Six Pixels of Separation: Everyone Is Connected. Connect Your Business to Everyone. Review

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(More customer reviews)This is a book for someone who is unfamiliar with the internet. There are terrific tips scattered throughout, some of which I could really use. My problem with it is that a huge chunk of space is devoted to convincing the reader how important the internet is, how useful it can be in creating a successful business model in this new and exciting digital world. I already know I want to create a presence. I think anyone who picks up this book already knows s/he wants to create a presence. The question is how, but this is not a howto book.
Mitch Joel throws out a bunch of examples of things we can consider doing for our business: pod casts, widgets, blogs, etc. There's not much information about how to get started doing a pod cast, just that we should consider doing it and why it could help. There seems to be an assumption that the audience would be familiar with the technology enough to know how to get started, but such a reader would not need this book.


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Is it important to be connected? Well, consider this: If Facebook were a country, it would have the sixth largest population in the world. The truth is, we no longer live in a world of six degrees of separation. In fact, we're now down to only six pixels of separation, which changes everything we know about doing business.This is the first book to integrate digital marketing, social media, personal branding, and entrepreneurship in a clear, entertaining, and instructive manner that everyone can understand and apply. Through the use of timely case studies and fascinating stories, SIX PIXELS OF SEPARATION offers a complete set of the latest tactics, insights, and tools that will empower you to reach a global audience and consumer base-and, best yet, you can do this pretty much for free. Digital marketing expert Mitch Joel unravels this fascinating world of new media-but does so with a brand-new perspective that is driven by compelling results. The smarter entrepreneurs and top executives are leveraging these digital channels to get their voice "out there"-connecting with others, becoming better community citizens, and, ultimately, making strategic business moves that are increasing revenue, awareness, and overall success in the marketplace-without the support of traditional mass media. Everyone is connected. Isn't it time for you and your company to connect to everyone? SIX PIXELS OF SEPARATION will show you how.

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The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business Review

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(More customer reviews)Having graduated from a top business school in Canada, I can safety say that I could have thrown out all my textbooks and used the money I spent on tuition to actually START a business, and used this book as a replacement to my business education.
What makes this book warrant such a strong statement is the fact that it's a comprehensive synthesis of all of the concepts you need to know to understand business inside and out. There are no complex models to learn or outdated theories to memorize just to get marks or pass tests. What you get is a comprehensive set of "mental models" or heuristics on all of the sub parts of creating, operating and working within a business. Why is this important? Because a mental model is like a rule of thumb for any possible scenario you might encounter in running a business - from value creation to delivery to marketing to finance. It helps you look at the world through the lens of what's most important (and thus no fluff to distract you) which ultimately helps you to ask the right questions and ultimately helps guide you to make the right decisions about maneuvering in business. These principles are universal and applicable for small business start ups to Fortune 50 CEOs because they're based on business fundamentals (the mental models) and not just tactics found in most other books.
In addition to a sound business knowledge what this book has is a very extensive section on working with yourself and with others. Achieving great strides in business is sometimes less about knowing the business aspect but more about conquering yourself - either with productivity, with working with people or with overcoming doubts and fears - all things I'm finding out as I work on my own venture. After having read dozens of psychology and self help books I can also say without a doubt that the section on working with yourself trumps them all. Josh delivers a well researched practical guide to understanding how you brain works and how to work with it rather than against it, so you can actually go ahead and apply the concepts in the rest of the book.
Highly recommended if you wish to know more about business, are thinking of starting your own business, or are thinking about joining an MBA program to climb the corporate ladder. Buying this book could end up saving a mortgage worth of student debt, so what have you really got to lose?


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The Portable MBA (Portable MBA Series) Review

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(More customer reviews)The rage nowadays seems to be how you can circumvent the B school process, save 100,000 dollars, and still come out on top with all the knowledge free.
I got news for you.
It won't happen.
But there are activities and materials you can procure in order to sharpen your business acumen and critical reasoning skills.
This post comes as a result from a recent seminar I attended where deans from top MBA programs in NYC were convened to talk about the admissions process.
There were 5 up there - 3 of them agreed that if it weren't for the networking opportunities at B school, everything you get a B school can be attained by suscribing to the Economist.
I was shocked.
So here we go.
The top five ways to get your portable MBA:
1. Buy the complete Portable MBA Series. There are many more, but you only need these 8:
- the portable MBA (start with this one)
-" " finance/accounting.
-" " entrepreneurship
-" " marketing
- " " management
- " " strategy
- " " investments
- " " economics
You probably think I'm joking.
I'm not.
The wealth of information here will blow you away.
Be a smart and consider it all as an investment.
Anyways, top b schools cover all the topics listed above.
2. Suscribe to the Economist.
I suscribe to dozens of business periodicals, but the Economist is global in scope.
Remember that word - global.
You'll hear it a lot in Business school should you decide to go.
3. Read Thomas Friedman's new book: THE WORLD IS FLAT. I read over 300 business books a year (on average one a week) and this is so far the best book I've read in 2005.
Get this: Business Week polled some of the top B school professors in the nation and they all said they were planning on reading this over the summer.
I'll let you decide.
4. Be thankful you have the internet at your disposal.
Our parents did not have such a luxury as Google, Investopedia, or Wikipedia.
Read everthing related to business, finance, econ, marketing, technology, media, wall street, stock markets, venture capitalism, & the internet.
That means blogs, too...
5. Get cable and watch either CNNfn, CNBC, or Bloomberg as much as you can.
Even if you're busy, leave it on and let that juice seep into the subconscious.
Use discipline + never change the channel to watch what the rest of America watches.
So there you go.

