Reading List for Dec-14

Lots of holidays in December and I want to make best use of it. So, I've a rather ambitious plan for December.

Product Strategy for High Technology Companies - Michael McGrath

This is one of the "must read" books for senior managers in my organization and I thought of reading and understanding the two critical components taught in the book - Core Strategic Vision (CSV) and Market Platform Plan (MPP).

This is a guide that continues to be the only book on product strategy written specifically for the 21st century high-tech industry. More than 250 examples from technological leaders including IBM, Compaq, and Apple—plus a new focus on growth strategies and on Internet businesses—define how high-tech companies can use product strategy and product platform strategy for competitiveness, profitability, and growth in the Internet age.



Profit from the Core: A return to Growth in Turbulent Times - Chris Zook

This is another "must read" in my organization.

In a new economic environment, where should executives look for the next wave of profitable growth? How can executives make the right choices for their businesses, even when faced with a new and different set of opportunities and challenges today? Achieving sustained and profitable growth is extremely difficult in any economy. But as the economy recovers and returns to a path of growth, building from a strong and differentiated core is even more critical now than ever. In this updated edition of "Profit from the Core", strategy expert Chris Zook shows that the most enduring growth pattern builds from a strong or dominant core business that benefits from continual reinvestment, constant adaptation to circumstances or business environment and persistent leveraging into new markets or geographies, applications or channels. In particular, Zook shows senior executives and their management teams how to rebuild the core business by following these four crucial steps: define the core business; identify the sources of differentiation that will continue to create market power and influence over customers, competitors and the industry profit pool; assess whether the core is operating at or near its full potential; and, use a strong core as a platform for expanding into adjacencies. Based on over ten years of Bain & Company research and analysis and fully updated with new research data and examples reflecting today's unique challenges, "Profit from the Core" is the bible for achieving profitable growth

Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work - Chip and Dan Heath
Chip and Dan Heath, the bestselling authors of Switch and Made to Stick, tackle one of the most critical topics in our work and personal lives: how to make better decisions.

 In Decisive, the Heaths, based on an exhaustive study of the decision-making literature, introduce a four-step process designed to counteract these biases. Written in an engaging and compulsively readable style, Decisive takes readers on an unforgettable journey, from a rock star’s ingenious decision-making trick to a CEO’s disastrous acquisition, to a single question that can often resolve thorny personal decisions.




Seeking Wisdom: From Darwin to Munger - Peter Bevelin
Seeking Wisdom is the result of Bevelin's learning about attaining wisdom. His quest for wisdom originated partly from making mistakes himself and observing those of others but also from the philosophy of super-investor and Berkshire Hathaway Vice Chairman Charles Munger. A man whose simplicity and clarity of thought was unequal to anything Bevelin had seen. In addition to naturalist Charles Darwin and Munger, Bevelin cites an encyclopedic range of thinkers: from first-century BCE Roman poet Publius Terentius to Mark Twain-from Albert Einstein to Richard Feynman-from 16th Century French essayist Michel de Montaigne to Berkshire Hathaway Chairman Warren Buffett. In the book, he describes ideas and research findings from many different fields. This book is for those who love the constant search for knowledge. It is in the spirit of Charles Munger, who says, "All I want to know is where I'm going to die so I'll never go there." There are roads that lead to unhappiness. An understanding of how and why we can "die" should help us avoid them. We can't eliminate mistakes, but we can prevent those that can really hurt us. Using exemplars of clear thinking and attained wisdom, Bevelin focuses on how our thoughts are influenced, why we make misjudgments and tools to improve our thinking. Bevelin tackles such eternal questions as: Why do we behave like we do? What do we want out of life? What interferes with our goals? Read and study this wonderful multidisciplinary exploration of wisdom. It may change the way you think and act in business and in life.

Dare to Run - Amit Sheth
I've been a runner now for 2 years. The frequent breaks that I take after training continuously for 5-6months, is not helping me to move to next level (whatever that is). I restarted my training 2 weeks ago and was looking for some inspiration and ran into this book by an accomplished runner and I was not disappointed.

