Drive - Dan Pink

The best business book I have read so far in 2010. Well written and researched - it has a clear message that runs through it from start to finish. Anyone who works and lives in the corporate world will find this book a compelling read.

The basic premise of the book is based on scientific research that is currently poorly understood by the business community. Much of this research flies in the face of current business practices and highlights that the traditional carrot and stick mentality to management, not only does not work, but is likely to damage the very behaviour that we are trying to encourage.

The book highlights the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and that the new world of work is based on intrinsic motivation – a motivation based on personal drive to master new skills and knowledge rather than an extrinsic motivation that essentially boils down to money.

This book brings a new level of understanding to the modern corporate world that we live in and provides a useful and new perspective. Having worked for Microsoft for a period of time, one of the questions that often went through my mind was why would people take a drop in salary to work for the company and why were we all so dedicated? To my mind, this book answers these questions and many others. Highly recommended.

Table tennis manual

It is often said the photographs reveal more about the photographer than the subject.  I wonder if the same is true of books? 

After a break of almost 20 years, I am back playing table tennis again (and still just as badly!).  A few coaching lessons and my playing has improved dramatically.  Next step? Read a book on the subject. 

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and it has improved my table tennis no end. I am an intermediate player and have been coached on a number of occasions. I recognise much of the same information in the book from some of my coaching sessions. So, in this regard, this book has provided useful additional information.

The book covers a wide range of topics and is pretty concise - in some sections, I can't help feeling tht it is a little too concise. However, this book is one in a series of sports guides and I suspect that the format of the series has dictated the layout and format of this book. One improvement to the format of the book would be the use of annotated diagrams to explain the different strokes rather than using a series of photographs. These strokes can often be difficult to describe in words and I think the use of diagrams would make them easier to understand. I am not sure that using photographs of different players has helped in conveying the different strokes (although it does illustrate the different playing styles).

A picture might be worth a thousand words, but an illustrated diagram is worth a thousand photographs. At least when trying to describe table tennis strokes!  However, I suspect photographs are cheap to produce and are thus prefered by publishers.

All in all, a great book that has helped me improve by playing and understanding of the game. I am sure that I will come back to the book in the future and use it as a reference book. Recommended.

Design Matters

With a background in user interface design, how could I resist a book with this title? But if you are expecting a book that concentrates purely on product design, then think again. This book really gets underneath what good design means: making products and providing services to customers that really matter to them. And not just at a superficial level, but really matter in terms of providing them with deep value - get this right and you will start to connect with your customers at an emotional level, building an ongoing dialogue, rather than a one off transaction. This is the key ingredient in building long term, successful businesses - ones based on establishing relationships with your customer base.

This book is easy to ready and exceptionally compelling. It is written with a passion and enthusiasm that is infectious. The user of examples throughout the book just help to bring the text to life. By the end of the book, my attention had moved away from Product design and start to concentrate on how to build customer centric businesses. I suspect this book is as relevant to those running Service companies and it is to those running Product companies. Thoroughly good reading and highly recommended.

The truth about innovation

This book provides some really useful reading. The book is organised into a series of 55 two to three page "truths" on the subject of innovation. Each of the entries has additional reading material listed in the back of the book which is really useful.

If you have read other innovation books, you may have encountered some of this material before. However, I suspect that it is exactly these readers that will get the most out of this book. It is packed with great tidbits and really thought provoking material. It almost reads as a set of blog entries. Because of the structure of the book, it is very easy to dip in and out of. If you are new to innovation, you might be better off with another book initially - just to provide a bit of context around the innovation process. Then come back to this book.

It is a well written and well structured book that I suspect that I will come back to time and time again. Recommended.

Getting the best from people

I like this series of books. They present information in easy to read bite pieces. Great reading for short tube journeys where you are constantly picking up and putting down the book. The material is well written and accessible. If you have read the "usual" management books, I suspect there will not be an awful lot of new material here. However, it is always useful to be reminded as all too often it is easy to get caught up in the day to day running of any business.

The main drawback (and probably it's biggest asset) is that the material is presented in no particular order. You don't need to start the book at the beginning and you can dip in and out. It does mean that it lacks a thread that develops throughout the book. However, I suspect this is an artefact of this book format. I enjoyed reading it and it provided me with some useful reminders.

