William Michael Redman has narrated 5 audiobooks on Listento.it by 6 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.8★ across 5 ratings. The most-rated is Startup CEO.
Startup CEO
Summary
A definitive book for any CEO - first time or otherwise - of a high-growth company. While big company CEOs are usually groomed for the job for years, startup CEOs aren't - and they're often young and relatively inexperienced in business in general. Author Matt Blumberg, a technology and marketing entrepreneur, knows this all too well. Back in 1999, he started a company called Return Path, which later became the driving force behind the creation of his blog, OnlyOnce - because "you're only a first time CEO once." Now, more than a decade later, he's written Startup CEO. As the fifth in the StartUp Revolution series, this reliable resource is based on Blumberg's experience as a startup CEO and covers a number of issues he's faced over the dozen years he's been a CEO. Engaging and informative, this book is essential reading for any, and every, CEO.
©2013 Matt Blumberg (P)2013 Audible, Inc.
The Knowledge-Creating Company
Summary
How have Japanese companies become world leaders in the automotive and electronics industries, among others? What is the secret of their success? Two leading Japanese business experts, Ikujiro Nonaka and Hirotaka Takeuchi, are the first to tie the success of Japanese companies to their ability to create new knowledge and use it to produce successful products and technologies. In The Knowledge-Creating Company, Nonaka and Takeuchi provide an inside look at how Japanese companies go about creating this new knowledge organizationally. The authors point out that there are two types of knowledge: explicit knowledge, contained in manuals and procedures, and tacit knowledge, learned only by experience, and communicated only indirectly, through metaphor and analogy. U.S. managers focus on explicit knowledge. The Japanese, on the other hand, focus on tacit knowledge. And this, the authors argue, is the key to their success - the Japanese have learned how to transform tacit into explicit knowledge. To explain how this is done - and illuminate Japanese business practices as they do so - the authors range from Greek philosophy to Zen Buddhism, from classical economists to modern management gurus, illustrating the theory of organizational knowledge creation with case studies drawn from such firms as Honda, Canon, Matsushita, NEC, Nissan, 3M, GE, and even the U.S. Marines. For instance, using Matsushita's development of the Home Bakery (the world's first fully automated bread-baking machine for home use), they show how tacit knowledge can be converted to explicit knowledge: when the designers couldn't perfect the dough kneading mechanism, a software programmer apprenticed herself with the master baker at Osaka International Hotel, gained a tacit understanding of kneading, and then conveyed this information to the engineers. In addition, the authors show that, to create knowledge, the best management style is neither top-down nor bottom-up, but rather what they call "middle-up-down," in which the middle managers form a bridge between the ideals of top management and the chaotic realities of the frontline. As we make the turn into the 21st century, a new society is emerging. Peter Drucker calls it the "knowledge society," one that is drastically different from the "industrial society," and one in which acquiring and applying knowledge will become key competitive factors. Nonaka and Takeuchi go a step further, arguing that creating knowledge will become the key to sustaining a competitive advantage in the future.Because the competitive environment and customer preferences changes constantly, knowledge perishes quickly. With The Knowledge-Creating Company, managers have at their fingertips years of insight from Japanese firms that reveal how to create knowledge continuously, and how to exploit it to make successful new products, services, and systems.
©1995 Oxford University Press, Inc. (P)2014 Audible Inc.
Dark Places
Summary
Winner of the 2005 Arthur Ellis Award for Best First Novel. In a place so harsh that survival is a struggle, one man has found the strength to kill.... Paul Wood is a modern vagabond, a man who chooses to leave the comforts of San Francisco to spend months backpacking through some of the world's most challenging terrain: Cameroon, Indonesia, Nepal. While hiking in the Himalayas, Paul gets more of a rush than he bargained for when he finds the body of a murdered hiker, the victim mutilated in a way that Paul has witnessed once before, years ago and thousands of miles away. To quell a scandal, the police rule the death a suicide and close the case. But Paul can't let it go. A man who has traveled through the thin air at the top of the world and across land mines in war zones, he is not easily discouraged. But his newest expedition will show him some of the darkest places imaginable, in both the terrain he navigates and the men he encounters. Finding the killer becomes Paul's new obsession - a journey that leads him dangerously close to the edge...and maybe over it.
©2004 Jon Evans (P)2013 Audible, Inc.
Gridiron Gauntlet
Summary
One year before Jackie Robinson broke the color line in major league baseball in 1947, four black players joined the Cleveland Browns and Los Angeles Rams to become the first professional football players of African-American descent in the modern era. While blacks had played on professional teams in the early days of pro football, none had joined a team since 1934. In this book, 12 players who began their careers from 1946 to 1955 not only reminisce about the violence they faced on and off the field, the segregated hotels and restaurants, and general hostility that comes with being a trailblazer, but also of white players and coaches who assisted and supported them at various stages of their lives. Among the oral histories presented here are those of such Hall of Famers Bill Willis, Joe Perry, and George Taliaferro.
©2009 Andy Piascik (P)2013 Audible, Inc.
The Halloween Man
Summary
The Halloween Man walks when the screaming begins, and only Stony Crawford holds the key to the power of the chilling mystery of Stonehaven - and to the power of the unspeakable creature trapped within a summer mansion...
©1998 Douglas Clegg (P)2013 Audible, Inc.