Business - barlowbooks

Retirement planning isn’t just about the money. It’s also about time … and how you will spend your time in all the important non-financial facets of life. People retiring today need to plan for 25-plus good years ahead. That’s more than 1300 weeks, more than 9100 days. What are you planning to do over the next 218,000 hours? No earlier generation has enjoyed such an extended retirement. There are no role models for how to do it best. Happily, though, Susan Latremoille is a visionary guide. In this book she lays out an effective 9-step process to maximize engagement, fulfillment, [...]

A beautifully illustrated coffee-table book that launches the reader into the moneyed world of late 19th-century America, when men once known as Robber Barons amassed great fortunes and bought glamorous boats for themselves and their friends and family. In these early days, boats were powered by steam engines, but unfortunately some of the boilers exploded, with lethal consequences. It was a Swedish immigrant, Frank Ofeldt, who found the answer: naphtha, a derivative of oil that was used in lamps. He found a way to control the volatile substance, and then used his knowledge and experience to invent the naphtha [...]

Business leaders who are new to blockchain can quickly find themselves overwhelmed or bewildered by the innovative digital assets, peer-to-peer marketplaces, and open economic systems that blockchain pioneers are creating. In this book, the authors intend to remedy that. In each chapter, they ask executives and investors to step back and witness the grand transformation underway. Financial services, foundational to all industries and economic activity, is undergoing a big shake-up. Every aspect of the sector is changing, from how we move and store value to how we access credit, invest, trade, transact, and insure against risk. This is an eminently [...]

Contrary to many predictions, there is growing demand for highly skilled sales jobs in the modern economy. Whether you’re a salesperson or a knowledge worker, knowing how to influence corporate buyers has become a critical skill. But most sales books tend to be narrow and prescriptive. They focus only on tactics and tools rather than principles and mindset that can redefine your approach. This is a different kind of sales book. In plain and direct language, Douglas Cole shows what it means to become a Strategist, a Change Agent, and a Decision Architect. Referencing the most important research and [...]

Edited and with a preface by Alex Tapscott, Co-Founder, Blockchain Research Institute This is the second book in the Blockchain Research Institute Enterprise Series. This series also includes: Supply Chain Revolution and Platform Revolution. This book offers readers a startling view of how blockchain technology will transform the financial industry in profound ways. Some of the world’s top thinkers in blockchain have contributed chapters that survey the coming digital storm—how it will level the playing field, give individuals more financial power, and create greater transparency in operations. Written for the educated financial reader, it reveals how blockchain can create a token-based incentive system that aligns the interests [...]

Nothing has rocked the foundations of the world, including the business world, more than the COVID-19 pandemic. As businesses struggle and often flounder to cope, many business leaders are wondering how to deal with the unpredictable. How do you plan for something you can’t predict? Strategist Lance Mortlock says you can, and you should. In this practical and accessible guide, he shows how scenario planning can identify risks and uncertainties and predict a variety of different realities that will affect the future of any organization. He gives business leaders the tools to understand the forces emerging in a volatile, rapidly [...]

Don Tapscott, one of the world’s great thinkers on the Internet, became Chancellor of his alma mater, Trent University, in 2013. Over the next 6 years, he spoke to students about all kinds of things — designing their lives, the value of a liberal arts education, how to thrive in the digital age, how to be resilient. Those delightful speeches have been compiled in Big Ideas. This book also includes articles previously published in Harvard Business Review, The Globe and Mail, and other journals about his ground-breaking ideas on the impact of the blockchain on higher education, the dark side of the digital [...]

In Stewards of the Future, Helle Jorgensen tells senior executives and board members how they can incorporate ESG and climate change into their business planning and operations—a real challenge for 21st-century boards. No longer do boards have the task of choosing the CEO and making sure they maximize value for shareholders. Now, they have to contend with a wide variety of stakeholders—such as customers, suppliers, vendors, politicians, and social media influencers—who can significantly affect the fortunes of a company. Helle argues that for long-term profits and sustainability, boards need to define the purpose of a company in society and be [...]

This authoritative textbook from one of the world’s top experts explains the theory of value investing and shows readers how to use value investing to pick stocks that will gain value in the long term. It includes a Foreword from Prem Watsa, Chief Executive of Fairfax Financial.

It’s a good time to attack the rich right now. The top 1% are getting hit from many angles: The rich are getting richer while the poor are suffering. The rich, say the critics, aren’t paying their fair share of taxes. They’re grossly overpaid for what they do. They’re sucking the life out of our society. We’d be better off without them. That’s the criticism, and lots of people, including many politicians, think it’s justified. Derek Bullen, a proud 1-percenter, sees things differently. He says that many of the critics are overlooking one crucial thing: We need businesspeople to build [...]

