Average customer rating:
|
Salsa Nights 2006 Calendar
Bill Brauer
Manufacturer: Ronnie Sellers Productions
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Calendar
 Calendars
| Formats
| Books
| Block Calendars
| Engagement Calendars
| Advent
| Animals
| Architecture
| Arts
| Astrological
| Automotive
| Boats & Ships
| Business
| Children's
| Cooking
| Crafts
| Diet & Health
| Family & Relationships
| Flowers
| Foreign Language
| Games
| Garden & Home
| General
| History
| Humor & Comics
| Inspirational
| Lighthouses
| Maps
| Movies
| Multicultural
| Music
| Nature
| Photography
| Pop Culture
| Quotations
| Readers & Writers
| Regional
| Science Fiction & Fantasy
| Sports
| Television
| Trains
| Women's Interest
General
| Arts & Photography
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Calendars
| Book Accessories
| Our Favorites
| Gift Ideas
General
| Arts
| Calendars
| Book Accessories
| Our Favorites
| Gift Ideas
ASIN: 141621030X
Release Date: 2005-07-25 |
Product Description
Bill Brauer's paintings of dancers are among the hottest selling images in the poster and print business. Skilled in the techniques of Renaissance masters, Brauer creates a harmonious blend of dance, romance, and sensuality. Each of the twelve paintings here capture the heat and high energy of latin dance.
Average customer rating:
|
Livewire Investigates Our World and Beyond The Changing Earth (Livewires)
Anne Garton
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
General
| Education
| Nonfiction
| Subjects
| Books
Readers
| Words & Language
| Reference
| Subjects
| Books
Reading Skills
| Words & Language
| Reference
| Subjects
| Books
Humanities
| Specific Skills
| Education
| Professional & Technical
| Subjects
| Books
ASIN: 0521526809 |
Book Description
Did you know that the Earth has been continually changing over billions of years and will continue to do so? Volcanic eruptions and earthquakes can alter landscapes suddenly and dramatically. But most changes to the Earth are too small and slow for us to notice. This book tells of what is happening beneath our feet on our amazing planet. It describes the layers of the Earth, the theory of continental drift and the science we call plate tectonics.
Book Description
This digital document is an article from JOPERD--The Journal of Physical Education, Recreation & Dance, published by American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance (AAHPERD) on March 1, 2000. The length of the article is 2314 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: Advocacy: Changing Our Professional Behaviors.
Author: Doris L. Watson
Publication:
JOPERD--The Journal of Physical Education, Recreation & Dance (Refereed)
Date: March 1, 2000
Publisher: American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance (AAHPERD)
Volume: 71
Issue: 3
Page: 46
Distributed by Thomson Gale
Average customer rating:
|
Our changing art education
Felix Payant
Manufacturer: Keramic Studio Pub. Co
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
Study & Teaching
| Reference
| Arts & Photography
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Instructional & How-To
| Arts & Photography
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Arts & Photography
| Subjects
| Books
ASIN: B00086O64M |
Book Description
This 96-page full color trade paperback features many of the most hilarious exploits of Archie and Friends'from the "ME" decade, better known as the Eighties. Computers! New age music! Urban cowboys! Preppies! E.T.! Roller boogie! Michael Jackson! Cabbage Patch Kids! Breakdancing! Trivial Pursuit! Music videos! It's all here in this amazing volume!
Customer Reviews:
I love the Series... not too crazy on the artwork!.......2007-02-01
Ok, I love the whole series and loved reading this one as well. I was born in the 80's afterall. But the drawings don't stand up to the earlier works. The faces don't seem to have as much effort put into them as the earlier works. It is still a must have though so that you can see and compare the differences in the books.
ARCHIE IN THE AWESOME 1980'S.......2005-08-08
Archie American Best of the 1980's is the final volume in the Americana series (at least until they to the best of the 1990's!) and contains 17 stories which represent the best and worst of the gaudy, garish decade of the 1980's. Steve Geppi of Diamond Distribution provides the introduction to this volume and relates his own life-long love of Archie Comics. One thing immediately noticeable about this volume is the cleavage on the girls, which was once completely banned back in the earlier days. As with the last couple of volumes the editors selected those stories which documented the many trends and fads from the decade of the 80's.
