Twitter eBook from Smarta

In the last few days several friends and relatives have been asking me about Twitter. Some are just curious, others are more hostile, and want me to justify this latest Internet intrusion into their consciousness.

Thank goodness those wonderful people at Smarta have come up with a solution in the form of their free Twitter eBook.

I am hoping they won’t mind me summarising some of the book’s key points here, although I would thoroughly recommend you download the pdf and keep a copy close to hand.

It comes down to T.A.T. – Time, Attention and Trust. These three things dominate the landscape of our personal and business lives. Someone has shifted the world up a gear and stuck their foot hard on the accelerator. We’re all doing more with less, we need to take in and absorb so much information, to keep up. As a result, traditional marketing is finding it harder to cut through: prospects are distracted, busy in their own world, occupied by their own challenges of how they blend work and home.

But before you get into Twitter, there are some things you should know. It won’t happen overnight. In social media terms, return on investment (ROI) translates into return on engagement (ROE), starting today doesn’t mean profits tomorrow. Think of engagement more like a courtship, a series of interactions, that will lead to you developing a relationship with someone over time, ultimately which may lead to a sales marriage. It’s a long term investment for most, not a quick killing.
Phil Jones – UK Sales and Marketing director of Brother – @PhilJones40

The real-time effect of Twitter opens up a whole new world of business opportunities for us all and we need to prepare ourselves to be ready for them. When I recently needed a party company to supply (at short notice) a children’s Easter egg hunt, I didn’t search Google, I tweeted. Three companies replied to me with links to their websites, swiftly followed up by some of their followers’ testimonials. Google’s great, but personal recommendation rules.
Shaa Wasmund – Founder of Smarta –
@shaawasmund

“Twitter is a chance to be yourself and give a human voice to your business. It creates intimacy and friendliness more than anything, and that’s what so many businesses struggle with online. Talk to your followers – invest a bit of time in reading their tweets and commenting on what they’re doing. Next time, they’ll remember you rather than going to a competitor.”
@DuncanBanntyne

Twitter is not the right channel for direct sales, but it will help grow your customer base and build your brand – which means it’s good for indirect sales in the longterm. Used effectively, Twitter can help you:
•    Develop a more personal, engaged and sustained relationship with customers
•    Grow your customer base
•    Get the attention of people interested in your industry or your work
•    Publicise your business
•    Build your brand
•    Track what other people think about your business, products and industry
•    Grow your personal network of contacts and develop business relationships
•    Cold-contact and market to people without annoying them
•    Drive more traffic to your website or blog
•    Position yourself as an expert in your field by sharing news and information relevant to your business and by answering questions
•    Provide amazing customer service in a really easy way
•    Keep ahead of the latest industry news and events
•    Position your business as up-to-date and in-touch, for being on Twitter
•    Provide customers with details of special offers, new products and other news you have
•    Develop and test products and services your customers want
•    Pinpoint customer locations to within a 20-mile radius

Here are some basic ground rules for success:
•    Only tweet 120 characters or less, so others can RT you.
•    It’s OK to tweet occasionally if you’re having a cup of coffee, but if you’re a plumber focus on tweeting links to useful websites offering tips on how to stop a leaky tap.
•    Provide information, insight and opinion.
•    Be helpful. Answer questions where you can.
•    Tweets with links in them are more popular than those without.

As something of a late adopter of Social Media Marketing activities myself I can relate to the negative comments I often come across. My current response is that even if you don’t like it, the simple truth is that it works, and will generate business for you. The Smarta eBook has a page on Dolan Bikes, showing how they grew their Twitter following from seven to more than 500, and have sold 12 bikes worth between £1,000 and £3,500 on the back of their Twitter activity. As they say, in business – money talks.

http://www.smarta.com/advice/ebooks/smarta-twitter-ebook

It comes down to T.A.T. – Time, Attention
and Trust. These three things dominate
the landscape of our personal and
business lives. Someone has shifted
the world up a gear and stuck their foot
hard on the accelerator. We’re all doing
more with less, we need to take in and
absorb so much information, to keep
up. As a result, traditional marketing
is finding it harder to cut through:
prospects are distracted, busy
in their own world, occupied by
their own challenges of how
they blend work and home.

How to Write and Publish Your Book in 5 Easy Steps

On Friday I attended one of our partners workshops called Get Published Now – How to Write and Publish Your Book in 5 Easy Steps.

