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humanity at large." It's up to lead- ers, they say, to rally the workforce and transform the organization. (McGraw-Hill, $27.95) Young investment bankers angling to get into Harvard might first want to read The MBA Reality Check, an intimate and gossipy deconstruction of the grad school admissions process from MBA consultants Evan Forster and David Thomas. GPAs, test scores, and experience are all important, they concede, but what really sets candidates apart are the "stories" they convey in essays and interviews. "Your essays are not about proving your worth; they are about creating a lasting impression on the committee by painting an evocative picture of how you think, what you care about, how you make decisions, your per- sonal leadership style, and what you look like in action." Candi- dates can't develop compel- ling stories by spending one afternoon painting houses for Habitat for Human- ity; they must explore the causes that really move them and demonstrate how they would change the world if they had the business skills to do so. Anecdotes about previous candidates and interviews with admissions per- sonnel add depth to the book—and yes, a wealth of stories. (Prentice Hall, $20) Today's corporations increasingly rely on customization to create more loyal and satisfied customers, but few use the same techniques to reward and retain employees. That might change soon, predict Susan M. Cantrell and David Smith in Workforce of One. As workplaces continue to diversify, and technology simplifies complex tasks, managers are finding it easier to tai- lor jobs, salaries, benefits, and sched- ules to individual employees. It's not as hard as it sounds, insist the authors, both affiliated with Accen- ture. They identify four approaches a company can take: segmenting employees by working styles or well- ness profiles; offering them modular choices in terms of responsibilities and environments; drawing broad and simple rules that consider how work is done, not how much time it takes; and allowing employees to define and personalize their own career paths. The book is aimed primarily at HR professionals, but it sketches out a vision of the future corpora- tion that most executives would find equally intriguing. (Harvard Business Press, $35) "Risk has developed a bad reputation," write Frederick Funston and Stephen Wagner in Surviving and Thriv- ing in Uncertainty. Conventional methods of managing risk focus on protecting assets, but fail to iden- tify new opportunities and create value, according to Wagner, recently retired from Deloitte & Touche, and Funston, still a principal with the firm. Conventional risk management also overlooks the disruptive power of market cycles, new technology, and catastrophic one-time events. The authors propose a more holis- tic approach of "risk intelligence," in which leaders acknowledge and prepare for a wide range of poten- tial threats. The authors isolate ten essential risk intelligence skills—such as abandoning familiar assumptions, anticipating causes of failure, and sustaining operational discipline—and provide in- depth guidelines for how executives and board mem- bers can hone these skills. "Broadly defined, risk management is the discipline of improving your chances of survival and success, particularly in uncertainty and turbulence," write Funston and Wagner. They under- stand that there is no reward without risk—but only if the risks are properly managed. (Wiley, $34.95) Entrepreneurship has a long and varied history, and academics explore its evolution in The Invention of Enter- prise. Edited by Harvard's David Landes, Northwestern's Joel Mokyr, and New York University's William Baumol, the book collects essays from the editors and 18 other econ- omists and historians. They look for commonalities in the societies that prospered—or failed to prosper— from entrepreneurial innovation, and they note that entrepreneurship is directly affected by the prevailing culture and religion. Ultimately, they pry open "a window into the seem- ingly innate impulse for innovation and entrepreneurship that cuts across cultures and time periods," writes Carl J. Schramm in the introduction. Schramm is CEO of the Ewing Mar- ion Kauffman Foundation, which is collaborating with the Berkley Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at New York Univer- sity and Princeton University Press to produce a series on innovation and entrepreneur- ship. (Princeton University Press, $49.50) ■ z BizEd JULY/AUGUST 2010 65