In "In the Swing" from 1981, Veronica dons the preppie look in a nostalgic look back to the fashions of the 40's.
"Bo Woe" has Vernoica undergoing treatments to give her hair the "Bo Derek" look from the film "10" with braids and beads. Problem is her new hair won't allow her to go out a boat date with a young playboy since she can't get her hair wet.
"The Punk" from 1983 visits the punk music scene as Jughead cuts his hair into a Mohawk and begins calling himself Captain Thrash. Archie does his best to try and save his friend from the punk scene but Jughead has an ulterior motive behind this radical change.
In "Break Dancing Break" from 1984, The Archies are told that the only way that they can get some new gigs is to cut a video. They have a hard time trying to come up with something catchy in their video until they enlist the aid of a group of street breakdancers to help them out.
"Trivia Travesty" finds the gang playing the hottest new board game, Trivial Pursuit but things turn bad for Archie when his answers lead him to getting caught for two-timing Veronica with Betty.
"Wheel of loot" is a spoof on the popular TV gameshow Wheel of Fortune as Betty stands-in for Vanna White as the games letter turner.
In addition to these stories the book features stories on other great and no so great trends of the 1980's including the Urban Cowboy craze, ET the Extraterrestrial, Roller Disco, and Flash Dancing. Even a Michael Jackson-like pop star shows up in the book. As with the other books in this series we also get a couple of cover galleries with sample covers of the 1980's. I've had a chance to review all seven volumes in the Archie Americana series and the set stands as a great testament to the popularity of the Archie character, still going strong after more than 60 years. Throughout all the volumes the editors did a splendid job of choosing stories that were topical and representative of the various time periods. Highly recommended for any Archie fan!
Reviewed By Tim Janson
Average customer rating:
- My Mother Loved This, But...
- Terribly, awfully, wonderful book of life between the wars
- British Wit. Same women world as we know it...
- Witty stay at home mum's life, dated and timeless too
- Charming but Dated
|
Diary of a Provincial Lady (Prion Humour Classics)
E.M. Delafield
Manufacturer: Prion Books Ltd
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
Humor
| Entertainment
| Subjects
| Books
| Books on CD
| Books on Cassette
| Business
| Business & Professional
| Cats, Dogs & Animals
| Comedy
| Computers & Internet
| Cooking
| Doctors & Medicine
| Essays
| General
| Hunting & Fishing
| Jokes & Riddles
| Lawyers & Criminals
| Limericks & Humorous Verse
| Love, Sex & Marriage
| Parenting & Families
| Parodies
| Political
| Puns & Wordplay
| Religion
| Rural Life
| Satire, Classic
| Satire, General
| Science & Scientists
| Self-Help & Psychology
| Sports
| Theories of Humor
| Urban Legends
19th Century
| British
| World Literature
| Literature & Fiction
| Subjects
| Books
Contemporary
| General
| Literature & Fiction
| Subjects
| Books
Look Inside Entertainment Books
| Trip
| Specialty Stores
| Books
Look Inside Fiction Books
| Trip
| Specialty Stores
| Books
Similar Items:
-
The Provincial Lady in London
-
The Provincial Lady in America
-
One Pair of Hands
-
The Provincial Lady in Wartime (Cassandra Editions)
-
The Provincial Lady in Russia: I Visit the Soviets
ASIN: 1853753688 |
Book Description
The Provincial Lady has a nice house, a nice husband (usually asleep behind The Times) and nice children. In fact, maintaining Niceness is the Provincial Lady's goal in life — her raison d'être. She never raises her voice, rarely ventures outside Devon (why would she?), only occasionally allows herself to become vexed by the ongoing servant problem, and would be truly appalled by the confessional mode that has gripped the late 20th century. The Provincial Lady, after all, is part of what made Britain great.
Customer Reviews:
My Mother Loved This, But..........2005-05-09
According to her, this is a single volume that contains "The Diary of a Provincial Lady" ONLY. The editorial review from Amazon states that this edition also includes several sequels. Apparently it does not. Still worth the price, according to Mom; she found it absolutely delightful.
