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Employees First, Customers Second
I saw this book in a local bookstore the other day and immediately bought it in my KindleDX. With KindleDX I read it in two parts – the first few chapters I had the book read out to me using the Text to Speech while driving to work and back, the second part I read out the text (as a book). Either ways I enjoyed the book “Employees First, Customers Second” by HCL Tech CEO Vineet Nayar. The book talks about the concept of a value zone, the importance of empowering the people in the value zone, how the layers of management in an organization though needed adds little to…
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Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good
I read a review of this book in Business Week and purchased the book some months back. Over last two weeks I finished this book – Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good by Sarah Lacy. The title made the book appear to be an interesting read on how the web 2.0 businesses have fared compared to the ones that came up and died quickly in the dotcom burst. On reading the book, it turned out to be a coverage of the story of Jay Adelson (Revision3), Kevin Rose (Digg), Max Levchin (Paypal and Slide) and Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook) and passing coverage of Marc Andressen (Netscape), Ben & Mena Trott (Six…
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Define the IT Workforce
The recent issue of IEEE ITPro Magazine (July/August 2008) had carried a very interesting Editorial. It raised the question “A Moving Target: Try to Define the IT Workforce”, where it pointed that job titles in IT industry were being invented and qualifications were shifting daily. It uses the US Bureau of Labor’s List of IT Jobs and arrives at a suggestion of a short list of 3 distinct “identities” in IT today: computer scientist software engineer, and IT Professional In the above list probably it is easier to understand “IT Professionals” as a broad designation. And the other two as niches within that. The authors Keith W.Miller and Jeffrey Voas…
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The Romance of Tata Steel by R.M.Lala
Truly one of India’s 20th and 21st Century industrial success story is of Tata Steel. The first time I read about them was in the earlier book of R.M.Lala “Creation of Wealth“, which was more of an overview of entire Tata Group. In his new book “The Romance of Tata Steel” Lala has focused only on Tata Steel. The author traces a hundred years and more of exciting history of Tata Steel—from men searching for iron ore and coking coal in jungle areas, traversing in bullock carts before the site was found, to the company’s modern status as a world-class company. Though the writing style makes it appear like a…
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The New Imperialists
The New Imperialists (How Five Restless Kids Grew up to virtually rule your world) by Mark Leibovich is a book I read recently. Though the book that talks about 5 technology leaders and visionaries is little old (it was written in 2001/2002 and a lot happens in technology industry in 5 years) I still purchased the book as I got it for a steal in Landmark sale last year (Rs.149 against the original price of Rs.1025, a saving of nearly $22). Leibovich a technology reporter for the Washington Post sets out to explain why he selected this particular 5 people whom he calls "The New Imperialists". The list of 5…
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Cold Steel – Lakshmi Mittal
Two weeks back on my way back to Chennai in Mumbai Airport I picked up the book – Cold Steel, Lakshmi Mittal and the Multi-Billion-Dollar Battle for a Global Empire by Tim Bouquet and Byron Ousey. The book is about the story of the world’s biggest and most hard-fought industry takeover in recent years. It is the story of Lakshmi Mittal taking over (or merging) with European steel giant Arcelor to form ArcelorMittal. What I liked about the book was that it is told in a thriller fashion on what happened each day of this six-month battle. Each day is narrated by the authors in a scene by scene fashion…
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Think Big and Kick Ass
Last month before boarding my long return flight from Seattle to Chennai, I checked out Borders store for some reading material to keep me occupied. I picked this book – Think Big and Kick Ass by Donald Trump. I have heard about the US TV Reality Show – Apprentice but I didn’t know anything about Trump. So I had no expectations and didn’t buy the book for Donald Trump’s name. I wanted an interesting lite reading book and found this to fit the bill. I finished a portion of it in the flight, but managed to complete the entire book in my vacation last week in Kodaikanal. I don’t like…
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It happened in India – Kishore Biyani
I finally finished reading the book “It happened in India“, the reason I am saying finally is that I have been reading this book for nearly 2 months but managed to complete the last 30 pages only today. The book is kind of an auto-autobiography of Kishore Biyani – it’s about the story of Pantaloons, Big Bazaar & Central chain of retail stores. Let me say at the beginning, I am a little biased in favour of Indian success stories – apart from being an Indian, the reason is that I feel there is a dearth of good books on Indian business stories. The first thing that you will notice when…
