Steve Blank

Thinking of starting your own business in high-tech? Do yourself a huge favor by reading this book first. The authors, both veterans of many start-ups, address topics vital to your start-up success, such as:Finding start-up opportunitiesLeaving your current employer but keeping your ideasProtecting your intellectual propertyManaging the five critical elements of a successful start-upSecuring start-up financingDealing successfully with venture capitalistsWriting a winning business planCreating a management teamHandling employment and compensation--who to hire and how to pay themAvoiding the most common mistakes entrepreneurs makeUnderstanding company valuation and exit strategiesJames Swanson and Michael Baird lay out all the basic concepts clearly, step by step. They demystify the start-up process with frank advice, insiders' tips, and "been there" examples. On-point case studies show you what to do--and what to avoid. An expanded list of resources steers you to help when you need it. You'll learn what it takes for you to create and manage a start-up, and the personal characteristics required to be successful in your new venture.In good economies and bad, entrepreneurs will continue to lead the way to new markets, new ventures, and new technologies. With this comprehensive new guide, you have a great start to start-up success! _____________________________ Since 1975 more than 2 million people preparing for their engineering, surveying, architecture, LEED®, interior design, and landscape architecture exams have entrusted their exam prep to PPI. For more information, visit us at www.ppi2pass.com.

The Book That Sparked A Selling Revolution In 1985 one book changed sales and marketing forever. Rejecting manipulative tactics and emphasizing "process," Strategic Selling presented the idea of selling as a joint venture and introduced the decade's most influential concept, Win-Win. The response to Win-Win was immediate and helped turn the small company that created Strategic Selling, Miller Heiman, into a global leader in sales development with the most prestigious client list in the industry. The New Strategic Selling This modern edition of the business classic confronts the rapidly evolving world of business-to-business sales with new real-world examples, new strategies for confronting competition, and a special section featuring the most commonly asked questions from the Miller Heiman workshops. Learn: * How to identify the four real decision makers in every corporate labyrinth * How to prevent sabotage by an internal deal-killer * How to make a senior executive eager to see you * How to avoid closing business that you'll later regret * How to manage a territory to provide steady, not "boom and bust," revenue * How to avoid the single most common error when dealing with the competition.

American science was as much the victim as the beneficiary of the Cold War. What science may have gained in funding, prestige, and political clout, it lost in independence and integrity. As one prominent scientist put it, the military bought American science on the installment plan, with fateful consequences for intellectual freedom. Military money and expectations blurred traditional distinctions between theory and practice, civilian and military, and claffified and unclassified, creating a new kind of American science that derived its character as well as its contracts from the Pentagon.

I've worked at 5 different startups in my career in Silicon Valley. While every company is unique, there are many similarities between Silicon Valley startups. As workplaces go, Silicon Valley startups embody the American dream: they're exciting, fun, and provide employees with great flexibility and freedom. Join the right startup, and you can change the world! This book covers topics of interest to anyone who wants to work at startups: How do you get a job at a startup? How do you choose which startups to talk to? How do you approach interviewing at a startup? How would you negotiate compensation? Once at a startup, what should you do to maximize gains from stock options? Why is it advantageous to exercise your stock options in certain conditions? What do the clauses in your offer letter mean? How do the clauses in your stock options contract affect you?

The ideas of US Air Force Colonel John Boyd have transformed American military policy and practice. A first-rate fighter pilot and a self-taught scholar, he wrote the first manual on jet aerial combat; spearheaded the design of both of the Air Force's premier fighters, the F-15 and the F-16; and shaped the tactics that saved lives during the Vietnam War and the strategies that won the Gulf War. Many of America's best-known military and political leaders consulted Boyd on matters of technology, strategy, and theory. In The Mind of War, Grant T. Hammond offers the first complete portrait of John Boyd, his groundbreaking ideas, and his enduring legacy. Based on extensive interviews with Boyd and those who knew him as well as on a close analysis of Boyd's briefings, this intellectual biography brings the work of an extraordinary thinker to a broader public. The paperback will retain the original publication date as it is the same book but different format.

Growth unleashes benefits beyond the economic. It revitalizes organizations and invigorates the people in them, creating energy, a sense of purpose, and the glow of being on a winning team. Like the alchemy of old, it seeks to transform the everyday into the exalted by means that seem little short of magical. Yet growth is often elusive, achieved at unacceptable costs, or managed in fits and starts. Based on over three years of research and application at high-performing companies around the world, The Alchemy of Growth is a comprehensive, practical approach to initiating, achieving, and sustaining profitable growth—today and tomorrow. As the book shows, the secret is to manage business opportunities across three time horizons at once: extending and defending core businesses, building new businesses, and seeding options for the future. The Alchemy of Growth offers managers at all levels the tools and concepts for investing in the right initiatives, capabilities, and talent to propel their companies into the future.

