Investing Books

This fascinating, well-written little volume is investing made easy for those of us who aren't Warren Buffet, and may even be "investing-challenged." With excellent analogies and anecdotes drawn from his puttering around the garden, the author makes the seemingly daunting task of what to do with one's - and one's family's - cherished and hard-earned savings seem not only less paralyzing, but even fun. And since the author writes informatively not only about finances but about gardening, it's a terrific "two-fer." Quite simply, it's the best investment I ever made.

I loved this little book!
I tend to be rather daunted by numbers in general and financial statements in particular, but this book discusses the basics of investing in terms of gardening -- tending the soil, planting the seed, waiting for the harvest -- rather than in terms of things that make my eyes glaze over. I've never heard investing described in this way, but it really helped me understand so much!

Some of the most exciting, complex and dynamic issues facing society today are found at the intricate and, at times, uncertain interface marking the rapidly evolving boundaries of law and biotechnology. Within the maelstrom defined by present day societal, ethical and scientific forces, the appropriate application and guidance of a well reasoned legal structure is critical to fostering and maintaining a biotechnology paradigm that is both functional and, on the whole, beneficial to mankind. Yet, while the present legal and regulatory framework has worked reasonably well in addressing the issues of the biotechnology industry to this point, the challenges facing the system are greater than ever before. Simply by picking up today's paper one is confronted by a litany of ethical (cloning, embryonic stem cells), regulatory (biogeneric legislation, genetic therapy) and economic/business (scope of intellectual property protection, reimbursement rates) issues that are often contentious, ill defined and overlapping. To appreciate the ramifications of these and other challenges facing the industry, it is necessary to understand the current structure as well as the source of future pressure points. Fortunately, Bob Bohrer's book, A Guide to Biotechnology Law and Business does an excellent job, both in explaining the many facets of the present legal and regulatory system governing the biotechnology industry and in exploring the open issues and forces that are influencing its evolution.

Lucid, intelligent, balanced and comprehensive, the book is written both for the professional in the industry and for the educated layman in something akin to a Scientific American format. As explained by the author "The book is intended to provide `the big picture' to everyone interested or involved in the biotechnology industry." As one in the industry, I find the Guide to be an admirable first line reference for areas in which I have a need for a detailed understanding but not a need to develop an expertise (e.g. regulatory matters).

Starting out with an interesting overview and using applied examples, the book quickly brings in the role of the legal system (and lawyers) in biotech lifecycle management and implementation of strategy. Following a short technical discussion of the scientific basis for biotech products are relatively detailed explanations of the university tech transfer process and the role of intellectual property in biotechnology. While going through the legal structure, both subjects are enlivened with practical examples that provide a "real world" feel and understanding much deeper (and less dry) than the typical legal treatise. The book then moves into the legal process concerning two of the more interesting "big picture" questions surrounding any business: how to get the money and how to make money. As one in the industry I can't tell you how much time, effort, blood and tears go into these efforts. Here the chapters on business strategy and biotech financing, again with practical illustrations, struck me as comprehensive and provided an excellent overview. This was followed by two very readable and complete descriptions of one of the more critical areas in biotechnology, the regulatory process. In what I found to be one of the most useful sections of the book, the chapters provide a relatively clear description of what has been a confusing legislative history and untangle the present web of overlapping regulations. Finally, the author concludes with a series of chapters on current ethical and regulatory issues that leave the reader contemplating where the industry is heading.


All in all a highly exciting and readable book for anyone interested in obtaining a detailed overview of the biotechnology industry. I would highly recommend it.

A disclaimer: I am a former law student of the professor's and a long time acquaintance. At the present I am an intellectual property attorney with a major biopharmaceutical company.

Professor Bohrer's Guide to Biotechnology Law and Business is a great resource for professionals that work in the junction of law and biotechnology. While it is a must read for those new to this area, it is also a great reference tool for seasoned professionals. This book fills an important need and should be in every biotechnology professional's reference library.

This book is especially useful for someone who doesn't understand the basics of bond investments. It explains these investments in clear and easy-to-understand language. A good reference for investors who have limited experience in bonds.

Provides a good overview of bond investments and explains what factors to consider when you are thinking about investing. Answers questions that made me uneasy about buying anything but bond funds.

This is an excellent buy. Easy to understand for someone who finds most tax information baffling. I finally figured out that municipal bonds don't make sense for me.

Everyone interested in building wealth needs to review the basics from time to time to ensure they stay focused. As every football coach knows -- when you forget the basics you lose. This book provides the guidance and reinforcement necessary to keep the reader focused and on the basics of financial investing. There are numerous ways to can win in the investment environment. This book lists these winning strategies. This is the type of book you will forever use as a reference.

