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.