The Caterpillar Way: Lessons in Leadership, Growth, and Shareholder Value

This is a difficult book to review. As an "Ad Man" and marketing person, I was hoping that the book would lean a little more in that direction; ie: How CAT positions themselves in the market and the role that their branding and provenance plays in that strategy. I found the first chapter to be boring yet informative — it dragged on and on about "why" they wrote the book and "who" the authors are. I don;t particularly care to know this information as I have already purchased the book; plus, that what bio flaps are for.If you love financial/economical acronyms, then you'll fall in love with this book. I found myself keeping an index card/bookmark of all the acronyms used, as there seemed to be a new one on each page. Secondly, If you also find yourself loving charts, graphs, and other economical graphics, then this book will tickle that spot for you — there are several.Overall, I found the content to be well organized and the chapters to be fairly clear and concise. The writing style is a little on the monotonous side for me and the use of foreign phrases to be "Frasier-esque." All in all, I would recommend it to a friend with the caveat that it'd be a friend who's in the financial or economic field.

Pretty much one sided. It was all accolades and not much critique. Caterpillar is a great company, but the authors sounded like they worked there and their boss reviewed the draft.

This is a good book, the most of the book includes are matching with my expectation. it giving you a background for how Caterpillar grown in a successful way and what is the challenges were CAT facing to be in the first.I didn't complete the reading of the book yet, and I hope that I can found how CAT lead the dealers in the world.About the book hard-copy:1- The book has a nice cover.2- The book is easy to be read and understand3- The book is not much expensive.

A real eye opener as to how multi billion dollar business's shape and influence American economics and foreign policy. Caterpillar as a stellar performer on Wall St. producing dividends, and capital gains, is remarkable. But as Globalization of Caterpillar increased to the point, where the American business side and workforce, Is less than 1/2 of the entire business, makes a person wonder. What has become of real friendship and economic patriotism ? Free Trade has huge impacts , at home and abroad , as American business invades overseas countries and Foreign business invades the USA. For anyone interested in the American economy, politics, and manufacturing business, this is a must read ! Very interesting !

Great book for the investor that merely enjoys a superficial glance at a company. The book falls short of investigating the Caterpillar generic parts market role in sustaining residual values of equipment, it's influence over the Illinois legislature, transfer pricing, anticompetitive nature of its parts distribution and global pricing structure.Caterpillar's ethical code so highly regarded in the book seemed to be disregarded when it produced equipment together with the South African Dealer under the brand name Wright during apartheid.

Good book about valuing a business, in particular, Caterpillar. Check out the podcast about the book on bloomberg.com and the author talks about the book and CAT in general. Sure, he is a fan of the company, but he also give you the worst case scenario and talks about CAT's formidable competitors like Komatsu.

I thought this was going to be more of an advertisement for the big machinery maker. It opens up the company to scrutiny and makes known how the Americans do it rather than us copying the way the Japanese do it. It's about time we lead rather than follow in the manufacturing realm.

This was a gift for my husband, but I plan to read it too. The little bit that I have read of it were very interesting.

When I got this book I was not sure if I would like it having worked for Caterpillar for over 25 years but I found myself reading it at every moment and finished it within a week.

This is an I-love-CAT book, meaning that it is written by those who have high hopes for CAT.It was an interesting read in that (i) it describes in detail how CAT was moving to the southern regions in the States to avoid labor disputes in Peoria and (ii) how they promote people from within. It is like a Japanese company in a way.Although CAT is a very reputable company, this book is the only book that I could find on CAT alone.