Book Topic: Cultural Commentary

A River Sutra
Gita Mehta
Rec from Terry Pearce Comment: I find eastern-based novels helpful in expanding my sense of the world as holistic.. I keep a steady diet since linear thinking doesn't seem to get us very far at all and will likely be further discredited during the next two decades

A Visionary Nation
Zachary Karabell
Six stages of change as well as a look at the next change…

As the Future Catches You
Juan Enriquez
Unwanted consequences of the rapid damaging pace of change thru society

Being Digital
Nicholas Negroponte
What is reeeaaallly going on in society with the technological changes and Internet visions… high profile mid 90s read

Cat's Cradle
Kurt Vonnegut
Outside of breakfast of champions which is at an indescribably high level in my pecking order every other Vonnegut book is better than the next. If I had any writing ability I would want to be able to write like Kurt Vonnegut. In this novel a biographer of the man who "invented" the atom bomb winds his way to a fictional banana republic loaded with a concocted religion. Great fun

Culture And Consumption II: Markets, Meaning, And Brand Management
Grant McCracken
Superb. Immediate insights about what goes on with humans as we make decisions on consumption. Readily apparent that Grant could speak to what it is to be human without ever stopping and why smart companies hire him to help

Got Game: How the Gamer Generation Is Reshaping Business Forever
John C. Beck, Mitchell Wade
While we are big big proponents that the digital natives raised in the computer age are fundamentally different in many ways than the analogists we don't attribute it directly to gaming at all. The authors more so than not do however.

Faster
James Gleick
Why has decision making condensed and will the pace ever reverse? Has strategy been replaced forever by tactics?

Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner 
A pleasant ride thru several stories but without a specific abstract to apply broadly. The stories are surprising and hence make a good pop book. There is no particular takeaway to apply to other situations outside of "think thru issues" and not fall prey to "conventional thinking". Seems confused at times between attempting holistical thinking and determining direct causality thru use of correlated statistics.

High Tech High Touch
Nana Naisbitt and Douglas Philips
How technology changes society? Longitude Dava Sobel A superb and fascinating account of the race to solve the puzzle of calculating longitude during the 1600-1700s… applicable to our change framework -- its all there

In the Country of Men
Hisham Matar
A novel about a nine year old boy in Libya in 1979, whose father becomes entangled in an extremely adverse political situation. A serious, short read.

Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman 
Yvon Chouinard
When my editor Duff suggested I read this one it went near the top of the list for a while but never got read. Perhaps it sounded like a vacation and that I 'should' be pressing my learning harder. Well, after the fact I found little that was new to me conceptually since I think of issues of best practices, holistic business development (which is what Coburn Ventures is aiming at in tech meets investing) and environmmentalism. So the ideas weren't new...What was very valuable and inspiring was to listen to the story of a someone so committed to creating a business that actually works hard at working for all. I don't know the founders (yet) but I feel a kinship with them and hearing their entire story and their ideas and inventiveness and persistence to create a great company helps in knowing we aren't so alone in our pursuits. There are people everywhere looking to create great results. 'Business' has developed a very bad name - it doesn't have to be that way...

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
by John Berendt
The last two paragraphs said it best in suggesting that Savannah (which we recently visited and where the story is set) is happy to remain isolated from the world protecting a way of life that seems to work well for them.

Never Eat Alone
Keith Ferrazzi
Keith masterfully suggests how to become a supernode and make a difference in the world at the same time -- he makes it clear that the two are inseparable

Night
Elie Wiesel
This book is much to powerful for me to put words to. This is Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel's personal experience of being forced into a Nazi concentration camp in 1944.

One Billion Customers : Lessons from the Front Lines of Doing Business in China
James McGregor
A clear, simple, effective and interesting survey course in doing business in china.

Purplecow
Seth Godin
Remarkable book that stresses making remarkable and only remarkable products in order to compete… an anti-me-too discussion

Success Built to Last: Creating a Life that Matters
Jerry Porras, Stewart Emery, Mark Thompson
Easy to find ten practical reminders that help achieve results that matter to you.