The presenter was author and trainer Mindy Gibbins-Klein who also goes under the name The Book Midwife, which is a great marketing angle. And like all good entrepreneurs, Mindy has registered the trade mark at the UKIPO (number 2399080)

She started the session by asking the group what book they were planning on writing. This led to the conclusion that as we all have unique experiences, and unique insights on those experiences, we all have something to write about that could be of interest to others.

For those who have decided to write a book, Mindy’s aim is to help them write and publish the best book they can, whilst also finding the biggest market for it.

It was a great workshop, full of practical and inspirational elements. It was encouraging to hear that so many authors procrastinate over their books (particularly their first). In Mindy’s case it had taken her ten years from first starting to getting into print, and this is not unusual. She reviewed the common reasons for failing to finish a book. The most popular is the author’s inability to finish the final chapter or even last few pages. This is often due to a fear of ridicule or rejection from friends and colleagues (and potential publishers) of the finished work.

It is somewhat ironic that so many books take so long to finish, as apparently the whole thing could be finishes in as little as 100 days. In fact Mindy has published her own book (with Bert Verdonck) called ‘Your Book in 100 Days’.

Mindy brought along some great examples of books with a clear title and simple but attractive covers to illustrate how important this aspect of your book can be on sales. It reminded me of Brad Burton’s book, given to me at the last Business Start-Up show in November. It’s called ‘Get off your Arse’, and tells his story of starting up in business, as well as being designed to inspire others to get off their bottoms, and follow their own dream.

It turns out that Mindy helped Brad get this book published in ninety days, after several previous false starts. I should point out that although I read the book with the intention of reviewing it here, the language and style of writing he used rather put me off. Perhaps working at the library has turned me into a literary snob. I suggest you make up your own mind and let me know what you think.

Here are my notes from the excellent workshop:

Reasons to Write and Publish a Book

These divide into emotional drivers or outcomes (such as money or status) or a combination of the two. It is helpful to know what yours are before you start.

There are 5 Easy Steps which must be completed thoroughly, and in strict order

1. Planning
2. Writing
3. Editing
4. Publishing
5. Promotion

100 hours should be enough time to go through these stages. Although most people take 200 hours, and spread them through several years.

An average book is around 50,000 words which equals around 150 pages. Researching a subject can add time to the process.

Sales of 20,000 copies is a realistic target for success. Very few authors sell more.

Three main publishing options

Traditional Cooperative Self-Publishing (you do it all yourself)

Time 12-18 months              3 months                     2 to 3 months

Financial no author inv.        £1,000 to £5,000         £1,000 to £5,000

Control publisher                      author                          author

Rights they keep                    you keep                     you keep

Likelihood of 1%                 100%                           100%
being published

Traditional model

£10 book – publisher takes £6, from remaining £4, author gets around 20p·
You will be very lucky to find a publisher

Self-Publishing

£10 book – printing £2.50, shop takes £6.00 leaving £1.50 for author
Are you prepared for all the leg-work involved in finding editors, printers and promoters?

Cooperative Publishing

£10 book – pay 80p royalty for publishing and distribution – author buys £4.50 each for their own use.

· Hybrid ‘best of both worlds’, full turnkey solution
· Keep control and rights
· Low cost of entry
· Timescales similar to self-publishing

Planning

It is very difficult to do on your own. Get input from someone you trust.
A lot of people start with their stories which is a mistake.
According to Mindy there is no such thing as writers block – It’s Official: Writer’s Block is a Myth.

Writing tips

· Be yourself – don’t edit yourself as you go along – save that to later when you have finished your first draft (ideally).

Editing is essential

But make sure you save this activity to the end, when you have finished your first draft.

People do judge a book by its cover

Make sure your cover is exiting and relevant

Promoting your book

Too many authors think their work is done once the book is written.
Mindy suggests two to four hours a week of promotional activities after it is published.

How to Write and Publish Your Book in 5 Easy StepsOn Friday I attended one of our partners workshops called Get Published Now – How to Write and Publish Your Book in 5 Easy Steps.The presenter was author and trainer Mindy Gibbins-Klein who also goes under the name The Book Midwife, which is a great marketing angle. And like all good entrepreneurs, Mindy has registered the trade mark at the UKIPO (number 2399080)
http://www.ipo.gov.uk/domestic?domesticnum=2399080).
www.bookmidwife.comShe started the session by asking the group what book they were planning on writing. This led to the conclusion that as we all have unique experiences, and unique insights on those experiences, we all have something to write about that could be of interest to others.

For those who have decided to write a book, Mindy’s aim is to help them write and publish the best book they can, whilst also finding the best market for it.

