Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/52321
free market purists and political Libertarians who believe less gov- ernment interference makes life bet- ter for all. In fact, he describes how the Darwinian process of natural selection can be great for the indi- vidual but lousy for the species, and Don't Miss "Where are the Indian Googles, iPods, and Viagras?" ask Nirmalya Kumar and Phanish Puranam in INDIA INSIDE. They scoff at the common perception that "Indians simply do not 'do innovation'" and point to the many "invisible" improvements that Indians have brought through process and management innovation in call centers and out- sourced R&D facilities. And because so many Indian-born professionals work at companies like Microsoft, Google, and NASA today, they pre- dict a couple of different possible futures: the "browning" of the C-suite in Western companies as these executives are promoted, or a burst of innovation in India as these individuals repatriate. Either way, the two London Business School professors expect India to be surging with inno- vation in the near future. (Harvard Business Review Press, US$25.95) In THE DIVERSITY INDEX, journalist Susan E. Reed examines how well diversity initiatives have succeeded at American companies since 1961, when Lyndon Johnson and various defense contractors signed the first Plans for Progress aimed at recruiting and developing minority employ- ees. Her conclusion: Not well. White women have advanced in the ranks, she notes, and so have nonwhites born outside the U.S., but their presence on the executive team has squeezed out domestic-born minori- ties. "Diversity has become a smorgasbord from which companies are taking what they desire and leaving the rest," she writes. "The partial use of the diversity concept has resulted in the formation of a persistent racial ceiling in corporate America." (AMACOM, US$27.95) Joan Magretta's UNDERSTANDING MICHAEL PORTER takes essential Porter insights on competition and strategy and boils them down for managers who don't have time to read and absorb the original work. A former strategy editor at HBR who is still affiliated with Harvard, Magretta stresses that Porter offers general theory and timeless princi- ples—"no blue oceans, no dancing elephants, no moving cheeses." She closes the book with an interview with Porter and a list of ten "very dis- tilled" takeaways. For instance: "Don't feel you have to 'delight' every possible customer out there. The sign of a good strategy is that it delib- erately makes some customers unhappy." Just like the book, brief and to the point. (Harvard Business Review Press, U$24.95) he extrapolates the same princi- ples to the eco- nomic arena. What's needed for the collective good is collective action—laws and rules, for instance, that keep all people safe from harm, whether that danger is posed by a drunk driver or an unregulated market. This is a smart, complex, and thoughtful book that will make many readers view the dismal sci- ence in a wholly different way. GREAT BY CHOICE AUTHORS: Jim Collins and Morten T. Hansen PUBLISHER: HarperBusiness, US$29.99 COMPANIES THAT outperform their rivals—by a factor of ten or more—aren't led by CEOs who are more creative, visionary, heroic, ambitious, or lucky than the aver- age top executive. In this study of seven "10X" companies, Collins and Hansen do find common traits among their leaders: fanatic disci- pline, a type of creativity that relies on empirical research, and "produc- tive paranoia" that leads them to imagine disasters and ways to avert them. They study these seven firms—Amgen, Biomet, Intel, Micro- soft, Progressive Insur- ance, Southwest, and Stryker—for periods of at least 20 years, all ending in 2002. And they compare their methods of operation to similar companies that failed miserably during the same time. Hansen, of UC Berkeley and INSEAD, and author Collins were looking for companies that can thrive in chaotic times. That's because they believe the world will remain "unstable for the rest of our lives, and we wanted to understand the factors that distinguish great organizations, those that prevail against extreme odds, in such environments." BizEd January/February 2012 67