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Bookshelf present abuses of the system become almost inevitable. Reacting to the ever more urgent cry of "share- holder value," CEOs and CFOs begin managing their numbers to present favorable quarterly reports. Members of the press seem to be in collusion with insincere corporate boards. Auditors who question company practices are replaced. Companies that miss their finan- cial projections see their stock prices fall—so they make sure not to miss. Because Internet technology makes stock market information instantly available to the smallest investor, in some instances it seems as if CFOs have no choice but to start lying in order to keep their investors happy. While the subject matter is treated seriously, now and then the 54 BizEd JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2004 Stock Market Shenanigans If you want to feel discouraged, outraged, and simultaneously enlightened about the current state of the stock market and the corollary issue of corporate excess, turn to Roger Lowenstein's cynical and fascinating Origins of the Crash: The Great Bubble and Its Undoing. Carefully and clearly, financial reporter Lowenstein explains how the American financial system got to where it is today. He starts with a description of the stock market in the 1970s—an entity which at the time received only mild interest from the average American—and traces its evolution through junk bonds, stock options, the cult of the CEO, cre- ative financial reporting, and colossal disasters like Enron and Tyco. As presented by Lowenstein, the prices—as if General Electric had not two hundred thousand employees but only Jack Welch, as if Eisner had not inherited the library of Disney cartoons but had personally drawn them," he writes. No one is exempt from Lowenstein's finger-pointing— not the CEOs, not the auditors, not the elite-school academics who praise corporate leaders in the new economy, not the investors them- selves. It's enough to make anyone rethink his portfolio—and his rela- tionship with the stock market. (The Penguin Press, $24.95) author's sardonic viewpoint is genuinely funny, as when he discusses the astounding prevalence of the CEO in the financial media. "It became common to speak of how much an individual CEO had raised 'his' share Competitive Advantage The very techniques that help a new company succeed most often will lead to its ultimate failure. Companies need to sustain continual growth in order to stay competitive, but for an estab- lished company, adding new prod- ucts or opening new markets are risks that rarely pay off. Clayton M. Christensen explored some of these conundrums in The Innovator's Dilemma. In his explain the different kinds of innova- tions that companies continually new book, The Innovator's Solution, co-written with Michael E. Raynor, he provides some answers. Christensen and Clayton first produce—the sustaining innovations that improve current products; the low-end innovations that appeal to customers who don't mind a lesser product that suits their needs; and new-market disruptions that target customers who typically didn't buy anything in this market at all. Established companies have no motivation to fight for the low-end or nonexistent portions of their mar- kets, so they tend to ignore innova- tors at those levels. But as soon as these innovators get a foothold in the market, they begin targeting higher-end consumers with better and better products—and then the whole market is likely to change. So how do companies, both new and old, design new products that are disruptive and guarantee their hold on the market? Christensen and Clayton advise readers to ignore tra- ditional marketing tenets like market segmentation and customer demo- graphics. Instead, they advocate learning what "job" the customer has "hired" the product to do— and then finding a way to make the product do that job more effectively. The authors fill their book with real- life and imaginary scenarios of prod- ucts that have succeeded or might succeed—or fail. Their formulas should give any brand manager fresh ways to look at his own product line. (Harvard Business Press, $29.95) A Positive Outlook We're all acquainted with good peo- ple—those who are positive, com- passionate to others, quick to laugh, and quick to forgive. They seem happier and more productive than the pessimistic and paranoid people we also know. Strange as it sounds, there are also organizations that qualify as "good," that embody