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This is actually already on the minds of a lot of HR people at top companies. IMO, it is more about employee satisfaction at the company, with salary being part of the mix. Gallup did this huge survey using 12 questions to measure employee engagement. They said that if an employee answered with 5s on a scale of 1 to 5 (5 being totally agree) to all of these questions, then that was one of the best indicators to company performance. Now, they're peddling this product to a lot of companies, and in my opinion (which counts for nothing), it works.

Read the book First, Break all the Rules, which is written by, surprise! The same guy who developed and is selling the survey.

• Do you know what is expected of you at work?
  
• Do you have the materials and equipment to do your work
  right?
  
• At work, do you have the opportunity to do what you do best
  every day?
  
• In the last seven days, have you received recognition or praise
  for doing good work?
  
• Does your supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about
  you as a person?
  
• Is there someone at work who encourages your development?
  
• At work, do your opinions seem to count?
  
• Does the mission/purpose of your company make you feel your
  job is important?
  
• Are your associates (fellow employees) committed to doing
  quality work?
  
• Do you have a best friend at work?
  
• In the last six months, has someone at work talked to you
  about your progress?
  
• In the last year, have you had opportunities to learn and grow?
  
  I'm bored.

Articles from reputable sources are a decent source of knowledge, but some quality business books will get you an infinitely better understanding of concepts. Here is my personal business book list if you want to get a "universal generalist" understanding of business:

• Business Creation - The Lean Start-up
  
• Value Creation - How to Make Millions With Your Ideas
  
• Marketing - Getting Everything You Can Out Of Everything You Got / All Marketers Are Liars
  
• Sales - Pitch Anything
  
• Value Delivery - Indispensable
  
• Accounting/Finances - Financial Intelligence / Accounting Made Simple
  
• Understanding the Human Mind - Making Sense of Behavior
  
• Productivity - Getting Things Done
  
• Problem Solving - The 80/20 Principle
  
• Decision Making - Smart Choices: A Practical Guide to Making Better Decisions
  
• Negotiation - 3-D Negotiation
  
• Management - Growing Great Employees
  
• Project Management - Making Things Happen
  
• Statistics - Marketing Metrics
  
• Corporate Knowledge - The Effective Executive
  
• Corporate Strategy - Purpose: The Starting Point of Great Companies
  
• Creativity - The Creative Habit
  
• Personal Finance - Your Money or Your Life
  
  I am graduating with a Bachelor of Commerce Honors degree in May and I can easily say that one of these books (average price ~25$) has significantly more content than most individual classes I have taken (~600$). However, keep in mind that business knowledge and business acumen are two entirely different things. Knowledge is easily obtainable through books like these, and acumen is the result of applied experience with decision making. In short, it is one thing to be book smart, but it is another to get out there and actually apply it. No one can give you that in the form of an article or book - you have to do that yourself.
  
  edit: added links to amazon

I don't dispute that Social Security can be fixed. I solidly agree with you there. It's a problem but can be fixed.

Medicare, however, cannot be fixed by any realistic plan. It's five times as large as the Social Security problem using even the most charitable expectations about health care inflation (i.e. assuming medical expenses will increase a couple percentage points less than general inflation).

I highly recommend this book:

http://www.amazon.com/Coming-Generational-Storm-Americas-Economic/dp/0262112868

It's useful because it's completely non-partisan, written by one of the best economists in the area (not a nut with an axe to grind), discusses things in depth, and ends with ways to protect yourself.

Power of Habit - Charles Duhigg

7 Habits of Highly Effective People - Stephen R. Covey

The Millionaire Next Door - Thomas J. Stanley

How to Win Friends and Influence People - Dale Carnegie

How to Get Rich - Felix Dennis

The Lean Startup - Eric Ries

Never Split the Difference - Chris Voss


The Richest Man in Babylon - George S. Clason

The Intelligent Investor - Benjamin Graham

*****

You can look at these books if you like. The Millionaire Next Door would probably be the one I would gift him first.

Good to great

A practical guide to turning around companies, providing a strong environment for ideas, devising long-term strategies for success, increasing shareholder value, and how to survive in highly-competitive marketplaces.

Another personal favorite is on management in general: Growing Great Employees which talks about practical approaches to making employees feel valued, being effective as a manager, and building an environment where everyone ends up doing the best possible work. I have used this technique in two failing groups over the years and it worked both times.

Happy to help :) It is a near lifetime of just being a business junky and just loving to read about this stuff. The best and easiest book I give people when they want to learn business is the Personal MBA.

http://www.amazon.com/Personal-MBA-Master-Art-Business/dp/1591845572/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1375464773&sr=1-1&keywords=personal+mba+josh+kaufman

It is a solid, easy to read overview of business. You wount become an expert from it, but it is a 'explain like I am five 'introduction into business.


For innovation and new market development specific (My specialty) I'd go with Crossing the Chasm Quick read

http://www.amazon.com/The-Innovators-Dilemma-Revolutionary-Business/dp/0062060244

Lastly, take a strategic finance class. No numbers, simply the logic behind what is value. I've been told The Wall Street MBA is a good read but I can't vouch for it.
http://www.amazon.com/Wall-Street-MBA-Second/dp/007178831X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1375464915&sr=1-1&keywords=wall+street+mba

Finance will ultimately change how you think. And not entirely for the better...

