Authors: Richard S. Tedlow.
Paperback, 352 pages
Publisher: Collins
Publication Date: 2004-12-01


Reviews :

   

For an extraordinary fifty-seven-year period, one of the nation's largest and fastest-growing companies was run by two men who were flesh and blood. The chief executives of the International Business Machines Corporation from 1914 until 1971 were Thomas J. Watson and Thomas J. Watson, father and son. That great corporation bears the imprint of both men -- their ambitions and their strengths -- but it also bears the consequences of a family that was in near-constant conflict.

Sometimes wrong but never in doubt, both Watsons had clear -- and farsighted -- visions of what their company could become. They also had volcanic tempers. Their fights with each other combined with their commitment to leadership and excellence made IBM one of the most rewarding, yet gut-clutching firms to work for in the history of American business.

We are accustomed to describing professional behavior as if men and women leave their emotions and vulnerabilities at home each day. In the case of the Watsons, filial and sibling strife could not be excluded from the office. In closely studying the desires and frustrations of the Watson family, eminent historian Richard S. Tedlow has produced something more than a family portrait or a company history. He has raised the nearly forbidden issue of the role of emotion in corporate life.

This book explores the interplay between the person- alities of these two extraordinary men and the firm they created. Both Watsons had deeply held beliefs about what a corporation is and should be. These ideas helped make "Big Blue" the bluest of blue-chip stocks during the Watsons' tenure. These very beliefs, however, also sowed the seeds for IBM's disasters in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when the company had lost sight of the original meaning behind many of the practices each man put into place.

Tracing the family's idiosyncratic ability to cope with each other's weaknesses but not their strengths, The Watson Dynasty is a book for every person who ever went to work but didn't want to check his personality at the door.

...

Authors: James Wallace.
Paperback, 320 pages
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Publication Date: 1998-05


Reviews :

    James Wallace brings readers up to date on the Gates saga to 1997 and reveals the inside story of the struggle to keep Microsoft on top in the World Wide Web game. Based on interviews with friends, colleagues, competitors, and both current and former Microsoft employees, the text offers an inside view as one of the world's leading business minds faces the challenge of his career....

    While Microsoft was occupied with the largest, most expensive consumer marketing effort in history, the launch of Windows 95, Netscape was equally busy capturing the Web browser market. By mid-1995 it looked as if Bill Gates and company had missed the paradigm shift created by the Internet, and many pundits doubted Microsoft could recover. Meanwhile, the Justice Department was aggressively investigating claims of unfair practices levied by Microsoft's competitors. Suddenly the company found itself in the unfamiliar role of lumbering corporate giant--and underdog. James Wallace's Overdrive, his sequel to Hard Drive, is the story of Microsoft's response to this challenge. A veteran investigative reporter, the author paints a vivid portrait of Gates's determination and competitive ferocity, with a host of revealing anecdotes and details as backdrop. The battle for control of cyberspace is far from over, but Microsoft is clearly not to be trifled with. The tale of how the company repositioned itself in the race makes for fascinating reading....

Authors: et al. Contributing authors Adrian Baker.
Ring-bound, pages
Publisher: Intellimation, Inc.
Publication Date: 1991
Edition: NTSC format, 1VHS, and Instructor's Guide Paper

Reviews :

    "New technologies provide ways to restore and preserve our artistic heritage. The Future of the Past offers a series of behind, the-scenes visits to the Statue of Liberty, the Parthenon in Athens, cathedrals in Europe, and museums in the United States that demostrate how science and art are working together to protect the treasures of the past for the benefit of the future. Distributed by Intellimation, Inc." (from back of cover) "This is the NTSC format, 1VHS, Approx. 60 minutes, and Instructor's Guide Paper are in ring bound. But, the VHS is the Playable with multisystem VHS Players and Televisions in the world too...!" [from the experience]...

