Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/56065
Bookshelf Trying to stay afloat in a turbulent econo- my? Harvard professor Ranjay Gulati has explicit advice: Stop thinking about what your company offers and start thinking about what the consumer needs. In Reorganize for Resilience, Gulati analyzes the success of compa- nies like Apple, Target, Best Buy, and Starbucks that operate from an "outside-in" perspec- tive. They know that "the goal isn't merely to serve customers," he writes "The goal is to immerse yourself in customer problems so you can offer up unique solutions." He knows it's not easy—it requires demolishing typical business silos, integrating teams across depart- ments, and partnering with outside vendors instead of focusing wholly on in-company components. But only by giving customers what they need can you survive in good times and bad, he says. It's time to become truly customer-centric. (Harvard Business Press, $35) Tomorrow's Internet will not be your grandfather's Web—or even yours. As industries and institutions around the world begin to coordi- nate the way they encode and col- lect data, information will become more ubiquitous, more distributed, more useful, and utterly transfor- mative. So says David Siegel in Pull: The Power of the Semantic Web to Transform Your Business. As he defines it, a "semantic web" consists of "data that interconnects and can be reused over and over, forming databases that live online." Say you're a bowler, he suggests, and you're accustomed to a com- puter at the bowling alley track- 56 BizEd MARCH/APRIL 2010 Most people think you can't bring about massive changes without complex initiatives. Chip Heath and Dan Heath disagree. In Switch, they show how companies and indi- viduals have used small, simple solutions to bring about astonishing change— from reducing malnutrition to improving hospital survival rates. First, they offer a three-part framework to creating successful change: Appeal to the rational brain by offering specific goals and instructions. Appeal to the heart by building an emotional case. Reshape the situation to make success more likely. Then they provide fascinat- ing analyses of enormous changes and how they were wrought. For instance, when Save the Children representative Jerry Sternin wanted to reduce malnutrition in Vietnamese children during the 1990s, he didn't try to fight the overwhelming forces of poverty, poor sanitation, and lack of clean water. Instead, he identified the healthiest children in specific villages and studied what their parents did to make their situations different; then, he arranged for those parents to teach other villagers the same techniques for improving their diets. "We need to switch from archaeological problem solving to bright-spot evan- gelizing," say the authors, brothers with appointments at Stanford and Duke respectively. The book—with its lively writing and incandescently optimistic tone—makes readers feel they can change the world. (Broadway Books, $26) ing every spare and strike. In the future, computers will follow your game, "then add your score to your personal online data locker"—and also compare your statistics to those of thousands of other bowlers around the world. Grocery stores won't need cashiers; every item in the store will carry its own data chip, and each one will be charged to your account as you carry out your bags. Industries as diverse as shipping, publishing, and medicine will be revolutionized by the avail- ability of data arranged in universal formats. Siegel admits that the world he envisions isn't here yet, but he's pretty convincing when he promises it's on its way. (Portfolio, $27.95) During economic turmoil, many look to the government to boost the economy by investing in entrepreneurship. But is that a good idea? Josh Lerner wrestles with that question in Bou- levard of Broken Dreams, which considers the history of the public sector's involvement in entrepre- neurship and venture capitalism— what's worked, from Silicon Valley to Singapore, and what's gone hor- ribly awry. Lerner, a professor at Harvard, confesses that the research is scant and the data muddy, but he does have some ideas about why public sector investments in entre- preneurship have failed in the past. For instance, investors might have over- looked the importance of academic partners; they might not have recog- nized the necessity of a global perspective; they might have misjudged