"Building a Business" is a very good series of podcast seminars for entrepreneurs

I recommend the podcast series "Building a Business" for anyone interested in entrepreneurship and starting their own business. This is true regardless of what industry you're in and is definitely appropriate for someone interested in starting a biotech/med device company. This podcast series is freely available from iTunesU and is a set of recordings of entrepreneurship lectures from Oxford University.

The series provides 9 very nice overviews on key topic areas, including:
Writing a business plan
Intellectual property
Negotiation skills
Venture Capital deals

Each seminar has a different presenter, so they do vary in quality and clarity. Overall, they are all a good listen and very informative. I particularly enjoyed the podcasts entitled "Taking the First Steps", "Intellectual Property", "Negotiation Skills", and "Entrepreneurship and the Ideal Business Plan".

The Goal is an important read for understanding the Theory of Constraints...just wish it was a powerpoint presentation rather than a romance novel.

Personally, I don't like the narrative style of management books and did not like The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt. I don't know if Dr. Goldratt had dreams of writing romance fiction novels, but I felt there is WAY too much fluff and needless side story that isn't critical to moving the story along. I admire and appreciate the production management concepts introduced such as identifying throughput bottlenecks, increasing flow, reducing work-in-progress/inventory, and realizing how localized optima can actually decrease overall efficiency of the entire system.

Since this book introduced the topic of Theory of Constraints (TOC) to the management field, it's a must read for anyone interested in TOC and how to implement it in manufacturing production. The book does a very good job of teaching that simple cost reduction and capital expenditure metrics can be very misleading or worse, downright unproductive. I just wish the book focused more on the theory and practice of TOC and less on marital stress and the main character's relationship with his mother and in-laws

In short: Do I recommend The Goal?

Yes, if you are a student of TOC or want to learn more about manufacturing production management theory. Just be prepared to read about boy-scout hikes, marital problems, mother-son relationships, and what pizza toppings the characters are eating.