Understanding the basic human psyche

Manage Mentor
The Rise & Rise of Jugaad
Virender Kapoor
(Matrix)

The fix-to-fit formula

In today's world, you don't necessarily have to be very large in size to become successful, you can remain small and still do well, says Virender Kapoor in The Rise & Rise of Jugaad: How ordinary people become extraordinarily successful (Matrix).

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Key characteristics of ‘good boards'

Books of Account
Rules Are Not Enough
Rupert Merson
(http://www.vivagroupindia.com/)

Ensure that the management is challenged

Governance will only work if we all take responsibility for bringing it to life, says Rupert Merson in ‘Rules Are Not Enough: The art of governance in the real world'. The responsibility is on ‘every individual involved in management,' he emphasises.

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Revolution in private life

Books 2 Byte
India Calling
Anand Giridharadas
(Harper)

The Indian revolution is within

Arriving at ‘the Happening City,' what does Anand Giridharadas find? Drivers dressed in white, lining up the corridor leading out of the airport, holding signs for customers such as ‘Microsoft Mr Sridhar' and ‘M. Rita Singh Motorola.' Sixty-three kinds of whisky for sale at this world-class airport in Hyderabad, with toilets cleaned no longer using the traditional twig brooms but with vacuum cleaners; and security cameras monitoring whether the cleaners performed their tasks at the appointed times, he writes in India Calling: An intimate portrait of a nation's remaking (Harper).

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'Back to the dollar'

BookValue

Bust: Greece, the euro, and the sovereign debt crisis

Matthew Lynn

(http://www.wiley.com/)

Get ready for upheaval in the currency markets

The short message of Matthew Lynn in Bust: Greece, the euro, and the sovereign debt crisis is that the euro is finished. Stating that the fault-lines exposed during the Greek crisis were too severe to be fixed and certainly not by the ramshackle rescue package cooked up in Brussels over the trillion-dollar weekend, he adds that it would be better for the system to be broken up wholesale rather than just for Germany to leave.

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A message to PR

Book Mark
Public Relations and the Social Web
Rob Brown
(http://www.vivagroupindia.com/)

Velocity, the new dimension in PR crisis

A common definition of ‘crisis' in public relations is a gap between expectations and experience; and the bigger the gap, the bigger the issue, notes Rob Brown in Public Relations and the Social Web: How to use social media and Web 2.0 in communications.

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Six imperatives

Books of Account
Towards the Next Orbit
Subir Verma
(http://www.sagepublications.com/)

Sustaining cost advantage

What does an audit of ‘the Indian business landscape' reveal? That India has a sustainable growth trajectory, says Subir Verma in ‘Towards the Next Orbit: A corporate odyssey'.

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Active programmes for the older adults

Books of Account
Aging Social Policies
Robbyn R. Wacker and Karen A. Roberto
(http://www.sagepublications.com/)

The will to care for the aged

Community-based carer support programmes such as low-cost respite, and day and night in-home help options are a part of a larger array of community-based services that exist to promote the health and social well-being of older adults, write Robbyn R. Wacker and Karen A. Roberto in ‘Aging Social Policies: An international perspective'.

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Software management

Books 2 Byte
The Economics of Iterative Software Development
Walker Royce, Kurt Bittner, and Mike Perrow
(http://www.pearsoned.co.in/)

Movie-making and software projects

We need a modern way of thinking about software quality management that accommodates our industry's 30 years of lessons learned and patterns of successful projects, declare Walker Royce, Kurt Bittner, and Mike Perrow in The Economics of Iterative Software Development.

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Naming convention

Books 2 Byte
Maximum Oracle with Oracle Best Practices
Rajnikant Puranik
(http://www.shroffpublishers.com/)

Design for performance

Among the many recommendations that Rajnikant Puranik offers in Maximum Oracle with Oracle Best Practices is his counsel about naming.

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The IT 'guide'

Books 2 Byte
The Street to the Highway
Vineet Bajpai
(http://www.jaicobooks.com/)

IT, the inevitable new force in SME dynamics

The master key, the catalyst, and the magic drug' for SMEs (small and medium enterprises) is information technology (IT), avers Vineet Bajpai in The Street to the Highway.

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Solvency

BookValue
Risk Pricing
Dimitris N. Chorafas
(http://www.visionbooksindia.com/)

Need for the right metrics of exposures

More than liquidity, the really powerful means in the regulatory toolbox is solvency and therefore capital, says Dimitris N. Chorafas in ‘Risk Pricing: New approaches to de-risking financial products'.