Terribly, awfully, wonderful book of life between the wars.......2003-11-05
This charming book was written in the period between the wars, and tells of the daily trials and tribulations of the Provincial Lady - dealing with the servants, nosy neighbours, the horribly snobbish local 'upper class', the husband who hides behind the paper. Always told with style and wit, we observe life for the lady in question as she tries to balance the accounts (never a success - where does it all go?), help out at the local Women's Institute, keep her wardrobe up to date and deal with such important issues as modern parenting, keeping one's brain active when living outside of London, and the delicate balance of letting the husband know not too much or too little.
The stand-out thing about this book is the character descriptions and her take on everyday life. If anyone ever tells you people were much nicer/politer in the good old days, just refer them to this book, which shows that there was just as many selfish, impolite, venal, self-centred and downright rude people in the 'good old days' as there are today. We just need to hope that we can deal with them with as much style and aplomb as the Provincial Lady would.
British Wit. Same women world as we know it..........2003-07-20
Am determined to write impressions from this book in the style of "the Provincial Lady" herself. Am doubtful however as to the outcomes of this effort as my highest labors would not reach the dry frank witticism she displays.
Provincial Lady does her best to satisfy the wishes of silent husband (... "Robert, this morning, complains of insufficient breakfast. Cannot feel that porridge, scrambled eggs, toast, marmalade, scones, brown bread and coffee give adequate grounds for this, but admit that porridge is slightly burnt...."), intimidating cook, beloved children (... "Robin - whom I refer to in a detached way as "the boy" so that she shan't think I am foolish about him..., "Vicky,.... Enquires abruptly whether, if she died, I should cry?"), Mademoiselle (the nanny), Gardner and all kinds of friends and neighbors including the tiring Lady Birkenshop, "our vicar's wife" and the hated Mrs. B. ("query: Is not a common hate one of the strongest links in human nature?... answer, most regrettably, in the affirmative.")
This is the same women world. Husband is as usual quiet and does not give any consolation and the Lady struggles to please everyone and not forget herself and her own wishes (and health) on the way. How very sad to discover it was the same (woman) world even 70 years ago ... Book is so very candid and manages to capture the ever lasting nuances of human behavior ("Mem: Candid and intelligent self examination as to motive, etc., often leads to very distressing revelations...."), little lies, social pretenses and the day to day struggles. Funny and entertaining yet can be tiring at times - since the day to day life is indeed tiring . Very very British and thus charming.
Witty stay at home mum's life, dated and timeless too.......2001-10-05
I reread this every year or two, and love it each time. Admittedly,a product of its time and place, capturing life among the genteely-poor gentry in an English village between the wars(WW's I & II). The diary format makes the provincial lady's narration of and commentary on the events around her doubly funny, as she struggles to run her household and not be driven crazy by nice but dull husband, snobbish wife of husband's boss,disputes among servants,quandaries about children, etc.--and to find time to keep a sense of herself as a professional writer. Not deep, but funny and often touching.
Charming but Dated.......2001-05-22
This was a simply written and quite charming novel. Whilst it did give an insight into the lives of a moderately wealthy English family in 1931, it lacked plot and real structure and for this reason I am unlikely to read more by this author at this stage - especially when there are simply too many other great books out there to read. A gentle, easy read but a little disappointing.
Customer Reviews:
My thoughts.......2006-06-29
It is a pretty good book. I was looking for a contemporary monologue and I wish it had a little bit more selection of those.
Not worth it!.......2002-12-04
I'm the second half of a 2-person book club, and we selected this book because we wanted to read something different. After many "hits" in our readings, this one was a big miss.
This is definitely a book geared toward actors as the title says. It's not for casual reading. But, even as a source of audition monologues, this book comes across as repetitive, vague, and one-dimensional.
The selection of movies starts in the 1930 and goes through many famous and infamous movies, which is great - a wide range. But it failed to give a diversity of characters, especially female characters, many of whom were the typical down-on-her-luck lasses. And the problem with the male characters selected is the demographic...white WASPs.
The emotional range doesn't get too far beyond the depressed and the depressing, which is useless to a character who's auditioning for a comedy and wants to show the producers and director that they are made for this part.
