Amazon link Trade-Off is a book which explores a simple, but useful, way to frame the world. Kevin Maney plots products along two dimensions, fidelity and convenience, and then spends the rest of the book discussing how products end up in different places on that graph, from the “fidelity belly” to the “fidelity mirage” Fidelity […]
Category: nonfiction
How We Decide, by Jonah Lehrer
Amazon link I picked this up from the library, as yet another in the recent series of books I’ve been reading that reinforce my own biases. Overall, I liked it – I knew most of the patterns in cognition that the book describes, but it summarized them nicely with good anecdotes. One standard model of […]
Chief Culture Officer, by Grant McCracken
Amazon link I have been a fan of Grant McCracken’s for several years now, so I was eagerly awaiting his new book, Chief Culture Officer. Note that I may be slightly biased in this review, as Grant mentions me in the book as a potential CCO candidate. Chief Culture Officer is McCracken’s manifesto of how […]
The Adventures of Johnny Bunko, by Daniel Pink
Book website Amazon link Dan Pink’s book Drive was good, so I also picked up this book from the library, subtitled “The last career guide you’ll ever need”. It’s written in the style of manga (Japanese comics), and can be read in half an hour, but offers solid advice on career management. Here are the […]
NurtureShock, by Po Bronson and Ashley Merriman
Book website Amazon link I’ve liked Po Bronson’s other books, like What should I do with my life?. I also really liked his New York magazine article called The Power (and Peril) of Praising Your Kids, which described Carol Dweck’s research into the fixed vs. growth mindset of children, and what a tremendous difference it […]
The Talent Code, by Daniel Coyle
Book website, with excerpts Amazon link A coworker recommended this to me, and was even kind enough to lend it to me for the weekend. Coyle asks the question: where does talent come from? Is it nature (genetics) or nurture (environment/opportunity)? He started by visiting several talent hotbeds – the Russian tennis academy that spawned […]
Drive, by Daniel Pink
Drive book website Amazon link I really liked Pink’s TED talk on the “surprising science of motivation” where he says “There’s a mismatch between what science knows and what business does”. In particular, the compensation and motivation strategies currently used by businesses have been shown to undermine motivation rather than enhance it. So I’ve been […]
The Design of Business, by Roger Martin
Amazon link I’m not sure where I heard about this book, but the subtitle, “Why Design Thinking is the Next Competitive Advantage”, pretty much sold me on at least checking it out, since I’m interested in both design and management. So I got it from the library and read it. Martin frames business as operating […]
Nonfiction Roundup August 2008
I’m finishing up packing my books, and came across the pile of books that I read this summer but haven’t reviewed yet. So this is going to be a quickie placeholder post with short reviews of each book, and hopefully I’ll have time to come back and do a longer review later on a couple […]
True Enough, by Farhad Manjoo
Amazon link Based on my previous thoughts about the decline of Absolute Truth , it’s not surprising that I wanted to read a book that is subtitled “Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society”. Manjoo observes that we, the body politic, used to agree on what was happening and the problems we were facing, but […]
