Advice on business literature from Helen Edwards

We are glad to present a fresh selection of interesting books from Helen Edwards, a SKOLKOVO Library project manager. You can read her previous advice on business literature here.

1. Business model generation: a handbook for visionaries, game changers and challengers
Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur
John Wiley, 2010
281 pages
ISBN 978-0470-87641-1

This book lives up to its name in that it provides the tools to generate new business models. Packed with pictures, diagrams and real life business stories, it breaks down the complex process of understanding today's business models. This book clarifies how seemingly counter intuitive business models have transformed whole industries and reveals how readers can apply these same techniques to create value for their own businesses and within their own organizations.

2. The lords of strategy: the secret intellectual history of the new corporate world
Walter Kiechel
Harvard Business School Press, 2010
320 pages
ISBN 978-1591397823

The history of the four men who formalized corporate strategy and set in motion the modern consulting industry: Bruce Henderson (Boston Consulting Group), Bill Bain (Bain & Company), Fred Gluck (McKinsey) and Michael Porter (Harvard Business School). The book describes the ideas and analysis applied to developing business from the customers, costs, competitors paradigm onwards and shows how a small number of models and frameworks have dominated management thinking in thousands of companies.

3. The hidden brain: how our unconscious minds elects presidents, control markets, wage wars and save our lives
Shankar Vedantam
Spiegel & Grau, 2010.
270 pages
ISBN 978-0-385-52521-3

Written by the Science Correspondent of the Washington Post , this book describes how the hidden brain operates, its focus on speed and how it may apply heuristics to situations where they do not work. The book follows these unconscious biases from small decisions in private, social and professional settings, to major life choices, personal and business, and finally to issues which affect society as a whole, small groups and terrorism, the criminal justice system and politics.

4. Global challenges in responsible business
N. Craig Smith, C. B. Bhattacharya, David Vogel and David Levine
Cambridge University Press, 2010
332 pages
ISBN: 978-0521735889

Today's CEOs are under pressure to address pervasive environmental, social and ethical issues. But what is the responsibility of business in addressing major global problems? While not necessarily the cause of all social problems, business may be the best hope of providing some solutions. This book addresses the issue of the relation between corporate social responsibility and corporate financial performance and the themes of embedding corporate responsibility, corporate responsibility and marketing and corporate responsibility in developing countries.


5. Capturing the world's emerging middle class
David Court and Laxman Narasimhan.
McKinsey Quarterly, 2010, Issue 3, p12-17.

New spenders are appearing in a dozen emerging markets. New business models, with an emphasis on speed and scale, are needed to capitalize on these new consumers. The article presents a matrix of four strategies for multinationals suited to different types of products: identifying similar consumers across markets; targeting premium consumers in product niches; shaping the market by localizing; reinventing the business model. And there is also the bottleneck of talent: relying on expats limits expansion prospects, yet developing talent locally and from within may take too much time.