November 2023 MBR The Business Shelf

The Business Shelf

International Entrepreneurship, second edition
Antonella Zucchella, et al.
Edward Elgar Publishing
9 Dewey Court, Northampton, MA 01060-3815
www.e-elgar.com
9781802204834, $125.00, HC, 182pp

https://www.e-elgar.com/shop/usd/international-entrepreneurship-9781802204858.html

https://www.amazon.com/International-Entrepreneurship-Second-Antonella-Zucchella/dp/1802204830

Synopsis: Now in a thoroughly revised and updated second edition, "International Entrepreneurship" explains the opportunities and challenges facing internationalising entrepreneurial ventures. With a new section on international sustainable entrepreneurship and new cases and examples throughout, this second edition of a heretofore successful textbook will be indispensable for students of international entrepreneurship.

Critique: Exceptionally well organized and presented, this new second edition of "International Entrepreneurship: provides a solid foundation for all international entrepreneurship course curriculums, as well as an ideal supplementary text for graduate students studying entrepreneurship and international business. While unreservedly recommended for college/university library Business/Entrepreneurship collections and supplemental MBA curriculums studies lists, it should be noted that "International Entrepreneurship: 2nd Edition" is also available in a paperback edition (9781802204858, $58.95) and an ebook edition (9781802204841, $47.16).

Editorial Note: Antonella Zucchella, Full Professor, Department of Economics and Management, University of Pavia, Italy, Birgit Hagen, Associate Professor of International Entrepreneurship and Marketing, Department of Economics and Management, University of Pavia, Italy and Vorarlberg University of Applied Sciences, Austria and Manuel G. Serapio, Associate Professor, Business School, and Faculty Director, IIB-CIBER, University of Colorado - Denver.

Belonging Rules
Brad Deutser
Matt Holt Books
c/o BenBella Books
www.benbellabooks.com
Blackstone Audiobooks
https://www.blackstonelibrary.com
9781637744024, $30.00, HC, 272pp

https://www.amazon.com/Belonging-Rules-Crucial-Actions-Performance/dp/1637744021

Synopsis: The need to belong is innate and enduring, yet often elusive. Genuine belonging requires a bold approach, one that offers both depth and credibility to the work required from leaders whose organizations are craving a sense of connection, security, and acceptance.

With the publication of "Belonging Rules: Five Crucial Actions That Build Unity and Foster Performance", Brad Deutser offers nuanced, direct guidance for navigating both the pre-existing and ever-evolving social and organizational demands of today's workplace. The five rules within, based on extensive research and application, create a framework to dissect and decode the complex, complicated, and controversial issues of the modern workforce.

And executive coach and award-winning management consultant, Deutser gives leaders the confidence to address the most critical societal imperative -- belonging. His approach doesn't tell leaders what to do, rather he provides leaders with the how to: Identify the heart of existing power structures and societal mandates; Reframe the impact of inclusion at an individual and organizational level; Challenge and fundamentally redefine the relationship with diverse stakeholders.

Leading can be uncomfortable. "Belonging Rules" is a guide that will empower leaders to shift attention, understanding, and effort toward bridging differences and uniting the "movable middle" which depowers the extremes, driving necessary change and desired performance.

Critique: Exceptionally 'reader friendly' in style, tone, organization and presentation, "Belonging Rules: Five Crucial Actions That Build Unity and Foster Performance" is informatively enhanced with the inclusion of a ten page listing of Acknowledgments, a four page Selected Bibliography, and a seven page Index. Of particular and specific value to readers with an interest in workplace culture, business management, and organizational leadership, "Belong Rules" is an appropriate and highly recommended pick for personal, professional, community, corporate, and college/university library Business Management collections and supplemental curriculum studies lists. It should be noted for MBA students, academia, corporate executives, business managers, entrepreneurs, and non-specialist general readers with an interest in the subject that "Belonging Rules: Five Crucial Actions That Build Unity and Foster Performance" is also available in a digital book format (Kindle, $14.99) and as a complete and unabridged audio book (Blackstone Audio, 9798212928984, $41.99, CD)

Editorial Note: Brad Deutser (https://deutser.com) is founder and CEO of Deutser, an award-winning management consulting firm, and the Deutser Clarity Institute, a think tank, idea accelerator, and innovative learning center. Deutser has transformed many prominent educational, healthcare, energy, industrial services, professional services, private equity, retail, and cause-based organizations through his unique perspective on organizational clarity. He is a leading business consultant, creative strategist, executive coach, and trusted counselor to top corporate leaders working to build great companies inside and out, especially during the turbulence of transition.

