800-CEO-READ New Releases

Wikinomics

by Don Tapscott

(Penguin USA, 288 Pages)

In just the last few years, traditional collaboration?in a meeting room, a conference call, even a convention center?has been superseded by collaborations on an astronomical scale.

Today, encyclopedias, jetliners, operating systems, mutual funds, and many other items are being created by teams numbering in the thousands or even millions. While some leaders fear the heaving growth of these massive online communities, Wikinomics proves this fear is folly. Smart firms can harness collective capability and genius to spur innovation, growth, and success.

A brilliant guide to one of the most profound changes of our time, Wikinomics challenges our most deeply-rooted assumptions about business and will prove indispensable to anyone who wants to understand competitiveness in the twenty-first century.

Based on a $9 million research project led by bestselling author Don Tapscott, Wikinomics shows how masses of people can participate in the economy like never before. They are creating TV news stories, sequencing the human genome, remixing their favorite music, designing software, finding a cure for disease, editing school texts, inventing new cosmetics, or even building motorcycles. You'll read about:

• Rob McEwen, the Goldcorp, Inc. CEO who used open source tactics and an online competition to save his company and breathe new life into an old-fashioned industry.
• Flickr, Second Life, YouTube, and other thriving online communities that transcend social networking to pioneer a new form of collaborative production.
• Mature companies like Procter & Gamble that cultivate nimble, trust-based relationships with external collaborators to form vibrant business ecosystems.

An important look into the future, Wikinomics will be your road map for doing business in the twenty-first century.

Competing on Analytics

by Thomas H. Davenport, Jeanne G. Harris

(Harvard Business School Press, 240 Pages)

You have more information at hand about your business environment than ever before. But are you using it to "out-think" your rivals? If not, you may be missing out on a potent competitive tool.

In Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning , Thomas H. Davenport and Jeanne G. Harris argue that the frontier for using data to make decisions has shifted dramatically. Certain high-performing enterprises are now building their competitive strategies around data-driven insights that in turn generate impressive business results. Their secret weapon? Analytics: sophisticated quantitative and statistical analysis and predictive modeling.

Exemplars of analytics are using new tools to identify their most profitable customers and offer them the right price, to accelerate product innovation, to optimize supply chains, and to identify the true drivers of financial performance. A wealth of examples�from organizations as diverse as Amazon, Barclay�s, Capital One, Harrah�s, Procter & Gamble, Wachovia, and the Boston Red Sox�illuminate how to leverage the power of analytics.

Send

by David Shipley, Will Schwalbe

(Random House Inc, 256 Pages)

When should you email, and when should you call, fax, or just show up?

What is the crucial—and most often overlooked—line in an email?

What is the best strategy when you send (in anger or error) a potentially career-ending electronic bombshell?

Enter Send. Whether you email just a little or never stop, use a desktop or a handheld, here, at last, is an authoritative and delightful book that shows how to write the perfect email—at work, at school, or anywhere. Send also points out the numerous (but not always obvious) times when email can be the worst option and might land you in hot water (or even jail!).

The secret is, of course, to think before you click. Send is nothing short of a survival guide for the digital age—wise, brimming with good humor, and filled with helpful lessons from the authors’ own email experiences (and mistakes). In short: absolutely e-ssential.

IT And the East

by Bob Hayward, Partha Iyengar

(Perseus Distribution Services, 226 Pages)

The center of gravity in the technology world has shifted east. Today, India and China are churning out some of the world’s best-trained computer science and electrical engineering graduates. In both countries, consumer classes and domestic markets for technology have ballooned. Western high-tech firms are increasingly sourcing their products’ assembly from India and China and the innovation that drives those products. Meanwhile, indigenous Indian and Chinese companies are creating intellectual property and innovations that will compete with those same Western companies.

In IT and the East, James M. Popkin and Partha Iyengar examine the vital questions these developments raise: What’s the long-term impact of high-tech outsourcing? How will innovation be managed in the future? Can Western firms compete in Asian markets while protecting key intellectual property? Will the innovation engine inexorably shift east? What would such a shift mean for Western countries currently driving innovation? The authors also discuss the emerging alliances between Indian and Chinese technology companies and outline the implications for Western businesses.

Filled with extensive interviews with high-level executives, government officials, and academics from around the world, IT and the East is the first book to articulate the challenges that new business scenarios and capabilities in India and China pose for Western technology firms.