It was a great workshop, full of practical and inspirational elements. It was encouraging to hear that so many authors procrastinate over their books (particularly their first). In Mindy’s case it had taken her ten years from first starting to getting into print, and this is not unusual. She reviewed the common reasons for failing to finish a book. The most common is the author’s inability to finish the final chapter or even last few pages. This is often due to a fear of ridicule or rejection from friends and colleagues (and potential publishers) of the finished work.

It is somewhat ironic that so many books take so long to finish, as Mindy has published her own book (with Bert Verdonck) called ‘Your Book in 100 Days’.

Mindy brought along some great examples of books with a clear title and simple but attractive covers, to illustrate how important this aspect of your book can be on sales. It reminded me of a book by Brad Burton, I was given at the last Business Start-Up show in November. It is called ‘Get off your Arse’, ??? and tells his story of starting up in business and is designed to inspire others to follow their own dream.

It turns out that Mindy helped Brad get this book published in ninety days, after several previous false starts. I should point out that although I read the book with the intention of reviewing it, unfortunately the language and style of writing he used put me off. I suggest you make up your own mind (extract ???) and let me know what you think.

Here are my notes from the excellent workshop:

Reasons to Write and Publish a Book
These divide into emotional drivers or outcomes (such as money or status) or a combination of the two. It is helpful to know what yours are before you start.

There are 5 Easy Steps which must be completed thoroughly, and in strict order
1.    Planning
2.    Writing
3.    Editing
4.    Publishing
5.    Promotion

100 hours should be enough time to go through these stages. Although most people take 200 hours, and spread them through several years.
An average book is around 50,000 words which equals around 150 pages. Researching a subject can add time to the process.

Sales of 20,000 copies is a realistic target for success. Very few authors sell more.

Three main publishing options

Traditional        Cooperative        Self-Publishing
(you do it all yourself)

Time            12-18 months        3 months        2 to 3 months

Financial        no author inv.        £1,000 to £5,000    £1,000 to £5,000

Control        publisher        author            author

Rights            they keep        you keep        you keep

Likelihood of        1%            100%            100%
being published

Cooperative Publishing:

Traditional model
£10 book – publisher takes £6, from remaining £4, author gets around 20p
•    You will be very lucky to find a publisher

Self-Publishing
£10 book – printing £2.50, shop takes £6.00 leaving £1.50 for author
•    Are you prepared for all the leg-work involved in finding editors, printers and promoters?

Cooperative Publishing
£10 book – pay 80p royalty for publishing and distribution – author buys £4.50 each for their own use.
•    Hybrid ‘best of both worlds’, full turnkey solution
•    Keep control and rights
•    Low cost of entry
•    Timescales similar to self-publishing

Planning
Very difficult to do on your own. Get input from someone you trust.
A lot of people start with their stories which is a mistake.
According to Mindy there is no such thing as writers block (see Mindy’s article via Google ???)

Writing tips
•    Be yourself – don’t edit yourself as you go along – save that to later when you have finished your first draft (ideally).

Editing is essential
But make sure you save this activity to the end, when you have finished your first draft.

People do judge a book by its cover
Make sure your cover is exiting and relevant

Promoting your book
Too many authors think their work is done once the book is written.
Mindy suggests two to four hours a week of promotional activities after it is published.

New books in our Small Business Help collection

Although it might be easy to assume I am only obsessed with web related information for business start-ups. In fact I am also interested in good old fashioned books. And looking at the recent additions to our collection below there are some essential reads, especially in specialist business areas.

http://www.acblack.com/images/Books/batch2/9781408111109.jpgGood Small Business Guide 2010 [new edition replaces last year’s edition]
SBH 658.022 BLA

How to Start a Business When You’re Young
Barrie Hawkins & Luke Wing
SBH 658.110842 HAW

Good Small Business Planning Guide
John Kirwan
SBH 658.022 KIR

Good Green Guide for Small Businesses
Impetus Consulting Ltd.
SBH 658.4083 IMP

How to Start and Run Your Own Petsitting Business
Fiona Mackenzie
SBH 636.0887068 MAC

Reading and Understanding the Financial Times 2010-2011
Kevin Boakes
SBH 338.43 BOA

The Coffee Boys’ Step-by-Step Guide to Setting Up and Managing Your Own Coffee Bar
John Richardson & Hugh Gilmartin
SBH 647.950681 RIC

