Rating: 
Summary: A Great Addition to My Business Library
Review: As a recent MBA graduate, I found this book to be far more valuable than most strategy texts I had read in school. While the focus is on explaining different profitability models, the lessons learned are easily applied to new ways to think about your enterprise. The book encourages the reader to read a chapter a week and suggests other books to read and thought exercises to do. While I'm sure this would be the ideal way to go through the material, I found the book suitable and enjoyable to read quickly. The writing is clear and to the point. And while comparisons to "The Goal" are unavoidable, I found the balance of storytelling and teaching in "Art of Profitability" to be skewed toward teaching. As a result, Slywotzky provides the reader more bang (quality insights) per page without compromising the books readability. Highly recommended.
Rating: 
Summary: Moderate Book, but not worth
Review: Easy to read (I read all the book in 2-3 hours doing all the exercises), but not worth to that price.
The book just include several graphs on profits, and how to think in a profit manner.
Let me propose you an alternative; read "Mind of Strategist" from Ohmae, then look to different industries in DowJones, and think of how to make more profit in each industry.. I think that you can draw at least 50% of all those charts..
The issue is not drawing the charts.. but how to execute the pricing strategy.. are all the world businessman dumb that they can not apply the pricing charts that can be developed in a minute???
This book is best for just practice of thinking, not worth more than 2-3 USD.
Rating: 
Summary: enjoy the CD
Review: Got this business CD for Christmas, and haven't been able to resist the temptation to listen to more than one track per day, let alone per week. For the most part, it is very well "acted" and easy to listen to, although often the chart descriptions are too poor and too breif to figure out in your head.Like other folks said, the suggested reading/listening is a great list of "get to" titles, and SO WHAT if he drops in a couple of his own titles along with others? Zig Ziglar, Brian Tracy, Earl Nightengale, etc have been doing that for years before, and besides we could all learn something from the sly pitch - yet another profit model to study about - so don't feel like you've been taken advantage of just because you didn't think of it yourself, he he he!
Rating:
Summary: Even my ten year old...
Review: I have been doctor for eleven years now. We don't get many business training in our curriculum, let along understanding profits. Like many others in my profession I got on the read-and-try everything the so call gurus has writen. Needless to said I have more than 20 books on the subject along. The results from reading it has not been too satisfactory. That until now. By reading Mr. Slywotzky, The art of profitablity I has been enlighted on the subject. I am recommending my colleagues to read it. I discuss it we my ten year old daughter, and you got to believe this, even she understand it.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting little parables to get you thinking
Review: I liked the structure of this book, and the approach of using parables - it makes it easy to read & absorb the principles. However, given my level of business experience, I wasn't a rookie setting out to learn everything from scratch.
I considered the instruction "read only one chapter per week" to be supercilious.
A typical chapter is only 10 pages or so (some are as short as 5, the longest is 14), but as there's 23 chapters I didn't want to spend 6 months reading this book. By reading 2 or 3 chapters per day, I could still absorb the message, and yet complete the book within 2 weeks.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting little parables to get you thinking
Review: I liked the structure of this book, and the approach of using parables - it makes it easy to read & absorb the principles. However, given my level of business experience, I wasn't a rookie setting out to learn everything from scratch.
I considered the instruction "read only one chapter per week" to be supercilious.
A typical chapter is only 10 pages or so (some are as short as 5, the longest is 14), but as there's 23 chapters I didn't want to spend 6 months reading this book. By reading 2 or 3 chapters per day, I could still absorb the message, and yet complete the book within 2 weeks.
Rating:
Summary: Simple Yet Effective
Review: I thought this book was great! Slywotzky uses this book as a sort of Cliff Notes to his previous books, all of which are probably the best books on strategy out there. This book will appeal to all levels of experience and knowledge, as very simple yet effective business paradigms and principles are explored. The best thing about the simplicity of these principles and the way that Slywotzky delivers them, is that he makes them very easy to apply and take immediate action on. I found myself perusing the Wall Street Journal, spotting them in action or being ignored. It's very short, but some of the references will likely inspire you to go off and explore them. As far as the critique about the plot, I think those reviewers missed the point of the book. Don't read a business strategy book from the VP at Mercer Management Consulting looking for plot twists and character development. Read it because he knows what he is talking about!
Rating:
Summary: Business Strategy Infomercial
Review: OK, "The Goal" this isn't, despite the comments of previous reviewers. However, the narrative style of the book does make a sometimes very dry subject readable. It did make me think, and that alone makes the book worth three stars. Obviously, (looking at the date of the review vs. the release date) I did not follow the instructions in the beginning that advise the reader to read only a chapter a week, spending the interim doing the "homework" assigned by the book's magus figure, David Zhao. However, the book's recommended list of books, articles, and authors does pique one's interest to dig deeper. Overall, the intent of the book seems to be to briefly visit multiple business models giving just enough info to whet the appetite. If this is truly the intent, it succeeds. However, there is one major flaw that really bothers me. The author uses his lead character as a shill for his other books. It's done discretely, with only the titles mentioned without disclosing the author. However, because every other book and article reference includes the author's names, the ommissions are a red flag. I found the book interesting and I probably will explore the author's writing further, but the self-referencing turns the book from a good high-level discussion of strategy to an infomercial. If only the author could have resisted temptation! Perhaps the last lesson should be "Spam is not a profit model!"
Rating: 
Summary: If you have extra time and money - it's alright
Review: The Good -
The main concepts of the book are sound and time proven, and it has some interesting and novel ideas. Moreover, the book has decent recommendations of other books (not surprisingly they were written by the same author). The Bad -
What was meant to be an entertaining fictional side plot, in the fashion of The Goal or The Max Strategy, doesn't work. It ends up being both corny and archaic. Basically, the main character of the book is a 20 something trying to save the large conglomerate which employs him. Give me a break. The vast majority of my peers including myself (in that age group) could care less about the slow and large, uncaring bureaucracies we work for. If anything we're dreaming up of escape plans to start our own businesses. Throughout the book I just kept wondering whether Steve was a complete moron or whether the story took place 30 years ago. A related flaw is how the book's concepts are delivered. Hearing the mentor character, Zhiao, give lessons is akin to listening to Bill Cosby's or Grandpa Simpson's random rambling for hours. It's very difficult to differentiate the useless/nonsensical crap from the good pieces of data, Zhiao keeps jumping from here and there. Sadly I could go on and on about how horrible the plot and side dialogue are... For ex, "What kind of fish do you think you are? I am a light fish." - enough said. Conclusion
Unless you have spare money or time, read Slywotsky's other books instead to get to the meat of his ideas. This is largely a waste of time.
Rating:
Summary: SIMPLE POWERFUL CONCEPTS TAUGHT IN INNOVATIVE WAY
Review: This book is focused on explaining 23 different models of profitability that different firms have followed. The author uses the realtionship between a wise mentor and an eager mentee to take the reader through the process of understanding the different models. The book is aimed at describing and giving the reader some insight into each model; it is not an in depth analysis of profitability. Given its aim, it is well written. It is not a step by step process to apply at a business. This is a book to make a manager reflect, not follow. Each chapter is one story that describes a model; the style seems to follow the general outline of Harvard Business School cases, which, given the author's professorship there, is not so surprising. I highly recommend it to someone looking for an entertaining read that will make one reflect. However, disregard the recommendation that you go through one chapter per week. It is too little, I think I would probably lose the book by the 3rd week. It is, instead, a book to be read in 3 days, and be referred back for ideas.
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