Books

Co-author Bruce Hazen and I wrote Business Models for Teams, which applies business model thinking to teams of all sizes in both commercial and non-commercial enterprises. The book is available in 10 different languages.

I served as lead author of the bestselling Business Model You, co-created by a terrific bunch of 328 contributors from 41 countries. Business Model You applies business model thinking to individual career development and management, teaching readers to use a four-phase methodology to design, test, and execute new ways of working. Visit our global community of personal business model enthusiasts.

In 2010, I enjoyed copy editing a book of scholarly essays about applying corporate social responsibility principles to management practices. The book, Responsible Management Practices for the 21st Century, was released by Pearson in spring 2011.

I had the pleasure of serving as editor and contributing co-author of the international bestseller Business Model Generation, which. Inc. Magazine named one of its 2010 “Best Books for Business Owners.”

My book on leadership, The Swordless Samurai, is based on Kitami Masao’s Toyotomi Hideyoshi no Keiei Juku. With the author’s permission, I selectively translated it from the Japanese and created and added new material to shift the focus from general management to leadership. St. Martin’s Press released hardcover and paperback editions in 2007 and 2008, and a local language version released by Red Line Publishing became a bestseller in Indonesia in 2009.

Hideyoshi’s story was so intriguing, and I had generated so much dynamite material from theSwordless Samurai research, that I decided to write and publish a book of parables centered around Hideyoshi’s extraordinary life in late sixteenth century Japan. This took the form of The Prosperous Peasant: Five Secrets of Fortune & Fulfillment from the Samurai’s Temple School, co-authored by (brilliant!) novelist Mark Cunningham. An Indonesian language version was released in 2011.

My first book, Saying Yes To Japan: How Outsiders are Reviving a Trillion Dollar Services Market, offers analyses of Japan’s real estate, finance, health care, and information technology industries, coupled with up-close profiles of entrepreneurs from around the world who successfully developed new business models to answer surprisingly underserved customer needs in these high-value service sectors. Co-authored by Carl Kay and released in English in 2005, Saying Yes was published in Japanese by Nikkei in 2006.