Getting to Plan B: Breaking Through to a Better Business Model
John Mullins & Randy Komisar
SBH 658.401 MUL

How to Set Up a Freelance Writing Business
Jason Deign
SBH 659.13202341 DEI

How to Make it in Music
Stuart Smith
SBH 780.2373 SMI

Good Finance Guide for Small Businesses
[no author]
SBH 658.1592 BLA

Virtually Free Marketing
Philip R. Holden
SBH 658.572 HOL

Successful Business Plans
Jane Khedair & Michael Anderson
SBH 658.402 KHE

How to Be a Successful Life Coach
Shelagh Young
SBH 158.3068 YOU

The Handbook of Global Outsourcing and Offshoring
Ilan Oshri et. al.
SBH 658.4058 OSH

A radical Reworking of business

front coverI know I refer quite a bit to items I hear on Leo Laport’s Net@Night podcast.  However episode 142 of the show with Sarah Lane guesting for Amber Macarthur was all about business.

They interviewed Jason Fried and David Hansson who created Ruby on Rails and co-authored Getting Real, amongst a range of notable achievements.

In their new book Reworking they attempt to debunk many business clichés, based on ten years of experience of running 37 Signals an internet based business.

They looked back over their first ten years of starting and growing their business to see what lessons they had learned, and how they could present the best of those ideas as succinctly as possible.

I tend to agree with them when they say that so many business books don’t really need to be more than 50 or 60 pages long, as their authors aren’t really saying very much. To generate enough content for 150 or 200 pages takes many years of experience.

Get more sleep
The first idea covered in the interview, Get More Sleep, may sound obvious, but working extreme hours has become something of a obsession especially with workaholics, and especially in the United States. But as they point out, the practical result is that you just end up with people being tired the whole time, and sooner or later it usually leads to burnout. Also, you can’t make up for the loss with an occasional one nights good sleep. You have to be consistent about your sleep. I like their quote, ‘you have to sleep in order to do good work.’

Ignore your competition
The second is about not copying, or even bothering to find out what your competitors are doing.

As they rightly point out, running a business takes a lot of time and you have to prioritise what you are going to spend that time on. Given that fact, they feel you are better off  spending it on your customers and your own products, rather than what other people are doing.

You can’t pay complete attention to your competitors, and your customers, and your products, and your employees, and your vision. You have to make some decisions and prioritise. So David and Jason would rather spend their time making the people who use their products very happy, instead of worrying about customers they don’t have yet, who might be being approached by their competitors.

They quote Henry Ford; ‘The competitors you should be worrying about are the ones that don’t care about you. They are the ones who are focussed on building their own business.’

According to David and Jason there is a business cold war going on, especially in the software industry, where everyone is spending their time trying to get one-up on everyone else. ‘We have to add two more features to counteract the one new feature from our competitor’. There are very few winners in this world where companies try and outspend their competitors, and everyone ends up looking the same.

Business is like software
They feel that businesses should be malleable, as we aren’t building bridges or skyscrapers. A company can change, it can try new things, it can iterate. ‘We try new stuff all the time, some works and some doesn’t. Our business itself has ‘bugs’, and we fix them as we go.’

‘When people think of a business as a monolith that has to have a lot of structure and policies, then they are sort of screwing themselves.’

‘There are few phrases I hate more than ‘this is how we do things around here’’. It is such a wrong and circular argument, but you hear it all the time.

The book has a simple structure with one idea every page or so. ‘The whole point of the book is that it is short, it is a quick read, because… aren’t you supposed to be doing something? These business books that take you a week or two to read, just seem like a waste of time.’

Learning from mistakes is overrated
‘There is a weird obsession, especially in the tech world, where everyone is telling you to fail early and fail often. What is that advice, fail often?’

‘Our take is that there is certainly some thing to be learnt from failure, but you are better off learning lessons from things that work well. Focus on the things that have gone right for you and try and do those things again. If you think that failure is so natural it will happen to you, you will start making really bad business decisions, and not looking at the odds.’

The obsession with growth

‘What is the point of everyone trying to build a billion dollar company? What is wrong with a million dollars? When did a million dollars become a small amount of money? When did running a business that generates $10 million a year become not a good and cool thing to do?’

‘Typically what happens is that people aren’t very happy working at these big big companies, and they are very slow at innovation. They have to acquire innovation by buying the small guys. The small guys are where the innovation and excitement happens.’

‘Why not build a great little company that is doing incredibly well, you can generate millions of dollars a year in profit. Who is going to be ashamed of that? And you can enjoy it, and you can get to sleep. That to me is really what it is all about.’

