Corporate-finance

The book is very generic on how Rupert Murdoch operates, I was expecting more specifics. The book is good though, if you just grab the 10 steps the author mentions.

I generally do not like reading thick books. This book is not only ideal for the busy executive, but also for that "lazy student" who has much beter things to do in life. At the end of each chapter, the key take-aways are summarized. It is interesting to note that Murdoch can compromise ethics and journalistic integrity to further his business. He also has a nack of thinking and planning lightyears ahead of his rivals, and can stoop at any level to keep the Chinese happy (BBC, Critical Reporting, scrapping Chris Patten's autobiography et all).

I believe that Richard Branson is a unique character and that information about his life and business philosophies would make an interesting read. Thus I chose to read this book.

However I was somewhat disappointed. Although I did learn a few things and there were some interesting passages, a great deal of the book consisted of quotes obtained from OTHER biographers and journalists attempting to document Branson's life.

Each chapter concluded with a summary (read: repetition) of the information in that chapter, and dozens of other sections/quotes/anecdotes were obviously repeated in various chapters. Perhaps because of this, it only took me an hour to read the entire book (admittedly I am a reasonably fast reader).

One thing that I can say in its favor is that the book was structured well; there were 10 main sections, each devoted to a different "Branson philosophy" (for example, "pick on someone bigger than you").

In short, although I did get some interest out of this book I am looking for another Branson biography to read because this one fell short of expectations.

I suggested that we choose Virgin as a company to research as an MBA Project. Our group used this book as research material. We found it wonderful, and uplifting, exactly what what was necessary for this project. I would highly recommend it to others as well as the book "Losing My Virginity". Virgin is a company that should be studied by US business'executives, its shows you can create an empire - differently!

Behind the complicated practices of the business world stand the simplicities of Jack Welch's philosophy. Here's a simple "How to" book that tells the story of 'what it takes to grow a successful business' all guided by Jack Welch's resume tales. Great read filled with anecdotes.

The book is a quick read about how Jack Welch manages. At least how the author thinks he manages. The author cobbles these thoughts from articles and other sources. For the most part it works--the book gives good insights into leadership and motivation. But a lot of it might be deceptive. For instance, the author takes a principle that Jack Welch has espoused in the past, and then fills in the details with his own related thoughts, and those of other management gurus. So, often times you are actually learning what some one else thinks about the topic--not Jack Welch's opinion. As long as this is taken into consideration, the book provides interesting lessons on how to manage and motivation people.

This is a nice summary of yet another 10 secrets of Bill Gates' success. I did find out something new for myself. However, the book itself is awfully repetitive. It seems like the chapters were written in dissonance as you read the same words over again like a constant deja vu which is somewhat annoying. Overall, not a bad book!

If you're looking for an easy to read summary of how Bill Gates went from college drop-out to the $50 billion man, here it is. "Business the Bill Gates Way," is a quick and sanitary overview of what happens when an irresistible combination of passion, luck, determiation, and brains meet an unbelievable opportunity. Bill Gates as nerd, seer, opportunist, organizational genius, and workaholic all tied-up in a nice, little, pink bow. Des Dearlove appears to written this book after only having read a half dozen other books on Bill Gates and Microsoft. You get the sense he never left his office, much less England, to research the subject. This is a formula book, heavy on format and light substance. Ten 16 page chapters, with a summary of the main points at the end of each. The series is obviously successful, and we can expect more of the same, but it reads more like the Cliff Notes than the real book. In fact, you could just read the summaries, memorize the main points, and move on to your algebra homework.

You will never be a better entrepreneur if you don't know about Gates. This book will surely give you some insights.

David Stauffer gives out some reasons why Cisco is so successful in the Internet industry. Among all the factors, I think ...people¡¦ is the most important one. It is because they can generate creative ideas for the company and so they are valuable asset. The term ...internet ecosystem¡¦ and last minute management¡¦ are important terms as well.

The author, David Stauffer, illustrate a clear picture of Cisco's business and management to readers.

