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ISBN 9780061937194 Published April 2010
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Posted Oct. 22, 2010 11:29 a.m. by dylan
In - 800 CEO Read Blog
➻ Vanity Fair has an excerpt up about The Blundering Herd at Merrill Lynch from one of this year's most anticipated books, All the Devils Are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis. From that excerpt:
In the years leading up to the financial crisis of 2008, there was no more infectious disease on Wall Street than Goldman envy. Goldman Sachs, perhaps the most storied name in all of American finance, had gone public only in 1999, the last of the big firms to do so. After the I.P.O., Goldman’s mind-boggling profits were on full display. Starting in 2003, Goldman went on a run the likes of which had rarely been seen in American business. In just three years, its revenues more than doubled, to $38 billion, as its profits skyrocketed. In 2007, C.E.O. Lloyd Blankfein received a bonus of more than $68 million. Even junior traders made millions. Who wouldn’t be jealous of numbers like those? UBS, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Lehman Brothers, Deutsche Bank—they were all stricken, to varying degrees, with Goldman envy.
No firm, though, had it worse than Merrill Lynch. And once the crisis struck, there was no firm for whom the disease would prove to be more fatal.
The authors of the book are Bethany McLean, a writer for Vanity Fair and the coauthor of The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron (one of the 100 Best Business Books of All Time), and Joe Nocera, a business columnist for The New York Times and author of Good Guys and Bad Guys: Behind the Scenes with the Saints and Scoundrels of American Business (and Everything in Between). It is due to be released next month.
➻ Scott Belsky (author of Making Ideas Happen), Daniel Pink (author of Drive and many other fine books), and Laura Vanderkam (author of 168 Hours) were chosen for GOOD magazine's GOOD Guide to Making Work Better about "productivity, procrastination, and getting off your butt and back to work." Here are each of their productivity mantras:
Scott Belsky: "Less ideas, more action."
Dan Pink: "Get to work."
Laura Vanderkam: "Do more of what matters. Do less of what doesn’t."
To get more tips from each of them and find out what each of them has to say about technology's effects on productivity, head on over to the GOOD slide show. (hat tip to the good people of Portfolio.)
➻ The New Yorker's Jenny Hendrix wrote a great review of a book I've been looking forward to for some time—Marcus Boon's In Praise of Copying.
In Praise of Copying is not an investigation of the ethical dilemmas of copying but a Stein-like affirmation of the mimesis that happens everywhere and everyday. Boon sees copying as fundamental to existence, part of "how the universe functions and manifests." Even on a molecular level, he writes on his blog, "all objects are made up of other objects." We cannot learn without mimicking (whether it’s learning to write a paper or learning how to catch a football)—but the way copying is defined in legal terms obscures this fact. Boon encourages us to rethink terms like "subject," "object," "different," and "the other," in order to "account for our fear of and fascination with copying."
If this book is anywhere near as illuminating as David Kord Murray's Borrowing Brilliance, it's worth picking up. And if you're interested in the topic from a purely business perspective, you may want to check out Oded Shenkar's Copycats.
➻ Richard Florida, author of The Great Reset and a slew of other books on the creative class—the man who, in fact, coined the term creative class—posted a gallery of the 20 Most Innovative States on The Daily Beast. He tells us in the introduction to the gallery how he defined them:
Though some argue that the rate of American innovation has declined recently, our economic recovery depends on a renewed investment in and commitment to innovation. The rate of innovation is likely to accelerate in coming years, as capital shifts back to invention and entrepreneurship in the real economy.
Our ranking of the most innovative states is based on two metrics: (1) the number of patented innovations per capita, and (2) the share of high-tech companies.
Unfortunately, Wisconsin did not make the cut. Apparently cheese curds aren't innovative.
➻ Stewart Quealy recently interviewed Aaron Goldman, author of Everything I Know about Marketing I Learned From Google about, well... Marketing Lessons From Google. From that interview:
SQ: When it comes to consumer mindshare, you claim it's a zero sum game. What does that mean for the Facebook vs. Google rivalry as these two giants cross into each others' domains?AG: It means all-out war. There are only so many hours in the day and attention span in the hours. The company that can help people make better, faster decisions will win. To be sure, those decisions can be related to information, commerce, and/or entertainment. Help me find quick answers, buy stuff I want, and connect with cool people and content, and I'll give you the lion's share of my time and attention.
