That Covers It

Business: The Ultimate Resource, the new single-volume reference from Perseus Publishing ($59.95), lives up to its name. Its more than 2,000 pages include contributions from 200-plus experts and authors, including Daniel Goleman (Emotional Intelligence) and Geoffrey Moore (Crossing the Chasm). The first of seven major sections, "Best Practices" offers essays from top management experts summarizing recent thinking in strategy, marketing, innovation, productivity, quality and more. The second section consists of checklists and action lists on tasks from creating a cash flow statement to disaster planning. A management library summarizes more than 70 business books past and present. It's followed by profiles of business giants and theorists. You'll also find a dictionary with 5,000 terms and profiles of 150 countries, all U.S. states and 24 global industry sectors. A concluding resource section directs readers to more than 3,000 sources on more than 100 topics. And that isn't all. Free monthly upgrades, including new checklists, essays and book summa-ries will be e-mailed to users and be available on the Perseus Web site. Business sets the standard for being encyclopedic and authoritative. It's simply the best general business reference ever.

Lies! All Lies!

If you're searching for ways to increase market share, stop. In three markets out of four, the business with the most profits doesn't have the largest market share, Richard Miniter says in The Myth of Market Share (Crown). Miniter, a Brussels-based financial writer, cites numerous case studies and research reports showing smaller competitors usually dig out more profits than bigger rivals. Avoid mergers seeking economies of scale, unfocused product line extensions and low- or no-profit sales, Miniter says. Instead, cut costs, better connect to customers and aim to generate profits on every sale. Do that, and you may not be bigger, but you'll be better.

Austin, Texas, writer Mark Henricks has covered business and technology for leading publications since 1981.

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This article was originally published in the November 2002 print edition of Entrepreneur with the headline: That Covers It.