Dare to run is the inspiring story of Amit and Neepa Sheth, a husband-wife duo who took up running as a sport in their late 30s. In this collection of essays written over five years, Amit, a self acclaimed couch potato takes us long with him on an incredible journey of determination, discovery, courage, self-awareness and self-belief. He takes us with him from his first, almost fatal, 200 meter jog on a beach in Mumbai, to the finish line of The Ultimate Human Race: the 89 km Comrades Ultra Marathon in South Africa. Along the way, Amit uses a combination of poetry, philosophy and scriptures to explain his unique perspective on life, religion, spirituality and running. This is a book not just about running but about the need to relentlessly follow your dreams and passions, no matter what they may be. It is a book which encourages you to be the best you can be in all walks of life while at the same time maintaining a certain sense of balance and appreciation for the beauty of existence. It encourages you to enjoy the gift of life to its fullest.

Reading List for Nov-13

The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon - Brad Stone

Amazon.com started off delivering books through the mail. But its visionary founder, Jeff Bezos, wasn't content with being a bookseller. He wanted Amazon to become the everything store, offering limitless selection and seductive convenience at disruptively low prices. To achieve that end, he developed a corporate culture of relentless ambition
and secrecy that's never been cracked. Until now...

Brad Stone enjoyed unprecedented access to current and former Amazon employees and Bezos family members, giving readers the first in-depth, fly-on-the-wall account of life at Amazon. Compared to tech's other elite innovators - Jobs, Gates, Zuckerberg - Bezos is a private man. But he stands out for his restless pursuit of new markets, leading Amazon into risky new ventures like the Kindle and cloud computing, and transforming retail in the same way Henry Ford revolutionized manufacturing.

THE EVERYTHING STORE is the revealing, definitive biography of the company that placed one of the first and largest bets on the Internet and forever changed the way we shop and read.

Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence - Daniel Goleman

For more than two decades, psychologist and journalist Daniel Goleman has been scouting the leading edge of the human sciences for what’s new, surprising, and important. In Focus, he delves into the science of attention in all its varieties, presenting a long overdue discussion of this little-noticed and under-rated mental asset that matters enormously for how we navigate life.

Goleman boils down attention research into a three parts: inner, other, and outer focus. Goleman shows why high-achievers need all three kinds of focus, as demonstrated by rich case studies from fields as diverse as competitive sports, education, the arts, and business. Those who excel rely on what Goleman calls Smart Practices such as mindfulness meditation, focused preparation and recovery, positive emotions and connections, and mental 'prosthetics' that help them improve habits, add new skills, and sustain excellence. Combining cutting-edge research with practical findings, Focus reveals what distinguishes experts from amateurs and stars from average performers.

Reading List for Oct-13

Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness - Richard Thaler

Nudge is about choices—how we make them and how we can make better ones. Drawing on decades of research in the fields of behavioral science and economics, authors Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein offer a new perspective on preventing the countless mistakes we make—ill-advised personal investments, consumption of unhealthy foods, neglect of our natural resources—and show us how sensible “choice architecture” can successfully nudge people toward the best decisions. In the tradition of The Tipping Point and Freakonomics, Nudge is straightforward, informative, and entertaining—a must-read for anyone interested in our individual and collective well-being.

 
Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions - Dan Ariely

Irrational behavior is a part of human nature, but as MIT professor Ariely has discovered in 20 years of researching behavioral economics, people tend to behave irrationally in a predictable fashion. Drawing on psychology and economics, behavioral economics can show us why cautious people make poor decisions about sex when aroused, why patients get greater relief from a more expensive drug over its cheaper counterpart and why honest people may steal office supplies or communal food, but not money. According to Ariely, our understanding of economics, now based on the assumption of a rational subject, should, in fact, be based on our systematic, unsurprising irrationality. Ariely argues that greater understanding of previously ignored or misunderstood forces (emotions, relativity and social norms) that influence our economic behavior brings a variety of opportunities for reexamining individual motivation and consumer choice, as well as economic and educational policy. Ariely's intelligent, exuberant style and thought-provoking arguments make for a fascinating, eye-opening read.

