$25.95
Customize It
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241 pages
ISBN 9781591843320 Published May 2010
Portfolio
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Posted July 2010 7:09 a.m. by dylan
In - 800 CEO Read Blog
Innovation is a word that gets thrown around a lot in business and business writing, but in can be hard to catch—to understand and implement—in your daily operations. It's like a knuckle ball... hard to deliver (only a few people seem to really master it at any given time) and you never know where it's going to go next. Bob Ueker famously said that "The way to catch a knuckle ball is to wait until it stops rolling and then pick it up." The problem with innovation is that it never stops rolling—it's not going to stop for you to pick it up. If you're in business, you either have to create it or follow along as closely as possible.
And, if that sounds like you, our friends over at Inc. Magazine have an ongoing series of live chats that I hope you're keeping up with. These chats have gleaned great insights from the likes of Jake Nickell, co-founder of Threadless, and Graham Hill, the founder of TreeHugger. If you enjoyed Rework (which if you read, you did), you'll love the live-chat with its author, 37signals founder Jason Fried.
In the month of June alone, they had Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos and author of Delivering Happiness, and Mark Frauenfelder, editor-in-chief of Make Magazine, co-founder of Boing Boing and author of Made by Hand.
they have three more live-chats scheduled in the near future.
Friday Links
Posted May 21, 2010 11:27 a.m. by dylan
In - 800 CEO Read Blog
➻ The new episode of The Business Beat has been released by the wonderful crew over at Portfolio. It's a DIY issue, featuring Mark Freuenfelder, author Made by Hand (one of our favorite new books), and Power Friending author Amber Mac. Though their books look vastly different on the surface, they both discuss building things from scratch. Our peerless leader, Jack Covert, also discusses building something—a business—bringing the conversation to one of the hundred best business books of all time, The Art of Start by Guy Kawasaki.
➻ Newsweek's Nancy Cook interviewed Richard Florida, author of The Great Reset, about Blue Collar Blues and "'upgrading' the service economy." Florida usually writes about the Creative Class, but he can speak of the service industry just as eloquently. Speaking of service arena jobs, Florida says:
We owe it to ourselves to make a national effort to improve these jobs. We will never generate enough manufacturing jobs to fill in the gaps, and not everyone can work in the creative class. It's very hard to offshore the person who cuts your hair or takes care of an elderly parent. Those are the jobs we should make an effort to make better. No one in our national political dialogue is talking about this. People just say these are bad jobs. We can't give up on the work lives of 60 million Americans.
➻ The working class in the virtual future of Cory Doctorow's new book, For the Win, form The Industrial Workers of the World Wide Web. This prompted a question about unions from the folks at the Morning Media Menu. Doctorow answers fully in their favor:
"The thing that unions do is something we need a place for. And, the thing unions do is attempt to rebalance the negotiating differential between employers and workers ... the only thing that makes the boss pay attention is her conscience, and historically that hasn't been a really good, reliable source of improvements in working conditions."
The interview then moves into an issue most of us know Docotorow more for: releasing free eBook versions of his books under the Creative Commons license. Speaking of why he does this, he offers that "It may be hard to monetize fame, but it's impossible to monetize obscurity." He has an equally brilliant suggestion in his latest Guardian column, "that we collectively kill the expression 'Information wants to be free,' in favor of better, more comprehensive slogans such as 'People want to be free.'"
➻ Friend of the company Phil Gerbyshak discussed eBook creation (and self-publishing versus traditional) in an interview with Jim Raffel at a bar playing music too loudly. Phil's most brilliant insight here? "Books are the business cards that nobody throws away."
➻ Kathryn Schultz has been interviewing folks on the art of being wrong over on Slate. This week she interviewed Diane Ravitch, assistant secretary of education under George H.W. Bush and author of The Death and Life of the Great American School System. Ms. Ravitch warns, "You have to be careful what you choose to engage yourself with, because the thing you're fighting could be the very thing you want." I'm really looking forward to Schultz's interview with the author of The Soul of Baseball and The Machine, Joe Posnanski.
➻ The Turners are an interesting organization. They began in Germany in the early 19th century as a "nationalistic gymnastic" organization. (Yes, you read that right.) After the Revolution of 1848, many Turners left Germany and brought the movement to America's German enclaves—cities like Milwaukee, the "Deutsches Athen" (German Athens). They believed heavily in the health of mind and body—hence the gymnastics—but they were also still very politically active, supporting the election of Abraham Lincoln and even providing the bodyguard for his inauguration (and, later, his funeral). The Turners have been around Milwaukee since 1853. They built the lovely Turner Hall here in 1882 and are still tumbling around town today. The Turner Hall Ballroom is now one of the best places in town to see a show, second probably only to The Pabst Theater. Speaking of The Pabst, would you see the Tallest Man on Earth playing in the upper balcony there?
The Tallest Man on Earth - "Shallow Grave" @ The Pabst Theater: Blue Ribbon Vision #4 from Pabst Theater on Vimeo.
I thought you might.
The reason I began the story of the Milwaukee Turners and Turner Hall, however, is that tonight The Turner Hall Ballroom will be filled with the gorgeous sound of Mono.
Next week, we will be discussing Victor Berger and Milwaukee's Sewer Socialists. (Not really... well, maybe.)
Made by Hand
Posted May 18, 2010 3:41 a.m. by jon
In - 800 CEO Read Blog
Whether you're looking to live "off the grid," looking to start your own business, or simply want to find some inspiration to better face challenges in your life, I can't recommend the new book by Mark Frauenfelder, Made by Hand: Searching for Meaning in a Throwaway World highly enough. Many will recognize Frauenfelder as the founder of the blog Boing Boing and the Editor in Chief of Make magazine, but this book is so much more - it's his personal story and insight. 
