Management and Strategy

Author: Michael Lewis

I had heard about this book a while back but after last years Wall Street Crash it was right time to read it. It took me a while to read it. It is not a very easy read. But I am glad I read it though.

Michael Lewis has shard story of Soloman Brothers and their collapse. Lewis illustrates how economic decisions made at the national level changed securities markets and made bonds the most lucrative game on the Street. His description of the firm’s personalities and of the events from 1984 through the crash of October 1987 are vivid and memorable.

It is a very good book to learn how Wall Street actually runs, what goes in mind of people at Wall Street. How investment backs make money etc…

It is fascinating to see how history repeats itself. You will read this book and think as if it was written after last years crash. This book is from 80’s.

It is a great read for anyone who wants to learn how mortgage securities market took off and how credit swaps came in play. Great book.

Author: Chip & Dan Heath

This is an awesome book. I was looking for book on storytelling this is an ideal book on that.

Made to Stick focuses on telling your story/message in a way that it sticks with the audience. Author focuses on very common themes like Simplicity, Unexpectedness, Concreteness, Credibility, Emotions, Stories to make the stories stick.

Book also has some good punch line which are good. The one I liked and remembered was “Avoid burying the lead. Don’t start with something interesting but irrelevant in hopes of entertaining the audience. Instead, work to make the core message itself more interesting.”

Other Good quotes:

• "And that’s the great thing about the world of ideas — any of us, with the right insight and the right message, can make an idea stick."
• "Becoming an expert in something means that we become more and more fascinated by nuance and complexity."
• "Abstraction is the luxury of the expert. If you’ve got to teach an idea to a room full of people, and you aren’t certain what they know, concreteness is the only safe language."

It is really great book to read. I will try to take authors class if I get a chance it is that good. Enjoy.

There are very few books or videos that really change your life. Last lecture is one that will really change your life. It is all about achieving your childhood dreams.  Randy is no more with us but he has left a legacy. Dream and Dream big and then work hard to achieve them. I had seen the lecture first and then I read this book. Book provides background on the lecture and Randy’s life. Was a great read. Actually some portions of book are really emotional. Great read I will highly recommend watching the lecture and reading the book.

[rating:5]

Author: Dan Roam

Amazingly easy read. You will learn something and will be able to use it in your work life next day. I actually started using some things from the book and the ideas really work.

This book is about visual thinking. In short how do you draw your ideas and how that helps you think about a problem and come up with solutions. Had 3 hour meeting today discussing about our product’s future. I thought this book gave me great ideas on how to think about things. Loved it…

Suggestion: Do not read it on Kindle which I did. Images are really horrible on Kindle. I had to borrow a copy from my friend to look at images.

Of course I will highly recommend this book to anyone.

Author: Malcolm Gladwell

This is a great read. I read it in 1 week. I have never read a book in that short period of time. This book is about Success…

Outliers says success follows a predictable course. It is not the brightest who succeed. Nor is success simply the sum of the decisions and efforts we make on our own behalf. It is rather a gift. Outliers are those who have been given opportunities and who have had the strength and presence of mind to seize them.

Great read and I highly recommend it to y’all.

Business Week has released its 10 best list of Innovation and Design books for Year 2008. I think it is a great list. I am already readying one on the list and will surely try out others. Enjoy the list. 

Aaron Gustafson

By Reena Jana and Matt Vella

This year, a number of the world’s experts released long-awaited books that augmented a bumper crop of texts on the subject of innovation. Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen, for example, published four books in 2008, while Procter & Gamble (PG) chief executive officer A.G. Lafley contributed a volume of tips on how to be innovative. Here we offer our list of the year’s 10 best reads—as in stimulating, practical, and well, inventive. The roster includes some well-known titles and a few surprises, presented in alphabetical order.

Best Innovation & Design Books of 2008: – BusinessWeek

Today while flying back from Dallas I picked up this book. I wanted to read something that I could finish in couple of hours and was valuable in business terms. This book turned out to be a real good one. There is some fluff in it but some content is real great. George has really done a great job of keeping it in around 100 pages and highlighting the key future strategies.

According to George the 5 key strategies to look forward to are

1. Supply Chain Gymnastics : Our infrastructure on west coast is crumbling and in future importing things from overseas through sea route may not be feasible. How can you react as business to this?
2. Sidestepping Economies of Scale: Bigger may not be always better. George talks about disposable factories. It is not a new concept, it is very common concept in project oriented industries where you setup small manufacturing operation on project site. 
3. Dynamic pricing: Ability to provide unique price to individual buyer. I have heard about this in past but George brought it home with a great example. Example he gave was of toll charges which change based on traffic patterns using RFID. It is being tested in Washington state.
4. Embracing complexity: Other way of putting this is increasing and accepting configurability of products. Every individual should be able to uniquely design the product he desires. Great example of this is MINI.
5. Infinite Bandwidth: Leveraging high speed Internet bandwidth to change business processes or even define new business models.

It is a good book and will highly recommend it to everyone. Enjoy

Businessweek also has another article predicting 10 things that may happen in 2008. Another good read and interesting stuff. Following is the list. Please read the detailed article by following the link below.

1. Green Crisis
2. Airline Consolidation Begins
3. Bloomberg’s Historic Run
4. Bye-bye, CDs
5. Facebook Fatigue
6. Finally, Internet TV
7. The Biggest Bribe Penalty Ever
8. Web Crash 2.0
9. Crude Oil Will Top $100
10. Big Brother Fears Return

Ten Likely Events in 2008

Author: Malcolm Gladwell

Tipping Point is my first book in couple of years. It is a great read and I will highly recommend it to everyone. Malcolm Gladwell talks about events and people that help make a major transformation. Tipping point is when a technology or product goes from being only for innovators to mass market. How does this happen? That is what Malcolm tries to find and his finding are really interesting.

He talks about Law of the few (Connectors, Mavens and Salesmen) and The Stickiness Factor and Power of Context.

Enjoy

“Satisfied customers are not enough as they can switch to competitors on first opportunity, We need customers who are raving fans”

 

Following are key takeaways… Three steps to creating Raving fans are

1. Decide what you want
2. Define a vision
   1. Discover what customers want
   2. Know what to ignore when they tell you what they want
   3. Know when to tell customers to take their needs to someone else
   4. Identify limits of your vision
   5. Your vision and customer’s vision should merge/fit.
   6. Listen to customers
      1. Customer’s say one thing and mean another. Listen to hidden meaning.
      2. No feedback is bad
      3. “Fine” is not good enough
3. Deliver vision plus 1 percent
   1. Consistency is key
   2. Focus on few thing and do them well every time
   3. Don’t drive expectation down, drive delivery up
   4. Exceed the expectations consistently
   5. Systems are key to consistency
   6. Systems are not rules. Rules create robots.
   7. Systems are pre determined way of achieving results
   8. Emphasis has to be on achieving results not following the system. 

Other key take away are:

• Track customers needs,
• Increase speed of delivery of service,
• Provide customers tools to help themselves,
• Provide suggestions to customers to help do their tasks better and quicker
• Differentiate yourself from others
• Be flexible and focus on results.

It is an interesting book. The way author narrates the story is a bit weird. It is a quick read. I was able to read it in couple of hours.