Guts Imagination Vision: Conversations with Innovators Changemakers is as interesting as it is attractive! The stories contained in the book have everything from romance to adventure, tragedy to triumph and misfortune to fabulous fortune! While reading this book I began to see these amazing entrepreneurs as people just like me. I learned from the lessons that they learned and I am inspired to follow in their very big footsteps. I feel like the subjects of this book became my mentors and friends, ready willing and absolutely able to show me the way in the world of free enterprise.

This book contains open conversations from people who have started their own businesses and grown them into successful enterprises. The narrative format allows the reader to come to know each of the entrepreneurs as individuals--an honest account of small business owners.

This is one of the volumes in the "Ideas with Impact" series, each of whose articles originally appeared in an issue of the Harvard Business Review. In this instance, all of the articles appeared in issues that extend from March 2004 to June 2007; their subject is Talent Management. As the editors correctly point out, "If great talent is hard to find, it's even harder to keep. In today's world, you need the best and the brightest on your team in order to stay competitive. If you lose your key talent, you may find that you're also losing out on crucial business opportunities. This valuable collection offers insights and strategies to make sure you recognize - and retain - your company's vital talent." All of the eight articles were written or co-written by experts on this specific business subject. Here in Dallas near the downtown area, there is a Farmers Market at which several of the merchants offer a slice of fresh fruit as a sample of their wares. In that spirit, I now offer a sequence of brief excerpts that will, I hope, indicate the "taste" as well as the thrust of the ideas in the articles.

From "What It Means to Work Here": "The best strategy for coming out ahead in the war for talent isn't to scoop up everyone in sight, unless you want to deal with fallout: high turnover, high recruitment and training costs, and disengaged, unproductive workers. Instead, you need to convince the right people - those who are intrigued and excited by the work environment you can realistically offer and who will reward you with their loyalty - to choose you." Tamara J. Erickson and Lynda Gratton

From "`Players' or `A Positions'? The Strategic Logic of Workforce Management": "While conventional wisdom might argue that the firms with the most talent win, we believe that, given the financial and managerial resources needed to attract, select, develop, and retain high performers, companies simply can't afford to have A players in all positions." Mark A. Huselid, Richard W. Beatty, and Brian E. Becker

From "Growing Talent as If Your Business Depended on It": At companies that are good at growing leaders, "operating managers, not HR executives, are at the front line of planning and development. In fact, many senior managers now hold their line managers directly responsible for these activities. In this worldview, it is part of the line manager's job to recognize his subordinates' developmental needs, to help them cultivate new skills, and to provide them opportunities for professional development and personal growth." Jeffrey M. Cohn, Rakesh Khurana, and Laura Reeves

From "Make Your Company a Talent Factory": "If functionality is about focusing your company's talent management processes to produce certain outcomes, vitality is about the attitudes and mind-sets of the people responsible for those processes - not just in human resources but throughout the line, all the way to the top of the organization...Our research shows that the vitality of a company's talent management processes is the product of three defining characteristics: [begin italics] commitment, engagement, and accountability [end italics]."Douglas A. Ready and Jay A. Conger

From "How to Keep `A Players' Productive: "One of the biggest challenges for A players is their inability to set boundaries for themselves. Ordinary people usually know how to step back from situations where vague requests make them uncomfortable; but insecure overachievers typically exceed expectations because they are prepared to operate outside their comfort zones in their efforts to win recognition." Steve Berglas

From "Managing Middlescence": "Burned-out, bottlenecked, and bored. That's the current lot of millions of midcareer employees. In our research into employee attitudes and experiences, we heard many stories of midcareer restlessness, a phenomenon we call middlescence...Like adolescence, middlescence can be a time of frustration, confusion, and alienation but also a time of self-discovery, new direction, and fresh beginnings. Today, millions of midcareer men and women are wrestling with middlescence - looking for ways to balance job responsibilities, family, and leisure while hoping to find new meaning in their work." Robert Morison, Tamara Erickson, and Ken Dychtwald

From "Off-Ramps and On Ramps: Keeping Talented Women on the Road to Success": "Perhaps most interesting, 24% of the women currently looking for on-ramps [to resumption of employment] are motivated by `a desire to give back something to society' and are seeking jobs that allow them to contribute to their communities in some way." Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Carolyn Buck Luce

From "It's Time to Retire Retirement": "If companies are to win back the hearts and minds of baby boomers and other generations of mature workers, they need to start with the work environment itself, which has become increasingly alienating to anyone over the age of 50. Human resource practices are often explicitly or implicitly biased against older workers, and these biases can seep into the culture in a manner that makes them feel unwelcome."

Those who share my high regard for this volume are urged to check out Tom Rath's StrengthsFinder 2.0: A New and Upgraded Edition of the Online Test from Gallup's Now, Discover Your Strengths and Strengths-Based Leadership co-authored with Barry Conchie, Lance Berger and Dorothy Berger's The Talent Management Handbook: Creating Organizational Excellence by Identifying, Developing, and Promoting Your Best People, William J. Rothwell's Effective Succession Planning: Ensuring Leadership Continuity and Building Talent From Within, Dean R. Spitzer's Transforming Performance Measurement: Rethinking the Way We Measure and Drive Organizational Success, and Enterprise Architecture as Strategy: Creating a Foundation for Business Execution co-authored by Jeanne W. Ross, Peter Weill, and David Robertson.

