An informative business guide by an author with substantial experience, written in a style that will put off some readers,...
A veteran entrepreneur shares his insights into starting and building a business.
In this debut, Lewis combines his knowledge from years of creating and selling several successful companies with a cheerful, breezy assurance. After detailing the various qualities that he believes a successful business founder should have, he addresses readers with the assumption that they already have drive, intelligence, and creativity, and only need some direction and wisdom from someone with experience. He intersperses his discussions of funding sources, initial hires, and intellectual property with episodes involving the fictional Dave. This engineer’s decision to quit his job and start a company shows the book’s topics in action: Dave evaluates his family’s finances before making the decision to leave, trades a majority stake in his new company for much-needed cash, and survives his first trade show while supervising frat-boy-like salesmen. Lewis’ verbal shrugs and claims to ignorance (“Disclaimer: I don’t have a PhD in psychology or neuroscience and have spent very little time actually reading about what makes some people creative”) can sometimes be distracting, particularly when the book’s main strength is in the very knowledge he claims to lack. His narrative voice is distinctive, but it may not resonate with all readers; those who find it grating to read that Moore’s Law “was pretty much dead nuts on,” or sentences such as “The news…felt like somebody had crushed my left testicle,” may want to look elsewhere for business guidance. Those who find Lewis’ prose style appealing, however, will find plenty of solid information here, from how to establish rapport with engineering hires to how to estimate revenue metrics before one’s very first sale.
An informative business guide by an author with substantial experience, written in a style that will put off some readers, but win over many others.Pub Date: Sept. 25, 2014
ISBN: 978-1500146986
Page Count: 254
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.
A helpful guide to working effectively with people from other cultures.
“The sad truth is that the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work,” writes Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an international business school. Yet they face a wider array of work styles than ever before in dealing with clients, suppliers and colleagues from around the world. When is it best to speak or stay quiet? What is the role of the leader in the room? When working with foreign business people, failing to take cultural differences into account can lead to frustration, misunderstanding or worse. Based on research and her experiences teaching cross-cultural behaviors to executive students, the author examines a handful of key areas. Among others, they include communicating (Anglo-Saxons are explicit; Asians communicate implicitly, requiring listeners to read between the lines), developing a sense of trust (Brazilians do it over long lunches), and decision-making (Germans rely on consensus, Americans on one decider). In each area, the author provides a “culture map scale” that positions behaviors in more than 20 countries along a continuum, allowing readers to anticipate the preferences of individuals from a particular country: Do they like direct or indirect negative feedback? Are they rigid or flexible regarding deadlines? Do they favor verbal or written commitments? And so on. Meyer discusses managers who have faced perplexing situations, such as knowledgeable team members who fail to speak up in meetings or Indians who offer a puzzling half-shake, half-nod of the head. Cultural differences—not personality quirks—are the motivating factors behind many behavioral styles. Depending on our cultures, we understand the world in a particular way, find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, and consider some ways of making decisions or measuring time natural and others quite strange.
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.Pub Date: May 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61039-250-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
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