Authors: Jeffrey S. Young.
Hardcover, 368 pages
Publisher: Wiley
Publication Date: 1998-09-29


Reviews :

    Here is the fascinating story of the making of the high-tech business revolution and the birth of the Digital Age. Journalist Jeffrey Young chronicles six decades of unbridled technological innovation, taking you inside today's business empires and introducing you to the dreamers, the schemers, the entrepreneurs, and the inventors who built them, including:
* Millionaire-playboy turned visionary-CEO Thomas Watson, Jr.-how he helped pioneer the business computing industry in the early 1950s and made IBM its undisputed master for the next three decades
*

Fast-talking hippie-entrepreneur Steve Jobs and engineering genius Steve Wozniak-how they went from penniless "wireheads" to high-tech multimillionaires overnight
*

Bill Gates-whose talent for turning other people's creative innovations into his own marketplace success was at the heart of Microsoft's brilliant strategy-a tactic Gates perfected at a very tender age
*

How a handful of visionaries turned a Cold War communications system into the global phenomenon called the Internet

Packed with all the excitement of scientific discovery and nail-biting suspense of entrepreneurial brinksmanship, Forbes Greatest Technology Stories is must reading for every business professional.

Forbes (r) is a registered trademark of Forbes Inc. Its use is pursuant to a license agreement with forbes Inc....

Authors: Michael S. Malone.
Paperback, 256 pages
Publisher: Wiley
Publication Date: 2001-12-14
Edition: 1

Reviews :

    An intimate behind-the-scenes look into the personal triumphs and tragedies of sixteen famous and infamous industry titans
From the garages and kitchen tables across America, the technology entrepreneurs have built great companies, reaped unimaginable wealth, and endured challenges to the very core of their personal beliefs and confidence. Now, Betting It All looks directly into the hearts and minds of sixteen of these extraordinary business people. It strips away the legend and gives readers a true glimpse into the very human side of each entrepreneur-including what motivates them, inspires them, and pushes them to continue in the face of crisis. From Bill Gates, Scott McNealy, and Kim Polese to Steve Wozniak and Larry Ellison, this remarkable book reveals what personal and professional price success brings, along with their controversial views on business and society. Readers will hear how these famous and successful business people stay strong when the inevitable crisis comes....

Authors: Mike Markel.
Paperback, 699 pages
Publisher: Bedford/St. Martin's
Publication Date: 2004
Edition: 7th

Authors: Hannah Jones.
Kindle Edition, 296 pages
Publisher: Accent Press
Publication Date: 2007-11-07


Reviews :

    Move over Julie Burchill 'cos there's a much bigger bitch in town. The book that eats the Size Zero debate for breakfast and coughs it back up with a side of comedy carbs, features the ordered ramblings of outsized and outspoken newspaper columnist Hannah Jones. Her diary will find resonance with all women, whatever their shape or size, who've felt pressure to weigh out their self-esteem along with their chips. It's a sharp, witty and heartfelt study on living life in the fat - oops, sorry - fast lane to self-acceptance. "Diary of a Diet" is about Hannah Jones' ongoing struggle to commit to get fit, stick to a sensible eating plan or think, once and for all, that she's simply fabulous just the way she is right now. ...

Authors: Ph.D. Robert Bruce Kelsey.
Paperback, 210 pages
Publisher: Management Concepts
Publication Date: 2006-03-01


Reviews :

    Software Project Management: Measures for Improving Performance focuses on more than the mechanics of project execution. By showing the reader how to identify and solve real world problems that put schedule, cost, and quality at risk, this guide gets to the heart of improving project control and performance. You'll gain valuable insights that will enable you to: Identify measurement needs and goals; Determine what measures to use to maximize the value of data; Interpret data and report the results; Diagnose quality and productivity issues; Use metrics data to solve real problems. This is a must-read for project managers and engineering managers working in organizations where deadlines are tight, the workload is daunting, and daily crises are the rule rather than the exception. The text provides simple run rate data through progressively advanced measures, as well as: Examples that show you how to combine measures to solve complex problems; Exercises that guide you through best practices for metric program development and implementation. From beginning to end, Software Project Management: Measures for Improving Performance guides you to improved project’s performance — long before you turn the last page! Contents: Measures, Goals, and Strategies • Implementing and Measurement Architecture • Applying the Basics: Run Rates • Behind the Line: Attribute Analyses • Measuring Up: Historical Data and Indicators • Graphical Display of Data • Reality Check: The Human Side of the Numbers...