Comedy was rare, the monologue selections redundant (except for the classics like "To Kill a Mockingbird"), and the plot descriptions were vague at best. Rarely were the authors able to give a sufficient set-up of the plot and characterization for the monologues. It helped if the reader had seen the movie and understood the character's motivation and the plot, but the author's seem frightened to give away endings, when that isn't the point of their work.
Our book club gave this a rating of 3 out of 10, but here, that translates to a 1 star.
Don't waste your money...rent a movie instead.
terrible.......2000-01-01
this book took the life out of the words and strangled it with all its might!
It was ok but lacked variety.......1998-10-02
The books monologues were aimed at people in there 30's and 40's. I was hoping they would be aimed at my age group which is the 20's and 30's. Maybe some day I will find something that suits me.
Book Description
This is the first book to examine Schubert’s songs as active shaping forces in the culture of their era rather than as mere reflections of it. Responding to rising new forms of social organisation, Schubert discovered that songs could serve as a medium for shuffling and reshuffling the basic building blocks of identity and desire, especially sexual desire. His songs project a kaleidoscopic array of unexpected human types, all of whom are eligible for a sympathetic response, even the strangest and most disconcerting. Schubert sought to validate these subjective types without subordinating them to a central social or sexual norm. The book describes and contextualises this process and tracks it concretely in a wide variety of songs. Combining close attention to both music and poetry, the book addresses both specialists and non-specialists in a lively, accessible style unburdened by excessive jargon.
Customer Reviews:
Yet another obscure intellectual romp with Lawrence Kramer.......2002-11-22
Lawrence Kramer's latest book suffers the same disease as his other books and articles on classical music suffer. Much of the points he tries to make are lost in the highfalutin language he enjoys using. The topics of his book are complex already, and he doesn't make it any easier on the reader to understand by writing in such a distanced manner. While this is a text aimed for scholars in the field, Kramer could have broadened his audience by making it more accesible for the apprentices, not just the masters. Kramer's writing seems almost exclusive, as if he is holding his knowledge just above the reach of most people, and enjoying himself as he does this as well.
Getting past the language, many of Kramer's points are not supported by a wealth of evidence. He makes points that lack credibility without enough support. Kramer seems to expect the readers to take him at his word, which is a dangerous thing to do, considering that he is far from the final word on Schubert. Kramer's opinions are NOT enough to make opinion fact, though he seems to think this is the case.
If you buy this book for leisure or for class, be sure to read carefully, or else you'll get tricked into believeing Kramer's assertions.
Using big words to describe a complex topic does not magically transform his opinions into fact, nor does it make a scholar more scholarly. It compromises what possibly could have been an interesting book, dooming it before it even started.
Average customer rating:
|
Franz Schubert: Sexuality, Subjectivity, Song.(Review): An article from: Notes
Christopher Hatch
Manufacturer: Music Library Association, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital
Entertainment
| Subjects
| Books
| Humor
| Movies
| Music
| Performing Arts
| Pop Culture
| Puzzles & Games
| Radio
| Sheet Music & Scores
| Television
Online Books
| Books & Reading
| Literature & Fiction
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Science
| Subjects
| Books
Science & Technology
| Subjects
| e-Docs
| Formats
| Books
Entertainment
| HTML
| Formats
| e-Docs
| Formats
| Books
Science
| HTML
| Formats
| e-Docs
| Formats
| Books
ASIN: B0008GZMP4
Release Date: 2005-07-28 |
Book Description
This digital document is an article from Notes, published by Music Library Association, Inc. on March 1, 2000. The length of the article is 1644 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: Franz Schubert: Sexuality, Subjectivity, Song.(Review)
Author: Christopher Hatch
Publication:
Notes (Refereed)
Date: March 1, 2000
Publisher: Music Library Association, Inc.
Volume: 56
Issue: 3
Page: 681
Article Type: Book Review
Distributed by Thomson Gale
Customer Reviews:
Amazing experience!.......2007-07-18
I loved this book. I could hardly put it down! You do all the problems, and fill out the graphs at the end (no cheating! you have to be honest). Then when you get is a scientific report of your strengths and weaknesses in different areas of chess. It's uncanny how accurrate this is. The best thing is you know where you need to focus your training, and he gives you advice for that. If you are interested in improvement, then this is a must.
