Business Writing to Remember
Story links, summaries & book reviews of great business writing
Dave Stark December 2014
Introduction
Business Writing to Remember is a follow-up to the compilation book projects Words Written Down, 111 Books Reviewed and More Words Written Down with all three coming out of the writing blog www.wordswrittendown.com. The idea behind first the website and now the books has been to read writing of interest and then attempt to describe those pieces well and make connections between them, with the result both a repository of great writing and body of work with my thoughts on the pieces.
This particular book compilation differs from the prior ones in that one of those was focused on book reviews done on books about many different subjects and the other two compilations also aggregated posts from many subjects, including sports writing, writing about writing and business writing. Business Writing to Remember is about… just that, my favorite business writing by others linked to and written about during the duration of the time I’ve written the blog Words Written Down.
As I began the process of looking back at past stories read, linked to and written about, categories of business writing began to emerge, with some of them around business segments and some specific companies. A particular segment or company not being included here in no way means it not interesting, just that the pieces here are those which most resonated with me, can be found via links that are currently available for reading without a subscription and tend to be fairly recently published works as some solid writing from years past not quite as relevant anymore.
The business segments separated out with pieces in that area are health care, venture capital, security, manufacturing & resource utilization and power generation & management. Companies with great writing about each are Tesla Motors, Google, Amazon and Apple. Additionally, there’s a section that includes single pieces of writing on Facebook, Twitter and Netflix, along with remarkable stories on two less-known companies in Declara and Tankchair. The final section includes reviews I’ve written over the last several years on solid business books, with many different segments and companies represented throughout the various reviews.
There’s been a lot of reading done to suss out the writing found to be interesting enough to include in the blog and this particular effort is the best of the business writing I’ve come across, along with a summary and for many of them, my thoughts on what makes the pieces so good. Pulling the pieces of writing with a business focus together and separating them out by category is simply a continuation of the point of the blog… to attempt to give a bit more permanence to pieces of great writing, along with my thoughts on what makes each a work to remember.
Contents
Segments: Health care 4 Venture capital 5 Security 8 Manufacturing & resource utilization 9 Power generation & management 11
Companies: Tesla Motors & electric cars 12 Google (including Nest) 13 Amazon (including Zappos) 14 Apple 16 Tankchair, Twitter, Declara, Netflix & Facebook 17
Book reviews: Being Mortal by Atul Gawande 18 Factory Man by Beth Macy 20 Abundance by Peter Diamandis 21 Show your work by Austin Kleon 22 Flash Boys by Michael Lewis 23 Hatching Twitter by Nick Bilton 24 The Everything Store by Brad Stone 25 Ingenious by Jason Fagone 26 Plan B by David Kord Murray 27 Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson 28
Segments
Health care
"Illumina's new low-cost genome machine will change health care forever" by Ashlee Vance for Businessweek in Jan 2014 – on people gaining affordable access to information about the genetic traits that they carry.
"Patient Zero" by Tom Junod and Mark Warren for Esquire in Dec 2013 – on cancer patient Stephanie Lee and noted scientist and researcher Eric Schadt.
"States of Health" by Atul Gawande for the New Yorker in Oct 2013 – on the Affordable Care Act by the noted physician and excellent writer.
"Has Carl June Found a Key to Fighting Cancer?" by Jason Fagone for Philadelphia Magazine in July 2013.
"Is Concierge Medicine the Future of Health Care?" by Devin Leonard for Businessweek in Nov 2012 – on doctors taking on patients on a monthly fee basis rather than billing insurance carriers for exams and basic services. It’s an interesting notion with lots of different service derivations and costs ranging from extremely high to quite affordable.
"Craig Venter’s Bugs Might Save the World" by Wil Hylton for the New York Times in May 2012.
