By Chris Zook, with James Allen. Well-crafted and lucidly written, Profit from the Core is evidence that a book doesn't have to be a tome to carry weight. The chief problem, they argue, was that companies diversified from their core businesses.
Examples are well-chosen, and the book's charts and tables are simple and readily comprehensible.
Profit from the Core has an important message for senior managers, and delivers it very efficiently. By James Champy and Nitin Nohria. Fundamentally, this book is about inspiration. Using that as a premise, the authors string together themed chapters drawing from figures such as Napoleon, the Wright Brothers, Martin Luther King Jr. and Thomas Jefferson, interspersed with vignettes involving modern business figures like Sam Walton, Ray Kroc of McDonald's, Ted Turner and eBay's Meg Whitman, as well as a few more obscure names. Most of its examples, however, are business people, living and dead.