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Bookshelf He believes that China's cul- ture-shaping architectures— law, technology, and leader- ship—combine to create an atmosphere highly favorable to entrepreneurship, whereas in America those same archi- tectures no longer foster the fertile entrepreneurial spirit so rampant in the 1990s. As the bal- ance of entrepreneurial activity skews away from the West, Hundt expects that "Chinese and other Eastern firms will make almost everything for nearly everybody in the world"— a concentration of productivity that will have widespread effects on politics and economics around the world. Hundt, with a clear bias toward U.S. entrepreneurship, pres- ents "the need to act, the difficulties of action, the possibilities for action, and the reasons for hope." (Yale University Press, $26) Getting a product to market isn't a simple or straightforward process, and as a company grows, its methods for putting products in consumers' hands tend to become both more complicated and more resistant to change. That's bad news for any executive trying to make distribu- tion channels more effective—even a source of competitive advantage. Fortunately, help is on hand in Har- vard professor V. Kasturi Rangan's Transforming Your Go-To-Market Strat- egy, written with Marie Bell. Rangan dissects the forces that shape chan- nel distribution and illustrates how executives can map out the influences affecting their own 64 BizEd SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2006 fields. He then shows how "channel stewards" can build and edit a channel value chain so that customers are best served and key members of the supply chain are rewarded. "Stewardship... requires a laserlike focus on the customer and a rigorous study of how the various partners contribute to the channel value chain," Rangan writes. He offers all manner of examples, from the huge auto industry to smaller pri- vate enterprises, making the book valuable for readers at all points of the business spectrum. (Harvard Business School Press, $25) Can love be a competitive advantage? Absolutely, say Jerry Porras, Stewart Emery and Mark Thompson in Suc- cess Built to Last. "Passionate peo- ple spend twice as much time thinking about what they've accomplished, how doable the task ahead is, and how capable they are of it," say the authors. They've interviewed hundreds of dedicated, successful individuals from all fields of endeavor—Jimmy Carter, Nelson Mandela, Maya Angelou, Bono, and a host of lesser-known people—to discover what contributes to long-term suc- cess and a meaningful life. While the book definitely has inspirational qualities, it also tries to honestly analyze the elements that make up true, lasting success. Love is only part of the equation. (Wharton School Publishing, $29) Quick Looks "If you can't build a business that leads to a better world for all in some small way, then why build a business at all?" That question is at the heart of True to Yourself by Mark Albion, a former Harvard Business School professor and co-founder of Net Impact. While Albion clearly believes in running a business according to the values of transpar- ency, sustainability, and responsibil- ity, he also knows that executives have to make a profit, demonstrate competence, and get a product to market or they simply won't survive. This short book is a primer on how to do business while living in harmo- ny with the world, and it will serve as an excellent guide for anyone try- ing to run a values-based enterprise. (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, $12) Educators who are committed to learning outcomes assessment but bewildered about how to make their classes yield helpful data should be interested in Catherine M. Wehl- burg's Meaningful Course Revision. She slowly and clearly walks the read- er through ways to mine information from past student coursework and demonstrates how small revisions in existing assignments can provide pro- fessors with better gauges of learn- ing. "Changing the activities and design of a course is a great deal of work, and focusing that work so that student learning is the reason for the change is essential," she writes. The book is full of useful nuggets, as well as old and new ideas, all presented in a sensible format that makes them seem easy to try. (Anker Publishing Company, $37.95) ■ z