Open Business Models: How to Thrive in the New Innovation Landscape
Henry Chesbrough
An attempt to categorically define a "new" landscape that goes way to far in its base assumptions about "open" and then has trouble dealing with enough of reality.
The Strategy Paradox: Why committing to success leads to failure (and what to do about it)
Michael E. Raynor
A forced effort it seemed from a disciple of clayton christiansen... I found little value in it at all even after hearing the author present his mental model. It didn't seem to explain very much at all - as in the applicability was only of exceptions not norms or even emerging trends.
Leading the Revolution: How to Thrive in Turbulent Times by Making Innovation a Way of Life
Gary Hamel
Very insightful... One of many 90s pundits whose time came when the world went looking for some new answers and went looking for pundits and new methodologies
Visionary's Handbook : Nine Paradoxes That Will Shape the Future of Your Business
Watts Wacker and Jim Taylor
Wonderful writers that stretch the mind about business... Jim Taylor leveraged his role in using cows as the emblem for Gateway but as Gateway crashed his innovation no longer seemed that monumental. Exceptionally engaging speaker.... The piece requires an update.
The Art of the Start
Guy Kawasaki
Superb book about practical business sense organized as a simple easy-to-understand flip thru. Outstanding for those creating or investing in start-ups
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.
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.
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...
Chief Culture Officer: How to Create a Living, Breathing Corporation
Grant McCracken
Grant - one of our favorite authors -- offers that with the pace of change in society companies must have a deep working knowledge of culture to guide their decision making.
Chemistry
Stone Yamashita Partners
How change occurs in enterprises
In Search of Excellence
Thomas J. Peters & robert H. Waterman Jr.
World famous consultant begins his career as sage on change.
Living On The Fault Line
Terry Pearce
Outsourcing. why, what and how
Reengineering The Corporation
Michael Hammer & James Champy
Heroes of the 1990's -- later the "reengineering" bug wore off but the tenets of the book were dead-on accurate.
Slack
Tom DeMarco
Tom DeMarco gets a change in the enterprise and about creating necessary pre-conditions
Unstuck: A Tool for Yourself, Your Team and Your World
Keith Yamashita and Sandra Spataro
Identifying points when change is required in companies and how to implement
Mavericks at Work: Why the Most Original Minds in Business Win
by William C. Taylor, Polly G. LaBarre
Most anytime I have read something by Polly Labare or associated with Bill Taylor I come out refreshed and inspired and am more open to considering how our business can work better and better everyday... An especially important message is that people matter most of all...
Innovation and Entrepreneurship
Peter F Drucker
One of the best thinkers walks thru "innovation"