What’s remarkable about the digital revolution is not how much it’s changed business and society, but how quickly the underlying infrastructure and applications have evolved. In a few short years, massive online communities like Linux and Wikipedia and social networks like Twitter and Facebook transformed the Internet from a space for posting information to a global platform for collaborating on any conceivable shared interest or pursuit. The first era of the digital age spanned mainframes, minicomputers, the personal computer, the Internet, the world wide web, social media, mobility, the cloud, and big data. We’re now entering a second era where [...]

Do you want to travel and make a positive impact on the world? This book is designed for you. How to Be an Amazing Volunteer Overseas delivers practical advice on how to decide what to do and where to go. It will help you to prepare for living in a new country where the culture and customs are very different. And it will help you to make sure you help the organizations serving as your host rather than be a burden. This book has lots of stories from the author’s experience around the world. Susan Gibson started as many volunteers do, with [...]

In corporate Canada you see this scenario play out all the time: Highly qualified and ambitious women enter the workforce all charged up and ready to change the world, only to be disappointed as they watch male colleagues pass them on the climb up the corporate ladder. Then they drop out. It’s no surprise, then, that women today occupy only 10 percent of the highest-paying jobs in corporate Canada. That’s not a very impressive number after all the effort to increase the number of women in corporate leadership. What’s the problem? The authors of this book, a former CEO and [...]

The Story Compass is a navigational guide to lead business people out of the uncertain times. The compass helps readers find their position in the fog and navigate through all the ups and downs of business life. The fuel it uses is story, and this short book shows what kind of stories readers need at any stage of the journey. There are four key stories: vision, knowledge, value, journey. Using them at the right time can propel business to success.

In this collection of articles, Norman Webster takes readers on a journey through his 50 years of newspapering—in Canada, China in the early 1970s, the UK of Maggie Thatcher, and around the world. Webster, a distinguished international journalist, worked at a time when you couldn’t rely on Google for your basic facts. You had to go there, look, ask questions. It’s old-style reporting from a journalist with a sharp eye for the absurd, as the title (from a reporting trip to Tibet) suggests. As a renowned editor, Webster writes about some of the big issues in Canada, such as the [...]

Scott Fraser was a shrewd Montreal money manager who defied traditional wisdom to deliver stellar results for his clients year after year. One of the most unusual investors in Canada, Fraser founded a legendary investment firm with Stephen Jarislowsky and then, 20 years later, walked away without receiving a dollar for his equity. When the business was eventually sold to a big chartered bank for $950 million, Fraser was left with nothing ... yet he never complained. Instead, he used his quiet, back-to-basics investment strategy to deliver a 19.5 per cent annual compounded return every year since 1990, an astonishing [...]

An Anthology of CIO/CISO Enterprise-level Perspectives A dozen of Canada’s top players in cybersecurity offer their insights into this white-hot issue for companies and individuals. Canadian Cybersecurity 2020 is written in clear, non-technical language that any executive can understand. And understanding the issues is paramount for making the big decisions that protect enterprises from devastating cyberattacks. “What makes this book special, and targeted, is its strict focus on Canadian cybersecurity,” says Ajay K. Sood, who wrote the Foreword. “My hope and my goal in putting this publication together is to give Canadian readers information and actionable advice that is directly relevant to [...]

In this memoir, one of the most successful investment bankers on Bay Street shares the lessons he learned about business and life in a long and successful career as president of Burns Fry and then as vice-chairman of BMO Nesbitt Burns. This book tells the inside story of how Donald K. Johnson led financing transactions involving hundreds of millions of dollars for Canadian and international corporations, deals that involved some of the biggest financial players in the world, such as Warren Buffet. Johnson shows how he applied that deal-making ability to raise millions for charities. And he illustrates his motto, [...]

Can game theory illuminate the options in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict? The author, a former neurosurgeon, examines the most intractable conflict in the world through the lens of game theory, a mathematical approach to decision-making. The Zionist dream, to create a Jewish state with a Jewish majority in the whole Palestine, is no longer tenable. But neither is two states for two peoples. What options are left, then? The only thing that’s for certain is that both sides must find a way to live together.

Think first. Design later. It takes way more than just being really good at what you do to start and run a successful business. To be seen, to be heard, and to be successful, you need to get clear on who you are, why you do what you do, what’s in it for your customers, and why they should hire you over the other guy. In Brand Chemistry, Laura Beauparlant shares her proven Brand Camp formula for achieving clarity and focus. No matter where you’re at now, you can build a brand that allows you to become a happier, more [...]

