MCG's Must Read Books

• "Indispensable: How to Become the Company That Your Customers Can't Live Without"(Joe Calloway) - An even more important message in this environment
• A Curious Mind (Brian Glazer)
• A New Brand World (Scott Bedbury)
• Alibaba - The House that Jack Built (Duncan Clark)
• Be the Best at What Matters Most (Joe Calloway)
• Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens (Richard Haass)
• Blind Spots - Why We Fail to Do What's Right (Max Bazerman and Ann Tenbrunsel
• Breaking Bad Habits: Defy Industry Norms and Reinvigorate Your Business (Freek Vermeulen)
• Competing Against Luck: The Story of Innovation and Customer Choice (Clayton M. Christensen, Taddy Hall, Karen Dillon, David S. Duncan)
• Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World (Adam Tooze)
• Crossing the Chasm (Geoffrey Moore) Read again for the 6th time - still relevant!
• Destiny and Power - George H.W. Bush (Jon Meachem)
• Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change, and Thrive in Work and Life (Susan David)
• Fascism (Madeleine Albright)
• Fix It: Getting Accountability Right (Roger Connors & Tom Smith)
• Foolproof: Why Safety Can Be Dangerous and How Danger Makes Us Safe (Greg Ip)
• Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance (Angela Duckworth)
• Hillbilly Elegy (JD Vance)
• How Civilizations Die
• Insight: Why We’re Not as Self-Aware as We Think, and How Seeing Ourselves Clearly Helps Us Succeed at Work and in Life (Tasha Eurich)
• Keep It Simple: Unclutter Your Mind to Uncomplicate Your Life (Joe Calloway.)
• Leonardo da Vinci (Walter Isaacson)
• Liquid Leadership: Multigenerational Management Ideas That Are Changing the Way We Run Things (Brad Szollose)
• Making Great Strategy: Arguing for Organizational Advantage (Glenn R. Carroll & Jesper B. Sorensen)
• Measure What Matters (John Doerr)
• Never by Chance (Joe Calloway)
• Once Upon a Time in Russia (Ben Mezrich)
• Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps that Explain Everything About the World (Tim Marshall)
• Results Rule!: Build a Culture That Blows the Competition Away (Randy Pennington)
• Rewriting the Rules of the American Economy (Joseph Stiglitz)
• Smart Growth (Ernesto Poza) - An oldie, but very interesting
• Taking People with You (David Novak)
• Thank You for Being Late (Thomas Friedman)
• The Brand Bubble: The Looming Crisis in Brand Value and How to Avoid It (John Gerzema and Ed Leba)r
• The Code of the Extraordinary Mind: 10 Unconventional Laws to Redefine Your Life and Succeed On Your Own Terms (Vishen Lakhiani)
• The Confidence Code: The Science and Art of Self-Assurance-What Women Should Know (Katty Kay & Claire Shipman)
• The Death of Expertise: The Campaign against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters (Thomas M. Nichols)
• The Earned Life: Lose Regret, Choose Fulfillment (Marshall Goldsmith and Mark Reiter)
• The End of Competitive Advantage: How To Keep Your Strategy Moving As Fast As Your Business (Rita Gunther McGrath)
• The Founder's Mentality: How to Overcome the Predictable Crises of Growth (Chris Zook & James Allen
• The Founders Mentality (Chris Zook & James Allen)
• The Happiest Life (Hugh Hewitt)
• The Power of the Other (Dr. Henry Cloud)
• The Race Underground (Doug Most)
• The Relationship Engine (Ed Wallace)
• The Road to Character (David Brooks)
• The Soul of America (Jon Meacham)
• The Undoing Project (Michael Lewis)
• Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know (Adam Grant)
• Think Twice: Harnessing the Power of Counterintuition (Michael Mauboussin)
• Thinking Fast and Slow (Daniel Kahneman)
• Thinking in Time: The Uses of History for Decision-Makers (Richard Neustadt and Ernest May)
• Trust (Francis Fukuyama)
• Universal Man: The Seven Lives of John Maynard Keynes (Richard Davenport-Hines)
• Wooden on Leadership (John Wooden)Some Reviews

Some Reviews

The End of Competitive Advantage: How to Keep Your Strategy Moving as Fast as Your Business

Are you at risk of being trapped in an uncompetitive business? Chances are the strategies that worked well for you even a few years ago no longer deliver the results you need. Dramatic changes in business have unearthed a major gap between the traditional approaches to strategy and the way the real world works now. Most leaders are stuck on a single dominant idea - that the purpose of strategy is to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage. But this idea is increasingly irrelevant. Professor McGrath argues that it's time to go beyond the concept of sustainable competitive advantage. Organizations need to forge a new path: capturing opportunities fast, exploiting them decisively, and moving on before they are exhausted. She illustrates new practices based on the new notion of transient competitive advantage.

How Civilizations Die    By David Goldman

The Half-Life of Facts: Why Everything We Know Has an Expiration Date

By Samuel Arbesman

Much of what we consider fact - because we learned it in school or read it in a book - is no longer true. Science advances, and measurement techniques improve. Though facts refuse to sit still, decision makers can stay fresh by reading omnivorously and questioning long-held assumptions. Arbesman disputes the popular argument that, by rendering information easily retrievable, the Internet is making us dumb. Would you rather consult your dusty memory vaults or online data baked fresh daily?

Liquid Leadership

By Brad Szollose

Times change, people change. These days we hear a lot about how Gen X and Millennials differ from Baby Boomers. Author Brad Szollose is a "Cusp Baby Boomer" who understands generational differences. But he also knows that there are some universal laws about leadership that cut across generations. In "Liquid Leadership" Brad presents seven laws that all leaders should follow. 1) Place People First. 2) Cultivate an Environment That Is Free and Safe to Tell the Truth. 3) Nurture a Creative Culture. 4) Support Reinvention. 5) Lead by Example. 6) Take Responsibility. 7) Leave a Lasting Legacy. This advice applies to career success as much as it does to leadership success. (more...) 