I would give you a list of more books on Google, but that would take days to get through. Just check out Ken Auletta's Googled and Jeff Jarvis's What Would Google Do?
➻ Rebeca D. Costa, author of The Watchman's Rattle, did a fantastic job of Reframing the Issue over at The Powell's Books blog, asking one simple question:
So the central issue we must now face is this: what happens when the complexity of the problems we need to solve exceed the cognitive capabilities we have evolved to this point?
Read on to find the answer.
➻ With a thousand kisses...
Summer 2010: International Best Sellers
Posted Oct. 8, 2010 4:39 a.m. by the-roy
In - 800 CEO Read Blog
I know, I know - I promised there would not be a long gap for best selling books around the country - but it has been a pretty busy summer! So, I will not prolong the wait... Here are 8CR's top books for the months of June, July, August & September!
# 1 - India: Corporate Lattice: Achieving High Performance in the Changing World of Work by Cathleen Benko and Molly Anderson
# 2 - France: Iconoclast: A Neuroscientist Reveals How to Think Differently by Gregory Berns
# 3 - Singapore: Different: Escaping the Competitive Herd by Youngme Moon and Lynn Carruthers
# 4 - Australia: Lords of Strategy: The Secret Intellectual History of the New Corporate World by Walter Kiechel
# 5 - Brussels: Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality by Scott Belsky
# 6 - Mexico: End of the Free Market: Who Wins the War Between States and Corporations? by Ian Bremmer
# 7 - Canada: Strengths Finder 2.0 by Tom Rath
# 8 - Spain: Great Reset: How New Ways of Living and Working Drive Post-Crash Prosperity by Richard Florida
# 9 - The Netherlands: Empowered: Unleash Your Employees, Energize Your Customers and Transform Your Business by Josh Bernoff and Ted Schadler
# 10 - France: The Trusted Advisor by David H. Maister, Charles H. Green and Robert M. Galford
HAPPY READING, EVERYONE!
Friday Links
Posted Aug. 20, 2010 11:13 a.m. by dylan
In - 800 CEO Read Blog
➻ Portfolio has released a new edition of The Business Beat. You'll hear from Don Tapscott, author with Anthony D. Williams of Macrowikinomics (due out in late September), and Stan Slap, author of Bury My Heart at Conference Room B, which was a Jack Covert Selects this month. And, as always, you'll hear from the man himself, as Mr. Covert tells us about Andy Grove's Only the Paranoid Survive.
➻ Umair Haque posted a video last week about The Jobless-est Recovery and the Great Transformation, noting that "this is not just a jobless recovery, per se, but that it is the most jobless recovery for a century. and the link between the actual recovery in terms of pure GDP and job creation seems to be completely broken." He begins to discuss what he sees as "a Great Transition, a Great Transformation" and the values that will be needed to do so. The video, however, doesn't delve to much into what that will look like. For that, you'll want to return to an older post of his, Reseeding the Economy.
➻ Or, you can always turn to Richard Florida and his book, the The Great Reset, which—especially amidst all the doom-and-gloom in publishing and the endless release of books about the crash and recession—is certainly one of the best and brightest books released this year. It's a forward-looking, big picture book. Florida has been discussing such a transformation for years in his work on "the creative class," but he also recognizes the need for a strong, blue collar working class. And so, he looked at Where the Blue-Collar Jobs Will Be in The Atlantic yesterday.
The good news is that the U.S. will continue to create relatively high-paying working class jobs. These jobs will continue to provide good livelihoods for the workers fortunate enough to have them. The bad news is that their rate of growth will be sluggish and not nearly enough to provide the amount of good, family-supporting jobs required to undergird a middle class of lower-skilled workers. The harsh reality is that blue-collar, working class jobs in the U.S. are increasing slowly, and they will grow the slowest in traditional manufacturing and industrial regions and communities whose economic and social life has revolved around these jobs.There is little policy-makers can do - aside from declaring a trade war - to bring back large numbers of these high-paying jobs. But they can develop strategies to improve not just the wages but the content of blue-collar work, by engaging workers more fully and seeing them as a source of innovation.
Head on over to the original post for some fascinating maps of the American labor landscape.
