If you want to get into business on your own, this guide to the essentials of self-employment should help you turn your dream into reality. A handbook of practical, commonsense advice about how to start a solo business, and how to run it successfully, it aims to help you navigate your way through the most important aspects of being your own boss, but without weighing you down with lots of detail.

 

The book is also about discovering what you really want to get out of life, and how your work can be in harmony with the way you want to live. It's about more than being self-employed and getting paid for what you do - it's about the power of being small.

Guide to Business Planning
Perhaps you want to start 2008 completely different and start running your own business? As always, also this book can give you many ideas... 

"To get any new business idea off the ground you must have a plan - and if you need to raise funds to finance the business or get the approval of senior management, it must be a convincing plan. This guide covers every aspect of preparing a business plan including how to analyze the market, how to model the business and financial statements, and analysis of risk and the assessment of both the upside and potential downside, and the all-important executive summary - often the only part of a business plan that is read. Finally, "Guide to Business Planningshows how to use a business plan to help put your ideas into practice and how to monitor and measure the performance of the business. This newest title in The Economist series is critical for businesspeople who have an idea and need a plan."

Financial Business Intelligence : Trends, Technology, Software Selection and Implementation
Turn storehouses of data into a strategic tool

Business intelligence has recently become a word used by almost every CFO, controller, and analyst. After having spent the last decade implementing Enterprise Resource Planning software and other mission critical solutions, companies now have large databases with transactional data sitting in their computer rooms. Now, finally, the technology has reached a point where it is possible– in almost real time–to quickly and easily analyze the financial data in the corporate databases, to be able to make more intelligent business decisions. This book will help financial managers understand the trends, technology, software selection, and implementation of financial business intelligence (financial BI) software. With a dictionary of business intelligence terms, a comprehensive list of Request for Proposal questions, and examples of popular financial business intelligence reroutes and user interfaces, this book enables managers to measure their companies’ business intelligence and maximize its value. (Amazon.com).

Penguin Readers - Level 4

This reader has more of a business slant and offers mini biographies and major contributions of some well know managers. Management Gurus is for people who want to find out about why the modern business world works like it does.  The book introduces six gurus of management.

The file also includes lesson materials from the Longman site.

Audio added. Thanks to valsi!