The 500 Year Delta
Watts Wacker & Jim Taylor with Howard Means
Technology's change on society -- superb; Jim Taylor is one of the best speakers you'll ever hear as well

The Clash of Civilizations
Samuel Huntington
Superb and simple read on assessing the on going role of cultural fault lines in the continual reshaping of the planets people.

The Clock of the Long Now
Stewart Brand
How long is the period "now"? Some cultures think of "now" as 150 years and make decisions as such… ours doesn't

The Cluetrain Manifesto
Rick Levine, Christopher Locke, Doc Searls, and David Weinberger
The "communication revolution" isn't about the tools but rather how a new generation is using the tools and how enterprises are being flattened

The Creating Brain : The Neuroscience of Genius
Nancy C. Andreasen
  A breakdown of commonalities found among creative geniuses from a wide variety of fields as well as a direction guide on how to nourish the next generation. Doesn't answer "where does creativity come from?" But useful in stimulating my brain about such and thinking how I am nurturing my own brain every day

The Culture Code
Clotaire Rapaille
Absolutely outstanding. I can see why he is much in demand. What his "codes" do is allow me to see much more clearly many base ideas from which humans of different culture make decisions. Certainly on of the five most useful books I have read in the past year

The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight
Thom Hartmann
The damage being created as fossil fuel supplies are used and are eventually extinguished

Trading Up: Why Consumers Want New Luxury Goods... And How Companies Create Them 
by Michael Silverstein, Neil Fiske, and John Butman
An excellent read about the elements that allow entrepreneurs to take advantage of americans desire to trade up for certain brands and products. The book does little in addressing the sources of this cultural situation. Case studies include Samuel Adams brewery, Callaway, BMW, Belvedere Vodka, Victoris's Secret, Panera Bread and more. Very very helpful book.

Laws of Simplicity
John Maeda
Nice short piece quite consistent with the idea of simplicity itself. I would have loved to have more of his thinking though -- sometimes in takes a while to expand and think thru long and hard before seeing how to break an idea down. My mere two hours to complete left me wanting more.and more.

The Lexus and the Olive Tree
Thomas L. Friedman
Superb superb piece on globalization

The Loyalty Effect: The Hidden Force Behind Growth, Profits, and Lasting Value
Frederick F. Reichheld
This is a classic of the loyalty crowd... Written in 1996. The basic message is that it is important for business success to include continuity of employees, investors and clients. While it is clear thru reading these pages and having lived during the past ten years that few companies are operating as if their organization would reeeeaaallly be around in a few years and forced to clean up any mess currently being created.... At the same time I think the author is really talking about "continuity" as opposed to "loyalty" --- a discussion of the difference between the two might have been valuable for the author to lead.

The One to One Future
Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, PH.D.
Though the one-on-one world did not happen anywhere close to the pace the writers suggested -- and still hasn't -- it is a great piece getting at the heart of a key change in marketing

The Three Tensions: Winning the Struggle to Perform Without Compromise
Dominic Dodd and Ken Favaro
The authors early on highlight three tensions that exist for all managers: profit v growth, today v tomorrow and the whole v parts... But unless this book really catches on the status quo will continue as the three tensions are pretty obvious to all managers. The best point: you don't have to think either/or... Challenge: advice on how to think "both" instead of either/or was scant

The World is Flat
Thomas Friedman
Since I have been living in the world Tom Friedman describes little was knew BUT it did reinforce that I can help my kids a ton by getting them lots of experiences around the globe. Felt good to have a Thai au pair teaching us her culture. Glad to have had three people who speak chinese on my teams.

Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Fight Terrorism and Build Nations ... One School at a Time by: Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin Greg
Mortenson has created change one might think inconceivable -- an American goes to Himalayan Mountains in Pakistan and builds 50+ schools in remote villages. Amazing and inspiring book.