you'll be happy. The only problem is that a decade of cutting-edge research in the field of positive psychology has proven that this formula is backwards. Success does not beget happiness. Based on the largest study ever conducted on happiness and human potential (a survey co... read more

Demand is one of the few economic terms almost everyone knows. Demand drives supply. When demand rises, growth happens - jobs are created, the economy flourishes and society thrives. So goes the theory. It sounds simple, yet almost no one really understands demand, including the business owners, company leaders and policy makers who try to stimulate and satisfy it. Aimed at a business and general non-fiction readership, DEMAND is a book which searches for clues as to where demand really comes from, and why, and how we might control it.

43 MISTAKES is Duncan Bannatyne's guide to the common traps people in business fall into, and how to stay out of them. Imagine you had your very own personal business adviser, who could give you the benefit of their expertise and help you avoid making costly, embarrassing, time-consuming and even career-ending mistakes. Duncan Bannatyne is that person and he's here to help you. 43 MISTAKES will make sure you avoid the most common business howlers, and is just as relevant if you are a sole trader on the high street or a bond trader in the City.

"Don't even think about trying to launch a startup without reading Guy Kawasaki's "Reality Check." - "BizEd" For a quarter of a century, in his various guises as an entrepreneur, evangelist, venture capitalist, and guru, Guy Kawasaki has cast an irreverent eye on the dubious trends, sketchy theories, and outright foolishness of what so often passes for business today. Too many people frantically chase the Next Big Thing only to discover that all they've made is the Last Big Mistake. "Reality Check" is Kawasaki's all-in-one gu... read more

Comparing Google to an ordinary business is like comparing a rocket to a wheelbarrow. No academic analysis or bystander's account can capture it. Now Douglas Edwards, "Employee Number 59", takes readers inside the Googleplex for the closest look you can get without an ID card, giving readers a chance to fully experience the potent mix of camaraderie and competition that makes up the company that changed the world. Edwards, Google's first director of marketing and brand management, describes it as it happened. From the first, pione... read more

The television allowed companies to send ads directly to consumers' living rooms, and the computer allowed them to start interacting with their customers. The third screen-the mobile device-changes the game in an even more radical way. The birth of m-commerce is not just about using the phone to pay for something. it is revolutionising the entire buying process based on location. Marketing has now become hyper-local. Author Chuck Martin explains how in this, the age of the smartphone - and now the tablet - the nature of marketing i... read more

You may have the skills to gain a new career or win a dream job but if you are unable to sell yourself to a prospective employer, your potential is unrealised. With this book, discover how you can stand out from the competition and receive more job opportunities and better value job offers than ever before. The achievements questionnaire will help you to discover and identify personal key career highlights and assist in marketing your skills to potential employers. With sections on resumes, covering letters, interviewing tips, netw... read more

What happens when advances in technology allow many things to be produced for more or less nothing? And what happens when those things are then made available to the consumer for free? In his groundbreaking new book, "The Long Tail" author Chris Anderson considers a brave new world where the old economic certainties are being undermined by a growing flood of free goods - newspapers, DVDs, T shirts, phones, even holiday flights. He explains why this has become possible - why new technologies, particularly the Internet, have caused p... read more