Stauffer refreshes our view of today's business world. Stepping into internet age, IT should become an important issue for every business. "Internet Ecosystem", created by John Chamber, helps Cisco to be an sucessful international organization. By this internet ecosystem, Cisco forms a diversified and close relationship with it's suppliers/customers/partners, etc. leads to "last minute management", which is widely adopted by most business.

Apart from IT, Cisco treats innovative employees as their valuable assets. Cisco creates a superior working environment for them to enhance their performance/team work spirit/self-esteem, etc. Cisco makes many acquisitions for new technologies, but more specific, they acquire people for knowledge/creativity, say for the next generation products.

This book would help you to know more about the fast changing business world. Be well-prepared, are you ready?

The author, David Stauffer illustrate a clear picture of CISCO, the world's leader in internet business, help readers to understand the internet giant's success foctors. To be a leader in the competitive internet business, an organization not only have to be innovative and creative but also ahve to do well in marketing strategy, internal management and external management. Cisco treats their employees as valuable assets. Cisco is well known in acquisition, but what they want from that is not only new technologies, people too, who can bring continuous improvement/ innovative ideas, say the next generation products to the organization. And thats a critical suceess factor for Cisco. Apart from that, Cisco is famous of its "last minute management". They form an "inernet ecosystem" with its customer, suppliers, retailers and so on. This help to them to decrease the inventory level, cost of storage, and so on. This wise management way is popularly adopted by most business firms around the world.

From this book, you will get more insight of how the business world is going, and be well-prepared yourself in this internet age.

This book teaches me on important thing, which is 'Make early failure a learning, not fatal experience', and 'Treat triumphs as fleeting'. However, vision should be remained the same over time.

Very basic book on doing business via the web. This should have been released a generation ago when Amazon.com itself was finding its way. The new enterpreneur exploring online business is more knowledgeble than the informaiton and insight provided here and hence can disappoint reading it. It may be suitable for those who are hearing the name of e-business and trying to set up the business online for the first time in their country to know what happend when Jeff Bezos tried doing so for the first time in the history. Certainly this book is not for those who already heard about e-business.

Ms. Saunders has taken riding someone else's wave to a new low - two waves really. The first is the branding and selling power of anything with "Amazon.com" on it. The second is the hope that this book will follow in the footsteps of Robert Spector's, "The Nordstrom Way," in giving the reader some insight into the world's leading and most successful e-commerce enterprise. Unfortunately, she fails to even remotely live up to either.

The book is dry and completely uninformative. Even worse, it's factually incorrect. A couple examples (though there are many, many others):

According to Saunders, Amazon.com set up shop in Seattle, Washington because Ingram is there. Um, Ingram is in Oregon, not Washington. What the heck is the Federal Trust Commission? I think it's usually referred to as the Federal Trade Commission.

These two errors and the many others in this book have regrettably been printed before - usually in the popular press - which speaks volumes about where she got her material.

The book is marketed as an investigative look at the business model and "Ten Secrets" that make it work. Considering the legendary secrecy surrounding Amazon.com's business and the supposed investigative nature of this book, I find it pretty amazing that she knocked it out without attempting to consult a single (current or former) insider. But then again, after the first two pages it becomes very clear that she had no intention of going out of her way. The book itself is about as pure an attempt to capitalize on Amazon.com's success as could have been imagined. Oh, and the ten secrets touted on the cover are actually basic common sense and obvious to anyone who visits Amazon.com on any sort of a regular basis.

If you're curious about Amazon.com, I say stick to Spector and read, "Amazon.com - Get Big Fast," (ISBN: 0066620414).

Keep in mind that as of this writing, there really is no truly in-depth factual piece on Amazon.com and it's business model. You can get more information about Amazon.com from the New York Times archives (online) or almost any Wall Street analyst who covers the company.

Amazon.com, perhaps best known for its highly effective and popular affiliate marketing program, has achieved much success during its short time in business. It has grown from a Web-based start-up in 1995 to become one of the most influential businesses in history.