Say no more, fam.

You don't need a degree to run a business. Having your own business allows you to experiment with these books first hand instead of taking some professor's word for it. Professor's usually just read what the book says. If they were actually good at running a business they'd probably be doing that.

• Business Creation - The Lean Start-up
  
  
  
• Value Creation - How to Make Millions With Your Ideas
  
  
  
• Marketing - Getting Everything You Can Out Of Everything You Got / All Marketers Are Liars
  
  
  
• Sales - Pitch Anything
  
  
  
• Value Delivery - Indispensable
  
  
  
• Accounting/Finances - Financial Intelligence / Accounting Made Simple
  
• Understanding the Human Mind - Making Sense of Behavior
  
  
  
• Productivity - Getting Things Done
  
  
  
• Problem Solving - The 80/20 Principle
  
  
  
• Decision Making - Smart Choices: A Practical Guide to Making Better Decisions
  
  
  
• Negotiation - 3-D Negotiation
  
  
  
• Management - Growing Great Employees
  
  
  
• Project Management - Making Things Happen
  
  
  
• Statistics - Marketing Metrics
  
  
  
• Corporate Knowledge - The Effective Executive
  
  
  
• Corporate Strategy - Purpose: The Starting Point of Great Companies
  
  
  
• Creativity - The Creative Habit
  
  
  
• Personal Finance - Your Money or Your Life

Very interesting article. Whenever this topic comes up I think about a couple books. First, Break All The Rules and Now, Discover Your Strengths. These books outline what makes a manager great and how the greatest managers identify, motivate, and retain the most talented people in their organization. Interesting read.

>ignore it altogether

this is up for debate. there's a theory/business thinking called "disruptive business/disruptive technology," and one of its main tenets is that a company should go the lengths to "ignore" what its customer base is saying... but the tenet is followed up with a statement that says that a company should do all in its power to seek out new innovations the customer is not expecting or doesn't know of.

customers don't know everything, and sometimes it's not a bad idea to ignore them while you cook up some fancy new features (iPhone's visual voicemail for example).

what RIM did was the opposite of this. It's apparent that while they were caught up in their own success, their hubris led to them thinking they did not have to worry about the iPhone and its encroachment of the business sector.

They failed to notice that the walls between one's 'corporate career' and 'personal life' have been coming down over the years. Devices that make one's personal life easy to manage have now found themselves in the 'corporate career' zone, all thanks to a well developed UI and lots of research into HCI.

you can read more about this stuff in this book, it's pretty good stuff:

Good for you bilbobillikins! A couple of books that helped me make the transition were - High Output Management and First, Break All the Rules. Apart from this there is a great series of podcasts where Mike and Mark talk about various challenges and have a great perspective on how to deal with typical situation that managers would face. You can find them at Manager Tools website.

A random walk, the intelligent investor, and black swan are all good ones.

Are you looking for trading, internal business, etc? more detailed would be helpful.

Try to learn from other success stories like Amazon for instance. Also, I've heard this is a good book, The Innovator's Dilemma

E Myth helped me a ton. It's a book by Michael Gerber. The E Myth site also used to have free resources on it, but I don't think it does anymore.

Otherwise Entrepreneur Magazine, Inc. Magazine and SBA.gov are all good.

I've also learned a ton from iTunes University podcasts by Yale Entrepreneurial Institute.

Personally, I'm not huge on social media, especially FB. You need feet in the door as you are a physical business. Just getting virtual clicks isn't enough.

What you need is good old fashioned business advice. The fundamentals of business never change even though the tools (such as social media) do.

I recommend these two books:
Good to Great

Fish!

I'm reading a book called the Innovator's Dilemma that explains how a company (and Sears is a perfect example) can do all the right things, and still lose its position as the dominant player in the market.

It's a very insightful read -- I recommend it. Very interesting if you're ever thinking of starting your own business.

http://www.amazon.com/Innovators-Dilemma-Revolutionary-Business-Essentials/dp/0060521996

There are consequences to financial ignorance.

http://www.amazon.com/Personal-Finance-Dummies-Eric-Tyson/dp/0764552317

504 pages. So 5 days of your time at ~100 pages a day. My guess is you'd have a better understanding of the why behind what you 'should' do with your income.


I got an additional degree in Finance when I was first in college. Granted that's a bit overkill for most people but educating yourself today is easy compared to even just as far back as the 1950~60s


Or just pick one of these based on reviews:

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_b?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=financial+planning&x=0&y=0

Sadly, this.

have you read Good to Great?

hiring a CEO from the outside does not usually yield great results.

Book by the same economist who wrote that article

How's this?

There is actually a book about this subject with a howto-approach: The E-Myth

The Innovator's Dilemma

This might discourage you http://www.amazon.com/Intelligent-Investor-Definitive-Investing-Practical/dp/0060555661/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1266975407&sr=1-1

</sarcasm> </whoosh>

or perhaps you missed Bush v2.0 on the idiot box circa 2003 indicating that America still wasn't in the business of "nation building" (we are, just not in the self-interested of the country in question... see confessions of an economic hit man for more info)

Oh well, I guess "you broke it, you brought it" policy applies to countries that have oil.