The intro describes the author's family's quest to find peaceful living, away from the hectic city life, so they sell their belongings and move to an exotic island. Once there, they discover that "peaceful living" is much more difficult than what the environment and location implies. Lessons learned, they return to the city, and start addressing things on the practical, as opposed to a conceptual level, and it works.
Filled with personal stories, as well as those from a variety of Do It Yourself cohorts met along the way, Frauenfelder has created a book as much about fixing problems and making things better as it is about developing a new personal philosophy about how the world works and how we work within it; are we dependent or are we able to create our own solutions?
Here is a brief Q&A with the author that will give you more insight into his ideas and what the book touches on.
A major theme in the book is fear of failure. What are some of the ways you see a system of fear being created by organizations meant to support people (schools, jobs, etc.)?
Students are afraid to make mistakes in class because errors result in bad grades. Striving for a "perfect score" takes your mind off the real goal, which is to learn and to be effective. In organizations we are afraid to make mistakes because a mistake is a convenient way for others assign blame. A fear-based workplace discourages risk-taking and experimentation. The worst mistake is to punish people for making mistakes in the pursuit of doing something in better way.
What are some ways people can work to overcome that fear?
Fail early, fail often. If you make lots of small mistakes and correct them as you go along, the finished project will probably be good. If you hedge your bets every step of the way and take the safe route, the final result may be adequate, but it won't stand out, and your competitor who does take a risks is eventually going to eat you alive.
How is DIY better than expertise?
Because an expert is not going to know the particulars of your problem or challenge as well as you do. The expert will never care about it as much as you care. You are living the problem, and so you will be able to tell when your attempts to meet the challenge are really working or not.
In an entrepreneurial sense, how can can people balance authority or expertise without it becoming a barrier to creativity?
Learn from experts, don't lean on experts. Take what you can from authority and expertise and throw it in the mix along with your own skills, knowledge, curiosity, instinct, and drive to succeed.
Many companies create disposable products that need to be upgraded, etc. What are some some alternatives to have a successful business without all the waste? And how can consumers break from the cycle themselves, particularly if they become dependent on using said products?
Make beautiful things out of superior materials that last longer than their owners, and make sure the parts that do wear out are easy to repair and replace. Take a look at appliances built before 1945. They didn't have "No User Serviceable Parts" labels. Instead, they had access panels that could be opened to replace motors, belts, vacuum tubes and other parts that had a short life span. Some of my DIY friends find the oldest tools, cars, and appliances they can find, because they are easier to self-service.
Made by Hand is a book about empowering individuals to create meaning in their lives. Overall, how does DIY create that opportunity?
My friend Shane Speal of cigarboxnation.com said DIY is not about cheaper, it's about deeper. In other words, the sense of reward and engagement you get from " living with the things you've made with your own hands is deeper than simply buying everything you consume. As I wrote in my book, DIY presents new opportunities to get deeply involved in processes that require knowledge, skill building, creativity, critical thinking, decision making, risk taking, social interaction, and resourcefulness.
Friday Links
Posted April 2, 2010 11:19 a.m. by dylan
In - 800 CEO Read Blog
➻ Rebecca Skloot, author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, is "here to report: Book tours are not dead." Not here, precisely, but over at Powell's blog.
➻ Eoin Purcell believes "Publishers should be platform agnostic," and explained why in a Publishing Perspectives article earlier this week: E-books are a Cul-de-sac.
➻ Roger Lowenstein's The End of Wall Street hasn't gotten the buzz it probably deserves yet, which Janet Maslin began to remedy in the New York Times book section recently, writing:
It is a complex but imaginative book, an especially useful piece of the jigsaw puzzle that current Wall Street books are busy creating.
The author has documented economic history before in When Genius Failed, one of The 100 Best Business Books of All Time. His new book will be out next week, and if you liked Too Big to Fail or The Big Short, you'll appreciate Lowenstein's addition to the genre.
➻ Harvey Mackay, author of Swim With the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive (also one of the 100 Best) showed up on Larry King Live recently with some great advice on how to break through an overcrowded job market and get noticed (and maybe even hired).
If you like what he has to say in the interview, his new book, Use Your Head to Get Your Foot in the Door, delves into the issues more deeply and intimately and, as Larry King says "there isn't a more important book out." Now, Larry King is no stranger to hyperbole, but that remark is spot on for so many Americans right now, and it's great to see him spread the gospel of Mackay. If you want to find out how to network without being annoying, check out Part 2 of the King interview or head over to harveymackay.com.
➻ Jon has tried to convince a few of us in the office that Kell on Earth is worth watching. I respond with a quote from a recent interview with Ms. Cutrone in Inc. Magazine:
I think one of the greatest gifts for me professionally and for my clients was to learn the word “no.”
➻ I'm really looking forward to diving into the advance copy of Mark Frauenfelder's Made by Hand that showed up here recently. You'll here more from us on it eventually, but if you can't wait, you can whet your appetite on this week's Treehugger review. And if you're interested in a different DIY project, such as say a college education, check out Salon's interview with Anya Kamenetz, author of DIY U: Edupunks, Edupreneurs, and the Coming Transformation of Higher Education.
➻ There is one more interview I want to point you to this weekend (or whenever you can get to it)—Michael Bungay Stanier interviewing Matt May.
➻ Walter S. Mossberg was amazingly able to review the iPad without chopping vegetables with it.
➻ Freakonomics the movie? Yep.
➻ Aaron isn't going to like it, but I've got nothing else, and the rest of the gang has already left for Conference Room H for a week-ending beer or four. So, here is Milwaukee's own, Juniper Tar. (This goes out to Shawn, Nancy and Mack.)
