Rakesh and Wind’s timely primer offers strategies for capitalizing on opportunities during crises and relays a careful assessment of how leveraging trends and consumer preferences can help businesses navigate the post-pandemic market. Replete with actionable, practical advice and up-to-date analysis, Transformation in Times of Crisis centers on the authors’ eight principles for “creating principle and value” in the world after Covid, principles crafted to guide businesses, marketing teams, and others in revitalizing approaches toward technology and talent while keeping an adaptive organizational perspective. Interdependent chapters steadily build the authors’ cases on sustainability, centering the customer, embracing digital transformation, and the process of implementing changes. The authors cast an attentive eye toward the global market—especially the U.S. and India—and break down with welcome clarity the factors that lead to recent success for start-ups and established companies.

In accessible, energetic prose, Rakesh and Wind urge readers to consider any disruptive change as an opportunity to reexamine the values and goals of their ventures. While they employ some familiar examples, such as Amazon, to demonstrate how companies found silver linings in a grim climate, they also shine a light on how smaller businesses like cleaning services, delivery services, and grocery stores have stepped up to challenges—“changed their mental model”—and thrived, always showing the research that backs up their arguments. The authors, a CEO and an academic, spare readers dense jargon and instead pepper the text with flowcharts, images, tables, self-assessment tools, and questions for reflection, bridging disciplines and making the long chapters approachable.

Citing case histories of companies like Pixar, Jio Platforms, Apple, Microsoft, and a host of start-ups, Rakesh and Wind's comprehensive and optimistic roadmap (“While there is a lull in business activities, you can map out and push toward a customer-centric digital transformation of your organization”) offers clear-eyed insight into the evolving economy that will aid businesses, leaders, and general readers in managing risks and opportunities.

Takeaway: A compelling guide to turning disruption into opportunity during difficult economic times.

Great for fans of: Susan Kahn’s Bounce Back: How to Fail Fast and be Resilient at Work, Edward Segal and Nicholas Brealey’s Crisis Ahead.

Production grades
Cover: B+
Design and typography: A-
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: A-
Marketing copy: B+