Retaining talent in today's increasingly competitive business environment is one of the biggest challenges that organizations face. Keeping prized employees happy takes a lot more than money. People want their jobs to matter. They want to work for companies that share their goals and ethics. The eight essays that make up this entry in the excellent Harvard Business Review management series illustrate the symbiotic relationship between talent management and corporate prosperity. Growth and success require a formalized system that stimulates, rewards and encourages skilled employees. Numerous examples throughout this tightly written book also demonstrate the value of planning. getAbstract applauds the way this collection analyzes talent management. It is an impressive addition to a respected set of business anthologies.

If you think that this is simply a wonderful story about an amazing 24 million dollar turn around within a hospital complex, you would be selling this book short. It is a shining example of how significant an organization can become once it has achieved complete clarity around its purpose. Starting with the concept that hospital and hospitality were derived from the same root word, this hospital sought to provide the very best patient experience possible. The leadership and organizational concepts presented in this book are applicable to any industry or organization, regardless of size.

When David Herdlinger coaches someone, his clients do the work, achieve unimagined results, and David gives them full credit for the changes that have taken place. All the while he is working behind the scenes gently poking, prodding, and orchestrating the efforts. Despite his profound success as a coach (or perhaps because of it), David has a heightened sense of humility and modesty. So it is with Healing a Hospital. As you read this amazing story, David's role in the outcome is hardly touched upon, yet you come away knowing that this was truly a team effort and that David was an essential core member of that team.

If you are part of an organization that has yet to achieve perfection, this book will serve as an inspiration and thought provoking experience. The values and concepts described in this book can help any organization become greater.

With health care comprising a significant part of the national economy and growing larger every year, hospitals need to become efficient and effective in how they take care of their own operations, their employees not to mention their patients. This is truly a white paper in a book that demonstrates, Yes, hospitals can be healed and can be turnaround in a relatively quick time from losing hundreds of thousands of dollars to becoming the premier hospital.

David Herdlinger shows that when a results focused, innovative and authentic leader takes over anything is possible. He also shares his part in how he helped one struggling hospital in GA to become the best of the best or the be The Red Jacket in a sea of gray suitsfrom providing training to one on one executive coaching. Organizational change is not easy especially in the health care industry. This book provides a simple place as to where to start and what to do.

WOW! The book's subtitle says it all-these ARE the keys to creating efficiencies in business processes. Michael Wood extends the lessons learned in his first book, The Helix Factor, by providing a working manual, complete with templates and instructions. Using an actual case study, Mr. Wood shows you how to apply the Helix tools to business improvement. This is the only guide I have found that is useful as a field book to facilitating a process improvement project.

The Hexlix Factor II will definitely help you launch projects and ultimately bring them to a successful conclusion. This authoritative guidebook provides all the tools you need to your make business processes more efficient and create a positive impact to your bottom line.

The only thing missing is an electronic version of the templates used in the Helix approach. However, given the fact that they are relatively easy to construct and will provide a valuable learning experience from the reader, their omission does not detract from the importance of the material.

This may be the first "Six Sigma" friendly process improvement methodology HOW TO book on the market. The book walks you through a prescriptive STEP-BY-STEP approach for facilitating the discovery of measurable and mappable business process improvements.

You will never need to ask yourself, "What do I do next?"

Identifying defects, integrating real-time performance feedback functions, conducting cross-functional work sessions and more are all covered in this book. From Kick-Off to Completion, this book has it all. Everything you need to lead, manage and complete breakthrough BPI projects.

If you are using Six Sigma, or any other approach to Business Process Improvement, this book is a MUST READ! I recommend you start with the first book, The Helix Factor - The Key to Streamlining Your Business Processes, by the same author.

This book is what the Christian community and the world need right now, I'm not saying this because I wrote the book, I'm saying it because the information found in it was helpful to take me from poverty to prosperity.

What an excellent book for Christians attempting to serve god while maintaining or striving for economic prosperity. I liked it so much, I ordered 4 more to give as a gifts.

As a solo chiropractic practitioner with no B-school background, this book came as a revelation to me! There is actually a systematic way to evaluate potential employees! Some of the chapters about psychometric testing, etc., applied more to small-to-midsize companies instead of micro companies like mine with 10 employees. Yet, I use the interview format from this book every single time I have a job opening for the last four years. What a difference it has made in my clinic staffing!

Mercer offers practical help in how to determine exactly the kind of person you want to hire, and gives sample questions to help you get answers that will allow you to determine if that person is a match.