Nightly Business Report Presents Lasting Leadership: What You Can Learn from the Top 25 Business People of our Times [Hardcover]

Mukul Pandya (Author), Robbie Shell (Author), Susan Warner (Author), Sandeep Junnarkar (Author), Jeffrey Brown (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0131531182 | ISBN-13: 978-0131531185 | Publication Date: October 22, 2004

Discover the attributes of the 25 greatest business leaders and how they can enhance your own leadership. Two of the world's leaders in business knowledge and insight come together to select and profile the 25 most influential businesspeople of the past quarter century. The team: Nightly Business Report, the United States' #1 daily TV business news program, and Knowledge@Wharton, The Wharton School's online journal of research and business analysis. The book's incisive profiles show exactly how each business leader became so influential. They teach lessons you can use to discover, refine, and nurture your own leadership style -- and gain powerful influence in your own career. You'll gain new insights into familiar faces (Jack Welch, Lou Gerstner, Bill Gates). But you'll also gain greater appreciation for less heralded individuals -- from Mary Kay's Mary Kay Ash to Mohammed Yunus, whose 'microlending' revolution is helping millions of poor people around the world transform themselves into entrepreneurs. The full list: Andy Grove; Bill Gates; John Bogle; Steve Jobs; Warren Buffett; Herb Kelleher; Sam Walton; Jack Welch; Jeff Bezos; Mary Kay Ash; Michael Dell; Peter Drucker; Alan Greenspan; Oprah Winfrey; George Soros; James Burke; Lee Iacocca; Peter Lynch; Frederick Smith; Mohammed Yunus; Ted Turner; Lou Gerstner; Charles Schwab; Richard Branson; and William George. No other book offers this much actionable insight into this many extraordinary business leaders.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

• Paths to greatness: Actionable lessons from today's most remarkable business leaders
• Incisive profiles from Knowledge@Wharton and Nightly Business Report
• Andy Grove, Mary Kay Ash, Lou Gerstner, Richard Branson, Herb Kelleher, Charles Schwab... and 19 more

In this book, two of the world's most respected sources of business insight come together to select and profile the 25 most influential businesspeople of the past quarter century. These incisive profiles teach specific lessons you can use to discover, refine, and nurture your own leadership style... achieve breakthrough results... and accelerate your career progress.

The team: Nightly Business Report, the United States' #1 daily TV business news program, and Knowledge@Wharton, The Wharton School's online journal of research and business analysis. Together, they offer powerful new insights into familiar faces--and reveal the passion and brilliance that allowed less-well-known leaders to achieve the extraordinary.

From corporate culture to brand management, risk-taking to pricing, this book's insights won't just help you: they'll inspire you.

What outstanding leaders do, and how they do it

Actionable insights for achieving your own form of greatness

Building corporate culture that can withstand anything

What you can learn from Southwest's Herb Kelleher and J&J's James Burke

Key attributes of lasting leadership

Giving voice to customers, giving voice to truth

Getting smarter, faster

Case studies in building organizations that learn--and act

Reinventing your business: when it's time, how to do it

Lessons from the master: Steve Jobs

Discovering underserved markets--and serving them profitably

Mohammed Yunus: Profiting from entrepreneurship in the world's poorest communities

The greatest business leaders of our generation

How they achieved the impossible

What you can learn from them

How to use those lessons to supercharge your career

25 compelling profiles from two of the world's leading sources of business insight:

Nightly Business Report and The Wharton School's Knowledge@Wharton

25 extraordinary leaders, 25 incisive profiles:

Andy Grove, Intel

Bill Gates, Microsoft

John Bogle, The Vanguard Group

Steve Jobs, Apple & Pixar

Warren Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway

Herb Kelleher, Southwest Airlines

Sam Walton, Wal-Mart

Jack Welch, GE

Jeff Bezos, Amazon

Mary Kay Ash, Mary Kay

Michael Dell, Dell

Peter F. Drucker

Alan Greenspan

Oprah Winfrey, Harpo, Inc.

George Soros, Soros Fund Management

James Burke, Johnson & Johnson

Lee Iacocca, Chrysler

Peter Lynch, Fidelity Investments

Frederick Smith, FedEx

Mohammed Yunus, Grameen Bank

Ted Turner, Turner Broadcasting

Lou Gerstner, IBM & RJR Nabisco

Charles Schwab, Charles Schwab

Richard Branson, Virgin

William George, Medtronic

© Copyright Pearson Education. All rights reserved.

About the Author

Nightly Business Report Presents Lasting Leadership: What You Can Learn from the Top 25 Business People of Our TimesAbout the Authors

Mukul Pandya is editor and director of Knowledge@Wharton, a web-based journal of research and business analysis published by The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

A winner of four awards for investigative journalism, Mr. Pandya has more than twenty years of experience as a writer and editor. His articles have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Economist, Time Magazine, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and many other publications. He coauthored Knowledge@Wharton on Building Corporate Value.