Reading list for Sep-13

Insanely Simple: The Obsession That Drives Apple's Success - Ken Segall

To Steve Jobs, Simplicity wasn't just a design principle. It was a religion and a weapon. The obsession with Simplicity is what separates Apple from other technology companies. It's what helped Apple recover from near death in 1997 to become the most valuable company on Earth in 2011, and guides the way Apple is organized, how it designs products, and how it connects with customers. It's by crushing the forces of Complexity that the company remains on its stellar trajectory.

As creative director, Ken Segall played a key role in Apple's resurrection, helping to create such critical campaigns as 'Think Different' and naming the iMac. Insanely Simple is his insider's view of Jobs' world. It reveals the ten elements of Simplicity that have driven Apple's success - which you can use to propel your own organisation. Reading Insanely Simple, you'll be a fly on the wall inside a conference room with Steve Jobs, and on the receiving end of his midnight phone calls. You'll understand how his obsession with Simplicity helped Apple perform better and faster.


A Compass to Fulfillment:  Passion and Spirituality in Life and Business - Kazuo Inamori

I was fortune enough to work in one of the group companies of Kyocera, founded by Inamori-san and therefore have been under his influence.

Kazuo Inamori, founder of Kyocera and KDDI, weavestogether his Buddhist faith and personal experience tocreate a life/business philosophy based on the simplest but most profound of human concepts: do the right thing,always. Inamori credits his and his companies’ extraordinary success to the daily practice of this timeless truth.
In A Compass to Fulfillment, the author helps you develop your own personal philosophy for success by:

• Recognizing your deepest desires and using them to create a better reality
• Informing all decisions with simple truths and principles
• Elevating your mind and practicing humility
• Living your life steered by an attitude of selfless service
• Controlling the trajectory of your life by accepting the“will of the universe”

A Compass to Fulfillment is about strategic thinking, butnot in the sense of business and management technicalities.It is about, first, understanding yourself, and then using that knowledge to get to the point you want to be—in your career, in your business, and in your life.

Reading list for Aug-13

Necessary But Not Sufficient - Eliyahu Goldratt

ToC applied to Technology! This book is not as engaging as Goldratt's other books like Goal, but nevertheless the ToC is now applied in a high tech context. Introduces you to some interesting concepts like Drum-Buffer-Rope, Buffer Management and Pull Inventory.







 Better Than Good - Zig Ziglar

Recognized as the motivational genius of our times, Zig Ziglar, makes you feel good— not complacent or pampered—but good about your possibilities. “Better than good” means taking your life beyond where it is by cultivating passion, especially about serving others. His aphorisms, stories, and historical clips are priceless, each one having exactly the right punch and momentum to illuminate his points and excite his listeners.






Hypnotizing Maria - Richard Bach

 Another classic from Richard Bach. Flight instructor Jamie Forbes guides a woman to landing her plane safely after her husband loses consciousness, then flies on to his own destination unimpressed by his act...flight instructors guide students every day. Only after she tells reporters that a stranger appeared in an airplane alongside hers and hypnotized her into landing, and after he meets his own guiding stranger does he solve the bigger mystery: how each of us creates, step by step, what seems to be the solid world around us. The best mysteries are the ones whose answers lie in front of us, in plain sight. The best solutions are those moments when all of a sudden we realize what we've known all along.

Readling list for Jul-13

Its Not the Big that Eat the Small .. Its the Fast that Eat the Small

Conventional wisdom once told us big companies are unbeatable... and eat smaller competitors for breakfast.

Not anymore. These days It's Not the Big that Eat the Small... It's the FAST that Eat the Slow!

