With spring in the air, it seems like a good time to clean off the old bookshelf, so here are quick-hit reviews of five of the more noteworthy books to cross my desk in the past several months.


First Among Equals - How to Manage a Group of Professionals
, by Patrick McKenna and David Maister, isn't about research but could certainly come in handy to researchers or anyone in the business world who needs to lead a team of co-workers, whether it's on an ongoing or one-time basis. The book is comprehensive: the authors show how to define your role as a leader, how to deal with many types of people (the prima donna, the underperformer, etc.), how to clarify group goals, and how to measure the group's success. If you don't want to take your role as a leader seriously, don't bother picking this book up. But if you do, there's a lot to work with here.

Leadership of another kind is the focus of Stakeholder Power. To show other interested businesses how they might assume a corporate leadership role, authors Steven Walker and Jeffrey Marr of the Indianapolis research firm Walker Information take the reader inside a number of companies that have aligned their quest for corporate integrity with corporate success. Walker and Marr argue that by conducting business at every level with integrity and fostering and sustaining an image of good corporate citizenship, a motivated company can achieve the newest business-world Holy Grail: customer loyalty.

Two other books focus on market segmentation. Defining Markets, Defining Moments paints portraits of seven American generational cohorts (Depression-era, World War II, Postwar, Leading-Edge Baby Boomer, Trailing-Edge Baby Boomer, Generation X, and N Generation) by examining the cultural and historical experiences that have shaped each group's outlook. There's not too much new here - most of the advice on how to market to the different cohorts is (or should be!) of the common sense variety. Still, the book is an entertaining read and provides a solid overview of the American consumer, making it a good reference for marketers trying to bring a specific age group into focus.

Selling to and understanding 8-12-year-olds is the subject of The Great Tween Buying Machine, a thorough look at one age group's fears, hopes, likes/dislikes, and media and consumption habits. The book's later chapters give battle-tested advice on how to reach tweens with advertising and marketing campaigns and how to develop new products.

Product development is the sole focus of our last book, Sheila Mello's Customer-Centric Product Definition. Mello, managing partner of Product Development Consulting, Inc., uses the phases of her firm's Market-Driven Product Definition methodology as a framework for showing readers how to truly incorporate the voice of the customer into their new product efforts. But Mello has avoided penning a book-length commercial and instead has packed 224 pages with advice on using the Kano method, establishing metrics, conducting customer visits, and seeing through the customer's eyes.

First Among Equals - How to Manage a Group of Professionals (288 pages, $26), by Patrick McKenna and David Maister, is published by The Free Press/Simon & Schuster, New York.

Stakeholder Power - A Winning Strategy for Building Stakeholder Commitment and Driving Corporate Growth (258 pages, $28), by Steven Walker and Jeffrey Marr, is published by Perseus Publishing, Cambridge, Mass.

Defining Markets, Defining Moments - America's 7 Generational Cohorts, Their Shared Experiences, and Why Businesses Should Care (364 pages, $24.99), by Geoffrey Meredith and Charles Schewe, with Janice Karlovich, is published by Hungry Minds, New York.

The Great Tween Buying Machine - Marketing to Today's Tweens (224 pages, $47.50), by Dave Siegel, Tim Coffey, and Greg Livingston, is published by Paramount Market Publishing, Ithaca, N.Y.

Customer-Centric Product Definition - The Key to Great Product Development (224 pages, $34.95), by Sheila Mello, is published by Amacom, New York.