Book review

Philip Delves Broughton is the author of “What they teach you at Harvard business school”. Not to be confused with “What they don’t teach you at Harvard Business School by Mark McCormack. He wrote a book about sales. Selling I  have been searching for a book like this. Our clients regularly ask us to find

Adapt takes a long time to illustrate how random and complex things are.  Uses anecdotes and stories to make that point. From toasters, Iraq, global warming and takes a failed Gladwell approach to it. Lots of better books You could have read “Loose”, “Little Bets”, “Business exposed”, “The wide lens”, “Overconnected”, “Black Swan” and a

For a client, we are looking at the area of outreach and engagement, particularly with young people. We recommended, “Join the club”. The book is about how social pressure works and how “join the club” models can change behaviour. Examples and science The book combines lost of examples (tackling AIDS, anti-smoking, teenagers, promoting math, microlending,

A perfect storm is coming your way. “Smart customers, stupid companies” takes four trends and explains what it will mean to your business. The trends are connectivity (the internet of everything), digital sensors (imagine a world where sensors are embedded in everything you see), pervasive memory (everything is recorded, everything is data) and the impact

“The wide lens” is yet another book about innovation. We have covered a wide range of the books with our clients. “The Innovators DNA”, “Open Service Innovation”, “Demand”, “Creativity unlimited”, “Flash foresight”, etc.. Some are future babble, some focus on creativity, other focus on the execution. None has ever covered the innovation eco system. The

I regard myself as a bit of an expert on business planning. I even wrote a few books about it. Imaginative titles such as “Planning for success”, “TENbizplan”, “Business planning for the social economy” and the best-seller “Start your own business, a workbook”. Those titles no longer relevant With regret, I have concluded that my

This is a quote directly from “Megachange, the world in 2050”. Another future babble book in the same vein as “Everything we know is wrong”, “Future Files”, “Physics of the future”, “Future Minds” and “Flash foresight”. The book gives a perspective on a very interesting cocktail of trends. 2012 Written around 2012, but still current if

Gaming is the new black. It is also a source of innovation and engagement. It probably started with “The kids are all right”, which one of the first books we read about gaming and how it impacts business and the next generation of human capital. “Fun Inc.” explains the importance of the gaming industry and

Another book about leadership. When you read lots of business books, you get a bit jaundiced about the books that have nothing new to tell, rehash old themes, can be said in one page (or are a long drawn out version of an article in Harvard Business Review), are badly written, are badly researched (Collins)