I picked up Crush It! on a recommendation from my friend Jonny Arkin and the fact that I had followed the exploits of the author Gary Vay-ner-chuk over the last couple of years. Gary’s back story is that he took his father’s business, “Shopper’s Discount Liquors”, from a $4,000,000 a year business to $20,000,000 through [...]

I though it was about time I get to some professional education reading and decided to finish a book I had started last year but could never quite complete (yes it still counts towards the total). As a designer communication is probably the most important skill you can have. I have always been a fan [...]

Book: Ender’s Game
Fiction

First things first. About 80% of the books I read are non-fiction. I rarely pick up a “Story” unless recommended to me. I figured since I am trying to read 24 books this year it would be good to switch up my professional development reading with some fiction.
This was a suggestion from one [...]

The Dip

As part my continuing 2010 goal of reading 24 books this year I picked up Seth Godin’s The Dip. I actually bought it about a year ago with a bunch of other impulse book purchases and just never got around to reading it. But since I had slacked since burning through Ender’s Game I [...]

As part of my master plan for 2010 I made a challenge to myself to read 24 books this year. I figure two books a month isn’t incredibly taxing yet high enough to ensure I can’t slack for days at a time. So why am I telling you? Well, they say if you want to [...]

The book that put global outsourcing in context is now available as a free audio book. From now until August 4th, you can download Thoms Friedman’s book The World Is Flat and receive an exclusive audio preview excerpt of his new book Hot, Flat, and Crowded.
Just go to this link and sign up.  You will [...]

Super Crunchersis just a great introduction to the world of data-mining. Author Ian Ayres uses a ton of case studies to illustrate the need for, processes and benefits of Super Crunching (the analyzing of “large datasets to discover empirical correlation between seemingly unrelated things”). He presents his arguments in a similar manner as The Long [...]

I originally saw this video about 3 years ago, but like they say: the more things change the more they stay the same. It reminds me of the book Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire  which recounts our horrible foreign policy track record. “Blowback” is a term for US actions abroad have repeatedly [...]

I am reading this book, Jump Start your Business Brain, trying to get ready to re-design and re-write my company’s website and I found a couple of points I wanted to share.
The section I am reading has to do with the brain and creativity.
“The power of the brain is thought to be less determined by [...]

The premise of Eric Von Hippel’s book Democratizing Innovation:
Users, aided by improvements in computer and communications technology, increasingly can develop their own new products and services. These innovating users — both individuals and firms — often freely share their innovations with others, creating user-innovation communities and a rich intellectual commons. [...]