Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/100231
bookshelf PLAYI NG TO WI N Authors: A.G. Lafley and Roger L. Martin PUBLISHER: Harvard Business Review Press, US$27 It���s hard to argue with advice about strategy when it���s presented by the former CEO of Procter & Gamble and the business dean of the University of Toronto. While Lafley and Martin illustrate their points by describing the transformation of P&G during the early 2000s, they believe that any business can successfully set its own strategy by considering five key questions: What is your winning aspiration? Where will you play? How will you win? What capabilities must be in place? What management systems are required? Not only do the answers to each question interact with each other, creating a cascade of effects, they require leaders to make some tough choices up front. And, as Lafley writes in a short sidebar, ���Most leaders do not like to make choices. ��� Choices force their hands, pin them down, and generate an uncomfortable sense of personal risk.��� But that���s just what���s required, they say, for businesses to succeed. MASTE R I NG TUR B U LE NCE AUTHORS: Joseph McCann and John Selsky PUBLISHER: Jossey-Bass, US$39.95 It���s widely accepted that the new constant in today���s business environment is change, but McCann and Selsky think the real constant is disruptive change������sharp, novel conditions from unanticipated sources with debilitating force that upset competitive dynamics and threaten survival.��� Companies can survive, even thrive, in this turbulent era, the authors insist, if they are both resilient and adaptive. That means leaders must engage in systems thinking that considers how disruptive change can be managed at every level, from the individual to the ecosystem. McCann, a former b-school dean who is now a consultant, and Selsky, a professor at USF, admit that the task is challenging. But they believe companies 68 January/February 2013 BizEd can manage turbulence if they are purposeful, aware, action-oriented, resourceful, and networked. The typical human response to turmoil is to hunker down, but they offer counterintuitive advice: ���Lift your head up, look around, and engage with others.��� TH E QU E ST FOR PROS PE R ITY AUTHOR: Justin Yifu Lin PUBLISHER: Princeton University Press, US$27.95 Before the Industrial Revolution, the prosperity gap between nations was not nearly as noticeable as it is today. What combination of natural resources, intellectual capability, and governmental policies has allowed some countries to surge to prominence while others have foundered? Peking University���s Lin, who was formerly chief economist of the World Bank, examines the question exhaustively in this densely detailed book. He uses the recent economic turmoil as a laboratory for analyzing what has worked and what hasn���t, espe- cially in developing nations. While it���s clear that many economies are still perilously fragile, Lin is mostly an optimist. ���I believe that all developing countries, including those in sub-Saharan Africa, can grow at 8 percent or more continuously for several decades in an increasingly global world,��� he writes. ���But they can do this only if their governments have the right policy frameworks to facilitate the private sector���s development.��� MANAG I NG G LOBAL I N NOVATION AUTHORS: Yves L. Doz and Keeley Wilson PUBLISHER: Harvard Business Review Press, US$35 IT���s not enough for companies to innovate incessantly, say Doz and Wilson of INSEAD; they must innovate globally, drawing from the expertise of distributed teams and the resources of international operations. Most multinational cor-