Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/56523
Think MBA. Think Rutgers MBA. Rutgers Business School - the future is happening here: • Opened state-of-the-art home in revitalized downtown Newark, fall 2009 • Hired 22 new faculty, fall 2009 • NEW One-Year MBA program meeting market demand • NEW Global Executive MBA program working with top universities worldwide • Bringing Rutgers intellectual property to market • Spurring economic development and entrepreneurship in urban communities Delivering people with business, science, and technology credentials to drive local, national, and global markets business.rutgers.edu Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey—founded 1766 Rutgers Business School at 1 Washington Park, Newark Campus of the book is the stories about the people involved at every turn and how they developed or stumbled into their enterprises. Readers will laugh while they learn. (Hyperion, $25.99) The information age is challenging a basic assumption of economics: that a perfect market can't exist, because there is no such thing as perfect—i.e., complete—information. But in Profit Power Economics, Mia de Kuijper of the Duisenberg School of Finance points out that the Internet and the cell phone have practically delivered us to perfection. "Where they aren't here already, ubiquitous connectivity and cheap, easily available infor- mation…are just around the corner. Everywhere. Globally." In this new transparent economy, she says, focused companies with distributed business arrangements are the new dominant business structure; com- petition is being waged not only up and down the value chain, but hori- zontally in established markets and across traditional industry boundaries. A company's key to profitability will lie in its ability to exploit its "power nodes," which include traditional advantages such as brand strength and proprietary ingredients, as well as new ones such as "hubs" of products, services, and people that build a company's popularity. It's all a little head-spinning, but the overriding message is clear: "The transparent economy will offer extraordinary opportunities to business executives, entrepreneurs, leaders of not-for- profit enterprises and investors." In short, everyone. Globally. (Oxford University Press, $34.95) It's hardly a surprise that Henry Mintzberg has strong opinions about the topic of management, and he sums them up in the simply titled Managing. He wants to dispense with the theories of the day to focus on the true responsi- bilities managers undertake. "Finding out what managers do is not the problem; interpreting it is," writes Mintzberg, a professor at McGill Uni- versity. "A half century ago Peter Drucker (1954) put man- agement on the map. Lead- ership has since pushed it off." Mintzberg first revisits the characteristics of man- agement itself—its unre- lenting pace, its fragmenta- tion—and the kind of practitioners these charac- teristics breed. He does not think one simple aspect of managing supersedes all the others: "Managing is ... con- trolling and doing and dealing and thinking and leading and deciding and more, not added up but blended together." By examining the manag- er's role in all its frenetic complexity, he infuses it with dignity and accords it much-needed respect. (Berrett- Koehler, $26.95) ■ z BizEd NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2009 57