Business & Economics

John Kapoor had already amassed a small fortune in pharmaceuticals when he founded Insys Therapeutics. It was the early 2000s, a boom time for painkillers, and he developed a novel formulation of fentanyl, the most potent opioid on the market.

Kapoor, a brilliant immigrant scientist with relentless business instincts, was eager to make the most of his innovation. He gathered around him an ambitious group of young lieutenants. His head of sales—an unstable and unmanageable leader, but a genius of persuasion—built a team willing to pull every lever to close a sale, going so far as to recruit an exotic dancer ready to scrape her way up. They zeroed in on the eccentric and suspect doctors receptive to their methods. Employees at headquarters did their part by deceiving insurance companies. The drug was a niche product, approved only for cancer patients in dire condition, but the company’s leadership pushed it more widely, and together they turned Insys into a Wall Street sensation.

But several insiders reached their breaking point and blew the whistle. They sparked a sprawling investigation that would lead to a dramatic courtroom battle, breaking new ground in the government’s fight to hold the drug industry accountable in the spread of addictive opioids.

In Pain Hustlers, National Magazine Award–finalist Evan Hughes lays bare the pharma playbook. He draws on unprecedented access to insiders of the Insys saga, from top executives to foot soldiers, from the patients and staff of far-flung clinics to the Boston investigators who treated the case as a drug-trafficking conspiracy, flipping cooperators and closing in on the key players.

With colorful characters and true suspense, Pain Hustlers offers a bracing look not just at Insys, but at how opioids are sold at the point they first enter the national bloodstream—in the doctor’s office.

Finally, a book that brings the vision of truly good governance down to earth. Ram Charan, expert in corporate governance and best-selling author, packs this book with useful tools and techniques to take boards and their companies to a higher level of performance. Charan puts his finger on a growing problem for boards: the disconnect between directors’ efforts and their results. The added time and attention boards invest is not translating into better governanceâ??that is, governance that adds value to the business.
Boards That Deliver gets beyond the rhetoric of corporate governance reform. It captures the tried-and-true practices used by high-performance boards. In contrast to experts who base prescriptions on number-crunching exercises, Charan identifies the real problems that drain directors’ time and suppress their best judgmentsâ??and explains clearly and succinctly how boards can solve those problems. These battle-tested solutions help boards achieve what rules and regulations alone cannotâ??to get succession right, refine a winning strategy, and design a rational CEO compensation package.

Good governance requires leadership. Boards That Deliver is the no-nonsense guide for directors and CEOs who are rising to the leadership challenge to make their boards a competitive advantage.

Seeing the How invites you to reimagine your brand, company, or idea through the lens of consumer experience. It gives today’s disruptors a path to offering consumers a new and better way to do what they do, clearly demonstrating how to see opportunities, and how to seize them to great advantage.

Two years ago, Zoom was unknown to most, six years ago, Netflix was a DVD delivery service. We ride in Ubers and stay with our families in Airbnb homes. We share Spotify playlists, refresh our closets with Bonobos, and pamper our pets with Chewy. We set up meetings with Calendly and pay bills with Venmo. The speed with which these disruptions to how we do things, and the enormous profits that come with changing daily routines, is breakneck and only point the way for other industries to carve out market dominance.

Seeing the How brings together data-driven research on consumer behavior, behavioral psychology, marketing analysis, and storytelling to provide a framework to help identify the methods by which business leaders can make these experience disruptions possible. Allen P. Adamson, an expert in branding, experience creation, and innovation strategy offers businesses a step-by-step guide to breaking into the market based on the tactics of the biggest experience disruptors out there, including Netflix, Apple, Warby Parker, and Stitch Fix.

These businesses speak to market segments and consumers that are diverse and far-flung. What they share is the extent to which they are experience disruptors. Their successes derive from their ability to make the stuff of daily life different, better, and easier.

Successful experience disruption is the de facto new competitive advantage across all categories. With Seeing the How you’ll have the strategy necessary to bring your disruption to life, command market segments, and cultivate consumer loyalty.