Authors:
Hardcover, 400 pages
Publisher: Stanford Business Books
Publication Date: 2003-09-15
Edition: 1

Reviews :

    ...

Authors: Kara Swisher.
Hardcover, 333 pages
Publisher: Crown Business
Publication Date: 1998-06-16
Edition: 1st

Reviews :

    In 1996, Kara Swisher, then a reporter at The Washington Post, was granted unprecedented access to one of the hottest and most closely watched companies in the world, America Online, Inc.  In aol.com, Swisher has written a book that captures the secrets of how AOL beat the competition and became the world's biggest online company.  Swisher also reveals the company's behind-the-scenes dealings with Microsoft cofounders Bill Gates and Paul Allen, CompuServe, Prodigy, Netscape, and the Christian Right.

Throughout its existence, AOL has repeatedly been written off by the media and the high-tech world.  Bill Gates threatened to buy it or bury it.  Deep-pocketed competitors such as CompuServe and Prodigy thought little of their smaller rival.  And AOL made matters worse by committing a series of public-relations and technical blunders that became front page news and enraged its subscribers.

But the company--a "cyber-cockroach"--refused to die.  Now, with over eleven million subscribers, AOL is the undisputed leader in the online world, vitally positioned at the nexus of big business, high tech, advertising, and new media.  In telling  the story of AOL, Swisher also conveys the fascinating history of the online business, which has its origins in the dreams of an eccentric and little-known entrepreneur named Bill Von Meister, whose grand ideas and big spending spawned the fledgling company that would become AOL.  But it fell to a young marketing executive named Steve Case to build AOL while fending off an onslaught of wealthier competitors and suitors.  Ultimately, as Swisher vividly illustrates, AOL gained supremacy because Case possessed the best vision for his company, establishing AOL as a vibrant virtual community rather than an online shopping center or business tool.  Included in that community is an array of enthusiasts, activists, and deviants who at times clash in battles over freedom of expression and family values, a flash point best illustrated here by AOL's fight against the Communications Decency Act.

Re-creating all of the major moments in AOL's frenzied history, aol.com is a fascinating and important inside story about the birth of a new medium, the enterprising  innovators who are leading it, and the way it is changing our culture....

    AOL's story--from its origins in a doomed gaming service through its early appearance as a much-dismissed startup to its current status as an often-maligned giant--is as irresistible as a heroic comedy. Kara Swisher chronicles the surprising growth of the world's largest online service, an organization for which everything apparently went wrong.

The company has run into obstacles at every step of the way--partners who failed to give necessary support or who even turned hostile, and competition from a multitude of corporate Goliaths (including Bill Gates, who declared that he could either buy AOL or bury it). Worst of all, AOL has created a cascading sequence of operational and technical blunders, often offending or infuriating the people they most need to survive; yet the company still manages to dominate the online service industry.

Swisher speculates that one main factor enabled AOL to succeed against overwhelming odds: the superior vision of marketing executive Steve Case. While other online services focused on games, shopping, and business, AOL worked on building community and interpersonal contacts. This service proved valuable enough to outweigh the company's mistakes and misfortunes.

However, it is this same focus that has also brought on many of AOL's problems. Swisher describes AOL's struggles with the seamier side of online life--people who use the service for criminal activities and for discussing raunchy sexual issues. Swisher also discusses the problems that come with too much success, such as the overload of users that routinely slows down or completely crashes the system, the backlash on the Internet when masses of netiquette-challenged AOLers appeared in cliquish newsgroups, and the national outrage when a technical problem brought down the entire service for many hours.

With its cast of fascinating and quirky characters, including Steve Case, Bill Gates, Paul Allen, and Alexander Haig, aol.com is a captivating look at all the human, cultural, and sometimes just plain quixotic factors that created this unlikely giant. --Elizabeth Lewis ...