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China's financial system

BookValue
Red Capitalism
Carl E. Walter and Fraser J. T. Howie
(http://www.wiley.com/)

Finance in the Forbidden City

China is an economy that, from the outside, appears as a huge growth story, one extraordinary boom that has continued over the last 10 years, but this is just the surface, write Carl E. Walter and Fraser J. T. Howie in Red Capitalism: The fragile financial foundation of China's extraordinary rise.

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IPL, Indian 'Power' League

Book Mark
The IPL Story
Abhishek Dubey
(http://www.pearsoned.co.in/)

Plots in the costliest cricket property

The Indian Premier League (IPL), irrespective of all the recent controversies, is the most envied league in the history of the game, writes Abhishek Dubey in The IPL Story: Cricket, glamour and big money.

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Natural gift for leadership

Manage Mentor
The Leadership of Muhammad
John Adair
(www.koganpage.co.in)

Leadership is a journey concept

You can be appointed a commander or manager, but you are not a leader until your appointment is ratified in the hearts and minds of those you lead, recalls John Adair in The Leadership of Muhammad.

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‘Needs' vs ‘wants'

BookValue
Brand Busters
Chris Wirthwein
(http://www.macmillanpublishersindia.com/)

People are not dots on a line graph

How to become a really good marketer in just about a minute? By remembering that you are not talking to data points but to people, says Chris Wirthwein in Brand Busters: 7 common mistakes marketers make.

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New directions in SCM

Books 2 Byte
Supply Chain Management
Sunil Sharma
(http://www.oup.com/)

Tech support in supply chain

‘Tagging, tracing, and tracking' is one of the sections in Supply Chain Management: Concepts, practices, and implementation by Sunil Sharma. It is not about the distressed students in a US university, as you would have guessed, but about the new directions in SCM facilitated by information technology (IT).

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Solving customer problems

Book Mark
Total Customer Value Management
Gautam Mahajan
(http://www.sagepublications.com/)

From call centres to action centres

Transform call centres to action centres, urges Gautam Mahajan in Total Customer Value Management: Transforming business thinking. Call centres are impersonal, and the concept of a personal account manager does not exist, though companies such as Verizon have tried this, he notes.

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A simple ‘action' advice to leaders

Manage Mentor
The Other 99%
Debashis Chatterjee
(http://www.jaicobooks.com/)

Action versus activity

We often confuse action with activity, laments Debashis Chatterjee in The Other 99%. One may be very busy in the office the whole day without having acted at all and the busy-ness may sometimes hide lack of action, he cautions.

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Valuable strategies

Books of Account
What I Didn't Learn in Business School
Jay B. Barney and Trish Gorman Clifford
( Harvard)

Towards competitive advantage

Does VRIO sound like the name of a new car or a mobile phone? Well, it stands for ‘valuable-rare-imitable-organisation,' a framework to evaluate whether or not a strategy is likely to be a source of sustained competitive advantage. A strategy is valuable when it increases a firm's revenues or reduces its costs, explain Jay B. Barney and Trish Gorman Clifford in ‘ What I Didn't Learn in Business School: How strategy works in the real world' ( Harvard).

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Stove-piping and turf battles

Books 2 Byte
Advantage
Adam Segal
(http://www.wwnorton.com/)

Hardware and software of innovation

There is much that is dysfunctional in the US, but there is also a great deal to be optimistic about, writes Adam Segal in Advantage: How American innovation can overcome the Asian challenge.

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The CEO 'misunderstandings'

BookValue

The Brutal Truth About Asian Branding

Joseph Baladi

( http://www.wiley.com/)

Myopic CEOs

After interviewing more than a hundred Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) and other C-level executives from multinational companies, regional conglomerates, and small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in more than half a dozen Asian countries – from mainland China to Singapore, and from India to Korea, what does Joseph Baladi find as the most obstructive hurdle preventing mediocre and good Asian companies from breaking through a decades-long glass ceiling and achieving brand greatness? Myopic CEO leadership, he declares, in ‘ The Brutal Truth About Asian Branding: And how to break the vicious cycle'.

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The 'last' chocolate bar

Book Mark
Chocolate Wars
Deborah Cadbury
(http://www.harpercollins.co.in/)

Bitter fight for sweet business

A poignant chapter in Chocolate Wars by Deborah Cadbury is ‘Gone. And it was so easy,' which recounts ‘the hotly contested takeover of Cadbury' by Kraft just about a year ago.

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