The Drunkard's Walk

The is another one of those fascinating books that I would put into the category of "behavioural economics". To be fair, it probably has a much wider appeal than that and will be of interest to anyone interested in popular science.

The book provides fascinating insights into the way our brains are wired and the way that we process probability and randomness can lead us to misinterpret events. For example, if we take the three events below and ask people to rank them in order of their probability, they will often put C before A or B. Yet, statistically it is the least probable (based on both A and B have to happen so it is impossible for the probability to be less than A or B).

A. My company's profits will increase next year
B. The economic climate will improve next year
C. My company's profits will increase next year and the economic climate will improve next year

Why is this? As Mlodinow puts it "if the details we are given fit our mental picture of something then the more details in the scenario, the more real it seems and hence the more probable we consider it to be - even though any act of adding less than certain details to a conjecture makes the conjecture less probable".

Fascinating stuff! And this book is full of such examples based on our peculiarly human understanding of conditional probability and randomness. In fact, I got halfway through this book and found it amusing that I was finding conditional probability so interesting! Just goes to show how well written it is! Highly recommended.

Predictably Irrational

I just loved reading this book. It was the sort of book that you know by the time you get to the end of the first chapter that it is going to be a good read. This book doesn't disappoint.

Our irrational behaviours are neither random nor senseless - they are systematics and predictable. This book takes us through a set of experiments across a wide range to subject areas to prove the point. And it proves the point well. The material is presented in an engaged, and often humourous, style that makes the book very easy to read.

This analysis of irrational bevahiour (and it's impact on our decision making) is in direct contradiction to standard economic theory that assumes we all conform to simple rational rules (e.g. supply and demand). This book provides a new way of thinking about these behaviours and ultimately brings into question many of the assumptions that underlie traditional economic theory.

Take a look at the website that goes with the book. There are updates to much of the research as well as Dan's blog highlight how his analysis can be applied to current affairs.

Mastering the Hype Cycle

Most people working in the IT industry will have come across the Hype cycle in one form or another - if the "trough of disillusionment" rings a bell, then you have come across the Hype cycle.

The book is split into two parts: Part One provides an overview of the Hype cycle. It takes us through each phase of the Hype cycle describing the characteristics of each phase. The (particularly) up to date examples help add life to the narrative. For me, I spent some time trying to work out where I thought many current innovations were in their journey through the Hype cycle - this is not as easy a task as you might think! However, it can be crucial to the success implementation of any innovation.

Part Two describes a process (termed STREET by the authors) for identifying, tracking and then introducing innovations based on the Hype cycle and your organisation's drivers and appetite for risk. This part of the book takes us through the process, step by step.

I think this book will be particularly useful to those people who are working in organisations that are involved in decisions about introducing new innovations. While it is aimed primarily at external innovations, there is no reason why the same process could not be applied to innovations that are generated from WITHIN your organisation.

Well written (which is exactly what you would expect from two Gartner analysts!) and exceptionally useful. Practical and definitely not overly theoretical. It certainly made me stop and think a little more deeply about the innovations that I am involved with and how (and when) they should be pursued. Highly recommended reading.

By understanding how a few become great, anyone can become better

This is a well written and accessible book. I found it compelling reading and finished it in a few sittings. The main tenet of the book revolves around the Nature vs Nurture debate and there is no doubt that this book is on the side of Nurture. It debunks very effectively the myth of innate talent and lays out the argument that the route to World class performance is through deliberate practice. I, like most of us, am all too quick to blame my inability to master a musical instrument or an artistic pastime on my lack of talent. This book argues that with deliberate practice, this mastery could be within reach. It wouldn't be easy, but neither is it impossible.

It is critical to understand what is meant by "deliberate practice" as I suspect for many of us this will be a key learning. Deliberate practice is an activity designed to specifically improve performance, often with a teacher's help; it can be repeated a lot; feedback on results is continuously available; it highly demanding mentally; and it isn't much fun. There are great examples of what it is NOT and I can empathize with much of the anecdotal comments from my years of trying to master playing the drums. Understanding how to design deliberate practice is clearly key.

The book covers how this can impact organisations as well as individuals. Chapter 9 covers innovation and how deliberate practice can impact the creative process.