Entrepreneurs have a bad name
‘That word has so many bad connotations, it means risking everything, including your family, because you have to go all-in, right away. It’s just not true. The way we build our software company was by doing work on the side. You don’t need to throw away all your safety nets on day one and charge after this thing with a everything you have.’

‘In many ways I think the American dream has been perverted. I think before, it was simply financial independence, and somehow it has become this thing where you have to build a billion dollar company. It should get back to the way it was.’

I will leave my favourite quote from their interview to the end. ‘Starting a business does not have to be rocket surgery’. I’m not sure if this was a deliberate play on rocket science and brain surgery but I would like to adopt it as a business start-up slogan.

Are you ready to publish your book?

They say everyone has at least one book inside of them, although I have yet to find mine. However, I have now seen quite a few clients who are ready and waiting to find a publisher for their manuscript or idea. Now we have a course tailored just for them, and you, if you are burning to get yours out into the wide world (and of course a copy for the British Library under legal deposit).

*  Have you thought about writing a book but didn’t know where to start?
* Have you got lots of ideas and don’t know which one to choose?
* Are you concerned about writing something that may not get published?

Get Published Today!
Get these and many more questions answered at an information packed half-day course on Wednesday 14th April from 10:00am –  13:00 with registration from 9:30 at the Business and IP Centre, British Library.

Veteran book coach Mindy Gibbins-Klein (best known as founder of The Book Midwife®) will be guiding you through every step of the process of planning, writing and publishing a successful book. Her clients have written and published over 300 books and most of them have completed the writing in just 90 days!

* Learn how to choose the best topic, title, publishing solution and market for your book
* Understand what your true message is
* Avoid the mistakes most first-time authors make
* End up with the best possible book in the shortest possible time
* Engage with your target market so they respond to you
* Know when the editing is finished and the book is ready
* Understand how the publishing industry works and use that to your advantage
* Get help from unlikely sources to promote your book
* Make your book ‘work’ for you and earn you income and higher fees
* Get the media attention you want and deserve
* Catapult your book to the top of the bestseller lists…and much more

How to write & publish your book in 5 easy steps

More Asian and African surprises from the British Library collections

Another year on and another show and tell from the idiosyncratic Hedley Sutton with more Asian surprises at the British Library. This time he added a few African ones to boot.

Hedley started the show off with an exotic quiz in the shape of a black and white photo of a European looking woman wearing a belly dancer’s outfit. After a short pause while the audience considered their options I blurted out, “is she Mata Hari?” I was rewarded with a knowing smile from Hedley and the appearance of an original letter from 1917 from an agent of the French secret service to their British equivalent. The letter identified her as a double agent for the Germans. Soon after in October Mata Hari (which was Indonesian for ‘eye of the day’), was executed by firing squad as a spy. It turned out she was in fact a Dutch subject and her original name was Margaretha Zelle.

Pat Shipman one of her biographers argues that Mata Hari was never a double agent, speculating that she was used as a scapegoat by the head of French counter-espionage. The fact that she was seen by some as a ‘wanton and promiscuous woman, and perhaps a dangerous seductress’, may not have helped her case.

International Dunhuang ProjectNext Hedley showed off what appeared to be an ancient religious text hailing from the famous Dunhuang Archaeological Sites in Xinjiang China. In fact it turns out this was actually a sophisticated fake, and part of a cottage industry which flourished in that part of China around the late 1800’s. The items were produced in response to an invasion of European collectors eager to get hold of historical documents from the area preserved for hundreds of years by the desert conditions.

This led on to a discussion about the the International Dunhuang Project, which is an international collaboration to make information and images of all manuscripts, paintings, textiles and artefacts from Dunhuang and archaeological sites of the Eastern Silk Road freely available on the Internet.

szyk-haggadah-family-at-sederNext we were shown a surprisingly recent publication, which turned out to be a new (and limited print run) version of the Szyk Haggadah.

The Szyk Haggadah is a Passover Haggadah illustrated by Arthur Szyk in Poland in the 1930s. According to the The Times it is ‘worthy to be placed among the most beautiful of books that the hand of man has ever produced’.

What makes the beautiful illustrations so unusual is Szyk’s approach of portraying contemporary political issues in medieval style. His first set of illustrations were clear and unfavourable references to the Nazis, including such detail as Nazi armbands on the Egyptians oppressing and murdering the Israelites, and the faces of Joseph Goebbels and Hermann Göring on two snakes.

szyk-haggadah-four-sons.