What fuels long-term business success? Not operational excellence, technology breakthroughs, or new business models, but management innovation—new ways of mobilizing talent, allocating resources, and formulating strategies. Through history, management innovation has enabled companies to cross new performance thresholds and build enduring advantages.In The Future of Management, Gary Hamel argues that organizations need management innovation now more than ever. Why? The management paradigm of the last century—centered on control and efficiency—no longer suffices in a world where adaptability and creativity drive business success. To thrive in the future, companies must reinvent management.Hamel explains how to turn your company into a serial management innovator, revealing:The make-or-break challenges that will determine competitive success in an age of relentless, head-snapping change.The toxic effects of traditional management beliefs.The unconventional management practices generating breakthrough results in “modern management pioneers.”The radical principles that will need to become part of every company’s “management DNA.”The steps your company can take now to build your “management advantage.”Practical and profound, The Future of Management features examples from Google, W.L. Gore, Whole Foods, IBM, Samsung, Best Buy, and other blue-ribbon management innovators.

High-Tech Ventures is for those who design, build, and market innovative products—people who are creating the high-tech world of the future. More specifically it is for all engineers, engineering managers, entrepreneurs, and intrapreneurs. Although engineers are responsible for identifying products and businesses that might benefit their company, all too often their suggestions are rejected. The products don't fit within the current business, or they threaten the status quo. Thus, start-up companies are the main arena for innovation.Entrepreneurs who are considering starting up a company, or who are already doing so, can use this book to determine the health of their venture. With High-Tech Ventures they can systematically assess the exact stages of their company's growth. They can compare their experiences to an ideal model, and sidestep—or eliminate—flaws early enough to save time, money, and even the company itself.High-Tech Ventures provides entrepreneurs with insight into the problems they may face, as well as a formal checklist for measuring success. It is also useful for board members, investors, and service industry personnel who are intimately involved in ventures. Professionals such as attorneys, accountants, technical consultants, and marketing consultants, who support the venture's infrastructure will also find critical information here.High-Tech Ventures includes revealing case studies from major entrepreneurial players such as Sun Microsystems, Apollo, Prime, Amdahl, Cullinet, etc.

Build better relationships and Sell More Effectively With a Powerful SALES STORY “Throughout our careers, we have been trained to ask diagnostic questions, deliver value props, and conduct ROI studies. It usually doesn’t work; best case, we can argue with the customer about numbers―purely a left brain exercise, which turns buyers off. This book explains a better way.” ―John Burke, Group Vice President, Oracle Corporation “Forget music, a great story has charm to soothe the savage beast and win over the most challenging customer. And one of the best guides in crafting it, feeling it, and telling it is What Great Salespeople Do. A must-read for anyone seeking to influence another human being.” ―Mark Goulston, M.D., author of the #1 international bestseller Just Listen: Discover the Secret to Getting Through to Absolutely Anyone “Good salespeople tell stories that inform prospects; great salespeople tell stories that persuade prospects. This book reveals what salespeople need to do to become persuasive story sellers.” ―Gerhard Gschwandtner, publisher of Selling Power “This book breaks the paradigm. It really works miracles!” ―David R. Hibbard, President, Dialexis Inc™ “What Great Salespeople Do humanizes the sales process.” ―Kevin Popovic, founder, Ideahaus® “Mike and Ben have translated what therapists have known for years into a business solution―utilizing and developing one’s Emotional Intelligence to engage and lessen the defenses of others. What Great Salespeople Do is a step-by-step manual on how to use compelling storytelling to masterfully engage others and make their organizations great.” ―Christine Miles, M.S., Psychological Services, Executive Coach, Miles Consulting LLC About the Book: This groundbreaking book offers extraordinary insight into the greatest mystery in sales: how the very best salespeople consistently and successfully influence change in others, inspiring their customers to say yes. Top-performing salespeople have always had a knack for forging connections and building relationships with buyers. Until now, this has been considered an innate talent. What Great Salespeople Do challenges some of the most widely accepted paradigms in selling in order to prove that influencing change in buyers is a skill that anyone can learn. The creator of Solution Selling and CustomerCentric Selling, Michael Bosworth, along with veteran sales executive Ben Zoldan, synthesize discoveries in neuroscience, psychology, sociology, anthropology, and other disciplines, combining it all into a field-tested framework―helping you break down barriers, build trust, forge meaningful relationships, and win more customers. This book teaches you how to:Relax a buyer’s skepticism while activating the part of his or her brain where trust is formed and connections are forged Use the power of story to influence buyers to change Make your ideas, beliefs, and experiences “storiable” using a proven story structure Build a personal inventory of stories to use throughout your sales cycle Tell your stories with authenticity and real passion Use empathic listening to get others to reveal themselves Incorporate storytelling and empathic listening to achieve collaborative conversations with buyers Breakthroughs in neuroscience have determined that people don’t make decisions solely on the basis of logic; in fact, emotions play the dominant role in most decision-making processes. What Great Salespeople Do gives you the tools and techniques to influence change and win more sales.