As the previous reviewer has commented, some of the material covered in this book also gets a mention in Malcolm Gladwell's latest book (Outliers), however, I found this book more interesting and definitely more practical. It leads the reader to a conclusion as well as providing practical ideas about how to improve your own and your company’s performance.

But probably best of all, I found it inspiring and upbeat. Great reading. Highly recommended.

Groundswell

There have been a few books written about "social computing", but few that go much further than simply providing observations or commentary. This book is different. If you are trying to make some sense of what you see happening on blogs and social networking sites and are trying to work out what you and your company should do, then this book is for you.

It is written by a couple authors from Forrester, so it will be little surprise that it is really strong on the strategy front. It successfully manages to link what we are seeing happening today on the Internet to strategies for succeeding in this space. The first part of the book provides us with an understanding of how to match solutions to an organisation's specific customer base. Users are categorised according to whether they are: creators, critics, collectors, joiners, spectators, or inactives. This categorisation comes from Forrester's Social Technographics tool and you can find more information on the book's website (http://www.forrester.com/groundswell) and even generate your own profile. The blog on the website is very good, by the way.

The authors then match technical solutions to an organisation's objectives: namely, listening, talking energizing, supporting and embracing their customers. Part 2 of the book is dedicated to stepping through each of these objectives providing worked through examples of how organisations have succeeded in each of these domains. As you might imagine, adopting the appropriate technique for your particular audience is absolutely key.

If you are interested in Innovation, chapters 8 and 9 have some useful insights on the role customers can play in the innovation process.

In a area that is frequently over-hyped, this book provides significant insight and examples that reinforce what following a successful strategy can do for you and your company. If you are about to embark on your first venture into this space, I would strongly suggest that you read this book first. Highly recommended.

The first 90 days

If you are moving into a new role (irrelevant of the level), this is a great book for providing new ideas about how to approach the challenge. It provides a wide range of ideas that will apply to leadership roles in a variety of situations. Since it is so well organised, it is possible to use it as a reference book and dip into the bits that are relevant for your particular situation. The examples and chapter summaries are excellent and make the material much more accessible.

The material applies to such a wide range of situations that I suspect others might find it useful. For example, it wouldn't surprise me if consultants will find this book useful when approaching a new engagement. It provides some useful tools and approaches to tackling new problems.

A really useful book that I will revisit time and time again. As another reviewer suggested, if you are serving out your notice before starting a new job, this would be a good book to read. One thing is for sure, once you start your new job, you will only have limited time to read!

Outliers - Malcolm Gladwell

I am a great fan of Malcolm Gladwell and had high expectations of this book having read both Blink and The Tipping Point. However, this book isn't quite in the same league.

The point his is making is made very well (that success is as much to do with being born in the right place at the right time - it is about riding a wave) and the case put forward is compelling enough. However, it seems that the book presents the same line of thought through many different examples. For me, the thinking didn't seem to evolve through the book - once you got the idea, it didn't really evolve. I was expecting so much more. Part One is a bit slow and repetitive, but the book picks up towards the end. As well as the main theme of the book (the power of cultural legacies and being in the right place at the right time), I found the section on Power Distance Index fascinating (chapter 7).

Having said all that, it was still interesting reading and I like Malcolm Gladwell's style - compelling and accessible.

Seth Godin's new book - Tribes

If you want to change the world, or change your bit of it, this is the book for you!

Seth Godin focuses on the role that LEADERSHIP plays in change and makes some powerful observations about the difference between MANAGEMENT and LEADERSHIP. Management is about maintaining stability, about perpetuating the status quo, it is about ensuring that things are done the same way that they have always been done. It is about avoiding change. For managers, change equals risk. Leadership, on the other hand, is about creating change that people can believe in. Leadership doesn't avoid change, it thrives on it. For leaders, change equals opportunity.

The book is incredibly well written. It feels as if every page has been handcrafted. Some many find the lack of chapters disconcerting. For me, it just helped the whole flow of the book. Ironically, it almost reads as a set of blog entries (no surprise for anyone that has read "Small is the new Big" or Seth's blog). I find it amusing that many said that the online world would kill off traditional publishing. Well, here is an example of the online world inspiring traditional publishing!

