University of Chicago Press: New Titles in Economics and Business: Business--Business Economics and Management Studies

Strategy

Fredmund Malik — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 05:00:00 GMT

In Strategy, Fredmund Malik once again offers executives in the business world the tools they need to lead their companies. Exploring the technological innovations that have revolutionized business, Malik outlines the problems confronting companies in this novel era. He then discusses the many effective cybernetic systems for strategic navigation and the patterns of transformations to come, along with the economic dynamics that will accompany them. The book also lays out the revolutionary new methods that allow businesspeople around the world to master these new strategies with precision, ease, and unprecedented speed.

Magnetic

Anne Bergeron; Beth Tuttle — Wed, 15 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

In this in-depth study of what makes a museum an organization successful, Anne Bergeron and Beth Tuttle look at so-called “magnetic” organizations, namely ones that combine a powerful internal alignment with a compelling vision so that they are able to attract critical resources, such as talented and committed employees, loyal audiences, engaged donors, powerful goodwill from the community at large, and the financial capital required to sustain programmatic excellence and growth. Magnetic: The Art and Science of Engagement analyzes six American museums: Children’s Museum in Pittsburgh; Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, Virginia; Conner Prairie Interactive History Park in Indiana; The Franklin Institute in Philadelphia; Natural Science Center of Greensboro in North Carolina; and Philbrook Museum of Art in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Each of these has embraced a shift in ideology and set a new course that has enabled them to achieve a positive reputation and a fruitful engagement with the community. This philosophy of magnetism provides a model not only for museum administration but also for all types of organizations—from corporations to nonprofits—that wish to maximize their involvement with their customers and the wider public while strengthening their own organizational infrastructure.

Genentech

Sally Smith Hughes — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 05:00:00 GMT

In the fall of 1980, Genentech, Inc., a little-known California genetic engineering company, became the overnight darling of Wall Street, raising over $38 million in its initial public stock offering. Lacking marketed products or substantial profit, the firm nonetheless saw its share price escalate from $35 to $89 in the first few minutes of trading, at that point the largest gain in stock market history. Coming at a time of economic recession and declining technological competitiveness in the United States, the event provoked banner headlines and ignited a period of speculative frenzy over biotechnology as a revolutionary means for creating new and better kinds of pharmaceuticals, untold profit, and a possible solution to national economic malaise.

Drawing from an unparalleled collection of interviews with early biotech players, Sally Smith Hughes offers the first book-length history of this pioneering company, depicting Genentech’s improbable creation, precarious youth, and ascent to immense prosperity. Hughes provides intimate portraits of the people significant to Genentech’s science and business, including cofounders Herbert Boyer and Robert Swanson, and in doing so sheds new light on how personality affects the growth of science. By placing Genentech’s founders, followers, opponents, victims, and beneficiaries in context, Hughes also demonstrates how science interacts with commercial and legal interests and university research, and with government regulation, venture capital, and commercial profits.

Integrating the scientific, the corporate, the contextual, and the personal, Genentech tells the story of biotechnology as it is not often told, as a risky and improbable entrepreneurial venture that had to overcome a number of powerful forces working against it.