Rebecca Saunders has taken the time to provide us with a behind-the-scenes look at the day-to-day operations of Amazon.com. She provides some background on the people who own and run it and offers some of the major reasons why this company has prospered in so little time. She offers her readers "secrets" of how this company has achieved its much heralded success within the membership of the online community. Readers will learn how they can harness some of the successful strategies that has made Amazon.com a household name.

For a company that has yet to turn a profit, Amazon.com under the direction of Jeff Bezos has put into place some mighty sound principles for conducting business that others should nonetheless pay close attention to, such as having a strong focus. Having a clear purpose, goals, and laying a foundation for the future are essential for the survival of any company.

It won't take readers long to notice that Amazon.com pays close attention to other details. Consider areas such as promoting a sense of community, learning to know about your customers, building customer satisfaction, providing safe and timely delivery of products, keeping promises (where have we heard this before?), name branding, Website domain name selection, Web development, and saving money.

Could your company be the next Amazon.com? You won't know without learning from among the best in the business world. This book is packed with a lot of insight that will lead any business in the right direction. They will benefit from sound advice and a clearly written outlined text that reads quickly and is easy to understand. Readers will enjoy this concise yet revealing look at this giant Web-based company. This book will provide readers with what it takes to succeed in any business!

I thought this was a comprehensive, interesting, well-written, and educational piece. If you are only going to read one book on M&A, and plan to practice in one form or another, this is the book to read. One warning - it reads like a history book, filled with dry facts about who did what without strong assesments of those involved.

What an incredible resource! I bought this book because it was on the suggested reading list for a course on Corporate Control I took in the MBA program at the University of Michigan b-school. Yes, it is almost 900 pages long. Yes, some of the stories could use a bit of updating because of the recent events at places like Tyco and Worldcom. But so what? It is nice to have on record how people used to think and talk about these businesses and their CEOs.

That little tiny caveat aside it is important to focus on everything you get in this really neat book. You get a history of the different waves of the M&A process throughout history, how it has evolved, the way it has developed in different industries and market sectors, and a rather nice analysis (in the broadest strokes) of what goes in planning and executing these deals.

Throughout the book there are wonderful spotlights on the principle people in the history of M&A and little synopses of the more famous and important precedent setting deals. This aspect of the book is incredibly valuable. In order to make sense of what we read about in the paper about mergers and acquisitions we need to know how we got here. This book provides an incredible amount of wonderful background material. Some complain that the book is long. I think it is amazing that he has put so much in only 900 pages. Amazingly compact!

Mr. Wassertein, one of the industries movers and shakers (currently running Lazard), has organized this book in twenty-three chapters that are grouped in three large sections: (1) Past as Prelude, (2) The Strategic Challenge, and (3) Doing the Deal. Plus there is a nice bibliography (also grouped in according to these three sections) that can lead to further reading on the topics of interest to you. The index is also quite useful because this book can be used for reference in looking up or reviewing specific topics.

Yes, reading this book front to back is a great read, but you cannot remember it all the first time through. It is useful to be able to dive into specific deals, people, and topics. The author has put this book together in a thoughtful and helpful way.

If you want scandal and gossip, well, this book really isn't for you. However, if you are interested in the BUSINESS of M&A this is a six star book. It really is terrific.

This book makes the Mojave look positively flush with water. Mr. Wasserstein addresses a fascinating topic--mergers and acquistions--with all the passion of a mortician.

Why the five stars? Mr. Wasserstein also happens to be a brilliant attorney, and have a remarkably substantive body of knowledge about innumerable large acquistions that have occurred over the past thirty years. Indeed, in his bibliography, he writes: "Much of the contemporary factual material in this book is drawn from memory." That is an especially impressive statement, given that the book weighs in at over 900 pages.

Read the book if only to be impressed at the mind of such a man.

Interesting side note: Mr. Wasserstein's sister is a Pulitzer-prize-winning playwright, Wendy Wasserstein. Her plays evince a passion utterly lacking in _Big Deal_.