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bookshelf D I S R U PT OR B E D I S R U PTE D AUTHOR: Graduate Management Admission Council; PUBLISHER: Jossey-Bass, US$40 management education's major challenges are laid out compellingly in this collection of essays curated by GMAC. Georgetown's Brooks Holtom and UC Irvine's Lyman Porter introduce the collection with a sobering overview that examines how schools are reacting to financial pressures, changing demographics, evolving program formats, and technological disruptions. To preserve their relevance and reputations, the authors write, schools must rethink "how they conduct research, select and retain faculty, design curriculum, engage students, and measure quality." Holtom is joined by DePaul's Erich Dierdorff in a final chapter that identifies the two features that will dictate management education's long-term health: "the overall quality of each institution's articulated mission, and each institution's corresponding strategic planning and positioning." TALE NT I NTE LLIG E NCE AUTHORS: Nik Kinley and Shlomo Ben-Hur PUBLISHER: JosseyBass, US$34.95 If you hire the right people, employees will stay longer, perform at higher levels, and be productive more quickly. But research shows that an average of 50 percent of new hires fail, according to consultant Kinley and IMD's Ben-Hur. They list five reasons: "1. Talent measurement is unavoidably complex. 2. It is hard to know what works. 3. Measurement methods do not always meet business needs. 4. Implementation gets overlooked. 5. Businesses lack expertise." They describe the various qualities that have been used to gauge talent—such as experience, competency, intelligence, and personality—and emphasize that no metric will be valuable if its results aren't implemented. But the effort is worth it, they believe: Businesses that keep the best talent "outperform their industry's average return to shareholders by 22 percent." STARTU P R I S I NG AUTHOR: Christopher M. Schroeder PUBLISHER: Palgrave MacMillan, US$27 Youth, technology, and the Arab Spring have combined to cre- 64 September/October 2013 BizEd ate amazingly fertile ground for entrepreneurship in the Middle East. Schroeder, himself an entrepreneur and investor, first describes the situation in cities like Dubai and Cairo, where eager young entrepreneurs are taking advantage of the digital revolution to launch businesses not hampered by conservative and sometimes corrupt bureaucracies. Then he presents a series of profiles on groundbreakers who have started to build empires in areas as diverse as package delivery, mobile banking, and online book selling. He doesn't minimize the challenges these entrepreneurs face, but he's optimistic as he considers the "hurricane-force winds" at their backs: online technology, which offers access to knowledge and capital; a venture capitalist community that has gotten comfortable with risk after 20 years of investing in BRIC countries; and changing market dynamics. No wonder he admits to being electrified by today's young entrepreneurs. Don't Miss Negotiating is a chaotic exercise that is "more like jazz than science," writes Michael Wheeler in The Art of Negotiation. He provides plenty of examples of negotiations that have succeeded or failed depending on how well the participants understood the basic cycles of learning about, adapting to, and influencing the other party. "Managing uncertainty should be the cornerstone of your negotiation strategy," writes Wheeler of Harvard. He helps readers understand if and when they should negotiate—and what the real stakes are. (Simon & Schuster, US$26) To hold on to their top talent and protect proprietary information, firms routinely require employees to sign noncompete and nondisclosure contracts. But that's the road to economic stagnation, writes Orly Lobel of the University of San Diego in Talent Wants to Be Free. Evidence suggests that companies will have better luck with R&D when high turnover allows knowledgeable employees to move freely within their industries. She writes, "Competitors such as Facebook and Google, Pepsi and Coca-Cola, and Southwest and JetBlue can zealously increase their investments, innovation, and bottom-line profits as their most talented players travel from competitor to competitor, exchanging ideas and passion." (Yale University Press, US$35).