'Essential for any leader in any industry' - Kim Scott, bestselling author of Radical Candor Working Backwards gives an insider's account of Amazon's approach to culture, leadership and best practices from two long-time, top-level Amazon executives. Colin Bryar and Bill Carr joined Amazon in the late 90s. Their time at the company covered a period of unmatched innovation that brought products and services - including Kindle, Amazon Prime, Amazon Echo and Alexa, and Amazon Web Services - to life. Through the story of these innovations they reveal the principles and practices that drive Amazon's success. Through their wealth of experience they offer unprecedented access to the 'Amazon way' as it was refined, articulated and proven to be repeatable, scalable and adaptable. Working Backwards shows how success is not achieved by the genius of any single leader, but rather through commitment to and execution of a set of well-defined, rigorously executed principles and practices that you can apply at your own company, no matter the size. 'Working Backwards should be read by anyone interested in the real thing - the principles, processes and practices of twenty-first-century management and leadership' - Forbes 'Gives us the story as it developed at the time - and that is probably worth the cover price of the book in itself' - Financial Times

What can you learn from the world's most successful companies? Marvel characters have been shaping pop culture for decades and when comic books were no longer keeping the company afloat, Marvel Studios was born. Marvel Studios is the multibillion-dollar home to iconic franchises. They are known for creating brilliant multilayered worlds and storylines that allow their audiences to escape into a fantasy and inspire the creative side of every viewer. But, behind those visionaries is a well-oiled storytelling machine dedicated to getting the Hulk's smash fists in the hands of every child and a sea of Spiderman costumes deployed every Halloween. The Marvel Studios Story educates you on how one of the largest creative companies in the planetary universe runs their business and keeps their fans and their parent company, Disney, counting the profits. Through the story of Marvel Studios, you'll learn: How to recognize and pursue additional revenue streams. How a company can successfully balance the creative with business to appease investors and fans alike. And how to keep a decades-old superhero franchise new and exciting without losing sight of its roots. The Marvel Studios Story will help you understand and adopt the competitive strategies, workplace culture, and daily business practices that enabled a struggling comic book publisher to parlay the power of myth and storytelling to become one of history's most successful movie studios.

Founded in 1987 by a former engineer in China's People's Liberation Army (Ren Zhengfei), Huawei Technologies is the world's largest telecoms equipment manufacturer and second only to Apple in smartphones. Its emergence into a multinational with over 175,000 employees all around the world is nothing short of extraordinary. This book delves into the financial workings and systems within Huawei - and the individuals whose craftsmanship and excellence enabled Huawei to expand globally in such impressive terms. Their personal stories tell us about the extraordinary vision, dedication, and perseverance required for companies to establish a robust financial system that supports the growth of a world-class company. Huawei's goal is not just to have profitable income and healthy cash flow. More important is that operating results are sustainable.

The Pyramid of Lies by international financial journalist Duncan Mavin, is the true story of Lex Greensill, the Australian farmer who became a hi-flying billionaire banker before crashing back down to earth, exposing a tangled network of flawed financiers, politicians and industrialists. Lex Greensill had a simple, billion-dollar idea - democratising supply chain finance. Suppliers want to get their invoices paid as soon as possible. Companies want to hold off as long as they can. Greensill bridged the two, it's mundane, boring even, but he saw an opportunity to profit. However, margins are thin and Lex, ever the risk taker, made lucrative loans with other people's money: to a Russian cargo plane linked to Vladmir Putin, to former Special Forces who ran a private army, and crucially to companies that were fraudulent or had no revenue. When the company finally collapsed it exposed the revolving door between Westminster and big business and how David Cameron was allowed to lobby ministers for cash that would save Greensill's doomed business. Instead, Credit Suisse and Japan's SoftBank are nursing billions of dollars in losses, a German bank is under criminal investigation, and thousands of jobs are at risk. What Bad Blood did for Silicon Valley and The Smartest Guys in the Room did for Wall Street, The Pyramid of Lies will do for the world of shadow banking and supply chain finance. It is a world populated with some of the most outlandish characters in business and some of the most outrageous examples of excess. It is a story of greed and ambition that shines a light on the murky intersection between politics and business, where lavish fortunes can be made and lost.

Since its invention in Italy in the fourteenth century, marine insurance has provided merchants with capital protection in times of crisis, thus oiling the gears of trade and commerce. With a focus on customs, laws, and organisational structures, this book reveals the Italian origins of marine insurance, and tracks the spread of underwriting practices and institutions in Europe and America through the early modern era. With contributions from eleven leading researchers from seven countries, the book examines key institutional developments in the history of marine insurance. The authors discuss its invention in Italy, and its evolution from private to corporate structures, assessing the causes and impacts of various state interventions. Amsterdam and Antwerp are analysed as one-time key centres of underwriting, as is the emergence and maturity of marine insurance in London. The book evaluates an experiment in corporate underwriting in Cadiz, and the development of insurance institutions in the United States, before applying the metrics of underwriting to discuss commerce raiding in the Atlantic up to the nineteenth century.