Digitising the British Library one page at a time

Lynne Brindley the British Library Chief Executive has been campaigning hard for the cause mass digitisation of content in order to facilitate access for all and preservation – Dame Lynne Brindley challenges Government on Digital Britain

However scanning books to turn them into digital ‘assets’ is not as easy as might be thought. I was lucky enough to be able to visit the part of the library where the work is currently in progress, and was impressed by both the scale and complexity of the challenge.

Recently I came across a YouTube video from German TV which gives a revealing insight into the project.

[youtube=http://http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=FtgeelIbk3s]

The BIG and Easy Guide to take a Bright Idea from Drawing Board to Successful Revenue

the_big_and_easy_guideAs a librarian of over 20 years there is nothing I like better than a book whose title describes its contents.

The BIG and Easy Guide to take a Bright Idea from Drawing Board to Successful Revenue is nothing if not informative. However, the fact it is written by Rob Lucas who has helped to develop our e-learning courses in Intellectual Property, and more surprisingly, seems to be a unique publication in covering this important topic, gives it even more value.

Certainly, those better informed on this topic than myself are impressed.

“Whether you are an aspiring inventor working from home or in the R&D department of a major institution, this book is an essential read.  I know of no other book like it”
Dr John Beacham CBE; DSc; FRSC
Former Senior Innovation Advisor to the
Department of Trade and Industry (now the DBERR)

Once again Amazon provides the opportunity to have a peek inside, to see that Rob covers the key topics of confidentiality and when to file for protection.

The best guide to starting your own business?

starting_your_own_businessThanks to an interview with Crimson Publishing founder David Lester on SmallBizPod late last year, I have discovered what I currently consider to be the best book on starting a business. Using the tried and trusted ‘Ronseal‘ approach, it is called Starting Your Own Business: The Good, The Bad and The Unexpected.

As you can see from the cover shot, it begins as it means to go on, being frank and honest. David doesn’t shy away from the difficulties pretty much all new business face, and includes plenty of examples from his own experience. He even starts the book with a health warning in the section “Do you really want to start a business?”

He talks about both the highs and the lows:
“…business highs are up there with some of the best feelings we can have. I will never know what it feels like to score a winning goal in a cup final, but I’m sure the best moments running your own business come pretty close. You should  expect your own business to also deliver possibly the lowest lows you can imagine, too. … To start your own business and seek those highs, you need to be willing to face those lows and come out the other side.”

You can read a few sample pages from the book to help make up your own mind using the look inside feature on Amazon.

The Puritan Gift – Triumph, Collapse and Revival of an American Dream

puritan-giftOnce again Peter Day has come up with a fascinating topic, this time on his Global Business radio show on the BBC World Service.

He interviews brothers Kenneth and and William Hopper authors of The Puritan Gift – Triumph, Collapse and Revival of an American Dream.

They claim to show where the Protestant work ethic comes from,  And how it enabled America to achieve such dominance in management for so long.

What I found fascinating was their analysis of the rise of the profession of management from the late 1950’s with the growth of business schools. This new set of managers lacked domain knowledge, which meant they knew how to manage business in theory, but did not understand the specific business they were managing. Following on from this was the rise of the accountants through the ranks to positions of power. These financial engineers who are obsessed with quarterly earnings figures have been bad news for American manufacturing industry, and have been a key factor in the decline of American business.

My favourite quote from the show compares companies use of financial debt to athletes use of steroids. “It enhances performance, but unless done in moderation becomes a risk to health.”

“The book is a compelling narrative history of American management practice, demonstrating how many of the distinctive Puritan practices moulded American companies and kept them on the straight and narrow.

American business (say the Hoppers) was driven by great purpose and organisation which owes its commitment to that bold voyage of the Puritans to New England in 1629, ten years after the Pilgrims Fathers arrived in some chaos and too late in the season. Half of their numbers perished.

The Puritans, under John Winthrope, who came later, were well equipped for a New World with a vision of what they wanted to build there and the abilities the skills they would need to make it happen. Hands on skills (and a love of tinkering) are a hallmark of American business leaders.

You may not like them but you know where you are with the Puritans. The Hoppers hint that when the Puritan disciplines started breaking down in business thirty years ago the way was laid for financial engineering (not the old fashioned metal bashing), big borrowings and outsourcing and many other things that have imperilled the whole American system as (as we now know) over the past decade.

Companies thrive when they are lead by engineers and inventors with insights in to the whole process of production.”