THE MARKET-PROVEN PRINCIPLES OF SOLUTION SELLING FOR TODAY'S HIGH-SPEED, HIGHER-PRESSURE SALES ENVIRONMENT The long-awaited sequel to Solution Selling, one of history's most popular selling guides Nearly 10 years ago, the influential bestseller Solution Selling literally rewrote the rules for selling big-ticket, long-cycle products. The New Solution Selling expands the classic text's cases, examples, and situations and sharpens its focus on streamlining the sales process to achieve greater success in fewer steps and a shorter time frame. Much in sales has changed in the past decade, and The New Solution Selling incorporates those changes into an integrated, tailored approach for improving both individual productivity and organizational return on investment. Written to enhance the results and careers of sales pros and managers in virtually any industry, this performance-focused book features: A completely revamped, updated sales philosophy,management system, and architecture Tools to increase the quality and velocity of sales pipeline opportunities Techniques that "Best of the Best" use to prospect for success Solution Selling created new rules for one-to-one selling of hard-to-sell items. The New Solution Selling focuses on streamlining the proven Solution Selling process and quickly differentiating both oneself and one's products from the competition while decreasing the time spent between initial qualifying and a successful, profitable close.

``Solution Selling is the most comprehensive sales and sales management process available today. Mike Bosworth has the best understanding of sales process in corporate America.''Jeffrey M. Fisher, Vice President, Symix Computer Systems.

Business Model Generation is a handbook for visionaries, game changers, and challengers striving to defy outmoded business models and design tomorrow's enterprises. If your organization needs to adapt to harsh new realities, but you don't yet have a strategy that will get you out in front of your competitors, you need Business Model Generation. Co-created by 470 "Business Model Canvas" practitioners from 45 countries, the book features a beautiful, highly visual, 4-color design that takes powerful strategic ideas and tools, and makes them easy to implement in your organization. It explains the most common Business Model patterns, based on concepts from leading business thinkers, and helps you reinterpret them for your own context. You will learn how to systematically understand, design, and implement a game-changing business model--or analyze and renovate an old one. Along the way, you'll understand at a much deeper level your customers, distribution channels, partners, revenue streams, costs, and your core value proposition. Business Model Generation features practical innovation techniques used today by leading consultants and companies worldwide, including 3M, Ericsson, Capgemini, Deloitte, and others. Designed for doers, it is for those ready to abandon outmoded thinking and embrace new models of value creation: for executives, consultants, entrepreneurs, and leaders of all organizations. If you're ready to change the rules, you belong to "the business model generation!"

Counter to traditional marketing wisdom, which tries to count, measure, and manipulate the spread of information, best-selling Author Seth Godin argues that the information can spread most effectively from customer to customer, rather than from business to customer. Godin calls this powerful customer-to-customer dialogue the ideavirus, and cheerfully eggs marketers on to create an environment where their ideas can replicate and spread. In lively detail, Godin looks at ways companies such as Napster, Hotmail, GeoCities, even Volkswagen have successfully launched ideaviruses. Godin provides all the ingredients so anyone can start their own ideavirus epidemic. He identifies key factors to show how any business, large or small, can use ideavirus marketing. Now all businesses can succeed in a world that just doesn’t want to hear it anymore from the traditional marketers. Who but Godin could teach consumers the importance of powerful sneezers, hives, velocity, a clear vector, and a smooth, friction-free transmission? Readers will learn much more, including: *Why ideas matter *Seven ways an ideavirus can help you *How to dramatically increase the chances your ideavirus will spread *The importance of sneezers *The thirteen questions ideavirus marketers want answered *Five ways to unleash and ideavirus

The man Business Week calls "the ultimate entrepreneur for the Information Age" explains "Permission Marketing"—the groundbreaking concept that enables marketers to shape their message so that consumers will willingly accept it. Whether it is the TV commercial that breaks into our favorite program, or the telemarketing phone call that disrupts a family dinner, traditional advertising is based on the hope of snatching our attention away from whatever we are doing. Seth Godin calls this Interruption Marketing, and, as companies are discovering, it no longer works. Instead of annoying potential customers by interrupting their most coveted commodity—time—Permission Marketing offers consumers incentives to accept advertising voluntarily. Now this Internet pioneer introduces a fundamentally different way of thinking about advertising products and services. By reaching out only to those individuals who have signaled an interest in learning more about a product, Permission Marketing enables companies to develop long-term relationships with customers, create trust, build brand awareness—and greatly improve the chances of making a sale.

