Puget Sound Business Journal

Based on reporting for which the author was named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the Gerald Loeb Award, this book traces the rise and spectacular fall of Washington Mutual.

Building Routes to Customers explains the powerful “Routes-to-Market” approach for driving profitable growth. World-class organizations including IBM, Microsoft, HP, Cisco, Hitachi, Adobe and Plantronics, and hundreds of smaller companies, have adopted RTM to develop and execute highly successful go-to-market strategies and tactics. With a step-by-step approach and dozens of examples, the authors show how you can use RTM to: (1) Determine the optimal level of spending for each function in marketing, sales and customer service, for each market segment, product and service. (2) Optimize your marketing mix and sales and distribution channels to maximize revenue and profitability throughout the product life cycle. (3) Get everyone in product management, marketing, sales, customer service, and your distribution partners aligned and working together to maximize results. (4) Get the right products and services to the right customers at the right time. (5) Retain existing customers and create profitable new ones.

Placid bays, steeply forested shorelines, breaching whales, dynamic urban centers -- Western Washington's Puget Sound region captivates with its magic.

Seattle's project of 'downtown revitalization' is often touted as a civic endeavour that serves the community as a whole. Gibson questions that assumption. He examines the trade-off between the gain produced by redevelopment and the loss of public space.

Corporate Disasters: What Went Wrong and Why profiles the biggest corporate mistakes or misdeeds throughout history -- covering the people, the times, the decisions made. This volume covers Real Estate and Mortgage Collapses. Each essay puts the business and its operators in the context of its own time, explaining the market, social, and technology forces at play, and each explores the key make-or-break decisions that led to disaster.