A colourful history of advertising. The process of producing goods and services is relatively easy to recognize as socially beneficial. But television ads? Telemarketers? Jingles? Junk mail? It is popular to view these commercial activities as inherently wasteful or manipulative, marginally informative or entertaining, at best. The most vociferous critics marshal economic and sociological data to argue that advertising dilutes culture and moral values, encourages conspicuous consumption, defrauds the public, and promotes dangerous products and behaviours. In Selling the Dream, John Hood takes the provocative stand that advertising images and sales pitches are actually part of the goods and services themselves, delivering an essential component of the consumer's experience. As such, they are inextricably linked to the basic tenets of the free-market system, and, in the boldest of terms, Hood argues that commercial communication is morally consistent with the principles of a democratic society, including freedom of choice, competition, and innovation. Tracing the history of advertising from Ancient Roman times to the present, through the first American newspaper ad in 1704, P.T. the modern consumer society, Hood offers a colourful account of advertising in its cultural context. Moreover, he addresses such controversial issues as the promotion of harmful and immoral products (such as tobacco and alcohol), marketing to children, the role of advertising in service industries such as health care and education, and the impact of the Internet and other new media on the conduct of commerce. In the process, he offers a compelling perspective on advertising and its essential role in business, communication, and popular culture. Advertising is a ubiquitous part of our consumer culture. It draws from business, economics, politics, and history to present a colourful picture of advertising in context and argues that advertising is an essential ingredient of competition, innovation, and free-market economic growth. Deals with controversial issues, such as advertising immoral products and advertising to children.

This volume is the result of a symposium in which 15 distinguished scholars, business leaders, lawyers, social scientists, philosophers, and theologians considered management and corporations in 1985.

Take a critical view of the institutions that affect our everyday lives with this extended essay. The most important of these is the modern-day corporation, which continues to resist social control despite an ability to adapt to the environment like no other entity in human history.

Corporations continue to explode with power, and religious, educational, and governmental organizations are looking to them as examples. An increasing number of entities are learning how to conduct themselves by looking at their corporate counterparts, and, as a result, they're no longer fulfilling their true purposes.

Author Francis X. Healy Jr. examines the implications of these disturbing developments. Discover why institutions continue to miss expectations, why society suffers as a result of corporate models, and how money and power interact in problematic ways.

The pursuit of money and power is stifling the true purposes of institutions with honorable objectives. Many groups that once carried at least a facade of being above it all are now stuck in the moneypower continuum; if something doesn't change soon, the consequences will be devastating.

Learn about one of the most impactful distilleries in American history in this comprehensive tale Buffalo, Barrels, & Bourbon tells the fascinating tale of the Buffalo Trace Distillery, from the time of the earliest explorations of Kentucky to the present day. Author and award-winning spirits expert F. Paul Pacult takes readers on a journey through history that covers the American Revolutionary War, U.S Civil War, two World Wars, Prohibition, and the Great Depression. Buffalo, Barrels, & Bourbon covers the pedigree and provenance of the Buffalo Trace Distillery: The larger-than-life personalities that over a century and a half made Buffalo Trace Distillery what it is today Detailed accounts on how many of the distillery's award-winning and world-famous brands were created The impact of world events, including multiple depressions, weather-related events, and major conflicts, on the distillery Belonging on the shelf of anyone with an interest in American spirits and history, Buffalo, Barrels, & Bourbon is a compelling must-read.

Learning From Upheaval The best seat in the house to understand a centuryOf challenge and transformation.Ideas distilled from substantial investments in human Performance improvement.The story has the all-encompassing sweep of the full twentieth century. Distance learning pioneer Jamison Handy and then Bill Sandy were interacting with America's legendary industrial giants on the topic most relevant to survival and success---the performance of human beings. There is no better vantage point to capture the drama of change. Throughout the turmoil, Sandy's specialty of performance improvement kept him focused not just on what was happening but why, and most important, what could be done about it. Sophisticated concepts of personal and organizational growth are served up as stories. Bill Sandy's success depended on his ability to understand issues, conceptualize solutions, and convey those concepts in a way that others could easily grasp. The author, who has lived through all the fads, extracts major principles from the turbulence and offers wisdom a man can do when he reflects on a lifetime spent riding the waves of change. One core principle is to maintain a sense of humor. Irreverence gives spice to this saga of personal and organizational transformation. www.LearningFromUpheaval.com

First published in 1981, this edited collection reviews the operations of state-owned enterprises, examining the actual performance of such organisations in the advanced industrialised countries. The authors consider the regularities and characteristics of state-owned enterprises, in particular the persistent efforts of managers to increase their autonomy and escape from the oversight of government agencies and the public. Chapters consider principles of finance and decision-making in these organisations and provide a truly international perspective with case studies in Italy, France and Britain. This is a timely reissue in context of the current economic climate, which will be of great value to students and academics with an interest in the nationalisation of companies, international business and the relationship between governments and managers.

"In vivid detail... examines the little-known history of two extraordinary dynasties."--The Boston Globe "Not just a brilliant, well-researched, and highly readable book about China's past, it also reveals the contingencies and ironic twists of fate in China's modern history."--LA Review of Books An epic, multigenerational story of two rival dynasties who flourished in Shanghai and Hong Kong as twentieth-century China surged into the modern era, from the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist The Sassoons and the Kadoories stood astride Chinese business and politics for more than one hundred seventy-five years, profiting from the Opium Wars; surviving Japanese occupation; courting Chiang Kai-shek; and nearly losing everything as the Communists swept into power. Jonathan Kaufman tells the remarkable history of how these families ignited an economic boom and opened China to the world, but remained blind to the country's deep inequality and to the political turmoil on their doorsteps. In a story stretching from Baghdad to Hong Kong to Shanghai to London, Kaufman enters the lives and minds of these ambitious men and women to forge a tale of opium smuggling, family rivalry, political intrigue, and survival.