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Posted Sept. 14, 2009 7:26 a.m. by 800-ceo-read
Without a doubt, this is one of the best books on sparking ideas that I have ever read. Jeremy Gutsche has written and designed an excellent book for an uncertain time—a time when all of our instincts scream at us to retreat. Instead, Gutsche all but demands that we act, reminding us that companies such as Disney, CNN, HP, GE, Apple, Sun, Eli Lilly and many more were founded during periods of economic recession.
The great motivational stories are here, from the boiling frog story to a more obscure tale about Smith Corona. You’ll find great motivational quotes here as well, including Edison’s “I have not failed 1,000 times. I have successfully discovered 1,000 ways to not make a light bulb.” and Michael Jordan’s “I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life and that is why I succeed.” And, while we may have heard these before, Gutsche presents the gathered material in an energetic and fresh manner.
Beyond the motivational material, Exploiting Chaos doesn’t serve up the same old examples of innovation and success. Gutsche points out that “IBM, GE, Wal-Mart, Dell, and Southwest Airlines were referenced in 1,304 of the most recent 2,000 Harvard Business Review articles” and states what you’re probably thinking after reading that sentence—“Holy crap! That’s excessive.” Accordingly, Exploiting Chaos brings you more rare examples, applicable to both big businesses and new ventures.
Exploiting Chaos is a different type of business book in terms of design as well. The presentation is truly special. The author explains the reason for this:
Our reading habits have entirely changed in the last decade. Driven by media clutter and our shrinking attention spans, our world has become headline obsessed. Hence, this book is visual and action packed, offering two ways to read:
- Consume the content end-to-end.
- Just read the headlines on each page. They flow together and will help to spark your next big idea.
I read it from cover to cover, but believe that even good skim will have you reaching for a blank piece of paper and pen or a fresh Word document. Get yourself a copy of Exploiting Chaos. It could be the difference going forward.
Posted Sept. 14, 2009 7:23 a.m. by 800-ceo-read
You may have heard the cynical expression “There are no new ideas.” Well, David Kord Murray wouldn’t necessarily disagree with that sentiment, but he would argue that it isn’t such a bad thing either. In Borrowing Brilliance, he tells us that when Isaac Newton was accused of stealing the creation of calculus, Newton defended himself by saying, “Yes, in order to see farther, I have stood on the shoulders of giants.”
For a more contemporary example, Murray tells the following story:
Bill Gates had pulled off the business deal of the century. IBM would sell millions of PCs, each running MS-DOS, and each triggering a royalty check to Microsoft. Others would copy, or clone, IBM’s machine and they, too, would turn to Gates for his borrowed operating system … Gates had borrowed the code from Seattle Computer, which had borrowed it from Digital Research, and used it as a beachhead into the desktops of millions of computers, brilliantly solving the problem he had identified … The business deal of the century had made him the richest man in the world and for us is the perfect example of what I mean by the term borrowed brilliance.
Murray’s many intriguing examples also include the Google guys creating their Empire by using existing search engines to discover a pattern in the results that allowed them to ultimately create the algorithm that became the keystone to the Google search engine and Alexander Fleming’s discovery of penicillin based on the work of many other scientists. The glue that supports Murray’s theory and holds your interest throughout is these wide-ranging and well-told stories.
In Dan Pink’s great book, A Whole New Mind, he suggests that the primary worker in this new economy is the creative worker. And, to survive the innovation wave that is coming, the creative worker needs to become the creator of ideas—not just the manager of them. In Borrowing Brilliance, Murray demonstrates that these ideas can and should be inspired by the ideas of others, and lays out the tools you need to build on them.
Posted Sept. 14, 2009 4:17 a.m. by 800-ceo-read
Rick Smith starts The Leap by telling the story of how he went from co-writing a best selling book to being unemployed within a very short period of time. Unfortunately, this is a pretty common situation these days. While Smith had moderate success in his previous work, he considered himself a completely average person with no extraordinary skills. He decided to find out how people who had great success, but weren’t considered special or gifted at an early age, succeeded.
Through his research, Smith found out that these seemingly average Joes and Janes actually had some traits in common. In particular, these successful people have found their personal “sweet spot.” This is the place where their best ability intersects with what most inspires them.
Smith fills his book with inspiring stories of success. First, he tells the second half of his own story. Remembering the explosive growth of networking groups that he researched while working on his first book, The 5 Patterns of Extraordinary Careers, he starts a senior executive networking company called World 50 which blossoms in just a year.
We also meet Sara Blakely who created Spanx, a $250 million women’s clothing company. She was a successful salesperson of copiers who got very annoyed when she couldn’t find the right clothes, and so she decided to invent them.
Interspersed with the personal stories, Smith presents practical lessons about shaking up your career that you can take to the bank. For example, to break out of the “Now Trap” you need to confront these myths:
- To make a great change in your life, you must change who you are
- To make a great change in your life, you must go it alone
- To make a great change in your life, you must take a great risk
Smith goes on to show us a step-by-step process that we can follow to make our own personal leap toward success.
Over the past few months, we’ve recommended many books to help you through this current recession. The Leap might be just the book you need to spread your wings and take flight under your own power.
Posted Sept. 11, 2009 4:36 a.m. by 800-ceo-read
Imagine that you are in your doctor’s office complaining about an ache or pain and, to help her in her diagnosis, she asks you what activities you’ve engaged in lately. Did you lift something awkwardly or eat something odd two days ago? It can be tough to come up with truly accurate answers to those questions because, if you are like me, you are a busy person and have a hard time remembering what you did an hour ago! When you add age into the mix, it becomes doubly hard. Gordon Bell and Jim Gemmell present the answer to this problem in their book, Total Recall.
Gordon Bell, a preeminent computer scientist, and Jim Gemmell, his colleague at Microsoft, decided in the late 90’s to create a digital record of Bell’s past. That digital record would include all of his artifacts—high school yearbook, family memorabilia, emails, writings, and doctor records—going forward. This data would be stored offsite and access would be available on all his devices, from smart phone to desktop. The authors envision a “personal digital memory collection-and-management system that will (if you choose) be able to record just about everything you see, hear, and do and keep it all in one big virtual collection in the cloud. The uses of such an archive are limitless.”
The book’s chapters are laid out around the application of this data storage and retrieval system to your work, your health, your learning and your everyday life. Then they show you how to get started with your own digital record with step-by-step instructions. The final forty pages of the book are annotated references and other valuable resources.
Total Recall has really stuck with me and I find myself agreeing with the authors that this revolution could be life changing. “Biological memory is subjective, patchy, emotion-tinged, ego-filtered, impressionistic, and mutable,” they argue, while “Digital memory is objective, dispassionate, prosaic, and unforgivingly accurate.” Now imagine the efficiency of that next doctor’s visit.