"Adventures in Extreme Science" by Tom Junod for Esquire in Mar 2011 – on scientist Eric Schadt and his "emperor has no clothes" approach to conventional wisdom in the field of molecular biology. Schadt makes for an interesting topic with his proselytizing about the vast networks and cause-effect relationships within the body... and how that runs counter to the previous belief that things within ran independently enough that successful mapping of human DNA would start us on the road to disease cure. In terms of this new viewpoint, the book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is cited as one of Schadt's early influences and which led to him breaking away from conventional belief. Junod details not just the intelligence and contrarian viewpoint of Schadt, but also his propensity to get out in front of his ideas and advocate loudly for him. Lest that statement make him appear a simple self-promoter, also noted in the profile is Schadt's collaborative approach to solving problems and curing disease... regardless of whether it's he or his company getting the credit and subsequent revenue. It was really interesting reading on Schadt and also striking to me from the piece was an anecdote about how he "likes to do his supercomputing on planes" via Amazon servers.
Venture capital
"The Zen Master of Silicon Valley Chatter" by Max Chafkin for Fast Company in Jan 2013 – on Kevin Rose, the Digg founder and now internet investor as part of Google Ventures.
"Social+Capital, the League of Extraordinarily Rich Gentlemen” by Drake Bennett for Businessweek in July 2012 – profiles the Venture Capital Fund led by former Facebook employee Chamath Palihapitiya and backed in part by Silicon Valley heavyweights Kevin Rose and Peter Thiel. Solid piece on an interesting fund build on the idea of backing companies trying to accomplishing something good.
"8 Visionaries on How They Spot the Future" by Joanna Pearlstein for Wired in Apr 2012 – written as a wisdom compilation story and the following are the people and their insights that struck me the most. Paul Saffo (Technology Forecaster) - looks for things that seem out of place as an indicator of events to come. Chris Sacca (Venture Capital investor) - you don't need to be a seer, prophet, soothsayer, diviner, or clairvoyant to spot and potentially invest in the companies that could be poised for success. Barriers to entry are low enough in many technology realms that evaluation decisions can be made based on the actual product or service experience (or at least an early stage iteration of it).
“How to Get Started as a Business Leader” by Mitch Joel for the Twist Image blog in Feb 2012 – contains an embedded video interview with investor Chris Sacca, head of the venture capital fund Lowercase Capital. I first heard of Sacca from a Feb 2010 Businessweek piece "And Google Begat..." on investing by Google alums and have since come across a number of interesting things noted and linked to by Sacca on his Twitter feed. The recent interview, though, particularly stood out as it's an hour-long conversation between Sacca and Kevin Rose (who founded Digg and hosts for another of his companies, Revision3, an interview series with business leaders). The interview with Sacca has a short introduction by Twist Image President Mitch Joel and my notes (which of course may differ from what someone else gleams) from the actual Rose-Sacca interview are as follows.
Background
Sacca went to the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown and then started down the road of graduate school. However, rather than completing grad school at the time, he received the school loan checks and used the money to start a business with the intention of aggregating class action lawsuit information. The business didn’t do much, but the story probably serves as an early indicator of his entrepreneurial bent. He then began day trading online and during this heyday period went to being up $12M, but then found himself down $4M in the market crash around 2000. With this roller coaster ride in his background, he proceeded to get his law degree and came to Silicon Valley. While having a day job as a lawyer, Sacca did lots of outside of work business hustling and attended all the networking events and worked hard to build a network. He was at the law firm for 13 months before getting laid off and then created a company that didn’t do a heck of a lot, but having that company helped him land a job at Spedera and from there got hired into Google. Sacca was brought into Google to buy data centers for server housing and negotiated with local officials on the space Google was looking to take. This role was part of the core engineering function at the company and exposed him to some of the brilliant people working there. He then became Head of Special Projects and worked on initiatives such as free WIFI for Mountain View and the $4.7B bid by Google for wireless spectrum. Sacca came to Google too late to get insanely wealthy, but did do well enough to pay off his day trading debt and return to even by Feb 2005. He then saw Google becoming more territorial and a harder place to get into new areas so left the company in 2007.
