Image from Mashable.com
Everybody knows Steve Jobs.
Icon, innovator, brilliant entrepreneur and creator of “insanely great” products, Jobs was the founder and CEO of Apple.
Creator of legendary products like the Macintosh computer, iPod, iTunes Store, iPhone and iPad, Jobs founded the Disney beating Pixar Animations (which was later sold to the behemoth), and opened the much lauded Apple Store.
“Undercover Economist” Tim Harford’s latest book Adapt – Why Success Always Starts with Failure blends economics, psychology, evolutionary biology, and anthropology to explain why trial and error is preferred over grand strategic plans. Touted as “Britain’s Malcolm Gladwell”, Harford’s central thesis is that countries, companies and individuals should embrace an evolutionary and empirical approach in determining what works and what doesn’t.
Using analogies from evolution such as variation, selection and adaptation, Adapt uses far flung examples ranging from the Iraq War, Global Warming, 2007’s Financial Meltdown, to 3rd World Development efforts to prove its point. Some of its stories – such as the invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg – date all the way back to the middle ages. Others, such as the almost accidental success of Google (which purportedly has no corporate strategy) are more recent.
Wonder why you are perpetually tethered to your smartphone, refusing to put it down even when your kids are yelling at you?
Or started eating that tub of delicious Haagen Dazs ice cream, and couldn’t stop until it’s all gone.
Perhaps you’ve got a 10 year old boy who nagged you incessantly about getting him that latest Play Station Portable (PSP) which all his friends in school have.
“In a world of extreme clutter you need more than differentiation. You need RADICAL differentiation. The new rule: When everyone zigs, zag.”
That, in a nutshell, is what Zag: The #1 Strategy of High Performance Brands is all about.
How do companies like 3M, Apple, Google, Xerox, Siemens and Grameen Bank continually generate game changing products and services?
What can large organisations do to retain talent while building innovative cultures?
The answer? Corporate Entrepreurship, which is also the title of a book by Thunderbird School of Global Management’s Robert D Hisrich and Claudine Kearney.
With the subtitle “A Masterclass in Modern Marketing Ideas”, British marketing consultant Kevin Duncan’s Marketing Greatest Hits provides quick summaries of what he considers seminal or interesting titles and their key ideas in marketing. Touted as a “definitive compendium of everything you need to know from the best minds in modern marketing”, the book attempts to encapsulate key lessons from the discipline’s thought leaders.
Neatly organised into six chapters, Duncan’s book systematically dives into the essence of 40 books covering major themes, principles and philosophies, branding, consumer behaviours, creativity and personal organisation. Each section provides a book summary that is further crystallised into an elevator pitch of sorts called a one-sentence summary – the core idea behind a book. Examples of these include the following:
Have you used metaphors for your marketing efforts? What were the outcomes of your attempts?
An integral part of your everyday life, Analogies and Metaphors are popular storytelling methods which simplify complex ideas and imbue them with meaning. They help to make your advertisements, articles, and brand stories come alive.
Every now and then, you pick up a book which offer such a compelling new idea that you simply cannot put down. The Mesh: Why the Future of Business is Sharing by Lisa Gansky is one such title.
In an increasingly crowded, economically uncertain, and environmentally damaged world, people are becoming increasingly wary about the financial and personal burden of buying and owning stuff.
Gary Vaynerchuk has been “crushing” it ever since he was a teenager helping out in his family’s wine business. And his latest book shows how he does it.
Written by the straight-talking serial entrepreneur and founder of Winelibrary.com, The Thank You Economy presents a no-holds-barred approach to how businesses can leverage on the power of social media.
Fantastic Beasts – the newest phenomenon from the wizarding world of Harry Potter (Image from Geek Tyrant)
Have you watched the latest blockbuster movie Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them?
J.K. Rowling’s latest installment – a prequel to the much beloved Harry Potter series – swept cinemas around the world with much critical acclaim. Based on a 2001 book written under her pen name Newt Scamander, it is the newest piece of the Harry Potter universe.