Game Changer: How Strategic Pricing Will Reshape Your Business, Your Market, and Society
Jean-Manuel Izaret and Arnab Sinha
Wiley
www.wiley.com
9781394190584, $45.00

https://www.amazon.com/Game-Changer-Strategic-Pricing-Business/dp/1394190581

Business readers who choose Game Changer: How Strategic Pricing Will Reshape Your Business, Your Market, and Society will find its analysis and suggestions for a comprehensive pricing strategy to be attractive not because it's a succinct overview, but because of its depth of attention to business details and comprehensive methodology. Of necessity, this means that Game Changer is recommended more for the future-thinking executive or entrepreneur who seeks to craft a vision paired with practicality about developing a logical frameworks for pricing (here called 'The Strategic Pricing Hexagon') than those looking for quick how-to reading. This depth is emphasized in chapters that encourage not only rethinking existing pricing strategies, but identifying ways they fail long-term.

The book demonstrates how to create a winning game plan for transitioning existing pricing approaches to decisions based on a vastly revised application of unilateral moves that take competition and internal business frameworks into consideration. From assessing the modern role of supply and demand and the "failure of the aggregate supply and demand curve" to better understanding traditional and non-traditional applications of pricing decisions, Game Changer ultimately presents a major opportunity to business readers - to reinvent the wheel of pricing strategies based on value-driven approaches. This principle (and others within) may feel ethereal, but another big 'plus' to this examination lies in its many case histories of real-world business stories, which profile companies that took a game-changing risk and ran with it successfully. From specific transformation challenges that affect different departments in a corporate structure to reviews of key takeaways to each account of successful alternatives, Jean-Manuel Izaret and Arnab Sinha reinforce their survey at all points and in different ways to show just how pricing strategy revision affects and challenges all levels of business.

Offering training and incentives, challenging established market pricing and strategies, and analyzing customer life cycles and how to fine-tune value throughout changing circumstances, Game Changer continually recalibrates the formula for maximum success. It provides practical insights and applications that business leaders will find enlightening and essential when building their own pricing strategy adaptations. How is value created, transmitted, and fine-tuned? These and other questions are answered in a wide-ranging yet specific approach that is highly recommended for business leaders who know they need to reinvent their company's approaches to pricing strategy, value, and frameworks leading to long-term success. Business library collections seeking a major contribution on the topic of strategic pricing will appreciate the scope and depth of Game Changer, which elevates it from another business book to a major lexicon of well-developed pricing approach strategies.

The Growth Leader
Scott K. Edinger
Fast Company Press
https://fastcompanypress.com
Brilliance Audio
https://audiobookstore.com/publishers/brilliance-audio
9781639080472, $27.95, HC, 216pp

https://www.amazon.com/Growth-Leader-Strategies-Drive-Bottom/dp/1639080473

Synopsis: The basic premise of "The Growth Leader: Strategies to Drive the Top and Bottom Lines" by Scott K. Edinger is that growth is a leadership issue, not a sales issue.

However you define business growth (total revenue, net income, margin expansion, number of products and services, or customer loyalty) sustained and strategic growth requires an organization to do more than sell by simply communicating the value of its products or services. It must create value in the way it sells by delivering a compelling experience that adds value beyond the product itself. As a leader, it's your job to build and guide that experience.

"The Growth Leader" reveals how top executives create profitable growth through the intersection of strategy, leadership, and sales. With a clear strategy, inspiring leadership, and aligned sales, powerful leaders understand that true competitive advantage doesn't come from innovation alone but belongs to companies that use their sales organization to add and create value. In this leadership guide, you'll learn how to ensure growth strategy is aligned at every level of the company, from boardroom initiatives to daily customer interaction.

With the publication of "The Growth Leader", leadership author and business growth consultant Scott K. Edinger helps CEOs and leaders intentionally and strategically engage with the customer experience to differentiate, innovate, cultivate loyalty, and grow. With this growth strategy mindset, your teams will know what they're supposed to be doing, have the skills to accomplish their work at a high level, and be properly supported by systems, process, and environment. But they can only do all this if you lead them -- if you are willing to be a Growth Leader.

Critique: Exceptionally well written, organized and presented, "The Growth Leader: Strategies to Drive the Top and Bottom Lines" will be of particular, practical, and special value to readers with an interest in business management, strategy, competition, forecasting, and corporate leadership. While especially and unreservedly recommended for personal, professional, community, corporate, and college/university library Business Management collections and supplemental curriculum studies lists, it should be noted for MBA students, academia, coporate executives, business managers, and non- specialist general readers with an interest in the subject that "The Growth Leader" is also available in a digital book format (Kindle, $9.99) and as a complete and unabridged audio book (Brilliance Audio, 9781799746201, $29.99, MP3-CD).