Twitter investment
He then started writing small angel investor checks to startups with Photobucket his first investment and Twitter his second. This initial investment in Twitter was done with founder Evan Williams while Sacca still at Google and his relationships there run deep and included other key leaders Jack Dorsey and Dick Costello. While out on his own after Google, Sacca started accumulating additional stake in Twitter (speculated, but not confirmed to now be around 10% of the company). This obviously makes the guy look brilliant in hindsight, but the important thing is the reasons Sacca notes for believing in Twitter as a business. Along with his firm belief in the brilliance of Evan Williams is the appreciation of how things there monetize with ads able to be sold based on actual math and ad conversion rates rather than conjecture of what the ad buy is worth. Additional value offerings noted were the component of mobile that Twitter provides and ability to work within Social Networks and promoted tweets / promoted trends.
Other investments
Sacca put together his Lowercase Capital LLC fund and other investments have included FanBridge (which he found from sending out a tweet asking about entrepreneurs working late on a Friday night), Instagram, turntable and Kickstarter. He notes doing less startup investing now due to the high valuations and focuses on companies and areas where he can be helpful. It’s also noted that VC investing not an exact science and there being a number of now successful companies that he could have invested in, but didn’t due to a lack of familiarity with the space in which they operated. Also brought up in the interview is how VCs make their money when they reinvest in companies already involved with.
Principles
Sacca describes himself as someone who grew up tenacious and determined, but along with that notes the import of building yourself through being helpful to others. To this point, he brings up that you often don't know where you're going to be able to contribute the most until you get in there doing things. The phrase used by Sacca was “create value before you ask for value back” and at this point, his interviewer, Kevin Rose, related his own story of wanting into Square so producing a demo video of how the product works and Sacca told of Ryan Graves, current GM at Uber who hustled and demonstrated helpfulness to get himself into foursquare. In terms of people he looks to work with, these ideas of contribution and hustling definitely come up as valued traits. Additionally, Sacca extols the idea of people who have had crappy jobs they had to grind at as well as those who are rounded enough that they have things outside of work. This last point being about working with people that he wants to spend time around as well as invest with.
Overall, it was a terribly interesting interview with someone who seems to have combined together the elements of skill/intelligence, hard work and good fortune. I say good fortune because the concept of "in the right place at the right time" often part of many success stories... but, Sacca's story from the interview shows effort getting him to the places where good decisions and solid work would pay off. In short, you gotta make your own luck.
"The Logged Out User (continued)" by Fred Wilson for his venture capital focused site AVC in Sept 2011 – on Twitter usage and how the service is used in different ways by different people, and what a great thing that is for the company.
"Ten Rules for Web Startups" from Twitter founder Evan Williams on his blog in Nov 2005. Williams’ track record is remarkable in that he co-founded both Pyra Labs (parent company that created Blogger) and Twitter. The rules as laid out in the blog post from Williams were all interesting, but what really stood out to me was number one... "Be Narrow" with the first few sentences "Focus on the smallest possible problem you could solve that would potentially be useful. Most companies start out trying to do too many things, which makes life difficult and turns you into a me-too. Focusing on a small niche has so many advantages: With much less work, you can be the best at what you do." This brought to mind the excellent Ken Jennings book Maphead, in which a collector was quoted saying "if you're going to specialize, specialize as much as possible." It's a tremendously interesting (and logical) concept that applies to map collecting, business creating and I'm sure many other ventures.
Security
“Now at the Sands Casino: An Iranian Hacker in Every Server” by Ben Elgin and Michael Riley for Businessweek in Dec 2014 – on an almost certainly government sponsored cyber-attack on the casinos of vocal Israeli supporter and Iranian critic Sheldon Adelson.
"This Stealth Attack Boat May Be Too Innovative for the Pentagon" by Caroline Winter for Businessweek in Aug 2014 – on entrepreneur Gregory Sancoff and his company Juliet Marine, maker of the invisible to radar small winged boat, Ghost.
"How Russian Hackers Stole the Nasdaq" by Michael Riley for Businessweek in July 2014 – on what appears to be a government-sponsored break-in to NASDAQ, done for reasons unknown.
