With 2008 fast approaching, I thought I’d share a list of the books I’ve read this year. I try to read one or two books a month and have a stack of 30 or so that I’ve been meaning to get to, but I always end up finding new ones that hop to the front of the line. Here’s 2007 to-date:
The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness and Greed by John Vaillant
A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future by Dan Pink
Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman by Yvon Chouinard
The City of Falling Angels by John Berendt
The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester
Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything by Don Tapscott
The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less by Barry Schwartz
Permission Marketing by Seth Godin
The Deviant’s Advantage by Watts Wacker
Chronicles, Vol. 1 by Bob Dylan
The Big Moo edited by Seth Godin
The Ten Faces of Innovation: IDEO’s Strategy for Defeating the Devil’s Advocate and Driving Creativity Throughout Your Organization by Tom Kelley
Banker to the Poor: Micro-Lending and the Battle Against World Poverty by Muhammad Yunus
The Dip by Seth Godin
Mind Your X’s and Y’s: Satisfying the Ten Cravings of a New Generation of Consumers by Lisa Johnson
Three Billion New Capitalists: The Great Shift of Wealth and Power to the East by Clyde Prestowitz
Leaving Microsoft to Change the World: An Entrepreneur’s Odyssey to Educate the World’s Children by John Wood
I’m currently reading Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne, which has frameworks we’re using in our Service Design class.
What are you reading that you recommend? I’m always looking for ideas.
Hey, you should review some of these for our conference book project
Posted by: Vincent LaConte | December 04, 2007 at 11:36 AM
Here's what's on my desk, read or unread. Too many blogger recommendations and eBay is deadly combination:
The Knowing-Doing Gap by Bob Sutton and Jeff Pfeffer
Weird Ideas That Work by Bob Sutton
The Halo Effect by Phil Rozenweig
Eating the Big Fish by Adam Morgan
Orbiting the Giant Hairball by Gordon MacKenzie
The Photographer's Eye by John Szarkowski
Winning Through Innovation by Tushman and O'Reilly
Design Methods by J. Christopher JOnes
Myths of Innovation by Scott Berkun
The Innovator's Solution by Christiansen and Raynor
Posted by: Todd W. | December 04, 2007 at 12:41 PM
I was lucky enough to get an advance copy of Nicholas Carr's new book "The Big Switch" through LibraryThing a week or so ago, and while I'm not quite finished with it yet, I'd highly recommend it. It's due out in early January 2008.
Carr posits some interesting ideas and parallels between the commoditization of power generation and the future of computing as a commodity. It's an easy read that might generate some good ideas and provide some food for thought. I've certainly enjoyed it.
Thanks for posting your reading list, there were a few titles in there that I haven't read and will definitely look into.
Posted by: Todd Kalhar | December 04, 2007 at 02:31 PM
Some of my recommendations:
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man -John Perkins
The autobiography of Malcom X-as told to Alex Haley
It's getting ugly out there-Jack Cafferty
Illicit: How Smugglers, Traffickers and Copycats are Hijacking the Global Economy -Moises Naim
Mountains Beyond Mountains-Tracy Kidder
Marie
Posted by: marie | December 04, 2007 at 05:25 PM
You, Inc. - Harry Beckwith (highly recommended)
Creating Customer Evangelists - Ben McConnell & Jackie Huba
Chasing Cool - Noah Kerner
Innovation & Entrepreneurship - Peter Drucker
Posted by: mvellandi | December 05, 2007 at 12:11 PM
Nice list of books :-)
I'm surely going to check out few of them...Thanks to Jon and others who commented!!
Posted by: Sampad Swain | January 05, 2008 at 02:06 PM