Jason Jennings and Laurence Haughton discovered what separates today's icons of speed from everybody else.

 

How Will You Measure Your Life

From the world’s leading thinker on innovation and New York Times bestselling author of The Innovator’s Dilemma, Clayton M. Christensen, comes an unconventional book of inspiration and wisdom for achieving a fulfilling life.  Christensen turns his considerable intellect and experience to perhaps the most fundamental question of all -- why are we here and how do we know we are making a difference. The book is exceptional in its combination of deep feeling that is personal and experiential alongside deeper thought and business experience.

Like the Flowing River

 Another master piece from Paulo Coelho. 

In this riveting collection of thoughts and stories, Paulo Coelho, the author of ‘The Alchemist’, offers his personal reflections on a wide range of subjects from archery and music to elegance, traveling and the nature of good and evil.
An old woman explains to her grandson how a mere pencil can show him the path to happiness…instructions on how to climb a mountain reveal the secret to making your dreams a reality…the story of Ghengis Khan and the Falcon that teaches about the folly of anger – and the art of friendship…a pianist who performs an example in fulfilling your destiny…the author learns three important lessons when he goes to the rescue of a man in the street – Paulo shows us how life has lessons for us in the greatest, smallest and most unusual of experiences.
‘Like the Flowing River’ includes jewel-like fables, packed with meaning and retold in Coelho's inimitable style. Sharing his thoughts on spirituality, life and ethics, Paulo touches you with his philosophy and invites you to go on an exciting journey of your own.

 

 

Reading List for Jun-13

8 Steps to Innovation
This is a book by a very close friend and my guide/philosopher for years, Vinay Dabholkar (along with Prof. Rishi Krishnan of IIM-B) and they present a guide to systematic, as opposed to incidental, ad-hoc innovation. I had privilege of going over the manuscripts a while ago as and when they were developed, but now I'm reading with an intention of running an Innovation Campaign in my team.

Innovation need not only be jugaad. For the first time a book shows us how in India, innovation can be introduced in one’s organization in a systematic, deliberate way.

8 Steps to Innovation explains how you can do this by building an idea pipeline in your organization, improving the velocity of ideas coming in, and implementing the ideas within the given constraints. All this is shown through nice, snappy examples, mostly homegrown Indian ones. Few books in the market talk about innovation in the Indian context with Indian examples as this one does.

More articles by the authors on the subject of innovation can be found here.



Bounce: The Myth of Talent and the Power of Practice


Syed, sportswriter and columnist for the London Times, takes a hard look at performance psychology, heavily influenced by his own ego-damaging but fruitful epiphany. At the age of 24, Syed became the #1 British table tennis player, an achievement he initially attributed to his superior speed and agility. But in retrospect, he realizes that a combination of advantages—a mentor, good facilities nearby, and lots of time to hone his skills—set him up perfectly to become a star performer. He admits his argument owes a debt to Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers, but he aims to move one step beyond it, drawing on cognitive neuroscience research to explain how the body and mind are transformed by specialized practice. He takes on the myth of the child prodigy, emphasizing that Mozart, the Williams sisters, Tiger Woods, and Susan Polgar, the first female grandmaster, all had live-in coaches in the form of supportive parents who put them through a ton of early practice. Cogent discussions of the neuroscience of competition, including the placebo effect of irrational optimism, self-doubt, and superstitions, all lend credence to a compelling narrative; readers who gobbled up Freakonomics and Predictably Irrational will flock to this one.

 

Reading List for May-13

The Icarus Deception

In Seth Godin’s most inspiring book, he challenges readers to find the courage to treat their work as a form of art

 

Everyone knows that Icarus’s father made him wings and told him not to fly too close to the sun; he ignored the warning and plunged to his doom. The lesson: Play it safe. Listen to the experts. It was the perfect propaganda for the industrial economy. What boss wouldn’t want employees to believe that obedience and conformity are the keys to success?