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"This is a first-rate book by a first-rate group of scholars. It provides a clear distillation of some very powerful new concepts and integrates [them] into a practical general management framework that will help managers meet the challenges of the 21st century." W. Carl Kester James R. Williston Professor of Business Management Harvard Business School. "The Portable MBA is an outstanding resource. Every prospective MBA student should read it to jump-start their course work; every practicing manager, even those with MBAs, would also profit greatly from time spent with this excellent book." Dennis E. Logue, Steven Roth Professor of Management The Amos Tuck School, Dartmouth College. "An excellent launching pad for anybody interested in an overview of the state of business administration in the 1990s ...an indispensable guide for the beginner and seasoned manager alike." L. L. Marlantes, President and CEO The Rockefeller Group. "The Portable MBA will appeal to those who recognize that the tired old rules of business no longer apply in today's rapidly changing global environment.This book offers students and business professionals an up-to-date approach that integrates all the key functional areas of the business enterprise." John D. Finnerty, PhD, Partner, Coopers & Lybrand LLP Professor of Finance, Fordham University. "[The Portable MBA] offers an interdisciplinary, succinct, and practical approach to tools, concepts, and emerging trends facing executives who compete in the global economy." Barry D. Leskin National Head of Human Resources Ernst&Young, London. The Portable MBA, Third Edition offers you an opportunity to learn the cutting-edge business theory and practice now being taught at today's top MBA programs. Written by faculty members of the prestigious Darden School at the University of Virginia, and structured around that school's world-renowned general management program, this completely new edition reflects the most important current trends in MBA education, namely cross-functional management, leading from the middle, alliance management, and an understanding of global trade and investing.Like its predecessors, The Portable MBA, Third Edition delves into all the core material covered in the first year of a typical MBA program: marketing, economics, business ethics, technology, strategy, and human resources management to select a few. But here the authors take an integrated approach, highlighting concepts that cross functional lines and responsibility and provide an enterprise-wide perspective. In addition, numerous case studies, vignettes, and first-person accounts from managers and executives at leading companies create a richer understanding of business transformation. Finally, this updated version contains capstone material that highlights the challenges facing the twenty-first-century manager building customer value, creating new paradigms for managing in periods of turbulence, and managing technology. In the grand tradition of the internationally bestselling Portable MBA Series, The Portable MBA, Third Edition brings the insight and wisdom of some of the world's top business educators to the comfort of your favorite reading chair.

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Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means Review

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(More customer reviews)Updated 28 Dec 07 to add links.
I have mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand, it is coherent, thoughtful, and tells a story about the emerging science of networks that anyone, who can read, can understand. This is a non-trivial accomplishment, so 4 stars.
However, the book is also--being brilliantly designed to be understood by the lowest common denominator, an undergraduate--somewhat shallow and empty.... especially when compared with Stephen Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science", 1197 pages not counting the index, which is at the other extreme.
Although there are good notes, there is no bibliography, and the author fails to use network methodology to illustrate and document the emerging literature on networks--called citation analysis, this would have been a superb appendix to the book that would have taken it up a notch in utility.
Among the key points that the author discusses and which certainly make the book worth buying and reading, my above reservations not-with-standing:
1) Reductionism has driven 20th century science (and one might add, all other knowledge), with the result being that we have experts who know more and more about less and less--and )as CIA and FBI recently found)while leaving us devoid of generalists and multi-disciplinary artists and scientists who can "connect the dots" across these fragmented foci.
2) Contrary to the prevailing wisdom about networks being equally distributed and thus largely invulnerable to catastrophic meltdown, the author does a fine job of documenting the importance of selected "hubs", so important that their removal ultimately breaks the network down into isolated pieces. The functionality of the network, its strength, is also its weakness--vulnerability to deliberate attack against the hubs (the author does not mention the Internet domain directories except in passing while discussing a table error, but MAYEAST and MAYWEST would be two obvious directory hubs that could be better protected through replication).
3) The author inadvertently makes a vital contribution to our understanding of how to defend America against terrorism--discussing why no single authority can close down the Internet by fiat, he notes "The underlying network has become so distributed, decentralized and locally guarded that even such an ordinary task as getting a central map of it has become virtually impossible." LOCALLY GUARDED--this is the key phrase. Federalizing counter-terrorism, and using federal agents and computers at the state and local levels, will not be effective against terrorists in civilian guise within the homeland--only a complete extension of counterintelligence and counterterrorism methods to the state & local level--teaching them to fish for terrorists, rather than trying to catch the terrorists with federal trawlers, is the way to go.
4) The author flirts with what is known as nomadic computing, making the point that nodes built around individual people are becoming as important--some would say more important--in a networked economy than nodes built around static organizations. There is a useful general discussion of how "fitness" in a networked economy is a combination of speed and scalability as well as diversity of linkages. As a general rule, as the FBI found (and also CIA, INS, and the State Department), systems with a single hub resistant to initiative from the field offices will tend to be slow and ineffective.
Missing from this populist overview is a discussion of the vital importance of geospatial information. While the author helpfully notes the Earth is increasingly covered by an electronic "skin" with millions of measuring devices, with experts predicting that by 2010 there will "around 10,000 telemetric devices for each human on the planet" (one suspects this refers only to privileged humans, not the billions of dispossessed that lack telephones, never mind computers), he does not take the next essential step, which is to note that in the absence of an XML-GEO standard and a global push to associate geospatial as well as temporal tags with all data, much of what we collect will, like the trillions of bits we have collected with secret satellites, never get processed in a meaningful manner.
This is a helpful book that will be of value to the general reader at the elementary (adult) level.
See also:
The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All
Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration
Collective Intelligence: Mankind's Emerging World in Cyberspace
Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century
One from Many: VISA and the Rise of Chaordic Organization
The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom
World Brain (Essay Index Reprint Series)
The Wisdom of Crowds
An Army of Davids: How Markets and Technology Empower Ordinary People to Beat Big Media, Big Government, and Other Goliaths