Great Book.......2007-07-16
This book is much more than a typical tactics book of finding the best move. The positions really make you think and get deeper into the ideas and plans. The author has a great way of explaining the ideas and analysis of the positions. The layout of the book is really good with nice diagrams. The results from the exam clearly point out your weaknesses and then you know what you need to work on to get better. I found this book to be very enjoyable and I had trouble putting it down after each position I wanted to get more. I highly recommend this book it was very instructive and informative. A must buy!
Customer Reviews:
One of the best books on tactics........2007-05-18
This book give numerous tactical themes and plenty of exercises. Very highly recommended.
Great for beginners.......2007-03-08
My young chess player says this book gives a great overview of each chess tactic. It begins the lessons with easy tactics and advances to harder and more difficult lessons rather quickly. A person who has been playing for about a year would find this book helpful. This book is not really for more experienced players. It will help the beginner become a better chess player (if you manage to work through all the exercises). And peeking at the answers without working through the problems won't do the trick.
perfect.......2007-01-15
This book is just perfect.
In the first part of the book the puzzles are introduced with some words that can give you an idea of what's going on. I usually don't like these kind of things, but ok, this is "Learn Chess Tactics", not "Test your tactic level" or something like that.
All the puzzles are from recent games, all the solutions are correct, every solution is analyzed in depth.
BEST chess tactics book of it's type for the non-beginner........2006-09-14
"Learn Chess Tactics" is a great first tactics book for someone who has learned to play chess to get.
Each chess tactic is broken down by it's type. The name is given and what the tactic is is explained. There are then examples to work on making the book fun. This is one of three types of books on tactics. This being more of an introduction with some examples. Then there are workbooks that contain hundreds of tactics puzzles to try and solve and then there are books that cover chess traps that help with tactics in the opening. Getting a variety of tactics books will be one of the best ways to improve the part of your knowledge on chess that will make you a better player.
Tactics are the lightning of chess.......2006-04-24
It is a truism that most chess games are won through tactics, whether those tactics occur on the board or in the notes.
And yet what player hasn't had this experience: you have entered upon what you believe is the final stage of a long and skillfully played game of chess. Not only have you handled the opening well, gaining an advantage, but you have nursed this advantage to the point where victory is surely in reach. You sit back in your chair, you smile, and as you start to consider how you might celebrate this victory later on... suddenly your queen is forked.
End of game.
Which is to say that tactics are both the wonder and the terror of chess. Long after we have forgotten our tournament results, how many of us can remember that game where, through a brilliant deflection, we won a rook? Or the rook we dropped through a discovered attack on our king? For many of us, our fondest and worst chess memories are these tactical blows.
It is these blows that fill the pages of John Nunn's book, Learn Chess Tactics, a work that is more than a puzzle book along the lines of Reinfeld's, 1,001 Brilliant Ways to Checkmate or Wilson and Alberston's 303 Tricky Chess Tactics. These have their place and are fine as far as they go. My advice for the novice is -- start with Nunn.
In Learn Chess Tactics, each tactical idea has a chapter, and each chapter starts with a clear and incisive analysis of the tactical idea - something most other books on the subject ignore. Along the way, each idea is illustrated by recent tournament games, and then the chapter ends with a score of exercises. These become progressively harder to solve, and the solutions to some struck me as truly revelatory - a permanent addition to my chess knowledge.
Aside from the tactical challenge of such a work, the text is peppered with more general observations about its theme, some of them insightful. For example, Nunn asks on page 90, "How does one spot the winning [tactical] idea?" And answers, "Very often the key is to focus on a potential weakness, and see what is necessary to exploit it." It follows therefore that the ability to spot tactics is the ability to identify weak points in a position and to know how to turn these to your advantage. Elsewhere he says that "although study of familiar patterns will undoubtedly improve one's playing strength, it is important not to lose the ability to think independently." Much has been made lately of pattern-recognition in chess, but as Jonathan Rowson and others have stressed, it is not a cure-all. It cannot, for instance, take the place of an alert, inventive mind. But nothing can.
