The Koch family has tried for decades to keep itself out of the spotlight while building the 2nd largest private company in America. However, as this biography explains, they haven’t done the best job of it. Daniel Schulman details the Koch brothers’ lifetime of conflict with business competitors, political opponents, their companies’ shareholders and employees, and each other. It feels a bit like if someone wrote a novelization one of those epic long-running soap opera TV shows, except this all actually happened. Continue reading “Book Review: Sons of Wichita”
Tag: Business
Book Review: University of Berkshire Hathaway
The market is flooded with books about Warren Buffett. This is the 5th one that I have read. Some books assemble or quote Buffett’s writings; others reverse engineer Buffett’s investment strategy. Often these authors seem to be trying to convince you they have inside information or trying to indoctrinate you into the Buffett cult. University of Berkshire Hathaway is not one of those books. It has details you won’t find anywhere else, which makes it a relevant addition to the prolific repertoire of books about Buffett and Berkshire. Continue reading “Book Review: University of Berkshire Hathaway”
Book Review: Business Adventures
This is a neat book of magazine-style business stories. There are 12 stories about 25-100 pages each. They don’t relate to each other at all, other than all being related to business, finance, and economics.
The stories are all interesting and well-written, so it is both entertaining and informative. This gave me some lesson ideas for my entrepreneurship class.
This is a great way to learn some new business content in a fun and engaging way.
Economies of Scale
Is your business idea scalable? How can you increase production, increase profit margins, and decrease the consumer price all at the same time? It’s all about learning strategies for scaling the business, like lowering input costs by buying in bulk and taking advantage of division of labor to hire specialists.
Here is a slideshow I used to teach this to my Intro to Entrepreneurship class:
Econ4All 