It is very easy to read. I read it in a couple of sittings and the only thing that slowed me down was the fact I made so many notes in it! I highly recommend it. If you are interested in leadership, then you MUST read this book. You will not be disappointed.

I wish I could think and write like Seth Godin. However, I suspect the only thing we have in common is our initials! Great book. Inspiring reading. Thank you, Seth.

The Wizard of Menlo Park

Thomas Edison has become a legend in the field of innovation. Amongst other things, he invented the phonograph and the first practical electric light bulb. During his career he was granted over 1,000 patents across a wide range of subjects. As part of this success came fame – indeed, he is recognised as one of the world’s first celebrities – interestingly, it was a man of science rather than entertainment (in those days, I suspect that there wasn’t much difference!).

This book provides insights into Edison’s life – the roller coaster nature of being an inventor, his dogged determination to perfect the phonograph, the multiple commercial and financial setbacks, and the people behind the scenes who helped (and hindered) him along the way. I found this a compelling book, particularly having read so many dry textbooks recently on innovation. Innovation is a difficult process to describe and yet it is critical to almost all endeavours. Frequently when attempting to understand the innovation process, many authors reduce the process to a set of rather abstract processes that lack the human touch making the processes difficult to relate to. Ultimately, innovation is a by-product of an inquisitive mind in the right sort of social and commercial setting.

In many ways, it is the quintessentially human activity. This book helped to bring real life to a set of abstract processes described elsewhere. I would highly recommend reading this book AFTER reading a number of the innovation textbooks. It helps underline the more abstract issues raised by other authors as well as providing another viewpoint on the innovation process.

This book seems to take a very balanced view of Edison's life - offsetting myth against, what has become, legend. Highly recommended for anyone interested in innovation.

Small is the new big

I have just finished reading Seth Godin's Small is the new big and can't recommend this book enough. It is a thought provoking collection of nearly 200 short pieces originally published on his blog, but they also work exceptionally well as a book. Very easy to dip in and out of, but a great read nonetheless.

I always find it funny that some people say that digital media will kill off the paperback book. Yet I find that the more blogs I read, the more books I buy. There is about as much chance of digital media completely replacing books as the radio did for completely replacing the television.

And the fact that this book is a collection of blog entries is even more amusing!

Digital negatives

I came across this book recently (ISBN:0240808541) and it has turned out to be really useful. It takes you through the process of producing high quality digital negatives (i.e. negatives created using an inkjet printer and OHP media) which are the cornerstone of alternative process photography (e.g. palladium prints, cyanotypes).

Since most alternative processes require that you contact print the image, the image is ultimately limited by the size of the negative. Thus, many of the traditional photographers who use alternative processes are using large format cameras. The size of digital negatives, however, are only limited by the capability of the printer and many of today's photoprinters are capable of up to A3.

I looked into digital negatives last year when I was doing some Cyanotype printing, however, this book has provided a few clues about how I can improve the images. I used an old laser printer (HP1300) to produce a couple of digital negatives using OHP media. You will find my attempts here. The images were simply inverted in Photoshop to produce a negative and then printed. The images were OK, but weren't exactly stunning - the lack a full black and the tonal range did not match the original image.

In hindsight, the "negatives" produced on a laser printer probably lacked enough optical density to completely block out the light during the exposure to produce a pure white. These OHP negatives are not as dense as a real negative. The other issue is that I had not used a correction curve in Photoshop to map the tonal range of the digital image onto the tonal range of the cyanotype print. This is where this book really helps.

It takes you through the step-by-step process for producing a correction curve for a particular alternative process and then shows you how to use this curve to produce a high quality digital negative. While some of the technology referred to in the book is slightly out of date now, the process of producing and applying the correction curves remains the same.

It is a really useful little book, although it is a little expensive and I do wish it was in a larger format with more gallery images. The associated website (where you can download some of the digital material) could be a little more aspiring and I do think the authors missed a bit of a trick in that it could have been used as a repository for readers to upload their own correction curves for others to use.

Not quite what I was planning

Here's a great little book. It consists of 1,000 autobiographies - all in 6 words. It is the result of an article in the US Smith magazine where readers submitted their own 6 word biographies. Allegedly inspired by Ernest Hemingway who was once challenged to write a story in six words. He came up with "For sale: baby shoes, never worn".