Almost any tactical puzzle book will help you think independently and to exploit weakness, and the two I mentioned earlier are good. What distinguishes Nunn's work, however, is his analysis of each tactical element, such as the pin, fork, and skewer. After explaining the basic mechanism of each, he shows us how complicated the mechanism can become in a real game, the many variations that can spring from each tactical theme. As Rowson and others have noted, chess is hard - and beautiful. Nunn's prose throughout is as clean and workmanlike as a Capablanca endgame.
Who is this book for? I've been playing chess for over thirty years and consider myself a solid, intermediate player. And though I could easily solve the first half of the exercises in each chapter, there were always a few in the second half that stumped me. Nunn wrote the book as a sort of primer on tactics, but don't let that fool you: it will challenge the non-beginner as well. At the very least, in its clear labeling and discussion of the basic tactical tools, it will provide the more advanced player a healthy refresher course on that part of the game that is, for many of us, the hardest to fully master.
The best advice I ever received as a new player was to make myself into "a tactical monster," and that's still good advice. As a new player set on moving up the ranks quickly, there is no surer path to victory than a good eye for the tactical stroke, and there are few books that discuss this theme more clearly than Nunn's.
Product Description
What makes this book different from the many other tactics books on the market is that it was written by a classroom teacher for other teachers. All the pages are formatted with a heading and perforated for easy use.
Materials in this book have been arranged to teach chess tactics in a progressive fashion (How often do your students overlook simple mates?) and the ability to search for good moves. Young students need to learn how to add layers to the depth and width of their search, hence the orderly increase in difficulty of the problems presented.
Customer Reviews:
Oversized Print Beginner's Tactic Workbook.......2006-09-26
Not bad! I like the idea of LARGE PRINT tactics and traps workbooks that are easy to see, use very big digagrams, large print and have got this book, "Chess Tactics Workbook", Bain's "Chess Tactics for Students" and Snyder's "Winning Chess Traps for Juniors" all in the large print books.
Except for some typos and a few mistakes in the solutions this is a decent first tactics book for a beginner.
Large Workbook for the Beginner or Advanced Beginner.......2006-08-12
This is a book that contains very simple to just beyond simple chess tactical problems to solve. Though arranged by type of tactics within that there is little organization or explanation of the themes. A couple of solutions are wrong and there are typos even in the later editions. Written years ago, there are better books for students to learn tactics from like "Winning Chess Tactics for Juniors" by Hays and "Winning Chess Traps for Juniors" both with more solid material.
When comparing to the competition this book is average at best.
Average customer rating:
|
Learn Chess Tactics
John Nunn
Manufacturer: Gambit Publications
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000N65F7E |
Book Description
Even world-class companies, with powerful and proven business models, eventually discover limits to growth. That’s what makes emerging high-growth industries so attractive. With no proven formula for making a profit, these industries represent huge opportunities for the companies that are fast enough and smart enough to capture them first.
But building tomorrow’s businesses while simultaneously sustaining excellence in today’s demands a delicate balance. It is a mandatory quest, but one that is fraught with contradiction and paradox. Until now, there has been little practical guidance.
Based on an in-depth, multiyear research study of innovative initiatives at ten large corporations, Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble identify three central challenges: forgetting yesterday’s successful processes and practices; borrowing selected resources from the core business; and learning how the new business can succeed. The authors make recommendations regarding staffing, leadership roles, reporting relationships, process design, planning, performance assessment, incentives, cultural norms, and much more.
Breakthrough growth opportunities can make or break companies and careers. Forget, Borrow, Learn is every leader’s guide to execution in unexplored territory.
Customer Reviews:
Working from the Inside.......2007-08-20
We always hear about the innovators who go out to their garage and come out millionaires. But those slogging it out to innovate in old companies don't get any kudos. In fact, it is a pretty thankless process.
This book provides some key wisdom and models that will help internal innovators to design systems to get the most out of a large corporation without killing the new idea.
Just what I needed to help my job.......2007-07-15
I work deeply involved in innovation and its unusual needs for creating successful business, sometimes very far from the regular processes and methodologies. However, it was sometimes difficult to justify to my bosses why I took some decisions that seemed to go in opposite direction of the expected result and it is exactly what this book brought to me. Recommended.
