Reading List for Apr'09

Pour your heart into it: How Starbucks built a company one cup at a time
I've visited Starbucks stores in several countries and have always been amazed by what they have achieved - consistent customer centric approach, the relaxed atmosphere at their stores, the attitude of their employees(and ofcourse their coffee). As a part of my PMBA study, I have made it a point to read about the great companies. This month, I want to understand what all has gone behind the making of Starbucks.




Co-Opetition: A Revolutionary Mindset That Combines Competition and Co-operation
This is another book, which is a part of my PMBA study on strategy. I have been fascinated by Game Theory and encountered the problem (as the authors state) of having too much material on Game Theory that is either heavy on the mathematics part or have examples that have no context to the business. My friend Vinay blogged about this book a while ago and I finally found time to go through it. The authors talk about three concepts - 1. Value net (a framework that forces you to think not just about competition and customer, but also on suppliers and complementors) 2. Role-playing (putting yourself in the shoes and heads of all the players in the game) and 3. PARTS (5 ways of looking into the game - Players, Added value, Rules, Tactics and Scope). Promises to be an interesting read.

The Wisdom of Crowds
I first read about this book in Tom Peters blog post titled The Power of Independent Thinking. In this book the author argues that "under the right circumstances, groups are remarkably intelligent, and are often smarter than the smartest people in them." A quick glance revealed that there are lot of (hopefully) easy to understand examples (infact the author points out that the celebrated Google Page Rank that almost gives what you are searching in the very first page of a Google result, is one of the biggest example of the wisdom of crowds).



Classic Drucker: From the pages of Harvard Business Review
I like the prescriptive and almost blunt style of Peter Drucker and have been heavily inspired and influenced by his works. This particular book is a collection of some of his remarkables HBR articles. The chapter on self-management itself would get you an immediate RoI.