“Somali Pirates' Rich Returns” by Robert Young Pelton for Businessweek in May 2011 – One of the points of this blog is to highlight cases of excellent writing on a topic of note and this piece definitely qualifies. I was struck even more by the story after realizing it was written by the author of The World's Most Dangerous Places, an excellent book that I read years ago.
"Hacker vs. Hacker" by Brad Stone and Michael Riley for Businessweek in Mar 2011 – about the shenanigans at and against a top exec of Computing Security firm HBGary Federal. The hubris of this guy Aaron Barr is pretty remarkable, just as is the zeal on the part of the Anonymous hackers taking him down piece by piece. Quite the entertaining read.
Manufacturing & resource utilization
"Materials That Will Change the World: Graphene" by Peter Diamandis for Medium in Oct 2014 – Diamandis is founder of the X Prize awarded for private spacecraft development and author of the book Abundance: The Future is Brighter Than You Think. In this story, he did a fascinating piece on Graphene as a material noted as having potential applications in the many areas of energy storage, flexible screens, desalinization and filtration of water, medical applications and sensors, photovoltaics and solar cells, computing and electronics and material composites.
"The Road to Resilience: How Unscientific Innovation Saved Marlin Steel" by Charles Fishman for Fast Company in June 2013 – on a company that used to solely make bagel baskets and has grown tremendously with now the large majority of products being much more expensive baskets for industrial and manufacturing environments. Noted in the piece was an interesting quote from owner Drew Greenblatt with "what I realized is that the customers who are a pain in the neck are really the great customers."
"Is Origami the Future of Tech?" by Drake Bennett for Businessweek in May 2012 – on the topic of DNA fold origami manufacturing. It's an amazing idea that departs completely from manufacturing paradigms based on sculpture (take a block and chisel away what's not needed) or piece-together assembly. Instead, Bennett describes a process of manufacturing for objects (both large and nano-sized) based at least in part on the work of mathematician and computer scientist Erik Demaine. "Fold-and-cut allowed you to make any shape in the world, any collection of shapes, even, as long as they had straight sides. One could, in an angular font, create the entire text of this page with the right folds and the right cut. In a paper published two years later, Demaine expanded on this idea, extending it into three dimensions: Any faceted solid, he showed, no matter how complex or irregular, could be folded from a single uncut sheet of paper. Start with a piece of paper big enough, and you could model Notre Dame down to the last gargoyle." The idea seems outlandish, but is actually based on objects in the natural world like flowers or snowflakes (with the idea of folding illustrated by paper snowflakes usually made in school). It was a remarkable concept that seems to me likely the type of innovation Silicon Valley entrepreneur Steve Perlman had in mind when he said the following from an April 2011 Businessweek story "Facebook is not the kind of technology that will stop us from having dropped cell phone calls, and neither is Groupon or any of these advertising things," he says. "We need them. O.K., great. But they are building on top of old technology, and at some point you exhaust the fuel of the underpinnings." It's not to find fault with communication platforms like Facebook or Twitter, but rather to highlight this case of what could be real true breakthrough innovation in the field of manufacturing.
"TechShop: Paradise for Tinkerers" by Ashlee Vance for Businessweek in May 2012 – on the facility chain where members have access to expensive equipment to build things from plastic, wood, metal or other materials for a $100/month membership cost.
“MakerBot's 3-D Printers Let Consumers Dream up Prototypes of Pretty Much Anything. But Do We Need More Plastic?” by Rob Walker for Fast Company in Jan 2012.
