A unique and fresh perspective on how to achieve business success based on the careers of modern history’s greatest pop figures. Stroll through the past and discover the fusion of pop culture and business. From Walt Disney to Bill Gates, from Burt Bacharach to Howard Hughes, from Steven Spielberg to John D. Rockefeller, and from Col. Harland Sanders to Steve Jobs, this is the comprehensive study of pop icons, historical innovations, and business pioneers. In Pop Icons and Business Legends, legendary business advisor and former presidential speech writer Hank Moore embraces the past as a roadmap to the future. This is history, cultural enlightenment, and business innovation, all rolled in one, plus a dynamic panorama of non-profit and humanitarian contributions to society. “How can one person with so much insight into cultural history and nostalgia be such a visionary of business and organizations? Hank Moore is one of the few who understands the connection.” —Dick Clark, TV icon “Hank Moore's Business Tree™ is the most original business model of the last 50 years.” —Peter Drucker, business visionary

Examines the legendary success that Steve Jobs has had with Pixar and his rejuvenation of Apple through the introduction of the iMac and iPod.

In Business Brilliant, Lewis Schiff combines compelling storytelling with ground-breaking research to show the rest of us what America’s self-made rich already know: It’s synergy, not serendipity that produces success. He explodes common myths about wealth and explains how legendary entrepreneurs such as Richard Branson, Suze Orman, Steve Jobs, and Warren Buffet have subscribed to a set of priorities that’s completely different from those of the middle class. Schiff identifies the seven distinct principles practiced by individuals who may or may not be any smarter than the rest of the population, but seem to understand instinctively how money is made. This guide also reveals how these business icons excel in areas of team building, risk management, and leadership development to accumulate their wealth. He offers a practical four-step program, from choosing one’s livelihood and pinpointing skills to focus on, to negotiating job terms and salary, in order to bring upon greater success. Business Brilliant by Lewis Schiff, coauthor of TheMiddle Class Millionaire: The Rise of the New Rich and How They are Changing America and The Armchair Millionaire, can help you can achieve better results in your business and in your career.

Coca-Cola. Harley-Davidson. Nike. Budweiser. Valued by customers more for what they symbolize than for what they do, products like these are more than brands--they are cultural icons. How do managers create brands that resonate so powerfully with consumers? Based on extensive historical analyses of some of America's most successful iconic brands, including ESPN, Mountain Dew, Volkswagen, Budweiser, and Harley-Davidson, this book presents the first systematic model to explain how brands become icons. Douglas B. Holt shows how iconic brands create "identity myths" that, through powerful symbolism, soothe collective anxieties resulting from acute social change. Holt warns that icons can't be built through conventional branding strategies, which focus on benefits, brand personalities, and emotional relationships. Instead, he calls for a deeper cultural perspective on traditional marketing themes like targeting, positioning, brand equity, and brand loyalty--and outlines a distinctive set of "cultural branding" principles that will radically alter how companies approach everything from marketing strategy to market research to hiring and training managers. Until now, Holt shows, even the most successful iconic brands have emerged more by intuition and serendipity than by design. With How Brands Become Icons, managers can leverage the principles behind some of the most successful brands of the last half-century to build their own iconic brands. Douglas B. Holt is associate professor of Marketing at Harvard Business School.

In the popular imagination, the business media, and the schools of business and management that train new generations of entrepreneurs and executives, achieving extraordinary success in business is attributed to far-sighted individuals who have taken bold risks, provided innovative leadership, and introduced new products, services, or ideas superior to those of the competition. Amid the growing skepticism about the means by which vast amounts of wealth are accumulated and its consequences, however, this belief is long overdue for reevaluation. In From Predators to Icons, Michel Villette, a sociologist, and Catherine Vuillermot, a business historian, examine the careers of thirty-two of today's wealthiest global executives--including Warren Buffett, Ingvar Kamprad, Bernard Arnault, Jim Clark, and Richard Branson--in order to challenge the conventional explanations for their extreme success and come to a better understanding of modern business practices. In contrast to the familiar image of the entrepreneur as a visionary with a plan, Villette and Vuillermot instead discover a far less dramatic process of improvised adaptations gradually assembled into a coherent course of conduct. And rather than being risk-takers, those who are most successful in business are risk-minimizers. Huge gains, these case studies reveal, are most reliably obtained in circumstances where the entrepreneur has established careful provisions for risk reduction. As for the view that innovation makes success possible, the authors find that because innovation is an expensive process that takes a long time to produce profits, innovators first of all require capital; success makes innovation possible. The necessary resources, they show, are most often derived from what they provocatively term "predation" ruthlessly taking advantage of imperfections, weaknesses, and vulnerabilities within the market or among competitors. Finally, From Predator to Icon considers the "practical ethics" implemented during the phase in which capital is most rapidly accumulated, as well as the social consequences of these activities. Drawing on interviews with some of their subjects and, crucially, close readings of the authorized biographies and other hagiographic accounts of these figures, which eliminates the bias of malicious interpretations, Villette and Vuillermot provide revelatory insights about the creation and maintenance of business wealth that will be profitably read by both the captains and the critics of contemporary capitalism.