 

But we tend to forget that Icarus was also warned not to fly too low, because seawater would ruin the lift in his wings. Flying too low is even more dangerous than flying too high, because it feels deceptively safe.

 

The safety zone has moved. Conformity no longer leads to comfort. But the good news is that creativity is scarce and more valuable than ever. So is choosing to do something unpredictable and brave: Make art. Being an artist isn’t a genetic disposition or a specific talent. It’s an attitude we can all adopt. It’s a hunger to seize new ground, make connections, and work without a map. If you do those things you’re an artist, no matter what it says on your business card.

 

Godin shows us how it’s possible and convinces us why it’s essential.

Reading List for Apr-13

Soar With Your Strengths

We had a "Strengths Training" and this book is one of the recommended reading. Sounds like the next version of the author's best seller "Now Discover Your Strengths" but with more stories from the field.






Manuscript Found In Accra
I'm a huge fan of Paulo Coelho and when the new book was released I got it on the same day as it got released. Like his international best seller The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho's new novel weaves a story that takes place in the past while the ideas it explores, he says, are more relevant than ever to the present.

Manuscript Found in Accra is set in 1099 in Jerusalem on the eve of the Crusades, where a wise man known as the Copt dispenses philosophical guidelines for living to an audience of Christians, Jews, and Muslims gathered to ask questions and listen.

Reading List for Mar-13

Mojo: How to Get It, How to Keep It, How to Get It Back if You Lose It  

Mojo is the moment when we do something that's purposeful, powerful, and positive and the rest of the world recognizes it. This book is about that moment--and how we can create it in our lives, maintain it, and recapture it when we need it.

  In his follow-up to the New York Times bestseller What Got You Here Won't Get You There, #1 executive coach Marshall Goldsmith shares the ways in which to get--and keep--our Mojo. Our professional and personal Mojo is impacted by four key factors: identity (who do you think you are), achievement (what have you done lately?), reputation (who do other people think you are--and what have you've done lately?), and acceptance (what can you change--and when do you need to just "let it go"?). Goldsmith outlines the positive actions leaders must take, with their teams or themselves, to initiate winning streaks and keep them coming.

Mojo is: that positive spirit--towards what we are doing--now--that starts from the inside--and radiates to the outside. Mojo is at its peak when we are experiencing both happiness and meaning in what we are doing and communicating this experience to the world around us. The Mojo Toolkit provides fourteen practical tools to help you achieve both happiness and meaning--not only in business, but in life.

 

 

Reading List for Feb-13

Busier even than last month. Only one book this month too.

Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit
The narrator of this extraordinary tale is a man in search for truth. He answers an ad in a local newspaper from a teacher looking for serious pupils, only to find himself alone in an abandoned office with a full-grown gorilla who is nibbling delicately on a slender branch. “You are the teacher?” he asks incredulously. “I am the teacher,” the gorilla replies. Ishmael is a creature of immense wisdom and he has a story to tell, one that no other human being has ever heard. It is a story that extends backward and forward over the lifespan of the earth from the birth of time to a future there is still time to save. Like all great teachers, Ishmael refuses to make the lesson easy; he demands the final illumination to come from within ourselves. Is it man’s destiny to rule the world? Or is it a higher destiny possible for him—one more wonderful than he has ever imagined?

Reading List for Jan-13

Rather busy month. Plan to read only one book, pretty long one though.

"The real cycle you're working on is a cycle called 'yourself.'"

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Enquiry into Values

I'm actually re-reading this one after I had read this about 10years ago. Now with my bike trips, its even more interesting. One of the most important and influential books of the past half-century, Robert M. Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a powerful, moving, and penetrating examination of how we live and a meditation on how to live better. The narrative of a father on a summer motorcycle trip across America's Northwest with his young son, it becomes a profound personal and philosophical odyssey into life's fundamental questions. A true modern classic, it remains at once touching and transcendent, resonant with the myriad confusions of existence and the small, essential triumphs that propel us forward.