Presentation "Changing landscape for business books" for Education UK Exhibition in Saint-Petersburg by Helen Edwards

1. Московская школа управления СКОЛКОВО
The changing landscape for
business books

2. Welcome and introduction

3. Questions about business
books
! Who writes business books?
! What does business literature cover?
! Who wrote the first business books?
! How many business books are published?
! What are the current trends in business
books?
! How can I find out more?

4. Academics: business school
faculty

5. Business leaders

6. Consultants

7. Journalists

8. ….anyone with something to
say

9. What does business literature
cover?
! The enterprise
– Types of Businesses, Management and Leadership
! The functions of the enterprise
– Sales and Marketing, Operations and Logistics, R&D, Finance and
Accounting, Human Resources, IT
! The environment in which the enterprise
operates
– Economics, Politics, Law and Regulation, Science, Psychology,
Transport

10. First business book
! Adam Smith:
! The Wealth of Nations 1776

11. Father of management: Peter
Drucker
“Management is doing things right;
leadership is doing the right things.”
“Management by objectives works if you
know the objectives; ninety percent of the
time you don’t.”
“No institution can possibly survive if it needs
geniuses or supermen to manage it. It must be
organized in such a way to get along with the
leadership of ordinary human beings.”

12. First business bestseller:
In Search of Excellence
Tom Peters and Robert H
Waterman Jnr.
“Celebrate what you want to see more of.”
“Test fast, fail fast, adjust fast.”
“Excellent firms don’t believe in
excellence,
only constant improvement and constant
change.”

13. Applying research to business
Evidence based research
- Data
- Best practice
“Most managers invent
their own solutions by lonely
trial and error without
benefitting from what has
worked for others”

14. How many business books are
published today?
USA 2011 figures – (US biggest market for
business books)
! 19 million business books sold
! 10,000 business titles published
! 13% in e-book format (compared to 51% e-
book format for fiction hardbacks)
! 80% of business books bought are never
read.

15. What about Russian
translations?
Harvard Business Review Press
! Out of about 1200 business books
published
in the last few years 251 Russian translations
have been contracted.
! Russian is HBR’s 9th biggest language over
all time and 7th in the last 3 years.
! Excluding Spanish and Portuguese,
Russian is the 2nd biggest European
language for HBR books, just behind
French.

16. Personal view: 3 trends
1. Uncertainty following the financial crash
and the impact of globalization.
2. Humanizing business: psychology and
behavioral economics.
3. Big data, technology, the internet and the
importance of analytics.

17. Trend 1: The end of…..
! Change
! Globalization
! Financial crisis

18. Trend 2: how do people actually
behave?
Psychology and behavioral economics –
impacts on decision making, marketing,
organizational culture.

19. Trend 3: Watching and analyzing
your every move?

20. Finding out more
! Thinkers 50 and other rankings:
http://www.thinkers50.com/
! FT Business Book of the Year Award and other
prizes :
http://www.ft.com/management/business-
book-award
! Bestseller lists
http://www.nytimes.com/best-sellers-books/
hardcover-business-books/list.html
! Library Facebook pages:
http://www.facebook.com/skolkovo.library

21. New book I’m looking forward to
reading next year
Everything I need to know about
economics I learned from online
dating
Paul Oyer
Harvard Business Review Press, 2014.
“Oyer uses his own experience of dating sites
to show that behaviors driving online dating
mimic those driving any other market……
help anyone to understand the intricacies of
economics and the role they play in
everyday actions.”

22. Thank you
Enjoy reading!
helen_edwards@skolkovo.ru