No comments about Protocols for Micropropagation of Woody Trees and Fruits.

1 comments about Six Sigma for Transactions and Service (Six Sigma Operational Methods).

1. A VERY TOPICAL BOOK FOR THE PRACTICING MANAGERS WHO ARE IN THE SERVICE INDUSTRY. AUTHORS HAVE USED A VERY SIMPLE LANGUAGE TO BRING OUT THE CONCEPTS, DELVED THEM WITH SOME GOOD EXAMPLES THAT MAKE SENSE, AND HAVE OFFERED SOLUTIONS. MOST PEOPLE ARE SO BUSY AT WORK, WITH ROUTINES, THEY FORGET THE FUNDAMENTALS AND THE NEW DIMENSIONS AND THE DYNAMICS. THE KNOWLEDGE AND EXPERIENCE OF THIS TEAM OF AUTHORS IN THE FORM OF THIS BOOK, WILL BE A GREAT HELP IN INCORPORATING THE SIX SIGMA CONCEPTS, MEASURE UPTO THE CHALLENGES OF TIME THE TRANSACTIONS AND SERVICE INDUSTRY IS CURRENTLY FACING, AND IMPROVING THE BOTTOM LINE. THE OVERALL PRESENTATION OF THE BOOK IS VERY GOOD AND THE PUBLISHERS - MCGRAW HILL, AS USUAL HAVE DONE WELL.
   
   THE AUTHORS NEED TO BE CONGRATULATED FOR DOING SUCH A FINE JOB.

2 comments about India Bazaar: Vintage Indian Graphics (Icons).

1. The American equivalent of owning this book is stocking up on 50's memorabilia and Americana. It's a great nostalgic look back at the colorful, underlying optimism of packaging designers of small town India.



2. This book was dissapointing for me. I thought there would be a little more text first of all! The graphics start off beautiful..of gods/goddesses, beautiful imagery of a cow, then 1/3 way into this book, the pictures turn into straight up old fireworks ads(by the apparenlty only co. that sold them?) old lablel photos of fireworks boxes. Now, these images look very American and show babies playing with "submarine bombs" and the like...the pictures of these are quite dull. Then come the matchbook covers, only a few have any nice pictures on them, they are low quality and I am still contemplating WHY the author thought these particular pieces of "art" should be in this book! Which expains why the good pctures are in the beginning and the um...boring...pictures after. The cover is quite misleading, i guess defining that old addage of 'you cant judge a book by its cover'. Im glad I didnt pay much for this, I really dont know what to do with it! It is not of much value. I feel the matchbook covers could have been better graphics, and the fireworks (almost 50 firworks ads!!) were very boring and sometimes disturbing! I give it 2 stars for the few gorgeous calendar prints in the front and a small handful of interesting pictures which are of pretty bad quality photos. And I mean a small, a baby's handful...I dont recommend it. Theres 3 pgs of text. I was like THIS IS IT? Too bad you cant look thru everything on amazon. THE COVER IS A PRINT OF SHIVA PARVATI AND GANESH. Which leads one to think the whole book will be filled with glorious photos of Indian bazaars, maybe some bindi packages? Whatever. Its NOT. Save yourself money. Dont bother.

4 comments about The Sustainable Company: How to Create Lasting Value through Social and Environmental Performance.

1. This landmark work helps managers assess the business value of sustainability. Many companies are keen to show that they are responsible corporate citizens. They are taking lots of actions on the environmental and social front, but have no idea which ones are important for their businesses. This book offered me a structured management process for thinking about "stakeholder" value-at-risk and value-opportunities. I highly recommend it for anyone looking for a set of practical guidelines to integrating stakeholders into their company's core activities. It helped me to make the business case for greater corporate responsibility in a language that other managers could understand



2. This book is an effective primer on this important cultural trend and is divided into three parts:
   (1) The basic ideas behind sustainable development and value
   (2) Four examples of sustainable companies
   (3) Some business tools for creating and measuring stakeholder value
   
   In Part I, Chris Laszlo presents the key concepts, history, importance of developing an increasingly conscious, sustainable and responsible business. He covers all the major elements of sustainability (such as triple bottom-line, various stakeholders, measurements, ethics etc.) but in language that does not reduce these exciting topics and trends to dull, academic abstraction. Most interesting is Part II on successful corporate models of sustainability (such as Patagonia clothing, ARCO) which give a real human face to the concepts. Many managers will find most useful the charts, graphs, models for creating, communicating and managing an effective sustainability program. Its not an MBA-level of detail, but a solid, conceptual starting point that will be appreciated to those newer to these ideas. However, I found his language a more academically labored in Part III, reducing its effectiveness to engage. Other popular books on the topic worth reading are "Natural Capitalism" and "Cradle-to-Cradle."