The indispensable classic on marketing by the bestselling author of Tribes and Purple Cow.Legendary business writer Seth Godin has three essential questions for every marketer:“What’s your story?”“Will the people who need to hear this story believe it?”“Is it true?” All marketers tell stories. And if they do it right, we believe them. We believe that wine tastes better in a $20 glass than a $1 glass. We believe that an $80,000 Porsche is vastly superior to a $36,000 Volkswagen that’s virtually the same car. We believe that $225 sneakers make our feet feel better—and look cooler—than a $25 brand. And believing it makes it true.As Seth Godin has taught hundreds of thousands of marketers and students around the world, great marketers don’t talk about features or even benefits. Instead, they tell a story—a story we want to believe, whether it’s factual or not. In a world where most people have an infinite number of choices and no time to make them, every organization is a marketer, and all marketing is about telling stories.Marketers succeed when they tell us a story that fits our worldview, a story that we intuitively embrace and then share with our friends. Think of the Dyson vacuum cleaner, or Fiji water, or the iPod.But beware: If your stories are inauthentic, you cross the line from fib to fraud. Marketers fail when they are selfish and scurrilous, when they abuse the tools of their trade and make the world worse. That’s a lesson learned the hard way by telemarketers, cigarette companies, and sleazy politicians.But for the rest of us, it’s time to embrace the power of the story. As Godin writes, “Stories make it easier to understand the world. Stories are the only way we know to spread an idea. Marketers didn’t invent storytelling. They just perfected it.”

Innovation is rapidly becoming democratized. Users, aided by improvements in computer and communications technology, increasingly can develop their own new products and services. These innovating users—both individuals and firms—often freely share their innovations with others, creating user-innovation communities and a rich intellectual commons. In Democratizing Innovation, Eric von Hippel looks closely at this emerging system of user-centered innovation. He explains why and when users find it profitable to develop new products and services for themselves, and why it often pays users to reveal their innovations freely for the use of all. The trend toward democratized innovation can be seen in software and information products—most notably in the free and open-source software movement—but also in physical products. Von Hippel's many examples of user innovation in action range from surgical equipment to surfboards to software security features. He shows that product and service development is concentrated among "lead users," who are ahead on marketplace trends and whose innovations are often commercially attractive. Von Hippel argues that manufacturers should redesign their innovation processes and that they should systematically seek out innovations developed by users. He points to businesses—the custom semiconductor industry is one example—that have learned to assist user-innovators by providing them with toolkits for developing new products. User innovation has a positive impact on social welfare, and von Hippel proposes that government policies, including R&D subsidies and tax credits, should be realigned to eliminate biases against it. The goal of a democratized user-centered innovation system, says von Hippel, is well worth striving for. An electronic version of this book is available under a Creative Commons license.

The story of the ghostwriting of Alfred P. Sloan's best-selling memoir, General Motor's attempts to block the book's publication, and the author's eventual triumph over the corporation. Published in 1964, My Years with General Motors was an immediate best-seller and today is considered one of the few classic books on management. The book is the ghostwritten memoir of Alfred P. Sloan, Jr. (1875-1966), whose business and management strategies enabled General Motors to overtake Ford as the dominant American automobile manufacturer in the 1920s and 1930s. What has been largely unknown until now is that My Years with General Motors was almost not published. Although it was written with the permission of General Motors—and slated for publication in October 1959—at the last minute General Motors tried to suppress the book out of fears that some of the material in it could become evidence in an antitrust action against the company. This book, by John McDonald, Sloan's ghostwriter, tells the behind-the-scenes story of the book's writing, its attempted suppression, and the lawsuit that eventually led to its publication. McDonald's narrative is partly the David-and-Goliath story of a lone journalist taking on the world's then-largest corporation and partly a study of strategy in its own right. McDonald's struggle to publish the book led him to navigate a complicated course among the competing interests of General Motors, Fortune magazine (his employer), and Time, Inc. (Fortune's owner). In many ways this "book about the book" parallels the Sloan book as a tale of successful, brilliantly planned strategy.