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Complete MBA For Dummies Review

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(More customer reviews)Have contemplated the idea of doing an MBA for a while, so came across this and thought it may give me a good basic idea of what will be covered. While the book covers a lot of ground, I found it way too basic. I mean, if you are at the point where you are considering an MBA, a reasonable base level of management understanding (either from undergrad or practical experience) can be somewhat assumed. This reads more like 'beginning business for dummies' or some such - well below 'mastering' business for the sort of person who may be considering MBA courses. Anyhow, it was well written, covered a lot of areas of business at a surface level, but certainly didn't provide me with a lot of new depth on any business areas.

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Want to get an MBA? The Complete MBA For Dummies, 2nd Edition, is the practical, plain-English guide that covers all the basics of a top-notch MBA program, helping you to navigate today's most innovative business strategies. From management to entrepreneurship to strategic planning, you'll understand the hottest trends and get the latest techniques for motivating employees, building global partnerships, managing risk, and manufacturing.
This fun, easy-to-access guide is full of useful information, tips, and checklists that will help you lead, manage, or participate in any business at a high level of competence. You'll find out how to use databases to your advantage, recognize and reward your employees, analyze financial statements, and understand the challenges of strategic planning in a global business environment. You'll also learn the basic principals of accounting, get a grip on the concepts behind stocks and bonds, and find out how technology has revolutionized everything from manufacturing to marketing. Discover how to:
Know and respond to your customers' needs
Handle budgets and forecasts
Recruit and retain top people
Establish and run employee teams
Use Sarbanes-Oxley to your company's advantage
Negotiate with the best of them
Build long-term relationships with clients
Avoid common managerial mistakes
Improve cash flow
Market your products and services
Make the most of your advertising dollar

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MBA In A Day: What You Would Learn At Top-Tier Business Schools (If You Only Had The Time) Review

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(More customer reviews)In my case the book was a great refresher having graduated over 3 years ago with a Business Adm. Major in college.
For anyone unfamiliar with basic business concepts (Theory) this book is a practical & simple guide to learning the basics.
For other's like me it's a great reference tool and refresher if you've been away from the books for a while.
I'm planning to go to B-School this fall and I feel a little more comfortable now- knowing that the material is fresh in my mind.
The book is easy to understand, well written and logically compiled. I would definitely recommend anyone searching for a business concepts book to give this book a shot.

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The same critical information top business schools teachBased on Professor Stralser's popular seminar series, MBA in a Day? is specifically designed for the busy professional (physician, attorney, architect, nonprofit executive, etc.) or entrepreneur/small business owner, who needs to know about the "business-side" of their practice, organization or business. With comprehensive coverage of vital business topics, important concepts and proven strategies taught at top graduate schools, this handy book offers a complete business education without the hassle of enrolling in an MBA program. Divided into four sections covering management and policy; economics, finance, and accounting; marketing; and systems and processes; this straightforward guide is easy to navigate and simple to use. Packed with illustrative examples, helpful anecdotes, and real-world case studies, this commonsense guide covers everything busy professionals would learn at the very best business schools-if they only had the time.Steven Stralser, PhD (Phoenix, AZ), is Clinical Professor and Managing Director, The Global Entrepreneurship Center at Thunderbird: The American Graduate School of International Management and founder and CEO of The Center for Professional Development, Inc., an organization dedicated to post-graduate training and education of today's professionals.

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