The Four

As Scott Galloway puts it, by the time you hit your mid-20s sh*t gets real. Life becomes stressful. Even the smart, the hardworking and the elite can feel lost in a chaotic, noisy and unpredictable world. As a professor at New York University's Stern School of Business, the debate in Galloway's MBA class often veers away from business strategy to the challenging issue of life strategies. Which is why Galloway, in his signature take-no-prisoners style, has developed a dynamic formula for a life well lived.

The Covid-19 outbreak has turned bedrooms into offices, pitted young against old and widened the gaps between rich and poor, red and blue, the mask-wearers and the mask-haters. Some businesses, like Amazon and video conference software maker Zoom, woke up to find themselves crushed under an avalanche of consumer demand. Others, like the restaurant, travel, hospitality and live entertainment industries, scrambled to not become instantly obsolete. But the pandemic has not been a change agent so much as an accelerant of trends that were already well underway. 

Winner of the 2013 Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award. Amazon.com started off delivering books through the mail. But its visionary founder, Jeff Bezos, wasn't content with being a bookseller. He wanted Amazon to become the everything store, offering limitless selection and seductive convenience at disruptively low prices. To achieve that end, he developed a corporate culture of relentless ambition and secrecy that's never been cracked. Until now...

“What would Jeff do?” Since leaving Amazon to advise start-ups and corporations, John Rossman has been asked this question countless times by executives who want to know “the secret” behind Amazon’s historic success. In this step-by-step guide, he provides 50½ answers drawn from his experience as an Amazon executive - and shows today’s business leaders how to think like Amazon, strategize like Bezos, and beat the competition like nobody’s business.

Ten years ago the idea of getting into a stranger's car or walking into a stranger's home would have seemed bizarre and dangerous, but today it's as common as ordering a book online. Uber and Airbnb are household names: redefining neighbourhoods, challenging the way governments regulate business and changing the way we travel. In the spirit of iconic Silicon Valley renegades like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, a new generation of entrepreneurs is sparking yet another cultural upheaval through technology.

In his sophomore year of college, Mark Zuckerberg created a simple website to serve as a campus social network. The site caught on like wildfire, and soon students nationwide were on Facebook. Today, Facebook is nearly unrecognisable from Zuckerberg's first, modest iteration. It has grown into a tech giant, the largest social media platform and one of the most gargantuan companies in the world, with a valuation of more than $576 billion and almost 3 billion users. There is no denying the power and omnipresence of Facebook in American daily life. 

As told by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Hit Refresh is the story of corporate change and reinvention as well as the story of Nadella's personal journey, one that is taking place today inside a storied technology company, and one that is coming in all of our lives as intelligent machines become more ambient and more ubiquitous. It's about how people, organisations and societies can and must hit refresh - transform - in their persistent quest for new energy, new ideas, relevance and renewal.

Colin started at Amazon in 1998; Bill joined in 1999. Their time at Amazon covered a period of unmatched innovation that brought products and services including Kindle, Amazon Prime, Amazon Echo and Alexa, and Amazon Web Services to life. Through their wealth of experience they offer unprecedented access to the Amazon way as it was refined, articulated and proven to be repeatable, scalable and adaptable.  

In just a decade and a half, Jack Ma, a man from modest beginnings who started out as an English teacher, founded Alibaba and built it into one of the world's largest companies, an e-commerce empire on which hundreds of millions of Chinese consumers depend. Alibaba's $25 billion IPO in 2014 was the largest global IPO ever. A Rockefeller of his age who is courted by CEOs and presidents around the world, Jack is an icon for China's booming private sector.

In this collection of Jeff Bezos' writings - his unique and strikingly original annual shareholder letters, plus numerous speeches and interviews that provide insight into his background, his work, and the evolution of his ideas - you'll gain an insider's view of the why and how of his success. Spanning a range of topics across business and public policy, from innovation and customer obsession to climate change and outer space, this book provides a rare glimpse into how Bezos thinks about the world and where the future might take us.

Intelligence is usually seen as the ability to think and learn, but in a rapidly changing world, there's another set of cognitive skills that might matter more: the ability to rethink and unlearn. In recent months, the pandemic has forced us all to reevaluate our assumptions about health and safety and multiple acts of police brutality have challenged most of us to reconsider our responsibility for fighting racism. Yet in our daily lives, too many of us still favor the comfort of conviction over the discomfort of doubt.

The remarkable inside story of how Instagram became the hottest website on Earth. With astonishing access to all the key players, she recounts the fateful meeting of the Instagram founders in 2010. She explores the company’s unlikely acquisition by Facebook and the internal clashes over whether it could retain its autonomy. And she reveals how when Facebook entered a tailspin brought about by data misuse and fake news, it was Instagram that came to the rescue. But this is not just a Silicon Valley story. No Filter reveals how Instagram has transformed global society.

Product management plays a pivotal role in organizations. In fact, it's now considered the fourth most important title in corporate America - yet only a tiny fraction of product managers have been trained for this vital position. If you're one of the hundreds of thousands of people who hold this essential job - or simply aspire to break into a new role - Product Management for Dummies gives you the tools to increase your skill level and manage products like a pro.  

The CEO of the Walt Disney Company shares the ideas and values he has used to reinvent one of the most beloved companies in the world, and inspire the people who bring the magic to life. In 2005, Robert Iger became CEO of The Walt Disney Company during a difficult time. Morale had deteriorated, competition was more intense, and technology was changing faster than at any time in the company's history. Twelve years later, Disney is the largest, most respected media company in the world counting Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm, and 21st Century Fox among its properties. 

Based on years of reporting on Samsung for the Economist, the Wall Street Journal, and Time from his base in South Korea and his countless sources inside and outside the company, Geoffrey Cain offers the first deep look behind the curtains of the biggest company nobody knows. How has this happened? Forty years ago, Samsung was a rickety Korean agricultural conglomerate that produced sugar, paper, and fertiliser.