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Title: The Art of Profitability by Adrian Slywotzky ISBN: 0-446-69227-1 Publisher: Warner Books Pub. Date: 01 September, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.22 (9 reviews)
Rating: 2
Summary: If you have extra time and money - it's alright
Comment: The Good -
The main concepts of the book are sound and time proven, and it has some interesting and novel ideas. Moreover, the book has decent recommendations of other books (not surprisingly they were written by the same author).
The Bad -
What was meant to be an entertaining fictional side plot, in the fashion of The Goal or The Max Strategy, doesn't work. It ends up being both corny and archaic. Basically, the main character of the book is a 20 something trying to save the large conglomerate which employs him. Give me a break. The vast majority of my peers including myself (in that age group) could care less about the slow and large, uncaring bureaucracies we work for. If anything we're dreaming up of escape plans to start our own businesses. Throughout the book I just kept wondering whether Steve was a complete moron or whether the story took place 30 years ago.
A related flaw is how the book's concepts are delivered. Hearing the mentor character, Zhiao, give lessons is akin to listening to Bill Cosby's or Grandpa Simpson's random rambling for hours. It's very difficult to differentiate the useless/nonsensical crap from the good pieces of data, Zhiao keeps jumping from here and there. Sadly I could go on and on about how horrible the plot and side dialogue are... For ex, "What kind of fish do you think you are? I am a light fish." - enough said.
Conclusion
Unless you have spare money or time, read Slywotsky's other books instead to get to the meat of his ideas. This is largely a waste of time.
Rating: 5
Summary: SIMPLE POWERFUL CONCEPTS TAUGHT IN INNOVATIVE WAY
Comment: This book is focused on explaining 23 different models of profitability that different firms have followed. The author uses the realtionship between a wise mentor and an eager mentee to take the reader through the process of understanding the different models. The book is aimed at describing and giving the reader some insight into each model; it is not an in depth analysis of profitability. Given its aim, it is well written.
It is not a step by step process to apply at a business. This is a book to make a manager reflect, not follow. Each chapter is one story that describes a model; the style seems to follow the general outline of Harvard Business School cases, which, given the author's professorship there, is not so surprising.
I highly recommend it to someone looking for an entertaining read that will make one reflect. However, disregard the recommendation that you go through one chapter per week. It is too little, I think I would probably lose the book by the 3rd week. It is, instead, a book to be read in 3 days, and be referred back for ideas.
Rating: 4
Summary: Interesting little parables to get you thinking
Comment: I liked the structure of this book, and the approach of using parables - it makes it easy to read & absorb the principles. However, given my level of business experience, I wasn't a rookie setting out to learn everything from scratch.
I considered the instruction "read only one chapter per week" to be supercilious.
A typical chapter is only 10 pages or so (some are as short as 5, the longest is 14), but as there's 23 chapters I didn't want to spend 6 months reading this book. By reading 2 or 3 chapters per day, I could still absorb the message, and yet complete the book within 2 weeks.
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Title: How to Grow When Markets Don't by Adrian J. Slywotzky, Richard Wise, Karl Weber ISBN: 0446531774 Publisher: Warner Books Pub. Date: 03 April, 2003 List Price(USD): $22.00 |
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Title: The Profit Zone : How Strategic Business Design Will Lead You to Tomorrow's Profits by Adrian Slywotzky, David J. Morrison, Bob Andelman ISBN: 0812933044 Publisher: Three Rivers Press Pub. Date: 26 February, 2002 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: Value Migration: How to Think Several Moves Ahead of the Competition by Adrian J. Slywotzky, Adrian J. Slywotsky ISBN: 0875846327 Publisher: Harvard Business School Press Pub. Date: January, 1996 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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Title: Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences by John Allen Paulos ISBN: 0809058405 Publisher: Hill & Wang Pub Pub. Date: 18 August, 2001 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: Profit Patterns: 30 Ways to Anticipate and Profit from Strategic Forces Reshaping Your Business by Ted Moser, Kevin Mundt, James A. Quella, Adrian Slywotzky ISBN: 0812931181 Publisher: Random House Pub. Date: 16 March, 1999 List Price(USD): $27.50 |
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