Bit Literacy

by Mark Hurst

(Good Experience Press, 192 Pages)

Bit Literacy is essential reading for anyone who has experienced "digital overload": the daily flood of e-mail, multiple todo lists, a cluttered desktop, documents in various file formats, and the constant distraction of cell phones and other devices. More than a quick fix or another "how-to" guide, the book offers an entirely new way of attaining productivity that users at any level of expertise can put into action right away. This is "bit literacy," a method for working more productively in the digital age, with less stress. Mark Hurst - who has reached hundreds of thousands of readers through his Good Experience e-mail newsletter, Uncle Mark technology guides, thisisbroken.com, and other websites - has revealed the way to survive, and thrive, in the digital age: "Let the bits go."

"Mark Hurst has written the indispensable guide to the digital era. Instead of a mere 'how-to' guide, Hurst shows what's really going on when we struggle with e-mail and to-do lists. For anyone who has ever used a computer, this will not just wildly increase their productivity (as it has for me!) - it'll also let their ideas fly."
- David Bodanis, author, E=mc² and Passionate Minds

"An informative and clear step-by-step guide on how to turn the ever-increasing avalanche of bits into a force that will propel your life and career."
- Tom Hughes, Chief Design Officer, Idealab

"Mark Hurst is the smartest person thinking about ways technology can make our lives easier rather than harder. If you're willing to give up some of your useless bytes for true knowledge and crowded RAM for zen clarity, then get bit-literate today."
- Douglas Rushkoff, author, Get Back in the Box

"A lot of people feel left out of the whole Internet and computer thing, but realize it could be really valuable for them. Bit Literacy provides the basic skills required for anyone to engage the wave of informational change."
- Craig Newmark, founder, craigslist.org

"Most of us learned how to deal with digital technology in piecemeal fashion. We developed habits that served us well for a time. But for the modern digital age, almost all of our habits are bad. In Bit Literacy, Mark Hurst provides brief, no-nonsense, clear, and unbelievably helpful advice on how to replace those bad habits with good ones. Take his advice and instead of being tyrannized by the overload that comes at you daily, you'll be liberated."
- Barry Schwartz, author, The Paradox of Choice

"The word 'empowerment' should be included in the subtitle of this book, as I believe reading it reduces the hypertension involved in our daily journey through the flotsam and jetsam of life. Bit Literacy helps make the complex clear."
- Richard Saul Wurman, author, Understanding USA

As the founder of Creative Good and Good Experience, and host of the renowned Gel conference (Good Experience Live), Hurst and his companies help organizations work more productively and create better customer experiences. Hurst holds bachelor's and master's degrees in computer science from MIT. He lives in New York City with his wife.

The Cult of the Amateur

by Andrew Keen

(Bantam Dell Pub Group, 240 Pages)

Amateur hour has arrived, and the audience is running the show.

In a hard-hitting and provocative polemic, Silicon Valley insider and pundit Andrew Keen exposes the grave consequences of today’s new participatory Web 2.0 and reveals how it threatens our values, economy, and ultimately the very innovation and creativity that forms the fabric of American achievement.

Our most valued cultural institutions, Keen warns—our professional newspapers, magazines, music, and movies—are being overtaken by an avalanche of amateur, user-generated free content. Advertising revenue is being siphoned off by free classified ads on sites like Craigslist; television networks are under attack from free user-generated programming on YouTube and the like; file-sharing and digital piracy have devastated the multibillion-dollar music business and threaten to undermine our movie industry. Worse, Keen claims, our “cut-and-paste” online culture—in which intellectual property is freely swapped, downloaded, remashed, and aggregated—threatens over 200 years of copyright protection and intellectual property rights, robbing artists, authors, journalists, musicians, editors, and producers of the fruits of their creative labors.

In today’s self-broadcasting culture, where amateurism is celebrated and anyone with an opinion, however ill-informed, can publish a blog, post a video on YouTube, or change an entry on Wikipedia, the distinction between trained expert and uninformed amateur becomes dangerously blurred. When anonymous bloggers and videographers, unconstrained by professional standards or editorial filters, can alter the public debate and manipulate public opinion, truth becomes a commodity to be bought, sold, packaged, and reinvented.

The very anonymity that the Web 2.0 offers calls into question the reliability of the information we receive and creates an environment in which sexual predators and identity thieves can roam free. While no Luddite—Keen pioneered several Internet startups himself—he urges us to consider the consequences of blindly supporting a culture that endorses plagiarism and piracy and that fundamentally weakens traditional media and creative institutions.

Offering concrete solutions on how we can reign in the free-wheeling, narcissistic atmosphere that pervades the Web, THE CULT OF THE AMATEUR is a wake-up call to each and every one of us.