HBR Handbooks

The one primer you need to develop your entrepreneurial skills. Whether you're imagining your new business to be the next big thing in Silicon Valley, a pivotal B2B provider, or an anchor in your local community, the HBR Entrepreneur's Handbook is your essential resource for getting your company off the ground. Starting an independent new business is rife with both opportunity and risk. And as an entrepreneur, you're the one in charge: your actions can make or break your business. You need to know the tried-and-true fundamentals--from writing a business plan to getting your first loan. You also need to know the latest thinking on how to create an irresistible pitch deck, mitigate risk through experimentation, and develop unique opportunities through business model innovation. The HBR Entrepreneur's Handbook addresses these challenges and more with practical advice and wisdom from Harvard Business Review's archive. Keep this comprehensive guide with you throughout your startup's life--and increase your business's odds for success. In the HBR Entrepreneur's Handbook you'll find: • Step-by-step guidance through the entrepreneurial process • Concise explanations of the latest research and thinking on entrepreneurship from Harvard Business Review contributors such as Marc Andreessen and Reid Hoffman • Time-honed best practices • Stories of real companies, from Airbnb to eBay You'll learn: • Which skills and characteristics make for the best entrepreneurs • How to gauge potential opportunities • The basics of business models and competitive strategy • How to test your assumptions - -before you build a whole business • How to select the right legal structure for your company • How to navigate funding options, from venture capital and angel investors to accelerators and crowdfunding • How to develop sales and marketing programs for your venture • What entrepreneurial leaders must do to build culture and set direction as the business keeps growing.

Navigate the complex decisions and critical relationships necessary to create and sustain a healthy family business-and business family. Though "family business" may sound like it refers only to mom-and-pop shops, businesses owned by families are among the most significant and numerous in the world. But surprisingly few resources exist to help navigate the unique challenges you face when you share the executive suite, financial statements, and holidays. How do you make the right decisions, critical to the long-term survival of any business, with the added challenge of having to do so within the context of a family? The HBR Family Business Handbook brings you sophisticated guidance and practical advice from family business experts Josh Baron and Rob Lachenauer. Drawing on their decades-long experience working closely with a wide range of family businesses of all sizes around the world, the author’s present proven methods and approaches for communicating effectively, managing conflict, building the right governance structures, and more. In the HBR Family Business Handbook you'll find: • A new perspective on what makes family businesses succeed and fail • A framework to help you make good decisions together • Step-by-step guidance on managing change within your business family • Key questions about wealth, unique to family businesses, that you can't afford to ignore • Assessments to help you determine where you are-and where you want to go • Stories of real companies, from Marchesi Antinori to Radio Flyer • Chapter summaries you can use to reinforce what you've learned Keep this comprehensive guide with you to help you build, grow, and position your family business to thrive across generations. HBR Handbooks provide ambitious professionals with the frameworks, advice, and tools they need to excel in their careers. With step-by-step guidance, time-honed best practices, and real-life stories, each comprehensive volume helps you to stand out from the pack-whatever your role.

Sales leadership essentials for an era of rapidly advancing digital technology. Managing an effective sales organization is key to revenue generation, customer satisfaction, and business results. But whether you're a sales manager or leading a large sales force, it's increasingly challenging to balance success today with driving the digital sales transformation that will position your team for the future. With actionable insights and examples from many industries worldwide, the HBR Sales Management Handbook provides the resources you need to build value for your company, your customers, and your sales teams. The book covers the fundamentals every sales manager needs to know and explores today's most challenging issues around digital: bringing value to informed and self-sufficient customers while managing the business; hiring, developing, and retaining the best talent; managing sales in the remote, multichannel world; using AI and analytics to support critical decisions; navigating change with continuous improvement; and building the next generation of sales information hubs. Your job as a sales leader is vast and dynamic. This handbook is a collection of proven and forward-looking ideas to help you, your salespeople, and your customers win. HBR Handbooks provide ambitious professionals with the frameworks, advice, and tools they need to excel in their careers. With step-by-step guidance, time-honed best practices, and real-life stories, each comprehensive volume helps you to stand out from the pack-whatever your role.

The one primer you need to develop your leadership skills. Put aside all the overhyped new frameworks, the listicles, the "10 best things you need to succeed as a leader today." The critical leadership practices--the ones that will allow a leader to make the biggest impact over time--are well established. They're about how you create a vision and inspire others to follow it. How you make difficult strategic choices. How you lead innovation. How you get results. These fundamental skills are even more important today as organizations and teams become increasingly networked, virtual, agile, fast-moving, and socially conscious. In this comprehensive handbook, strategy and change experts Ron Ashkenas and Brook Manville distill proven ideas and frameworks about leadership from Harvard Business Review, interviews with senior executives, and their own experience in the field--all to help rising leaders stand out and have a big impact. In the HBR Leader's Handbook you'll find: Concise explanations of proven leadership frameworks from Harvard Business Review contributors such as Clayton M. Christensen and Michael E. Porter In-depth case studies of senior leaders such as Jim Wolfensohn at the World Bank, Paula Kerger at PBS, Darren Walker at the Ford Foundation, and Jim Smith at Thomson Reuters Step-by-step guidance to help you understand and start implementing six core leadership practices: building a unifying vision, developing a strategy, getting great people on board, focusing on results, innovating for the future, and leading yourself