“Alaska’s Billion Dollar Mountain” by Daniel Grushkin for Businessweek in Oct 2011 – on entrepreneur Jim McKenzie and his mining company, UCore. Focus is on Bokan Mountain near Ketchikan, Alaska and the large support of valuable rare earth metals held deep underground. It's an interesting story in the efforts of McKenzie to gain mining access and in how the land reached its current valuation. Previous attempts
to mine Bokan were unsuccessful at trying to find and extract uranium and this is exactly what McKenzie was initially interested in and hoping to convince the old prospector (Bob Dotson) who owned the mineral rights to allow him access to. Through spending time with Dotson, McKenzie learned of the rare earth metal potential in the mine and then brokered a deal with Dotson and his estranged children (to whom who he had granted shared rights) to be able to mine Bokan. In 2010, China as the world's largest producer of rare earth metals then made the decision to dramatically cut its exports of these minerals (that go into complicated electronics, jet engines and missiles) and as a result made prices skyrocket and dramatically increased the value of Bokan. It still remains to be seen whether the cost of deep underground extraction will make the investment pay off, but the potential is very much there.
"The Siberian Energy Rush" by Joshua Hammer for Fast Company in Nov 2010 – about Russia pushing natural gas exploration further and further into the Arctic Circle. Written by Joshua Hammer it's a pretty amazing look at a country staking a claim to new territory.
"I Have Just One Word for You: Bioplastics" by Mar Der Hovanesian for Businessweek in Aug 2008 – on biodegradable plastics and the biotech company Metabolix.
"China Invades Africa" by Richard Behar for Fast Company in June 2008 – a special report on the ongoing private / public efforts of China to stake claim to needed resources that are and will be taken out of the continent of Africa.
Power generation & management
"Meet the Radical Berkeley Artist Whose Company is Turning Trash into Electricity" by Josh Dean for Fast Company in Mar 2014 – on Jim Mason whose company All Power Labs makes the Power Pallet that works through a process called gasification.
"Why the U.S. Power Grid's Days Are Numbered" by Chris Martin, Mark Chediak, and Ken Wells for Businessweek in Aug 2013 – on the increased usage by individuals and companies of power generated outside the grid. This usage of power is known as distributed generation and most commonly includes solar and wind power. Also cited in the piece is how one of the technological advances moving forward distributed generation is an advance in microgrids, the systems that enable switching between different power sources, both generated within and outside the utility company run grid.
"The Plutonium Gang: CH2M Hill Dismantles the Hanford Nuclear Site" by Steve Featherstone for Businessweek in Aug 2013. One really interesting detail from Featherstone about this dangerous task was the $33,000 per day cost of protective gear for cleanup workers at the Plutonium Finishing Plant and the story made it feel fortunate there hasn't been a larger nuclear disaster (accidental or intentional) than we've seen.
"Beyond the Grid" by Anya Kamenetz for Fast Company in Jul 2009 – looks in great detail at the concept of small-scale household or business power generation and its potential. Not surprisingly, this idea of a "micro-grid" is being fought by large power utilities looking to prevent competition by either installing and controlling it themselves or by simply making it go away.
Companies
Tesla Motors & electric cars
“Tesla’s electric man” for The Economist in Dec 2014 – on production of battery packs at the forthcoming Reno gigafactory along with corresponding technological improvements in energy storage. Really interesting piece that features the following from Tesla Motors co-founder and CTO JB Straubel, “I see us more as an energy-innovation company. If we can reduce energy-storage prices, it’s the most important thing we can do to make electric vehicles more prevalent. Add in renewable power and I have a direct line of sight towards an entire economy that doesn’t need fossil fuels and doesn’t need to pay more to do it.” Reference is also made in the story to home energy storage options from the company SolarCity and information from the piece is echoed by the Dec 2014 Bloomberg story “Why Elon Musk's Batteries Scare the Hell Out of the Electric Company,” which notes how the gigafactory along with batteries for Tesla cars will “also churn out stationary battery packs that can be paired with rooftop solar panels to store power.”
"Inside Elon Musk's $1.4 Billion Score" by Peter Elkind for Fortune in Nov 2014 – on how Tesla Motors went about deciding on Reno as the location for the forthcoming electric car battery gigafactory.
"Tesla Grabs a New (Old) Spokesman From Square" by Ashlee Vance for Businessweek in Nov 2014 – on Ricardo Reyes returning to head Communications at Tesla. The background that Reyes has is fascinating, particularly in relation to the idea of narrative and storytelling within business communication.