3. Chris "CC Storm" Laszlo has done it again! Another best seller that informs as well as it entertains. He makes compelling arguments promoting environmental sustainability via fuel cells operating on a Slim Jim and Mellow Yellow mixture rather than Hydrogen. The author is no doubt a briliant business and social strategist, but he is a really nice guy, good looking and available too! I can't wait for the sequel coming in December: "Son of Sustainable Company". Happy reading!



4. This may be the worst book ever written. The "arguments" are not only circular, but contradict one another. Terms are poorly defined and lack continuity. The focus for change is inappropriately placed on the business side of the business/consumer relationship. I'm dumber for having read it.

3 comments about Tao Teh King.

1. Archie Bahm's interpretation is by far the easiest to take in. Clear, concise and straihtforward, without any attempt to mystify the meanings.
   The last chapters about Lao Tzu, Tao, Teh and Confucius is very informative.



2. This translation of the Tao Teh Ching will not replace my favorite (more poetical) translation, but I found it very helpful in understanding those passages and ideas that are too often obscured by a too 'mystical' sounding translation. I want it alongside my other translations as I think I will refer to it frequently.



3. A true, simple and deeply insightful translation of the Tao Teh Ching. No poetic wording or attempts to mystify the text. Presented in its true simplicity. This text will help you to understand the other translations you may have read.

No comments about Perceiving Rubrics of the Mind.

5 comments about Enterprise Service Oriented Architectures: Concepts, Challenges, Recommendations (The Enterprise Series).

1. James is my best friend and have worked with him in the past and current. This book on SOA is a highly recommended book for companies trying to get into the SOA space. Concepts cleanly explained with implementation details. Great book if it were to be used in academic realm or to be used by people in the industry.



2. Although I am not a friend of any of the authors, I find this book great. The first chapter is not only an excellent introduction to SOA; it also addressed the change of mindset you have to implement to succeed. The requirement discussion is chapter two is also excellent. It challenges the use-case driven development from RUP (and other story-based development methods) and shows how a successful SOA implementation within IT and business makes it possible to make a simple and direct mapping from business requirements to services. I also find the emphasis on information services important! The proposed method for requirement management will definitely change the mindset for both programmers and business people - and increase business agility within the enterprise.
   
   The rest of the book covers the fundamentals of SOA in a very compact format. Spending time on this book seems to be a good investment.



3. This topical book takes us through the many facets of SOA. It can help you understand and implement an SOA redesign of your company's software assets. One of the promises of SOA is that the redesign can start at a higher level. Not at the software or the design of the software per se, but at modelling the workflow and business process management. The book bundles these under the label of "Orchestration" and explains how the Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) offers the expressive power to document them. Actually, BPEL can do more than document. There is a prospect here that BPEL can be used to implement how the workflow proceeds, at the level of Web Services. Of course, the latter still have to be written. The reader needs to appreciate that the bulk of the work resides outside the book's scope, in the coding of those Web Services.
   
   The book shows the considerable potential of SOA.



4. There were a few decent pieces of information, but overall I was not very impressed. Some of the content was OK, but the grammatical errors and different writing styles made it a very disappointing read. There were four different authors which contributed to the flow problems, and it was obvious that some of the chapters were more poorly written than others. In addition, it didn't seem like anyone even proofed the book. I can understand a few errors, but I found myself re-reading sentence after sentence trying to understand what words were missing, misspelled or out-of-place.
   
   The chapter on transactions was pretty decent. I liked the information on compensating transactions, which I had heard called three phase commit previously. The chapter on UDDI was pretty decent as well. I was disappointed in the last chapter on Event-Driven Architecture. It just seemed to be a hodge-podge catch all of the author's thoughts without much meat.



5. These folks use my book, "How to Open Locks With Improvised Tools" in their work. They stated that my book was published by Harper Collins in 1997. The first version, "Lock Bypass Methods" was published in 1998, and the version they cite was published in 2001, by Level Four Publications. The title page, including contact info in my book, is concise and clear. Harper Collins has never touched it. No, they didn't ask permission for use, and there are so many spelling and grammatical errors that it is obvious they cut corners in other places, too. Since they're happy to invent spurious references when the real thing is readily available, I wouldn't hold much faith whatever else they cranked out. I'm sorry my name shows up in their shoddy work.

No comments about The Prescriber.

No comments about Concepts and Techniques in Oil and Gas Exploration.

3 comments about Management of Research and Development Organizations: Managing the Unmanageable.

1. R&D is not only important to organizations whose names do not include the words research or development or technology; it is important to managers whose job titles do not include the terms researcher, scientist or engineer. The transformation of our industrial society into an informational society requires research; and a thorough understanding of the R&D function has become a critical issue for every manager. Unfortunately, the R&D function is difficult to manage. This is partly due to the nature of the work, and partly due to the nature of the people. One of the major lifelong dreams of a scientist or engineer is to develop a leap-ahead technology that will cause previous scientific dogma to become obsolete. This revolution causes the management systems and organizational infrastructure that supports the old technology to also become outmoded.