Inside look at managing an innovative offshoot.......2007-04-19
As opposed to offering a simple guide to innovation, Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble do something less common, and they do it well: They analyze the institutional structures which allow, nurture and support innovation. They explain how to open new innovation-focused divisions in your organization, how to think about learning and how to evaluate such new projects (and, perhaps more importantly, how not to evaluate them). They share case studies of established companies' successful and failed attempts to sprout innovative offshoots. The results are very level-headed. The authors are quite clear about the obstacles to institutional innovation, planning and learning in uncharted waters. We expect that this book could help you sail through.
A "must-understand" for leaders concerned with long-term prosperity.......2006-07-14
Many thanks to Vijay Govindarajan (VG) and Chris Trimble for this grand exposition of ideas first shared in the Spring 2005 California Management Review and the May 2005 Harvard Business Review. VG and Trimble's "Forget, Borrow, Learn" framework is the most powerful recipe for corporate reinvention that I have encountered.
As other Amazon reviewers have skillfully described the contents of this excellent book, I would like to add just two things.
First, as a graduate of the Tuck School of Business, I had the good fortune of encountering VG in the classroom. VG is a dynamic presence who commands attention. If you get a chance to experience VG in person, take it. To get a (very) small taste of what I am talking about, check out VG's video link at Tuck's website.
Second, to learn further from VG, I highly recommend VG's blog. Several of VG's posts are pure gold. For example, in VG's March 10, 2006 post, he puts forth his "three box thinking model," with box 1 being "Manage the present," box 2 being "Selectively abandon the past," and box 3 being "Create the future." The leaders of most companies spend most of their time in box 1, believing that they are working on strategy. As VG contends, though, strategy is really about boxes 2 and (especially) 3, that is, figuring out how to allocate scarce resources today to assure market leadership in 2010, 2020, and beyond. Yes, indeed.
In sum, I not only recommend this book wholeheartedly, but also urge those concerned with the long-term health of their firms to continue reckoning with the thoughts and writings of both VG and Chris Trimble.
Some Excellent New Ideas for Pursuing Organic Growth.......2006-06-27
This is an excellent book that provides some excellent new ideas for pursuing organic growth. These ideas are built around three challenges: forgetting, borrowing and learning. The ideas are developed as 10 rules which are supported by numerous examples. To read this book, I would focus on the introduction and chapter one and then go to the conclusions in chapter 10. Chapter one provides the context for the rules and chapter 10 summarizes them. From there, you can focus on the rules that are most interesting to you and your organization. The chapter that I found to be most interesting was chapter 9, Theory Focused Planning an approach to understanding the business, how it will work and to discover the business model that the organization needs to focus on to be successful. I found this to be the best chapter in the book, because the traditional concepts of annual budgeting really don't work well in the world of innovation. And, this appears to me to be fundamentally better approach.
Books:
- Serious Business: The Art and Commerce of Animation in America from Betty Boop to Toy Story
- Shaman: The Paintings of Susan Seddon Boulet: 2006 (Wall) Calendar
- Significant Others: Creativity & Intimate Partnership (Interplay)
- Silhouette Designs for Artists and Craftspeople
- Silversmithing: A Manual of Design and Technique
- Skate Crazy: Amazing Graphics from the Golden Age of Roller Skating
- Sketching With A Pencil: For Those Who Are Just Beginning
- Sonic Process
- Standard Catalog of German Coins: 1601 To Present (Standard Catalog of German Coins)
- SuperVisions: Geometric Optical Illusions (Supervisions)
Books Index
Books Home
Recommended Books
- The Team Renzo Gracie Workout: Training for Warriors
- The Malloreon, Vol. 1
- Synthetic Chemistry of Stable Nitroxides
- The Sky Unwashed
- The Prop Builder's Mask-Making Handbook
- The Nemesis Affair: A Story of the Death of Dinosaurs and the Ways of Science
- The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts
- The World of Charles Addams
- The Life of a Style: Beginnings and Endings in the Narrative History of Art
- The Sacrilege
