What Tom’s Reading

NON-FICTION

CORPORATE RELIGION, Jesper Kunde, Financial Times/Prentice Hall (UK). A totally fresh … AND INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT … look at brands: Brand Power in the “outside” market is a direct byproduct of the internal soul and personality of the Firm.

Kunde and Company Website

 

EXPERIENTIAL MARKETING: How to Get Customers to Sense, Feel, Think, Act, Relate, Bernd Schmitt, Free Press. Beyond “service” to the Total Experience of Dealing with the Company. [Every airline CEO oughta memorize this, for starters.]

 

201 GREAT IDEAS FOR YOUR SMALL BUSINESS, Jane Applegate, Bloomberg. Fabulous “stuff” for all of us … not just small business owners.

 

RADICAL MARKETING, by Sam Hill and Glenn Rifkin. Cases of unconventional, passionate marketing … from Harley to the NBA. [I’m re-reading this.]

 

DESIGNING WEB USABILITY, Jakob Nielsen, New Riders. BEST WEB DESIGN BOOK. PERIOD. [NO SHIT!]

Jakob Nielsen’s Website—lots of web usability ideas

 

MACHINE BEAUTY: ELEGANCE AND THE HEART OF TECHNOLOGY, by David Gelernter, Basic. “Beauty” and “business” … YES!

 

FUNKY BUSINESS, Kjell Nordström and Jonas Ridderstråle, Bookhouse (Sweden). A “crazy” … and brilliant … book … by two “straight” Swedish business-strategy profs. (I LOVE THIS BOOK!!!)

FunkyBusiness.com

 

THE FUTURE AND ITS ENEMIES, Virginia Postrel, Free Press. Extremely thoughtful analysis of why unvarnished competition and entrepreneurialism power economic growth. (The best thing since Hayek!)

Virginia Postrel’s Website

 

THE ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF NEW BUSINESSES, Amar Bhide, Oxford. Thoroughly original research on the shape of entrepreneurialism.

 

THE CATHEDRAL & THE BAZAAR: MUSINGS ON LINUX AND OPEN SOURCE BY AN ACCIDENTAL REVOLUTIONARY, Eric Raymond, O’Reilly. A software “potboiler”!

Book Site

 

THE BEAK OF THE FINCH, Jonathan Weiner, Vintage. If this doesn’t make you an “evolutionist,” I don’t know what will!

 

THE RISE AND FALL OF STRATEGIC PLANNING, Henry Mintzberg, Free Press. I called this “the book of the decade.” I meant it. This is about my 5th close reading.

 

THE LOOK OF THE CENTURY: DESIGN ICONS OF THE 20TH CENTURY, Michael Tambini, DK. This is a wonderful catalog of the products that have shaped our lives.

 

THE PENCIL: A HISTORY OF DESIGN AND CIRCUMSTANCE, Henry Petroski, Knopf. 434 pages on the origin and evolution of the not-so-humble pencil! I love “sagas” like this; among other things, they reinforce one’s [MY!!] views about the fascinating messiness of “progress.”

 

BLIND MAN’S BLUFF: THE UNTOLD STORY OF AMERICAN SUBMARINE ESPIONAGE, Sherry Sontag and Christopher Drew, Public Affairs. Yes … a page turner. But I also read it as a “management” story … dealing with the “risk-reward tradeoff” … when the stakes are the future of the world!

 

BETWEEN SILK AND CYANIDE: A CODEMAKER’S WAR 1941—1945, Leo Marks, Free Press. Even when the cause is clearly just—beating Hitler—WOW Projects must survive tortuous politics!!!