Filed under: Books in General, Marketing, Politics | Tags: books, Business, business book, business books, Marketing
This story caught my eye the other day, and I thought it opened up an interesting debate. Here’s the original article from The Business Journal’s affiliate in Greensboro, North Carolina. It’s tough to think of an industry that is more maligned than the tobacco business, although right now health insurance companies are likely to run a close second. Over the past 20 years, legislation and strong public pressure has squeezed tobacco companies to drastically reduce the ways in which they advertise their products, as well as restrict the locations where tobacco can be used.
The new federal law that gives the Food and Drug Administration regulatory oversight of tobacco products is leading tobacco companies to challenge the law’s validity on free speech grounds. While there are other products that could be sighted as a factor in causing health issues (alcohol and fast food, for starters), tobacco is the only one that has been universally condemned as a health risk. It’s still too early to tell the extent to which government will use this law, but it opens the door for dialogue about the restrictions applied to products that, if misused, are believed to cause harm.
Should it be the government’s job to handle the communication of tobacco’s effects, if it feels the industry itself is failing in this job? The public may prefer it if the companies themselves stepped up and saved the Feds the trouble (and the money) of doing so.
The moral obligations of a business are more prevalent now than ever before in the public consciousness. We covered this idea ourselves when we summarized Lynn Sharp Pain’s Value Shift in a previous edition of Soundview Executive Book Summaries. Pain’s argument that customers expect a higher standard of corporate behavior creates an especially vexing problem when one considers the tobacco companies. As of now, tobacco is still a legal product and the ability to smoke is a choice. It’s the public’s problem to conclude whether the companies or the government is the entity to trust when it comes to providing information about the product and its effects.
Filed under: Books in General, Conference/Event, Innovation, Politics, health care | Tags: books, Business, business book, business books, Conference/Event, health care, Innovation, Soundview Live
If we’re able to push aside the celebrity-related news for two seconds, what remains on the front page is an intense focus on the health care system here in the United States. Opposing sides are dissecting and scrutinizing every aspect of this hot-button issue. Today, with great interest, I checked out the story of Wal-Mart weighing in on the issue.
As the summer rolls on, this issue may generate the most heat of all. This is partly pleasing to me since we opted to select The Innovator’s Prescription as one of the 30 best books of 2009. I have to tell you, this was a book that generated some considerable debate amongst our selection committee. It had nothing to do with the quality of the content. We knew it was great material. We were somewhat concerned that our existing subscribers may feel the book didn’t have direct application to their own business. How times change, eh? With the prospect of major shake-ups in health care, there’s never been a better time to arm oneself with much-needed info about the health care industry and possible ways to improve it. This summary gives an in-depth look at a top-to-bottom overhaul of the health care industry via disruptive innovation.
And for you subscribers out there, you’ll be able to sign up for FREE for our Soundview Live event featuring Dr. Clayton M. Christensen, co-author of The Innovator’s Prescription. This live audio broadcast on the Web will give you the chance to send your questions in to Dr. Christensen. Who knows? By the end of the month, we could be looking at a whole new landscape in health care. I, for one, can’t wait to hear what Dr. Christensen has to say about it!
Books have always been a part of the political process, and this election cycle has been no exception. Each of the four presidential and vice-presidential candidates has a book out in the marketplace to help people learn more about their story. But Barack Obama has been especially successful in this regard.
His first book was published in 1990 and reprinted after his famous 2004 convention speech. Dreams from My Father is currently at #10 on Amazon and has netted Obama over $1 million in royalties. He also slipped under the legal wire by signing for two more books between his election to the Senate and his swearing in, to collect another $1.5 to $2 million upfront for The Audacity of Hope, currently at #1 on Amazon.
In addition, Obama has used paperbacks to get his message out, including Change We Can Believe In and Barack Obama in His Own Words. He has also carried other writers’ books on his coattails, such as Obama’s Challenge by Robert Kuttner, a book about America’s economic crisis and what Obama will need to do to get us out of it; Say It Like Obama by Shel Leanne, which looks at the Senator’s powerful public speaking skills; and Obamanomics by John Talbott, which looks at the bottom-up versus trickle-down economic model that Obama is promoting.
Even Obama’s opponents are doing well with books that use his name. David Freddoso published The Case Against Barack Obama, which is currently at #258 at Amazon, while Fleeced by Dick Morris and Eileen Mcgann is at #63.
It’s encouraging to see that even in this Internet age, books still have a place in our political dialogue, even if some of that conversation has moved to YouTube and Saturday Night Live!
