Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim & Renee Mauborgne

Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim & Renee Mauborgne
“To search for a Blue Ocean” has become a Silicon Valley, West Coast cliché. I was resistant to read this one as a result.

But overt the summer, on the way to a fascinating course at the Singapore Insead school, I read it and learned a lot. It turns out that knowing businesses should seek less-crowded spaces in order to thrive and knowing some very practical ways to accomplish this are not the same thing at all. And this book is filled with case studies and some terrific, lightweight ways of ideating and measuring this topic.

I stole a few of the case studies here on how to graph the customer proposition relative to the competition, added a little bit of futurism borrowed from Kurzweil, and created a game I called Blue Ocean that a bunch of innovative thinkers and I used to spend some delightful hours on whiteboards. Over the last three months the result has been ten to fifteen entrepreneurial ideas which – while not all completely practical – are at least deeply innovative and have not been seen before in this world. That’s not an easy thing to do in the modern age, and I give a lot of credit to Kim and Mauborgne for clearly communicating a framework for how to think about competition and the open spaces where it may not exist.

Very useful and interesting book.

Mindset by Carol Dweck

Mindset by Carol Dweck
There are two ways of approaching a problem: The “fixed” mindset suggests that ability to succeed is implicit, fixed at birth or based on innate ability. The “growth” mindset suggests that people can succeed based on hard work, incremental improvements, training and perseverance.

Dweck argues that those who approach life and work with a growth mindset are more successful in the long run; they work harder even in the face of setbacks. They are also happier, she argues.

This notion is now somewhat ingrained in our culture (at least in North America high tech business culture.) But at the time she wrote it, in 2006, this was a novel way of framing the difference in perspective.

Primal Leadership by Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis, Annie McKee

Primal Leadership by Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis, Annie McKee
This trio addresses the role of Emotional Intelligence in leadership. There are some very useful discussions here on how to build organizations that grow leaders as a nearly automatic function of their structure and cultural values.

Sections on how to increase positivity as a cultural force in the workplace, how to grow leaders who grow more leaders, minimize control and pacesetting values are all valuable. A section on various different styles of leaderships and how they can be effectively employed in different situations was also valuable.

There’s a lot of practical advice here. (“Cultivating special relationships whose sole purpose is to help you along your path, is crucial to continuing development. Mentors and coaches help you understand your strengths…”) etc. Most of us is presented in an unadorned style that seldom gets in the way of the message.

Generally, this is a valuable book for leaders. I wish I had all of these lessons implanted on a microchip in my brain; as it is, it’s challenging to always stop and use them in the head of the moment.

Design Thinking for Strategic Innovation by Idris Mootee

Design Thinking for Strategic Innovation by Idris Mootee
I didn’t love this book.

The author had a half of a book here, very little of it fresh. And he stretched this lackluster content for 202 pages by publishing lots of poorly edited photos of boring business scenes, weak formatting, and excessive verbosity.

Consider, for example: “Within dynamic environments, foresight helps organizations better understand the variables influencing the pace, nature and possible impacts of change.” Well… Sure. But that’s hardly news. And the language is so tortured and poorly massaged that what little content there is here feels like it has been run through a Grad School Speak version of Google Translate.

Few of the ideas were wrong, and many of the little exercise suggestions in the book would be a good ice breaker at a strategic offsite… But that's about the best I can say.

Still, there were some good quotes in here from people like Warren Buffett.

The Leadership Challenge by James Kouzes & Barry Posner

The Leadership Challenge by James Kouzes & Barry Posner
Another Monicat gift, The Leadership Challenge is a sprawling 300+ pages on how to be a better leader. It covers topics like credibility, values, establishing a shared vision, how to empower others, how to encourage people to do their best, how to give feedback that is constructive, etc. There are a lot of very valuable lessons in this book, if nothing that feels particularly new. Still, anyone in a leadership role anywhere would likely be well served to pick this book up each morning, flip to a random page, then make sure they tried to follow the advice therein that day.

The Monk and the Riddle by Randy Komisar

Often mentioned by people who liked The Four Hour Work Week, or Vagabonding, I’d been meaning to read the Monk and the Riddle for a few years now. It’s business philosophy at its heart, though far less philosophical than the title might lead you to believe. In a rambling collection of Silicon Valley anecdotes, bookended by a couple of glimpses into various world travels Randy has enjoyed, Mr. Komisar advances the popular cliché that “It’s not the destination that matters, but the journey.” He digresses from this central theme for the majority of the book to name drop and wag about the ways of the Silicon Valley VC crowd, using a case study in misguided entrepreneurial spirit (Funerals.com) as an object lesson in why just chasing money isn’t likely to be very successful. At its best moments, the book discusses the difference between management (execution) and leadership (vision), and meanders around the importance of an inspiring vision to galvanize a company to greatness.

Interesting book, but somehow a lot less insightful or motivational than I expected, given the praise it has received. Had I just already learned all this through high-tech osmosis over the last decade?

Goes on the shelf between Tim Ferris and Jack Welsh, but isn’t as good as either.

The Negotiation Toolkit by Roger J. Volkema

Volkema’s book, subtitled “How to Get Exactly What You Want in Any Business or Personal Situation” was published in 1999 by the American Management Association. I picked it up after reading an excerpt from the book on the internet. Volkema seemed as if he had sufficient experience in the topic to be a valid source, and who couldn’t stand to be a better negotiater? The book is useful. In two hundred easy-to-follow pages it covers common negotiation strategies, how and when to best employ them, and how to counter them when used against you. Most of what’s here will already be familiar to veteran businesspeople or anyone who negotiates deals for a living. But formalizing some of these hard won lessons is definitely useful. I found myself remembering specific events or occasions in the past when I’d first learned whatever lesson Volkema was attempting to teach; suggesting that reading this book when it was first published might have given me a head start.

The book is well organized and useful, though much of the actual text of the “negotiation exercises” seems like filler. Still, as a foundation for a course in Business Basics or similar, this book would be quite valuable. And there are many folks I know who operate on a fairly high level who would benefit from reading through Volkema’s thoughts and practicing some of what’s contained herein.

How to Make Millions with Your Ideas by Dan S. Kennedy

Still on the quickly-getting-tired Business/Self-Help category we have Dan Kennedy's early nineties book on how to be a successful entrepreneur. Kennedy was highly involved in the mail-order, direct-to-consumer, and the early television info-mercial scene. He (apparently) made millions and has made millions of dollars for some of his clients by advising them on ways to build better businesses.

These could be summarized as:
- Find products and sell them.
- Make your business a service business in addition to its other functions.
- Use synergies between various businesses you control to get a multiplier effect.
- Market yourself and your business aggressively to get more customers; then sell these customers more stuff.

The book was vaguely useful, if occasionally smarmy. As part of a larger cross sampling of entrepreneurial case studies, there were a few tidbits here. In particular, a primer on how to get more money for a business you sell to a larger company was likely valuable. The end of the book also contains a (now very dated) list of various resources which could help you find products to sell, find customers to sell them to, deal with fulfillment, etc.

Not a waste of time, but... I couldn't help but feel like Dan Kennedy was just using ME, the reader, as yet another sucker he could toss off a quick book to and make a few bucks. The coupon at the end of the book for a PERSONAL PRODUCT REVIEW WITH DAN KENNEDY... Not sure the infomercial market is for me... Still, interesting as part of a larger study.