Mr. Pandya, who has an M.A. in economics from the University of Bombay, lives in Ewing, NJ, with his wife and daughter.

Robbie Shell, the managing editor of Knowledge@Wharton, has worked as a business reporter and editor for national news services, newspapers, and magazines throughout her career. She has covered both the White House and U.S. Supreme Court and taught journalism at the University of Virginia. Her freelance work most recently appeared in The Wall Street Journal. A graduate of Princeton University, she lives in Wynnewood, PA, with her husband and two sons.

© Copyright Pearson Education. All rights reserved.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

Chapter 6 from Lasting Leadership [PDF]

• Hardcover: 266 pages
• Publisher: Wharton School Publishing (October 22, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0131531182
• ISBN-13: 978-0131531185
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #695,665 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Graduate Level Course, May 22, 2005

By 

John G. Hilliard (Toronto Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Nightly Business Report Presents Lasting Leadership: What You Can Learn from the Top 25 Business People of our Times (Hardcover)

What a wonderful book this turned out to be. Not only did it give me an insight into what these individuals key strengths were, but the book also had enough personal information about them that you came away from the book feeling you knew more about them as individuals. The book starts off by making the assurance that great leaders are not only capable individuals, but they also have a desire to lead and chose to do so above all else. They are not just great because of smarts or drive, but because they want to be and work at it continuously. Thus the authors provide a book that is not a road map to greatness, but a review of these 25 leaders and what they do that has made them successful. It is a broad group of people and it is interesting that the traits highlighted in the book are also wide spanning. I had incorrectly assumed that the book was going to give me a simple list of the things I needed to get good at, no such luck.

The goal of the book is to help current day leaders observe proven and successful leaders to help them in coming better. The purpose is not so much to imitate their qualities but really to discover which attributes resonate with yourself and the cultivate those traits to expand and improve your leadership skills. There are so many good examples in the book that it is almost too much to take in with one reading, this is one of those books that you will find yourself highlighting and marking pages for further review. It comes as close as possible to a how to guide for personal improvement. Overall I not only enjoyed the book, but I learned a great deal from it. This book as so many helpful bits of info that all managers and business owners can learn from it. The book is not only worth the money, but also worth the time to read.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A must read guide for CEOs, November 26, 2004

By 

Ann Cullen - See all my reviews

This review is from: Nightly Business Report Presents Lasting Leadership: What You Can Learn from the Top 25 Business People of our Times (Hardcover)

This is one of the most powerful and inspiring book on leadership. It must be a required reading for MBA students and senior executives.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the best new business books recently released..., November 24, 2004

By 

800-CEO-READ - See all my reviews

This review is from: Nightly Business Report Presents Lasting Leadership: What You Can Learn from the Top 25 Business People of our Times (Hardcover)

Who doesn't want to know about leadership? It is a discipline that has been called an "art" by Max DePree and dissected by countless academics. Wharton School Publishing has created, in collaboration with Nightly Business Report (NBR) and Knowledge@Wharton, a perfect book for those of us who like to discover how leadership is done.

The book identifies the 25 most influential business leaders of the past 25 years-side note, I didn't make it. The NBR viewers nominated more than 700 business people from around the world-once again, I was skipped. A panel of six Wharton judges selected the top 25. Seriously, it is a great list. Iacocca, Welch, Branson, Buffett, Bezos, and Kelleher. The panel was asked to pick the "best" of the 25. Andy Grove won that honor. 2 of the 25 have died-Sam Walton and Mary Kay Ash-and they interviewed 15 of the remaining 23.

They have identified eight characteristics that have enabled the 25 individuals to overcome major challenges as well as create their own leadership style.

1. Building a strong corporate culture-Herb Kelleher. 2. Truth telling-Peter Drucker, Bill George 3. Finding and catering to under-server markets-John Bogle, Charles Schwab 4. Seeing the invisible-Steve Jobs, Ted Turner 5. Using price to build competitive advantage-Jeff Bezos 6. Managing and building their organizations brand-Oprah Winfrey, Lee Iacocca. 7. Being a fast learner-Lou Gerstner, Bill Gates. 8. Managing risk-Alan Greenspan, Peter Lynch.

The history and challenges of these 25 leaders are thoroughly covered with tidbits of information on side bars, which includes detailed information on birthdays, marriages, schooling and highlights in their respective careers. What's great about this is that you can pick and choose what you want to read and everything is in bite-sized morsels. The stories ends with what is titled "The Leadership Lesson" which gives further insight into how these 25 leaders got to be where they are. Their stories are told with many verbatim quotes, which really helps this book to be both interesting and motivating. This makes it a great holiday gift book for anybody in business.