by Paul Jarvis ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 15, 2019
A bright, useful entry in the small-is-beautiful genre.
How to stay small and succeed in business.
“Blind growth is the main cause of business problems,” writes online-tech veteran Jarvis (Everything I Know, 2013, etc.), whose corporate clients include Microsoft and Mercedes Benz. “What if you worked instead toward growing smaller, smarter, more efficient, and more resilient?” In this upbeat, anecdote-laden how-to book, he draws on some 20 years of experience (and steadily increasing income) to describe the advantages of running a “company of one,” whether as an independent business person or an autonomous, innovative corporate employee who deliberately questions growth and stays “lean and agile” on purpose. The payoffs are many: A marketing vice president becomes a cartoonist (his lifelong hobby) and earns three times as much income; the owner of Milkwood Designs makes regular retreats to a Sierra Nevada yurt. It all takes hard, focused work characterized by resilience, autonomy, speed, and simplicity. “There’s a silent movement to approaching business in this way,” writes Jarvis, emphasizing the importance of staying small, with set yearly profit goals. Many of his examples are modern, often dot-com businesses run by individuals unafraid of celebrating their quirkiness as a way to build trust and relationships with customers. They eschew obsessive growth (occasioned by inflation, investors, churn, and ego) and instead work to keep existing customers by getting better (rather than bigger) and offering “a real relationship” based on “trust, humanity, and empathy.” “Companies of one can be led and run by quiet, thoughtful, introspective folks” who are bad at managing others, writes the author, a self-confessed “awkward geek.” He notes federal records show that in 2015, more than 38,000 “companies (of one) were bringing in seven-figure revenues, doing everything from the usual high-tech and scientific fields to equipment repair and laundry services.” Many such firms “share and give away their ideas freely,” becoming trusted advisers to their customers through teaching, podcasts, and other means.
A bright, useful entry in the small-is-beautiful genre.Pub Date: Jan. 15, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-328-97235-4
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
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by Abhijit V. Banerjee & Esther Duflo ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 12, 2019
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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More About This Book
SEEN & HEARD
by Enrico Moretti ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 5, 2012
A welcome contribution from a newcomer who provides both a different view and balance in addressing one of the country's...
A fresh, provocative analysis of the debate on education and employment.
Up-and-coming economist Moretti (Economics/Univ. of California, Berkeley) takes issue with the “[w]idespread misconception…that the problem of inequality in the United States is all about the gap between the top one percent and the remaining 99 percent.” The most important aspect of inequality today, he writes, is the widening gap between the 45 million workers with college degrees and the 80 million without—a difference he claims affects every area of peoples' lives. The college-educated part of the population underpins the growth of America's economy of innovation in life sciences, information technology, media and other areas of globally leading research work. Moretti studies the relationship among geographic concentration, innovation and workplace education levels to identify the direct and indirect benefits. He shows that this clustering favors the promotion of self-feeding processes of growth, directly affecting wage levels, both in the innovative industries as well as the sectors that service them. Indirect benefits also accrue from knowledge and other spillovers, which accompany clustering in innovation hubs. Moretti presents research-based evidence supporting his view that the public and private economic benefits of education and research are such that increased federal subsidies would more than pay for themselves. The author fears the development of geographic segregation and Balkanization along education lines if these issues of long-term economic benefits are left inadequately addressed.
A welcome contribution from a newcomer who provides both a different view and balance in addressing one of the country's more profound problems.Pub Date: May 5, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-547-75011-8
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: April 3, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2012
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