Business authors and experts have proclaimed enough revolutions to fill a long shelf. Most of these turn out more like ripples than tidal waves, as a check of any bookstore’s markdown shelves will show. Sure, a few tomes and gurus from the past three decades have made a difference in the way entrepreneurs operate–or at least in what they bring on the plane to read.

But even the rare title with the power to change rarely has much staying power. The speakers who promised to teach American companies to operate like Japanese firms were influential in the 1980s, but imploded in the 1990s along with Japan’s bubble economy. Likewise, the 1990s experts who proclaimed an end to the Old Economy lost listeners and credibility when the New Economy’s glitter faded in the new century.

Of the thousands of business books published in the last 30 years, only a handful have withstood the assaults of changing times and changing objectives to remain as relevant today as when they first came out. Here are nine worthy of space on any entrepreneur’s shelf–now and in the future.

1. The One Minute Manager (HarperCollins, 1981) by Kenneth H. Blanchard and Spencer Johnson
2. Out of the Crisis (The MIT Press, 1982) by W. Edwards Deming
3. In Search of Excellence (HarperBusiness Essentials, 1982) by Thomas J. Peters and Robert H. Waterman
4. Guerrilla Marketing (Houghton Mifflin, 1983) by Jay Conrad Levinson
5. Innovation and Entrepreneurship (HarperBusiness, 1985) by Peter Drucker
6. The E-Myth (HarperBusiness, 1985) by Michael Gerber
7. The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (Free Press, 1989) by Stephen Covey
8. Reengineering the Corporation (HarperBusiness, 1993) by Michael Hammer and James Champy
9. Built to Last (HarperCollins, 1994) by Jim Collins and Jerry Porras

Entrepreneur

It took a few years before Martine Rothblatt got used to describing her daughter’s chronic lung disease as a lucrative market opportunity. “I choked every time I said it - it sounded so immoral,” says Rothblatt, 52. But when she realized that the fastest track to a cure was to launch a biotech firm and then take it public, Rothblatt started United Therapeutics.

The company, based in Silver Spring, Md.,makes and sells Remodulin, a drug that treats pulmonary hypertension (PPH), abnormally high blood pressure in the arteries that supply the lungs. The rare, incurable, and often fatal ailment causes shortness of breath, fainting spells and fatigue. Most treatment options, ranging from daily pills to intravenous medicines, are fully reimbursable by insurance companies.

Rothblatt describes watching her daughter, Jenesis, battle PPH when she was diagnosed as a little girl. Jenesis survived on a mix of pills, but doctors warned that if her condition worsened, she would have to take Flolan, a GlaxoSmithKline (Charts) drug that stays in the bloodstream for only three minutes. It must be continually administered via a catheter threaded directly into the groin or neck. Unstable at room temperature, Flolan requires patients to carry an ice pack 24 hours a day to ensure that it stays cool.

“The treatment seemed worse than the disease,” recalls Rothblatt, stroking one of the three mohawked Labradoodles that roam her offices. “My vision became an inhaled version of the medicine.” Her first step was to develop a drug that lasted longer than Flolan.

FSB Magazine

Back in the early 1980s, Frank Crail had a dream that many of us harbor in some small corner of our souls. A successful - if harried - tech entrepreneur in sunbaked Southern California, Crail yearned for a small town in the cool mountains where he and his wife could raise a big family and savor the simple life. So he moved to Durango, Colo. (pop. 15,000), and started looking around town for a way to make a living.

“I realized I had two options: a car wash or a chocolate store,” Crail recalls. “I’m not a car-wash kind of guy, so I opened the chocolate factory.”

Crail wasn’t exactly a candy man, either. He mixed his first batch of chocolate on a Ping-Pong table and got it all wrong. The nut clusters were as big as hockey pucks. The peanut-butter cups were a size D. But it turned out that folks were hankering for supersized sweets. Crowds gathered, and not just for the chocolate. Part of the fun was watching the new shopkeeper fumble around in his open kitchen.

“Resort towns are perfect for chocolate,” Crail says. “No one’s on a diet when they’re on vacation. People have money to spend, and they’ve got to bring something to folks back home.”

Today Crail’s Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory is the largest U.S. chocolate retailer in terms of locations, surpassing Godiva and See’s. Rocky Mountain (rmcf.com) has 325 stores in 44 states and this year plans to open 40 more. Revenues rose 13 percent, to a record $31.6 million, in fiscal 2007. (Same-store revenues, however, were flat.) Profits climbed 17 percent, to an all-time high of $4.7 million, propelling the company to No. 80 on the FSB 100.

CNN Money

Every inventor has a thousand ideas. But it’s the rare one who has 350 of his ideas actually on the market.

Meet Zlatko Zadro, president of Zadro Products in Huntington Beach.

After careers selling large computers and refurbishing real estate, Zadro decided in 1983 to try marketing one of his inventions.

The result is an international company that makes 350 products, many of them patented. It has 40 employees in Huntington Beach and 800 in China. Many inventors can learn from Zadro’s practical approach that focuses on customer needs, not his own desires. Read the rest of this entry »

Question: I have been considering taking two friends as partners in my planned company. I need their expertise as well as their ideas, contacts and other contributing efforts. Should I take them on as employees? Or is it better to partner?

Answer: Here are a few things to ask yourself: First, do you really need business partners to build a successful company? If so, will these friends make strong and trustworthy business leaders? And perhaps most importantly, are you willing to risk hurting your friendship if the partnership falls apart?

Complete article at startupjournal.com

Why do small business owners write on blogs?

1. A faster and better way to create newsletter articles.
2. A strategy for getting published.
3. A low-cost way for a small business owner to market online.
4. A method to communicate and connect — especially important for business owners.
5. Satisfaction of some inner need to share.

Why do you blog? Or, if you do not currently blog, tell us the reason you do not.

smallbiztrends.com

Business is supposed to be fun. Losing sight of that only tends to negatively impact your business and cause you to forget why you started your business in the first place. As an entrepreneur there is probably no end to your overtime, so be sure you have fun for yourself, both at work and outside of work.

Fun is also critical for keeping your employees happy. Statistics and experience both show that employees who enjoy their jobs are more productive and will stay with a company far longer than employees who do not enjoy their jobs.

Fun at work doesn’t have to be an extravagant ordeal. It could be as simple as taking an hour or two once a month to attend an interesting seminar or having a company cook-off where your staff tests their skills to see who makes the best cookies or appetizers.

Or it could mean taking the time to go out for coffee or a drink after work. Whatever the culture of your company is, find something that will engage and motivate employees.

Yahoo! Finance