My favourites?

• Occasionally wrong but never in doubt;


• Tried everything once, few things twice;
  
• Found true love, married someone else;


• Educated too much, lived too little;
  
• Lucky in everything else but love;


• Cursed with cancer. Blessed with friends;


• Never really finished anything, but cake.

It is possible to read it from cover to cover in an hour. It is inspiring and thought provoking. The thought that went through my mind is that many of these autobiographies would make great themes for photos.

I don't think it is out yet in the UK, but you can find imports on Amazon.

Quirkology

Interesting name for a book, but it contains even more interesting content. As a psychologist, I can’t help but take the content seriously – surely, this is just social psychology. But some of the work covered in this book covers emphasises the bizarre nature of human behaviour, hence the name of the book. I love the way it is written - it makes the material easy to read and intensely compelling.

Some of the psychology studies covered appear in other works (including Blink and The myths of Innovation), so maybe the work isn't that quirky after all!

The work I am most intrigued by is that of Stanley Milgram. I am ignoring the work that he is famous for (around obedience and authority) and am just impressed with his innovative research methods. The one that sticks in my mind is the "envelope dropping" experiments where researchers would drop envelopes in the street that were already addressed and had a postage stamp. Half the envelopes would be addressed to one party and half to another. The researchers would then record how many of the envelopes were picked up by passers-by and posted. Invariably, the return rates were dependent on the addressee on the envelope. Using this method, Milgram could detect differences in political voting behaviour. The technique was later adapted to determine the friendliest towns by dropping envelopes in major cities across the US and measuring the return rates. So this is an ingenious way to infer what people are thinking by interpreting their behaviour rather than asking them the question outright.

This spurned a whole series of experiments including stalling cars at traffic lights and measuring how long it would be before someone hooted their horn. If you do this from country to country, you can identify the most impatient country in the world. Although bizarrely, the researchers found that the length of time was dependent on the nationality of the driver.

I wonder if it is possible to conduct this sort of social research online? A sort of "virtual envelope drop" experiment. It must be easier to do this stuff online. Anyone seen anything like this?

BTW, the quirkology website is well worth exploring. Do take a look at the videos.

Bob Carlos Clarke - The Dark Summer

I have managed to pick up a second hand copy of Bob Carlos Clarke's The Dark Summer. It seems to becoming pretty hard to get hold of. I can't believe that it is 20 years since I went to his exhibition at the Royal Photographic Society in Bath. I always regretted not buying the book at the time and it seems really weird to buy it 20 years later!

The images are stunning and looking back on these images you can see how far this genre of photography has come in the last twenty years - much of it due to the BCC influences.

The images are deep and dark with definite Goth style overtones. What makes this book even more remarkable is that many of the images are either hand coloured or the result of multiple negative printing. Today, such images would be easily replicated using digital techniques and this book underlines BCC's skill as a traditional printer although he will be remembered for his skills as a photographer foremost.

Tim Rudman - World of Lith printing

I have experimented with Lith printing and you will find examples on my website as well as some more detail information on the technical pages.

I admit that my initial interest was stimulated after reading Tim Rudman's "The Master Photographer's Lith Printing Courser" and I was excited to find this new book. The original book is a great handbook to Lith printing and is about all you need to get started (except papers and chemicals!).

This new book (published in 2006) contains some basic information to get you started, but is not a substitute in any way for the original text. Once past the first 30-40 pages of the instruction book, there are a series of example images from a number of guest photographer's portfolios together with technical notes. I find this really useful as it provides inspiration and explores the different styles and subject matter being used by a variety of photographers. I really liked the work from Margaret Ball, Cece Wheeler, Richar Clegg and Skip Smith.

The final part of the book is dedicated to using digital techniques to produce lith prints. I must admit that first time around, I skipped this section (as I have a habit of skipping anything that says "digital" in photography books). But having subsequently read it, I have to admit that I actually found it not only interesting, but useful!

All in all, a nice book. If you are looking to get start with Lith printing I would suggest starting with Tim Rudman's "Master Photographer's Lith Printing Course" and follow up with this book. ISBN: 978 1 902538457.