➻ Edward R. Schmitt, author of President of the Other America: Robert Kennedy and the Politics of Poverty touched on that topic a bit in a guest post at The Washington Post's Political Bookworm today. Speaking of Kennedy and his move against poverty in his day and the need for leaders to do the same today, he writes:
As Kennedy suggested ... leadership matters. Even before the severe recession of the past three years, alarming exposés of a new class of “working poor” Americans ... cautioned that a new endemic poverty, resistant to the traditional American tonic of employment, threatened to become a permanent part of the American economic landscape.
But significant leadership focusing popular attention on the problems of poor and near poor Americans has yet to re-emerge. The political will necessary to influence popular opinion and to address the growing problem of poverty in America can be renewed. Visible, national leadership on the issue is critical, and it is on this point that Kennedy’s story can be instructive.
Politicians with an eye toward their legacy would also do well to note that while Kennedy was a polarizing figure in his day, he is now often most fondly remembered for putting his political career on the line to become a president for the other America.
➻ Most Americans are hard-working, even the "struggling artists" out there. But we don't always feel that working hard is working out, and we all get down on ourselves from time-to-time. In one of her most popular posts, Naomi Dunford at IttyBiz reminds us to remember that we're not alone When [We] Feel Like A Raging Failure.
➻ Last week Steven Pressfield, author of The War of Art, wrote about The Ego and the Self, and where the "Resistance" comes from. And in his Writer's Journal this week, spoke to how the struggle of not working is far greater than struggle to do so.
I also know from experience that the alternative to doing my work is a hundred times worse than the pain or fear of doing it. I remember vividly the seven years when I did yield to fear and Resistance—and the hell it was for me and for people I loved. I can hear the whip crack. The fear of not doing it is stronger than the fear of doing it.
Amen.
➻ I was looking for Shellac's "Squirrel Song," but I couldn't find a decent video so here is the exact opposite... Milk Thistle.
The Big Brain Business Book Club
Posted July 27, 2010 3:29 a.m. by k8cr
In - 800 CEO Read Blog
We're nearing the first anniversary of our Big Brain Business Book Club. For the past four quarters, we've sent out the best picks from the newest books. There have been books from a well-known Fortune 500 CEO, a man you know by name, an urban studies theorist who focuses on creativity in cities, a jack of all trades who speaks to innovation, and a few more. Members can choose to receive books that appeal to their thinking type -- left brain, right brain or whole brain.
We're in the midst of prepping our shop and preparing the latest batches of right brain and left brain books. We have two incredible books to share with you this quarter. If you'd like to join us in our Big Brain Business Book Club, you can sign up here.
Jack Covert Selects - The Great Reset
Posted May 14, 2010 8:23 a.m. by 800-ceo-read
“A crisis is a terrible to waste.” It’s a phrase you hear often nowadays, and it’s the issue at the heart of Richard Florida’s new book, The Great Reset.
Richard Florida has been writing about big changes in society for a long time now. You may know him from his great works about the Creative Class, including The Rise of the Creative Class and Who’s Your City—books in which he documents the demographic shift away from industrial jobs and toward creative work, and how that shift affects where and how we live. In his latest effort, he discusses the convergence of that already occurring phenomenon with the crash of the old economic system, and looks at what the Reset Economy will look like.
Part I of the book recalls the two most similar times in our economic history to today, the depressions of the 1870s and 1930s, both of which were followed by Great Resets of the economy that enabled prolonged prosperity.
The First Reset occurred after the Long Depression of 1873 and gave rise to mass production, massive industrial cities and the Industrial Midwest. The Second Great Reset occurred after the Great Depression, and saw the rise of mass suburbanization, the freeway system and the Sunbelt.
In Part II of the book, the author moves from discussing past shifts into how specific cities, regions and economies are faring today, and are likely to develop as the current Reset plays out. Part III of the book discusses what the Reset economy will look like and how it will affect us.
Today’s Reset will affect our society at a deeper level than did the Resets of the past. We are living through an even more powerful and fundamental economic shift, from an industrial system to an economy that is increasingly powered by knowledge, creativity, and ideas.
It is here he gets into the details of how and where the Creative Class will resettle and what the infrastructure of tomorrow’s cities, indeed “megaregions,” will be. It is here he discusses specifics like what kind of jobs we’ll be doing, how we’ll get to them and what kind of homes we’ll return to.
The Great Reset we’re in the middle of is going to take time, but it is happening now, and where we live and work—and how we live and work—is going to have to change to meet the new economy’s needs. To navigate that change, Richard Florida’s The Great Reset is the perfect guide.
