New Books on Entrepreneurship and Business
The Power of Broke
Daymond John has been practicing the power of broke ever since he started selling his home-sewn t-shirts on the streets of Queens. With no funding and a $40 budget, Daymond had to come up with out-of-the box ways to promote his products. Luckily, desperation breeds innovation, and so he hatched an idea for a creative campaign that eventually launched the FUBU brand into a $6 billion dollar global phenomenon. But it might not have happened if he hadn't started out broke - with nothing but a heart full of hope and a ferocious drive to succeed by any means possible. Here, the FUBU founder and star of ABC's Shark Tank shows that, far from being a liability, broke can actually be your greatest competitive advantage as an entrepreneur.
#Girlboss
Sophia Amoruso spent her teens hitchhiking, committing petty theft, and scrounging in dumpsters. By age 22 she had dropped out of school, and was broke, directionless, and checking IDs in the lobby of an art school. It was in that lobby that Sophia decided to start selling vintage clothes on eBay. Flash forward ten years, and she's the founder and executive chairman of Nasty Gal, a $250-million-plus fashion retailer with more than 400 employees. Sophia was never a typical CEO, or a typical anything, and she's written #GIRLBOSS for other girls like her: outsiders (and insiders) seeking a unique path to success. #GIRLBOSS proves that being successful isn't about where you went to college or how popular you were in high school. It's about trusting your instincts and following your gut; knowing which rules to follow and which to break; when to button up and when to let your freak flag fly.
The Entrepreneur's Playbook
When failure is not an option. Big new ideas rarely make great businesses . . . Laboring on a business plan can be a waste of time . . . You are going to need dramatically more start-up money than you think you do. Counterintuitive concepts like these have helped the world's best entrepreneurs succeed. Yet most of us only learn them the hard way. Len Green, an experienced investor, entrepreneur, and business professor, shares inside secrets and proven tactics for launching a business. Based on his popular Ultimate Entrepreneurship course, the book explains how to: Locate sure-bet opportunities for improving products * Get serious about positioning, distributing, and licensing * Find funding * Take calculated risks and minimize failure * And much more. The Entrepreneur's Playbook allows you to become a virtual student: dozens of exercises (which you can submit online for feedback) and hundreds of examples make the learning stick. Why stumble your way to possible failure when you can tap into the best ideas for making your venture work.
Hacking Growth
The definitive playbook by the pioneers of Growth Hacking, one of the hottest business methodologies in Silicon Valley and beyond. It seems hard to believe today, but there was a time when Airbnb was the best-kept secret of travel hackers and couch surfers, Pinterest was a niche web site frequented only by bakers and crafters, LinkedIn was an exclusive network for C-suite executives and top-level recruiters, Facebook was MySpace's sorry step-brother, and Uber was a scrappy upstart that didn't stand a chance against the Goliath that was New York City Yellow Cabs. So how did these companies grow from these humble beginnings into the powerhouses they are today? Contrary to popular belief, they didn't explode to massive worldwide popularity simply by building a great product then crossing their fingers and hoping it would catch on. There was a studied, carefully implemented methodology behind these companies' extraordinary rise. That methodology is called Growth Hacking, and it's practitioners include not just today's hottest start-ups, but also companies like IBM, Walmart, and Microsoft as well as the millions of entrepreneurs, marketers, managers and executives who make up the community of GrowthHackers.com.
Originals
"Reading Originals made me feel like I was seated across from Adam Grant at a dinner party, as one of my favorite thinkers thrilled me with his insights and his wonderfully new take on the world." --Malcolm Gladwell, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Outliers and The Tipping Point "Originals is one of the most important and captivating books I have ever read, full of surprising and powerful ideas. It will not only change the way you see the world; it might just change the way you live your life. And it could very well inspire you to change your world." --Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer of Facebook and #1 New York Times bestselling author of Lean In The New York Times bestselling author of Give and Take examines how people can champion new ideas--and how leaders can encourage originality in their organizations.
Fast/Forward
The leading companies of the past twenty years have all harnessed the power of information to gain competitive advantage. But as access to big data becomes ubiquitous, it can no longer guarantee a leg up. Fast/Forward makes the case that we are entering a new era in which firms that understand the limits of 1s and 0s will take the lead. Whereas the industrial age saw the rise of bureaucracy, and the information age has been described as a meritocracy, we are witnessing the rise of adhocracy. In uncertain, rapidly-changing times, adhocracic organizations scan the horizon for winning opportunities. Then, instead of questing after more analysis, they respond with agility by making smart, intuitive decisions. Combining decisive action with emotional conviction, future-facing firms seize the day. Fast/Forward paints the big picture of a new approach to strategy and provides the necessary playbook to make your company fit for the future.
The Attention Merchants
From Tim Wu, author of the award-winning The Master Switch ( a New Yorker and Fortune Book of the Year) and who coined the term "net neutrality"--a revelatory, ambitious and urgent account of how the capture and re-sale of human attention became the defining industry of our time. Feeling attention challenged? Even assaulted? American business depends on it. In nearly every moment of our waking lives, we face a barrage of messaging, advertising enticements, branding, sponsored social media, and other efforts to harvest our attention. Few moments or spaces of our day remain uncultivated by the "attention merchants," contributing to the distracted, unfocused tenor of our times. Tim Wu argues that this condition is not simply the byproduct of recent technological innovations but the result of more than a century's growth and expansion in the industries that feed on human attention.
If You`re in a Dogfight, Become a Cat!
Businesses often find themselves trapped in a competitive dogfight, scratching and clawing for market share with products consumers view as largely undifferentiated. Conventional wisdom suggests that dogfights are to be expected as marketplaces mature, giving rise to the notion that there are "bad" industries where it is unlikely that any company can succeed. But there are notable exceptions in which enlightened executives have changed the rules to grasp the holy grail of business: long-term profitable growth. Rather than joining the dogfights raging within their industry, companies such as Apple, FedEx, and Starbucks have chosen to become metaphorical cats, continuously renewing their distinctive strategies to compete on their own terms.
Entrepreneurship
A practical guidebook for people interested in starting a business with comprehensive coverage of all aspects of starting, running and growing a business. This book includes everything needed to launch a successful business now--expert strategies, up-to-date trends, business planning guidance, and inspiring real-world case studies, along with worksheets and critical thinking exercises to help would-be entrepreneurs be successful.
The Caterpillar's Edge
The secret code to growing a successful business is adjusting your strategy every single day. Business leaders, large and small, need to learn a new game with very different rules. They must accept an ever-changing and uncertain landscape, but a landscape that can be constantly leveraged for greater profitability. They must believe that their companies are caterpillars with the potential to become butterflies. The Caterpillar's Edge shows why we must embrace a future of flux. It exposes the addictions that chain us to our past and the truths that influence our behaviors. And, it shows just how to seize breakthrough advantages by pushing through all the noise around "Big Data." Within its DNA, the caterpillar aspires and pushes for more, and it gets just that, evolving gracefully from one entity into another, always building a competitive edge in the process. Break free from accepted archaic business practices by cracking that secret code which demands evolving your business always.
Other Libraries
If you can't find the book you want you can always check the WorldCat Catalog to see if it is in a nearby library. SFC Library is a member of Academic Libraries of Brooklyn (ALB). If you request an ALB card from the Reference Desk you can visit six other academic libraries.
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