Edited and Foreword by Don Tapscott, Co-Founder, Blockchain Research Institue This is the first book in the Blockchain Research Institute Enterprise Series. This series also includes: Financial Services Revolution and Platform Revolution. This groundbreaking book, distributed to members of the Blockchain Research Institute, provides a glimpse of the future of global supply chains. Distributed ledgers—combined with the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, machine learning, robotics, a suite of sensors, and the global positioning system—will transform the practices of operations, logistics, procurement and purchasing, transportation, customs and border control, trade finance and insurance, manufacturing, and inventory management. This wide-ranging book will help readers decide how best [...]

This is the memoir of the man who was the strategic Mr. No to Canada’s foremost entrepreneur, Ted Rogers. As the ultimate right-hand man for over 40 years, Phil Lind tells how he helped Rogers choose the best ideas and make them work. He also tells the inside story of how Rogers made the big move into live sports, with the purchase of the Blue Jays and the start of the cable sports channel, Sportsnet. The book includes a forward by Toronto Mayor John Tory, who worked closely with the author at Rogers.

This important new book for businesswomen looks at the 10 key characteristics of today’s winning leaders. These characteristics — like compassion, honesty, and authenticity — were once seen as feminine weaknesses in business. But today they define the leader who strengthens organizations rather than undermines them. This book comes from the voices of experience, powerful executives such as Kathleen Taylor, the Royal Bank’s chair of the board; Shelly Lazarus, chair emeritus of Ogilvy and Mather; and Annette Verschuren, former president of Home Depot Canada. They’re among the 70 women who tell compelling, first-person stories about ambition, courage, and the [...]

The Zero Dollar Car explores the deep changes that Big Data will make to our lives in the very near future. A car is a perfect example. Right now cars are outfitted with sensors that gather valuable information about the driver and road conditions. What if the driver could trade that information for money? That information could be so valuable that it could pay for the car. Cars are only the beginning. Imagine the Zero Dollar House — would you be willing to trade the information sensors gather in your fridge, your bathroom, and elsewhere? Big technology companies like Apple and [...]

​Heenan Blaikie was one of Canada’s leading law firms that boasted 1,100 employees and once had two former prime ministers on its staff—Pierre Trudeau and Jean Chrétien. When it collapsed in February 2014, lawyers across Canada and the business community were stunned. What went wrong? Why did so many lawyers run for the exit? How did it implode? What is it that holds professional partnerships together? This is the story of the rise and fall of a great company by the ultimate insider, Norman Bacal, who served as managing partner until a year before the firm’s demise. Breakdown takes readers [...]

Unstoppable tells the previously untold story of a business that has grown to be the largest source of debt financing to Canadian consumers outside of the traditional bank loan. This book covers the rollercoaster ride of asset-based finance, now a $300 billion business, through interviews with business trailblazers such as Jim Pattison and Steve Hudson, who led the industry for the past half century. It is an entertaining and personal business history that will inspire both students of business history and entrepreneurs alike. Unstoppable shows how this form of finance helped to grow Canada’s former industrial economy. It chronicles the rise and [...]

In 1989 Vicki Saunders was travelling in Europe with her brother, considering the pros and cons of jumping into a PhD, when the news hit that the Berlin Wall had fallen. They hustled themselves to Prague to take in a slice of history. There, surrounded by people declaring different versions of “now that I’m free,” it hit her: she was free too, free to follow whatever path she chose and to create the life she desired. It was a total shift in mindset. And so a consummate entrepreneur was born. Over the years Saunders has started five companies all over [...]

If you are living on an average Canadian income of $80,000, how can you afford to buy a home and start saving for retirement, even in a city like Vancouver with the richest real estate in the country? This is the question that every average Canadian is asking these days, especially in Vancouver where the most homely bungalow is selling for well over $1 million. Vancouver-based financial planner Christine Conway shows you how to do it. Speaking from her own experience living in Vancouver and with the expertise of a certified financial planner, Conway lays out a plan that an [...]

When you have to make big changes at work, really big changes, where do you turn? Organizations usually bring in the high-priced consultants, but the trouble begins when these outsiders try to implement the changes they recommend. Management consultant Steve Pinkus, a 20-year veteran in the business of change management and project management, explains how you can implement the pros’ advice yourself, if you follow his step-by-step plan.

Jim Beqaj, a former president of a Bay Street investment firm, offers blunt advice to readers looking for a job: Before you start looking for a job, think about who you really are. What do you like to do? What are you good at, and what are you not so good at? Who do you like to hang out with? Then, and only then, look for a job that actually suits your skills and your personality. This book is written for people who are in their 20s, fresh out of college, or in their 40s, fresh out of a corporate [...]