Editorial Note: Scott K. Edinger (https://www.scottedinger.com) is a premier consultant for leading business growth who has worked with CEOs and senior leaders to develop pragmatic strategies and execute approaches to drive top and bottom line results. He has written three books and over a hundred articles in Forbes and Harvard Business Review, among other prominent publications. Scott has served as an affiliate faculty member for the University of North Carolina, Kenan-Flagler School of Business. He received a B.S. in Communication Studies and Rhetoric from Florida State University, where he sat on alumni committees including the Board of the College of Communication and Information, as well as the Seminole Torchbearers.

Write Your OWN Story
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession
Warren Publishing
www.warrenpublishing.net
9781957723013, $26.95 Hardcover/$15.95 Paper/$4.99 ebook

https://www.amazon.com/Write-Your-OWN-Story-Thrive/dp/1957723009

Write Your OWN Story: Three Keys to Rise and Thrive as a Badass Career Woman embraces the notion of a revised form of "badass career woman" who changes the workplace through a more humanitarian attitude towards work, career, and interacting with others. It confronts and revises many popular notions of work value, ethics, and business processes during the course of advocating a revised role for career women who want something more from their lives. The nuggets of wisdom that form this new approach originated with Rebecca Fleetwood Hession's own realizations about her success and its ultimate cost. Those who follow her admonition to become "badass" receive not only a blueprint for transformation, but the logic behind contemplating such a vast change.

Business titles promising transformation through processes of reformulating and restructuring business goals and methods are nothing new. What is new (and invigorating) about Write Your OWN Story is its focus on adding human objectives and rejecting formerly-accepted notions of dysfunction as part of the business success story. What is prosperity? What human needs can be translated to a goal statement that works on more than one level? These and other questions segue business and humanitarian goals in ways which are unique to this book, yet supported by experiences of revised real-world processes that have been proven to translate to greater success than traditional business methods.

Ideally, Write Your OWN Story will receive widespread attention from businesswomen and women involved in redefining and creating a more positive, empowered work environment. It also will attract leaders and managers with more than a cursory interest in identifying inherently dysfunctional processes and patterns in their operations, who would replace them with more proactive, supportive routines and systems. Libraries that cater to business readers but look for wider-ranging discussions appropriate for book clubs of all kinds will find Write Your OWN Story a vivid, potentially positively explosive acquisition.

Don't Lead By Example
Thom Hayes
Warren Publishing
www.warrenpublishing.net
9781954614901, $24.95 Hardcover/$17.95 Paper/$4.99 ebook

https://www.amazon.com/Dont-Lead-Example-Thoughts-Leadership/dp/1954614896

Don't Lead By Example: Thoughts and Essays on Leadership and Life explores the horizons of leadership in not just the business world, but the broader perspective of life endeavors and interactions with others. It does so by assessing the impact of leaders on teams and outcomes with an analytical eye to exploring not just traits and strategies, but how they are executed, considering their ultimate impact on life. Thom Hayes dispels many myths of leadership often promoted in other books, incorporating some thirty years of leadership experience into the observation that "it's the experience, not the title, that matters." It took many years for him to gather the experience to create this book, but hopefully it won't take that long for his followers to absorb his important insights.

Would-be leaders who eschew linear thinking and long books will delight in the succinct approach represented here, which features a flexibility and ideals which are neither staid nor overly described. Examples from various facets of business and military life can be applied to virtually any life situation and thus prove more translatable than many similar-sounding leadership or management books. Additionally, Hayes cultivates a tone that pairs real-world examples of leadership failures and successes with insights that will give many a leader pause for thought. This is only the opening salvo to a rich compendium of experiences, assessments, and eye-opening insights that encourage readers to act kindly, consciously, and on a level that engages more firmly and productively with those they seek to guide.

From secrets to "spinning gold star performance" that considers basic attitudes towards work, workers, and demonstrating a vested interest in not only results, but personal lives, to the types of dialogues and interactions that, when tweaked, produce better outcomes, Hayes creates a book that, in itself, is as much a dialogue for self-improvement and better engagement as it is a focus on leadership approaches that result in better outcomes for all. Don't Lead By Example is a lively, inviting, thought-provoking book that ideally will spark discussions among book club readers as well as proving an attractive library acquisition - especially for collections seeing interest in leadership books that connects many seemingly disparate dots to close the gap between ideals, actions, and engagement.

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Midwest Book Review