A searing portrait of Steve Jobs, the California boy wonder who—having co-founded Apple Computer in his garage in 1979—went on to make a ``bid of entrepreneurial history'' with a $600-million disaster of a high-end, high-tech company called NeXT. Stross (Business/San Jose State; Bulls in the China Shop, 1991—not reviewed) seems to have a passionate dislike for Jobs, whose stake in Apple won him widespread notoriety—and a great fortune. According to the author, college-dropout Jobs's main talent was self-promotion; in business, he was technically unskilled and was ``considered an incompetent manager of at best'' by Apple, where, in 1985, he was stripped of his duties by a CEO he himself had hired. After that debacle, Jobs sold his Apple stock and, in 1985, announced the formation of NeXT—whose purpose was no less than to ``build computers to change the world.'' Such was Jobs's aura of genius and infallibility that—without design specifications, a market, or any software for his promised new computer—he garnered significant backing from Ross Perot, IBM, and Canon. Jobs proceeded to make every management mistake Apple had made, and without producing the fabulous machines that had compensated at Apple: Instead of building a computer, he built lush new private offices, staffed them with 400 technicians and salespeople, and adopted a secretive, nearly paranoid, stance toward competitors and the press. By the time the pokey, limited, expensive, and not entirely reliable NeXT Cube computer appeared, two years behind schedule, in late 1988, the high-stakes technological race had gone to the swifter Sun Microsystem and IBM; a second generation of new and improved NeXT boxes did nothing to change the situation in 1991, when the company abandoned manufacturing. Stross's treatment of Jobs as a born megalomaniac and thoroughgoing devil leaches his narrative of the tension of a rise- and-fall tale. Nevertheless: a fascinating, though overlong, glimpse of glittering Silicon Valley in the 1980's. (Eight-page photo insert—not seen)
Pub Date: Nov. 18, 1993
ISBN: 0-689-12135-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1993
BOOK REVIEW
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
IN THE NEWS
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.
A helpful guide to working effectively with people from other cultures.
“The sad truth is that the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work,” writes Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an international business school. Yet they face a wider array of work styles than ever before in dealing with clients, suppliers and colleagues from around the world. When is it best to speak or stay quiet? What is the role of the leader in the room? When working with foreign business people, failing to take cultural differences into account can lead to frustration, misunderstanding or worse. Based on research and her experiences teaching cross-cultural behaviors to executive students, the author examines a handful of key areas. Among others, they include communicating (Anglo-Saxons are explicit; Asians communicate implicitly, requiring listeners to read between the lines), developing a sense of trust (Brazilians do it over long lunches), and decision-making (Germans rely on consensus, Americans on one decider). In each area, the author provides a “culture map scale” that positions behaviors in more than 20 countries along a continuum, allowing readers to anticipate the preferences of individuals from a particular country: Do they like direct or indirect negative feedback? Are they rigid or flexible regarding deadlines? Do they favor verbal or written commitments? And so on. Meyer discusses managers who have faced perplexing situations, such as knowledgeable team members who fail to speak up in meetings or Indians who offer a puzzling half-shake, half-nod of the head. Cultural differences—not personality quirks—are the motivating factors behind many behavioral styles. Depending on our cultures, we understand the world in a particular way, find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, and consider some ways of making decisions or measuring time natural and others quite strange.
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.Pub Date: May 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61039-250-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
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