The World is Flat: The Globalised World in the Twenty-First Century, Thomas Friedman
Also known as The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century Friedman’s award-winning book examines what he calls the ‘flattening’ of the world levelling the playing field. It was inspired by a trip to Bangalore, when Friedman realised globalisation had changed economic concepts.
Ten ‘flatteners’ Friedman identified include: The fall of the Berlin Wall, which led to economic growth at a time when Windows-based PC were enabling people to create their own content and connect to one another; the rise of Netscape, which results in Internet access being readily available to many more people than in previously had been; and The Steroids, which includes elements such as wireless, VoIP and file-sharing.
Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers, Geoffrey A. Moore
Described by Stanford Technology Ventures Program’s Tom Byers as, ‘the bible for entrepreneurial marketing’, Moore’s book examines the benefits of marketing high tech products during the start-up phase, and the benefits of doing so.
The chasm referred to by Moore is that point in the technology adoption lifecycle when a product makes the leap from ‘innovators’ and ‘early adopters’ to the ‘early majority’. Moore argues this is the most difficult leap to make, and the key is to take one group of customers at a time: innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority and laggards.
The Soul of a New Machine, Tracy Kidder
Kidder’s book chronicles Data General Corporation’s efforts to create a new 32-bit minicomputer to compete with great rival Digital Equipment Corp. Codenamed ‘Fountainhead’ the project was held up by bureaucracy and a need to do everything by the book. Eventually a skunkworks project (an almost unofficial secondary project that is much less bureaucratic) codenamed ‘Eagle’ won the design race and the product was released as the Data General Eclipse MV/8000.
The book examines the risks taken by DG in order to get the product released on time, such as hiring college graduates and installing a hard and fast work ethic. One of the more interesting points the book makes is around the idea of innovations being started down at engineering level, rather than being pushed down from management at the top.
The Two-Second Advantage: How We Succeed by Anticipating the Future – Just Enough, Vivek Ranadive and Kevin Maney
Tibco founder Ranadive has produced a number of books on the subject of gaining an advantage in the business space. His first effort, The Power of Now: How Winning Companies Sense and Respond to Change Using Real-time Technology, was released in 1999 and he followed that up in 2006 with The Power to Predict. His latest book is called The Two-Second Advantage, which is about, "being more effective," he told CBR a while back. "The two second advantage really means that a little bit of the right information before hand can be more valuable than all the information in the world six months later."
The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail, Clayton Christensen
A lot of books in this field focus on what you should do in the early days of your business. But what about if your company is already well established but needs fresh ideas to stop from falling behind new, more innovative competitors? Christensen takes the disk drive industry as a prime example of how disruptive technologies (or innovations as he calls them) presented a challenge to the established giants of the industry.
He essentially argues that a shift in culture is needed to ensure companies actually focus on innovation, rather than resting on their laurels by slowly improving current products.
Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy, Carl Shapiro and Hal Varian
"Many of today’s managers are so focused on the trees of technological change that they fail to see the forest: the underlying economic forces that determine success and failure," states Information Rules, which examines how easy it is to take your eyes off the prize as a result of technological advances.
Although it is quite an old book (it describes Netscape as ‘fundamentally vulnerable’ because of the dominance of Windows and the authors claim ‘We’re not sure exactly how software for viewing Web pages will evolve’) but many of the themes and messages have stood the test of time. As one review puts it: "Information Rules belongs on the bookshelf of anyone who has an interest in today’s network economy – entrepreneurs, managers, investors, students. If there was ever a textbook written on how to do business in the information age, this book is it."
Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams
Tapscott and Williams explore the idea that many companies are using mass collaboration and open source technologies such as Wikis to generate success, revolving around four ideas: Openness, Peering, Sharing, and Acting Globally.
It also pushes heavily the idea of crowdsourcing – opening up aspects of the business to mass collaboration, whether its workers, customers or just about anyone with an interest. To do this companies have to take advantage of aspects of Web 2.0 such as blogs and wikis. It is, as one reviewer says, "dizzyingly fascinating," for those who want to know more about the way the Internet changed and is still changing the world of business.
Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell
Not so much a business strategy guide as a guide to success, Outliers chronicles what it takes to succeed in a variety of industries. It does include aspects of luck – such as how being born in the early part of the year greatly increases your chances of success in the Canadian ice hockey world – to the 10,000 hour rule. Gladwell suggests that both the Beatles – when they were in Hamburg – and Bill Gates – when he was given access to a computer at the age of 13 – meet this criteria, amassing over 10,000 hours of practice perfecting their art.
The Art of War, Sun Tzu
OK, this one may be a bit of a tongue-in-cheek entry. It is perhaps more suited to the sales pitch but any executive looking for a memorable sound bite to rally the workers (or troops…) will find plenty on offer in this ancient Chinese military treatise. Some choice quotes include: Opportunities multiply as they are seized; Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat; Management of many is the same as management of few. It is a matter of organisation; A skilled commander seeks victory from the situation and does not demand it of his subordinates.
PCs For Dummies, Windows 7 Edition, Dan Gookin
Starting right at the bottom? Probably best to have a read of this one first…