   Though there are many books citing the importance and unique aspects of R&D, there is a paucity of books on how to manage it. Most R&D management books are not broad enough in scope...they are project management books that detail PERT and budgetary control mechanisms. They are oft-times written in technical jargon making them inaccessible to the lay reader.

   This book is unique in that it takes management concepts and innovatively applies them to an R&D environment in an easy-to-understand and easy-to replicate way. It bravely examines topics that are typically taboo in R&D organizations. The ethos of a scientific community espouses universalism and the sharing of scientific knowledge. To acknowledge, much less prescribe, remedial steps for all the various ways that conflict can manifest itself (conflict within individuals, between individuals, between groups, and inter-culturally) is very revealing...and healing. Beyond being very informative, there are aspects to the book that are entertaining. There's a structure questionnaire on "Identifying Your Leadership Style." In one of the sections, you must rate your level of agreement with statements like: "The people I supervise have trouble getting along with each other." There's also questions at the end of each chapter which can be used to stimulate further thinking and discussion; and case studies for group review and analysis. This book is unique in that it is entertaining to read; and can also be used as a textbook. It brings to mind Samuelson' book (Economics, McGraw-Hill, 1976), not only because of its format but because it is a landmark book that breaks from the tradition of boring, technically-jargonned books that are inaccessible or unappealing to the reading public...This book operationalizes the "High Touch" that John Naisbitt said "High Tech" (Megatrends, Warner Books, 1982) necessitates.

   I have recommended this book to my colleagues at Motorola, and I recommend it to you as well.




2. As the Training Manager for a DOE contracted physics lab, I am concerned with increasing the management skills of our scientists, engineers, and technicians. This book was indispensable in providing the rationale for valuing management skills in an environment like ours, and also provided excellent advice on how to use them with our unique workforce. It is practical, user-friendly, and well-written. It can easily be adapted as a support text for management development since it has study questions and a review at the end of every chapter. We have 30 copies of the book on site, both in our Library and in the hands of individual managers. I highly recommend it.



3. This book as many of the characteristics of academic papers. It contains a very detailed and complete review of issues and literature on the problem of managing R&D. However, each and every chapter typically ends with more or less generic recommendations and prescriptions on how to 'manage the unmanageable'. For one thing, the authors show a clear bias in favor of researchers and scientists as opposed to business managers. This is the most popular view commonly held in academia today, where professional management is considered ultimately a burden to creativity and true R&D. This position emerges especially in chapter 13 on "The University Research Enterprise". The concluding comments in this chapters match the simplistic views on R&D held in academia today, like: the largest and most creative segment of the basic research enterprise resides at academic institution, the public and Congress need to be "educated" about the importance of research", society and science 'need' research. Such conclusions are not only simplistic, but also very inconsistent with the history of R&D in this country. In particular, they miss completely the historical and political perspective on how research and science have evolved especially after World War II. It does not take much analysis to recognize that the big boost to basic research in the last 50 years has been motivated by political factors like World War II itself, and the ensuing Cold War (think of the big competition for space exploration). It was not an act of an 'educated' Congress, and it is not fortuitous that government funding of research has been decreasing in recent years as the Cold War came to an end. Similarly, a lot of technological advances have originated in companies, as more and more talented people have been leaving universities to seek better employment in rich industries. Failing to see the links between basic research and the current political and economical environment is a typical mistake that most people in academia make, and one that is causing a lot of academic research to become increasingly irrelevant to industries, because academic researchers fail to see the links between their work and the surrouding environment.

   The authors also miss completely to analyze the relationship between the issues they treat in the book, efficient leadership, decision making, conflict resolution, and the actual managerial structure of academic and laboratory institutions. They never examine, for example, whether or not the current tenure system is actually compatible with effective management of R&D projects. The tenure system, where tenure faculties are basically 'untouchables' and hold much power over the rest of the researchers, is one of the causes that hinder rapid change and innovation of ideas in academia. Too often, in fact, the younger researchers have to limit their creative abilities in order to produce papers that are acceptable to their older peers, so that they can be promoted to the higher academic ranks (tenure). In this respect, research groups in academia are very different from groups in industry. Academic research groups are more like little feudal systems, where a single (tenured) faculty rules over the group. The ability to conduct technical research is routinely confused with the ability to manage, with disastrous consequences for the efficiency of the laboratories, and even more disastrous wastes of federal money. Furthermore, academia typically rewards individual contributions rather than teamwork, a practice that limits enourmously the management of large-scale projects. These issues are well known, and have been discussed in many professional publications.

   In summary, I found this book much less useful than other books on R&D management written by consultants and project leaders involved with industry (e.g., the book by Roussel et al.). While it is a comprehensive source of references and data, it remains simplistic and generic in addressing the really complex issues of innovation and change in R&D organizations. Furthermore, it fails to discuss the hard managerial issues related to the current organizational structure of research institutions like universities, where the very notion of efficient management is totally absent.