By David Maister

David Maister reminds us remorselessly that knowing what your company needs to do is relatively obvious: the test for us all is actually making it happen. What is noteworthy is how similar (if not identical) most firms� strategies really are: provide outstanding client service, act like team players, provide a good place to work, invest in your future. However, just because something is obvious doesn�t make it easy. Real strategy lies not in figuring out what to do, but in devising ways to ensure that, compared to others, we actually do more of what everybody knows they should do. (more�)   

Indispensable: How to Become the Company Your Customers Can't Live Without                    

By Joe Calloway                                                                                                     

When products and services become interchangeable, price becomes the ultimate determinant for consumers. Indispensable shows businesses how to break out of that cycle by using The Five Drivers-a strategy that takes companies to the next level of performance. Renowned business consultant Joe Calloway looks at how real companies have made their product or service "mission critical," and satisfied customers in the process. (more�) 

Becoming a Category of One                                                                 

By Joe Calloway                                                                                                             

In this no-nonsense guide to beating the competition, Calloway offers hope to companies confronting a constantly changing and increasingly competitive marketplace. Success lies in distinguishing yourself from others and forging emotional connections with customers. Before you do anything else, he says, you must answer the question, "Who are you?" unambiguously and with fervor. If your response is vague and uninspiring, Calloway predicts failure, since a lame answer signals lack of vision, focus and commitment, elements he considers essential just to be in the running. (more�)

Jump the Curve: 50 Essential Strategies to Help Your Company Stay Ahead of Emerging Technologies   

ByJack Uldrich                                                                                                                                                                                                       

This book explores how exponential trends in information technology, biotechnology, robotics, manufacturing, material science and nanotechnology, are all converging at this unique moment in history. Uldrich�s presentation lays out ten specific strategies that executives, businesses and industries can use to navigate and survive in this era of unparalleled change. (more�)

Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers
By Geoffrey A. Moore
High-tech products are unique, argues Geoffrey Moore, because they sell well to the technically literate but have trouble crossing over to mainstream buyers. Moore explains how marketing professionals should bridge the gap by targeting specific segments rather than leaping into the market. This updated edition of the 1991 classic uses examples such as Apple, Oracle, and Sun to make its compelling case. (more...)

The Next Economy
By Elliott Ettenberg
In The Next Economy: Will You Know Where Your Customers Are? To sell more to your customers, use technology to get inside their heads. Forget conventional demographic segmentation. Instead, employ "want segmentation" - a dynamic approach that analyzes customers' purchases, values and beliefs to reveal not just what they've bought but why. (more...)

The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World
By Lawrence Lessig
Lessig's new book argues that the early days of the Internet, when innovation flourished, are being swept aside as established corporations and media companies reassert their power and invoke intellectual property rights to protect their interests and squelch the free flow of ideas. (more...)

The Innovator's Dilemma
By Clayton M. Christensen
"What do the Honda Supercub, Intel's 8088 processor, and hydraulic excavators have in common? They are all examples of disruptive technologies that helped to redefine the competitive landscape of their respective markets. These products did not come about as the result of successful companies carrying out sound business practices in established markets. In The Innovator's Dilemma, author Clayton M. Christensen shows how these and other products cut into the low end of the marketplace and eventually evolved to displace high-end competitors and their reigning technologies." 

Living on the Fault Line: Managing for Shareholder Value in the Age of the Internet
By Geoffrey A. Moore
"This book is all about how to focus on BUILDING VALUE. If you've enjoyed Moore's previous work, you'll find Living on the Fault Line a must. If you've never read Moore before, get this on your bookshelf before your competition does. Engaging and highly readable, this one's a keeper."

Marketing High Technology: An Insider's View
By William H. Davidow
"Marketing is civilized warfare. And as high-tech products become increasingly standardized - practically identical, from the customer's point of view - it is marketing that spells life or death for new devices or entire firms. In a book that is as fascinating as it is pragmatic, William H. Davidow, a legend in Silicon Valley, where he was described as 'the driving force behind the micro processor explosion,' tells how to fight the marketing battle in the intensely competitive world of high-tech companies - and win."
 

Brand Warfare: 10 Rules for Building the Killer Brand
By David F. D'Alessandro and Michele Owens

Leading at the Speed of Growth
By Katherine Catlin and Jana Matthews
In this impressive book, Catlin and Matthews show us how growing companies go through difficult, but predictable, stages of development and identify ways for CEO's to manage through these transitional 'hotspots.'

Unleashing the Ideavirus
By Seth Godin and Malcolm Gladwell
In Unleashing the Ideavirus, Godin describes ways to set any viable commercial concept loose among those who are most likely to catch it--and then stand aside as these recipients become infected and pass it along on to others who might do the same. "The future belongs to marketers who establish a foundation and process where interested people can market to each other," he writes. "Ignite consumer networks and then get out of the way and let them talk."

Profit From the Core
By Chris Zook with James Allen
Ninety percent of companies worldwide failed to achieve sustained, profitable growth over the past decade. The authors argue that most growth strategies fail to deliver value - or even destroy it - primarily because they wrongly diversify from the core business. This timeless strategic precept - building market power in a well-defined core - remains the key source of competitive advantage and the most viable platform for successful expansion.

What the CEO Wants You to Know: How Your Company Really Works
By Ram Charan
The same business principles that guide the global corporation behemoth also guide the successful street vendor. By understanding the fundamentals of business, you too will be able to contribute to your company's health, regardless of your job title. This book can help every IT employee in your department generate new ideas and improve upon work processe