The AMA handbook of business documents : guidelines and sample documents that make business writing easy

 by Kevin Wilson and Jennifer Wauson. Your company "s identity, products, services, and strengths are all represented by its written communications. From business plans and sales presentations to newsletters and e-mail marketing, the way the company comes across on a page or screen can make the difference between big success and big trouble. The AMA Handbook of Business Documents takes the guesswork out of preparing firstclass written pieces of every type. Packed with dozens of sample documents and practical tips, this handy guide is everything you need to create: Proposals Memos E-mails Press releases Collection letters Speeches Technical, research and lab reports Sales letters Policies and procedures Warning letters Announcements Suited equally to executives, entrepreneurs, managers, and administrative staff anyone charged with putting a business "s intentions into words The AMA Handbook of Business Documents is a versatile, powerful, and indispensable toolbox. --Publisher (Check Catalog)

Escape velocity : free your company's future from the pull of the past

 by Geoffrey A. Moore. Moore, consultant, entrepreneur, and venture capitalist, offers advice on how a company's management should continue to maximize results from past successes while setting sights on new growth and opportunities. Globalization is the significant reality that has changed the corporate landscape for everyone. Using case studies, charts, and diagrams, the author devotes a chapter to each element of his Hierarchy of Powers, which evaluates all economic competition in relation to five types of economic power: category power (demand for a given class of products/services), company power (typically exhibited in market share), market power (reputation within a market segment and its share of that segment), offer power (demand for a given product/service vis-a-vis competitors), and execution power (ability to outperform competitors). Moore concludes, the advantage goes to whomever can call the tune first, identify the relevant changes under way, find the pivotal role to play, and communicate the vision in actionable frameworks. This is a thought-provoking book for business leaders and those seeking leadership roles. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

The big enough company : creating a business that works for you

 by Adelaide Lancaster. Lancaster and Abrams, the founders of In Good Company, a New York City community workspace for female entrepreneurs, draw on the acumen of 100 businesswomen for tips on building a strong, sustaining company tailored to your needs and capabilities. Entrepreneurs, they argue, frequently start their own businesses because they think leaving the corporate world will give them freedom and the power to be their own bosses-but as time goes by, the pressure to expand can leave them feeling that the businesses are owning them rather than the other way around. How do you sustain a company that is just big enough to deliver what you need and achieve what you want? The authors use case studies from their interviews to illustrate the need to undertake smart growth that is strategic, creative, and goal-driven, to clarify your goals and your purpose, to build and manage an effective team, and to keep focused and keep goals reasonable. Their approach is inspirational and strategic, rather than immediately actionable; it's smart, helpful reading that stops just short of providing a toolkit for putting real change into effect. --Publishers Weekly (Check Catalog)

The great crash ahead : strategies for a world turned upside down

 by Harry S. Dent. With little attempt to soften the blow, Dent (The Great Depression Ahead) and Johnson use demographics to predict that the Dow Jones Industrial Average will drop to approximately 3,000 between late 2012 and late 2014, while house prices will fall between 55% and 65% before the crisis ends. At the end of their spending lifecycle, aging Baby Boomers are avoiding conspicuous consumption and heavy credit card debt, and saving for retirement, rather than investing in college educations, or making large real estate purchases. By the time readers absorb the theory of seasons of inflation over an 80-year cycle, problems with the Fed, and unfunded liabilities in all strata of government, they may feel that the best place for their money is in a sock under the mattress. However, Dent and Johnson offer suggestions for surviving the next decade, as well as a few simple (perhaps obvious) ideas to solve national problems, including Social Security and the mortgage crisis. --Publishers Weekly (Check Catalog)

Grand pursuit : the story of economic genius

 by Sylvia Nasar. The historical transformation of economics from laissez-faire into a. instrument of master. (Nasar's phrase) thematically presides over these biographical sketches of some of those who were instrumental in the process. Showing them all wrestling in some way with the causes of poverty and prosperity, Nasar opens with Marx and his habit of supporting himself on cadged capital while he wrote Das Kapital. Indeed, the way Nasar's subjects dealt with their own funds enlivens her presentations of what they advised businesses, banks, and governments to do with theirs. In Nasar's time frame, about 1870-1960, the booms and busts her economists lived through affected their wallets as much as their theorizing. Though few of her subjects besides Marx, Keynes, and Milton Friedman will be familiar to many readers, such figures as Irving Fisher, inventor of the Rolodex, and Joan Robinson, a British economist with a colorful background, become supremely interesting in her hands. Also including sketches of socialist Beatrice Webb, conservative icon F. W. Hayek, and developmental economist Amartya Sen, Nasar creatively deploys lives-and-times to show the evolution of economics from an explanation of fate into an application of policy. . HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Sylvia Nasar's A Beautiful Mind (1998), a biography of schizophrenic mathematician-economist John Nash, was converted into an Academy Award-winning movie starring Russell Crowe, priming above-average awareness of this author and interest in her sequel about economists. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

Empowered : unleash your employees, energize your customers, transform your business

 by Josh Bernoff. Two vice presidents at Forrester Research (Bernoff is also the coauthor of Groundswell) offer a rare thing: a book about using new technologies that actually goes beyond jargon and offers practical solutions. In addition to providing examples of how today's consumers have empowered themselves through social software, the authors suggest that the best way to deal with such customers is to train and support empowered workers (or HEROes, "highly empowered and resource operatives"). The most valuable part of the book is its second half, which describes how HERO employees, management, and IT staff can and must collaborate to make the system work. The focus on the whole organization makes this a good read for employees and managers alike. --Library Journal (Check Catalog)

Groundswell : winning in a world transformed by social technologies

 by Charlene Li. Kudos to Li and Bernoff (both, Forrester Research) for this jam-packed guide to using social networking sites to market products and services and engage customers. Timely and accessible, Groundswell provides an insider's look into the Internet world of blogs, online communities, wikis, discussion groups, tweets, and more. The book is filled with stories of companies that have successfully harnessed the power of the Internet to connect with customers and build relationships. For example, Blendtec, manufacturer of a $399 blender, used the "Will it blend?" video on YouTube to show its industrial-strength blender chewing up everything from wooden two-by-twos to Apple iPhones--and increased sales by 20 percent. Accounting firm Ernst & Young built a Facebook "wall" to recruit new accounting graduates. Procter & Gamble created the Beinggirl.com community to connect with teenage girls, answering their coming-of-age questions while steering them to the company's tampon products. With its techniques, strategies, and how-to advice on tapping into the online social networking movement, Groundswell is a must for today's marketers. See related, David Meerman Scott's The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use News Releases, Blogs, Podcasting, Viral Marketing and Online Media to Reach Buyers Directly (CH, Dec'07, 45-2127). Summing Up: Highly recommended. --Choice (Check catalog)