Islands of Profit in a Sea of Red Ink

Oct 4, 2024 7:30 AM

Author:Jonathan L. S. Byrnes

Companies around the world turn to MIT's Jonathan Byrnes for one reason: he can figure out where the profit is. He shows them which customers and businesses are cash cows, and which efforts are just a drain on resources. Most astonishingly, in each case he finds that roughly 40% of his client's businesses are unprofitable.

We are transitioning from an era of mass markets to the Age of Precision Markets. Before, companies sought to distribute their products as widely as possible using arm's-length customer relationships. Broad metrics like aggregate revenues and costs were adequate. But today companies form different relationships with different sets of customers. Successful businesses create competitive advantages and sustained profitability by developing innovative relationships and new types of value. This is a double-edged sword: if customers are matched with the right relationships, sales and profits soar...but if they are matched poorly, profitability plunges.

Islands of Profit in a Sea of Red Ink tells you how to rethink your business for maximum profit - what to do, what difficulties you'll encounter, and how to overcome them. This book gives you the roadmap and tools you'll need to be a highly effective manager in a new era of business.

Reviews

Not for the meek, Hacking Work is for those who truly want to change the way they do business

—— Marshall Goldsmith, author of the New York Times Bestsellers MOJO and What Got You Here Won't Get You There

Book of the Month

—— City AM

27 Powers of Persuasion offers readers some powerful new ideas on how to get others to follow you."

—— CNBC

St. Hilaire provides...interesting and useful methods for presenting ideas.... He's practical...though he very wisely recognizes how humans think and act. His anecdotes are apt and instructional..., and show how executives and others can present their thoughts in ways that are palatable to others without necessarily compromising or losing integrity.

—— Miami Herald

Erdal convincingly exposes the gross errors in the conventional models economists use to describe people and businesses (which he labels 'just-so stories'), and describes how and why employee-owned businesses are superior to publicly listed companies in every way. The book is an easy read, jam-packed with quotable passages.

—— R. Eric Swanepoel , Bella Caledonia Blog

Dan and Chip Heath have done it again ... Any leader looking to create change in his organization need not look beyond this little book. It is packed with examples and hands-on tools that will get you moving right away. And it is really a fun read

—— BusinessWeek

Chip and Dan Heath have mined the latest psychological research to work out how to engage our emotional brain, and encourage us to focus on "bright spots" - techniques proven to help us change bad habits - rather than merely telling us what we're doing wrong

—— Psychologies

Provides a useful framework for understanding change and is full of suggestions for "fooling yourself"- and those around you - into making changes you want to make but can't

—— Director

A particularly absorbing and entertaining read

—— Financial Times

A cautionary tale for those who believe that the grass - and their future paycheck - would be greener if only they could jump the fence into the rarefied world of the Masters of Business Administration

—— New York Times

Original, clever, funny - and full of insights into one of the most influential insitutions in the world

—— George Osborne, Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer

What They Teach You...' is a hilarious, perceptive and unflinching account of the strange world of Harvard Business School, its students and the wider world of business which they are set to dominate. It is the Liar's Poker of the MBA set. Destined to become a classic

—— Albert Read, General Manager of Conde Nast

Informative, wry, and well-written, this book will make rewarding and pleasurable reading for anybody wishing to understand why business is the way it is.

—— John Cassidy, staff writer for The New Yorker and author of Dot.Con

Kirkpatrick's amazing reporting details what happens when a hacker culture turns into a multi-billion-dollar firm. Mark Zuckerberg sought to maintain that hacker energy, and it's fascinating to hear what resulted

—— Chris Anderson, Editor of Wired and author of The Long Tail

Engrossing. . . . A detailed and scrupulously fair history of [Facebook]

—— Rich Jaroslovsky , Bloomberg Businessweek

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