General Motors chairman Alfred P. Sloan was the ultimate organization he rose to the top of the auto industry after pioneers like Henry Ford built it, and then he transformed it with innovative management practices that today are studied and copied by business executives everywhere. In Sloan Rules, University of New Mexico historian David Farber describes how Sloan led his company to "economic greatness" between the 1920s and '40s, particularly by developing "a loose economic model in which highly rationalized corporate productivity combined with relentless marketing creates a mass consumer society that, in turn, produces the greatest good for the greatest number of people." Surprisingly little is known about Sloan's personal life--he was an intensely private man--but in this biography Farber provides a good overview of what made Sloan such an outstanding businessman. He also recounts Sloan's contentious relationship with Franklin Delano "To Sloan, the New Deal was a raw deal." (At one point, the chairman even described the New Dealers as "ancient Asiatic despots.") Farber clearly wishes his subject had concerned himself more with social justice, but he also points out that Sloan's energy and creativity made it possible for a subsequent GM chairman to say, with some if not complete credibility, that what's good for GM is good for America. --John J. Miller

My Years with General Motors became an instant bestseller when it was first published in 1963. It has since been used as a manual for managers, offering personal glimpses into the practice of the "discipline of management" by the man who perfected it. This is the story no other businessman could tell—a distillation of half a century of intimate leadership experience with a giant industry and an inside look at dramatic events and creative business management. Only a handful of business books have reached the status of a classic, having withstood the test of over fifty years' time. Even today, Bill Gates praises My Years with General Motors as the best book to read on business, and Business Week has named it the number one choice for its "bookshelf of indispensable reading."

One industry has had more impact on life in America than any other before or since. Here is the story of two men and one company at the start of it all. You couldn't find two more different men. Billy Durant was the consummate salesman, a brilliant wheeler-dealer with grand plans, unflappable energy, and a fondness for the high life. Alfred Sloan was the intellectual, an expert in business strategy and management, master of all things organizational. Together, this odd couple built perhaps the most successful enterprise in U.S. history, General Motors, and with it an industry that has come to define modern life throughout the world. Their story is full of timeless lessons, cautionary tales, and inspiration for business leaders and history buffs alike. Billy, Alfred, and General Motors is the tale not just of the two extraordinary men of its title but also of the formative decades of twentieth-century America, through two world wars and sea changes in business, industry, politics, and culture. The book includes vivid, warts-and-all portraits of the legends of the golden age of the automobile, from "Crazy" Henry Ford, Ransom Olds, and Charles Nash to the brilliant but uncredited David Dunbar Buick and Cadillac founder Henry Leland. The impact of Durant and Sloan on their contemporaries and their industry is matched only by the powerful legacy of their improbable and incredible partnership. Characters, events, and context--all are brought skillfully and passionately to life in this meticulously researched and supremely readable book. "This book is particularly timely, with the auto industry in a period of extreme turbulence that features a restructuring of General Motors, as well as other icons of times gone by. In a sense, we may be reliving in the 21st century the auto drama of the 20th century portrayed so well by Bill Pelfrey. The author's outstanding writing and research skills are evident throughout and make this one of the most important and fascinating books I've read in a very long time." -- David E. Cole, Chairman of the Center for Automotive Research "Every person who is interested in the building of the American automobile industry must read this book. Bill Pelfrey has done a great job researching the early years of Billy Durant and Alfred Sloan and the very different roles they played in the history of General Motors." -- Jack Smith, retired Chairman and CEO, General Motors Corporation "Anyone interested in the current story of General Motors should read this engrossing description of the beginnings and early growth of this largest of all America's businesses. Billy, Alfred, and the General is an important work on the history of the automobile industry." -- John G. Smale, retired Chairman and CEO, Procter and Gamble Company; former Chairman, General Motors Corporation "The challenges faced by Durant, Sloan, and others in the automotive industry 100 years ago are as relevant as ever today: managing through varying leadership styles; ensuring the ability to adapt to a changing business environment; maintaining cash flow during downturns. This book highlights both their successes and failures, and it should be read by managers everywhere." -- Ira M. Millstein, Senior Partner, Weil, Gotshal and Manges; Visiting Professor in Competitive Enterprise and Strategy, Yale School of Management; Special Adviser to the World Bank on Corporate Governance "To understand where General Motors is going, you must first understand where it has been. The who and why of it all is beautifully described, anecdote by anecdote, by Pelfrey in this fascinating read. Magnificently researched." -- Gerald C. Meyers, Professor of Management, University of Michigan (Ross) Business School; former Chairman and CEO, American Motors Corporation