Chris's Blog

Business books for Xmas ?

1 in 4 books sold is a Christmas gift and whilst I'm not a huge fan of business books per se, I always try to find one to read over the holiday.

This year it's 'Getting Real'- about how a business developed a web application and went big in just two years with no outside funding, no debt, and only 7 people (distributed across 7 time zones). Over 500,000 people around the world now use these applications to get things done. Sound geeky?

Well, if you don't care for open source software, it's not a problem. The crux of this book is about keeping your business focus clear, development simple, actions fast and avoiding the inertia that is heaped on business process today if you want to succeed. And it's also about the power of word of mouth marketing.

I've heard good things about it.

Still unsure? Here are others I'd recommend: -

Wikinomics- how mass collaboration and the power of the internet is changing business.

Karaoke Capitalism- do you want your business to be a first rate version of itself, or a second rate version of someone else? Fresh ideas for sure.

Innocent by John Simmons-great story of the little drinks company that made it big by building a brand on nothing but fresh fruit, effective PR -and fresh thinking.

Typo-David Silverman's true account of how he bought a company, then made and lost £4 mill by not changing to survive!

Super Crunchers- how playing the numbers game in a world of 'too much data' can inform and improve business decisions- but don't write off intuition, or crunch the 'wrong numbers'!

(Click here for book reviews, postings and visible links)

'Shooting the puppy'

'Shooting the puppy', 'tanking', 'kicking a dead whale up the beach' or identifying the 'boggle factor'....

In a world littered with an increasing lexicon of business jargon, we have no desire to bamboozle clients with it ,or blind them with any sort of marketing gobbledegook.

As we've said before, clarity and succinctness are at the heart of good communication.

Now I see that a new book by Tony Thorne charts the creep of jargon into our everyday lives. 'Shoot the puppy' looks like a necessary handbook for de-coding much of the ubiquitous and ridiculous words and phrases we are now exposed to- at work or at large.

Management goes to the movies

There are many valid analogies between business and sport. Parallels made on strategy, leadership, team construction and game planning etc. And even historic and literary characters have made it onto the corporate bookshelves-doing it Shackletons Way, or consider Shakespeare’s role in modern business.

Now, four Italian management consultants have declared that if you want to succeed in business watch movies. They’ve just published a book called ‘Cinema for Managers’ listing 50 recommended films that they say ‘can teach rising executives about management techniques such as problem solving and team work, as well as issues such as globalisation and diversity’.

So should we leave the books at home this summer and pack Spielberg’s ‘Terminal’, Almodovar’s ‘Volver’, and the old seventies classic by Sidney Lumet “Murder on the Orient Express’- to name three?

Mmm…I think I’ll stick with Mike Brearley’s ‘Art of Captaincy’ and ‘The Last place on earth’ just in case, along with 'Field of Dreams' and 'Butch Cassidy' to watch on the laptop ;-)

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'Long tail' -wagging 'goodbye 80:20?'

The publication of Chris Anderson’s ‘The Long Tail’ seems to be the most talked about business book for a long time. This may be due to the fact that his hypothesis has incubated on the business circuit for some two years or more- ever since he articulated the theory in Wired magazine.

The books treatise is that popular culture will ultimately be transformed by the power of the Internet. As the internet becomes more pervasive and production and distribution costs decline, then the mainstream economy and culture will move from being dominated by a small number of ‘big hits’ to lots of smaller, specialist and even obscure niches which will be collectively as dominant. The book suggests this will also happen in other markets too. (Squidoo synopsis)

There is no doubt that the theory of the long tail could apply to entertainment and eCommerce in the longer term, but you have to be somewhat sceptical about its relevance in other markets.

Proponents of the theory argue that culture and commercial enterprises will ultimately be the beneficiaries. Statistically the number of web companies generating sales on the old 80/20 Pareto principle is falling. Companies like amazon and Ecast sell products a long way down the tail. They claim that when all these sales are added together, they are significant and highly profitable. And of course book sellers like amazon have sophisticated predictive software that which will analyse your past selections and therefore can lead niche buyers deeper into the tail.

But many of the mainstream media organisations disagree, as well they might. Murdoch’s News Corporation sees the theory as resentful rhetoric against their ‘mega hits’ machine and continuining success- they see Anderson simply taking a pop at what he refers to as ‘the tyranny of lowest-common-denominator fare’.

There is no doubt that the growth of web technologies; online social networks and low cost media production etc are starting to make an impact. Over the last few weeks statistics from Hitwise, Yahoo and Youtube indicate the tip of the US media iceberg maybe starting to melt, despite the ‘mega hit’ success of the Pirates of the Caribbean sequel.

It may take time, but the long tail may yet start to wag the dog.

I have half a mind to ....

Highly recommended light business read that The Sunday Times led me to is Daniel Pink's 'A whole new mind'. It suggests how we will have to unleash the creative power of the right side of the brain to compete and be successful in the emerging 'conceptual' economy. All sounds very high falutin', but his premise is that knowledge is now a commodity, and all of us working in the current 'knowledge economy' will have to connect creatively with the 'bigger picture' to win in the future. You could say hasn't this always been the case? Yes, but timing is everything and research indicates that the knowledge economy has created analysts of us all with well developed logical and rational left-brain thinking, at a time Pink thinks we need to switch to the right-hand side of the brain to succeed.

Food for thought. Wasn't it Albert Einstein who said

'I never came upon any of my discoveries through the process of rational thinking'?

Keen to understand which half dominates in my head I found this- take the test.