Books that Matter: BIF-3 Storytellers Share Their Inspiration

I asked several of our BIF-3 storytellers which books were influential to them in helping build their companies, inspire new ideas or frame their way of thinking. The result: Our fall reading list. I'm really digging this list because it's off the beaten track - much like the stories we heard at this year's summit.

If anyone would like to take the lead on reviewing one of these books, let me know. We'll be conducting several online book chats and invite each of our storytellers back (as well as some of the authors if I can finagle it) to participate and talk about their recommended book.

Jason Fried, Founder of 37signals recommends

Maverick: The Success Story Behind the World's Most Unusual Workplace by Ricardo Semler

For those who attended BIF-3 and recall Jason's strong opinions about leadership and the wisdom of crowds ("Leaders make great decisions…groups don't. You have to be a hard ass…an enemy of mediocrity.") you might be surprised by this recommendation. First published in Brazil in 1988 as Turning the Tables, Maverick was the all-time best-selling nonfiction book in Brazil's history. Semler, the 34-year-old CEO, or "counselor," of Semco, a Brazilian manufacturing firm, describes how he turned his successful company into a "natural business" in which employees hire and evaluate their bosses, dress however they want, participate in major decisions, and share in 22 percent of the profits. Semler believes that Semco is different from most companies that have participatory management because employees are given the power to make decisions--even ones, with which the CEO wouldn't normally agree. Semler claims, "This is not a business book. It is a book about work, and how it can be changed for the better."

Juan Fernando Santos, Creative Director at Studiocom recommends

Blow-Up and Other Stories by Julio Cortázar

A story, Julio Cortázar claimed, is born in a sparkle, a thunderous strike of inspiration, and requires very little by way of processing. He considered literature the product of a spirit dictating its craft to numerous scribes everywhere on the globe. Blow-Up and Other Stories is a collection of short stories told often through a child's perspective. Cortazar takes us into that kind of place where wonder still outweighs any learned way of seeing "reality." (Isn't that a great way of defining design-thinking!) Each of his stories takes us out of our normal context in order to give us a whole new set of associations and a whole new world to walk in.

Steven Johnson, author of Ghost Map and founder of Outside.In recommends

The Wild Trees : A Story of Passion and Daring by Robert Preston

It's no wonder Steven Johnson enjoyed this book so much - Richard Preston, who also authored The [ebola-crazed] Hot Zone is a fellow consilient thinker whose new book In The Wild Trees introduces us to several researchers probing the mysteries of old growth forests. Put aside any assumptions that this is a boring biology book. According to Preston, it wasn't until the 1980s that humans made the first forays into the tops of "supertall" trees, in excess of 350 feet high. Included in his cast of characters are Michael Taylor, a millionaire's son and speed-chess champion who is afraid of heights but downsizes his life to work as a grocery clerk while he searches for the world's tallest tree, and Marie Antoine, who at the age of 8 lost her mother to cancer and became a scholar of lichens. Eventually, Preston, who took up tree-climbing as a respite from writing, joins them up in the treetops. Talk about random collisions.

Dan Heath, author of Made to Stick recommends

The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

This is an interesting book coming off the heels of BIF-3. Black Swan is a book about serendipity. (Recall what Eric Bonabeau said: "Luck is the number one success factor in business and life.") A black swan is a highly improbable event with three principal characteristics: It is unpredictable; it carries a massive impact; and, after the fact, we concoct an explanation that makes it appear less random, and more predictable, than it was. The success of Google was a black swan; so was 9/11. For Taleb, black swans underlie almost everything about our world, from the rise of religions to events in our own personal lives. Why do we not acknowledge the phenomenon of black swans until after they occur? Part of the answer, according to Taleb, is that humans are hardwired to learn specifics when they should be focused on generalities. We concentrate on things we already know and time and time again fail to take into consideration what we don’t know. (Channeling a bit of Mark Cuban here: "I know what I know and I know what I don't have a clue about.") This book is a good balance to the next book in our list - how to establish predictability.

Eric Bonabeau, author and CEO of Icosystem recommends

Super Crunchers : How Thinking by Numbers Is the New Way to Be Smart by Ian Ayres

Eric Bonabeau says that there's much in life we recognize without being able to explain why. He says we're great at detecting patterns but terrible at exploring alternatives. He recommends Super Crunchers because it's a better written Freakonomics. Yale Law School professor and econometrician Ian Ayres argues that the recent creation of huge data sets allows knowledgeable individuals to make previously impossible predictions. He calls the data set analysts "super crunchers" and discusses the changes they're making to industries like medical diagnostics, air travel pricing, screenwriting and online dating services. He frequently asks whether statistical methods are more accurate than the more intuitive conclusions drawn by experts, and consistently concludes that they are.

Andy Hargadon, Associate Professor and Director of Technology Management programs at the UC-Davis Graduate School of Management recommends

Men, Machines, and Modern Times by Elting E. Morison

I love this book. I read it before I read Andy's book and was thrilled to see that he had designated one of his chapters to one of Morison's essays. So many of us are eager to say that we live in an unheralded era of technologically change but after reading this book, I guarantee you'll think differently. Written in 1968 and based on a series of lectures between 1950 and 1966, the book is a collection of beautifully written historical essays. Morison traces the development and introduction of new processes and techniques which (during their time) profoundly changed the way things were done. He describes a continuous battle between entrepreneurs and new adopters on the one hand and resistors on the other. Morison proposes that a process of more carefully testing and introducing new technologies may not only help soften the resistance to change, but also lead to less risky social adoption. It's truly one of the best books ever written on the process of transformation.

Posted October 17, 2007 10:41 AM by Chris Flanagan | Permalink