Business Book Summary Services

I sure do wish I had known about business book summary services when I was doing my MBA.

Back in the mid 1990s I spent two years in an MBA program. Although I don't regret it at all, in retrospect I will say that it was truly one of the most challenging periods in my life.

It was in one of those "executive" MBA programs and the dynamics were different from taking an MBA program straight after an undergraduate degree. More stressful I would say.

It was one of those programs where you did your MBA studies at night and on weekends while continuing to work in your fulltime job. Classes were on weekends and there were typically 15 to 25 hours of assignments and casework outside of class and each week. Also, since by definition all of the other students had been out in the real working world for an average of 15 years or more, it was highly competitive as well. Most of them were type A, high achiever types. Talk about constant pressure for two years!

In any case, I recall that one of the most time-consuming tasks was to try to get through all of the assigned reading every week. And, not all of the reading was from academic textbooks. Because it was a real-world business course, many of the books that we were required to read were current public domain business books. So, during that period I spent almost every lunch hour with a sandwich in one hand and a book in the other, just trying to keep up with the reading.

By the second year, out of necessity, I had started developing my own personalized business book summaries. I would condense important books down into 15 to 20 page point-form summaries in my word processor. Once a couple of members in my case group saw these they wanted their own copies, and within days just about everyone in our two classes were using my business book summaries. The common refrain soon became, "…has Shaun done a summary of the book [whatever title] yet?".

If only I had known then what I know now about business book summary services! I would have subscribed to one of these in a nanosecond. It would have been worth every penny in terms of time saved and reduced stress.

It is possible that business book summary services didn't exist to the extent or level of sophistication that they now do online. In fact, since those were the early days of the Internet I'll assume that they didn't exist then. However, since then things have changed. Here are three of the best business book summary services that I have found:

Business Book Summary Services

getAbstract Business Book Summaries
Book summaries by professionals of more than 5,000 of the top management and business books. Stay up-to-date with the latest developments and learn from the best business books ever published.
www.GetAbstract.com

Soundview Executive Book Summaries...
So many great business books, so little time. With Soundview Executive Book Summaries you can listen to summaries of today's top business books with your MP3 player! Download any time from your own online library.
www.SoundviewExecutiveSummaries.com

Online Executive Business Book Summaries
Book summaries from BusinessSummaries.com for executives and entrepreneurs who are too busy to read a lot of books but need to be updated with the latest thinking...
www.bizsum.com

To see a typical business book summary, check out the following link:
Sample Book Summary