"As Software and Hardware Advance Together, the Next Innovation Wave Rises" by Ashlee Vance for Businessweek in Sept 2014 – on the great advantage held by companies like Apple, Tesla Motors and Nest (now part of Google).
"Why Everybody Loves Tesla" by Ashlee Vance for Businessweek in July 2013.
"Triumph of His Will" by Tom Junod for Esquire in Nov 2012 – on Elon Must and really well done writing about a fascinating individual. Junod starts off the profile with a great hook alluding to Musk's audaciousness and then in the piece shows his drive in looking forward, and often past what others want from him, and having a remarkable willingness to place huge bets.
"Elon Musk, the 21st Century Industrialist" by Ashlee Vance for Businessweek in Sept 2012.
"Why Tesla Motors Is Betting On The Model S" by Jon Gertner for Fast Company in Mar 2012 – on the much anticipated and planned for July 2012 launch of its sedan. Tesla’s CEO Musk is a fascinating guy and the thing that stood out from this piece was his mention of needing iterations (three progressive car models) to reach his ultimate goal of a low priced mass market vehicle. This translates to the Model S sedan as the mid-point between the high priced roadster and the planned for the future third model.
"Electric Cars Get Charged for Battle" by Eric Pooley for Businessweek Dec 2010 – focuses on entries to the field from Nissan and General Motors. The Leaf from Nissan has a higher green credential being all electric, but the electric/gasoline hybrid Volt from GM follows in the already proven to be successful footprints of the Toyota Prius. Reading the piece, it seemed to me that Nissan will have a tougher road to success (pardon the pun) with its higher reliance on the availability of public charging stations.
Google (including Nest)
"Google's Larry Page: The Most Ambitious CEO in the Universe" by Miguel Helft for Fortune in Nov 2014.
"The $3.2 Billion Man: Can Google's Newest Star Outsmart Apple?" by Austin Carr for Fast Company in Sept 2014 – on Tony Fadell and the company Nest.
"As Software and Hardware Advance Together, the Next Innovation Wave Rises" by Ashlee Vance for Businessweek in Sept 2014 – on the great advantage held by companies like Apple, Tesla Motors and Nest (now part of Google).
"The Truth About Google X: An Exclusive Look Behind the Secretive Lab's Closed Doors" by Jon Gertner for Fast Company in Apr 2014.
"Google: The Celebrity Profile" by Tom Junod for Esquire in Sept 2013 – on the company, its power, and the potential for abuse of that power. Junod also wrote in the piece about Google X and offerings like Google Glass and not current, but also not out of the question, things like storing of biological data.
"Inside Google's Secret Lab" by Brad Stone for Businessweek in May 2013. Fascinating stuff on the Google X division within the company that's devoted to "moonshot" ideas or problems that Lab Director Astro Teller says about which "over some long but not unreasonable period of time we can make that problem go away."
“Tony Fadell’s Newest Invention is the iPod of Thermostats” by FC staff for Fast Company in Nov 2011 – on a fascinating product designed with user experience in mind from former Apple exec Tony Fadell.
"And Google Begat..." by Kimberly Weisul and Spencer E. Ante for Businessweek in Feb 2010 – on the angel investing done by current and former Google employees. Pretty interesting stuff about the next generation impact Google wealth is having by helping fund tech startups such as Twitter, Tesla Motors and a host of smaller unknown (but, probably not always) ventures.
Amazon (including Zappos)
“The Everything Book: Reading in the Age of Amazon” by Casey Newton for The Verge in Dec 2014 – on the company, it’s Lab126 in Northern California, the Kindle and Amazon’s influence on reading and books. Really a fascinating story that echoed points from the 2013 Brad Stone book The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon, in particular that Amazon still begins meetings by having someone read a six-page narrative of what the meeting to discuss. Just such an interesting concept utilized at Amazon.
"Amazon's Drone Fleet Delivers What Bezos Wants: An Image of Ingenuity" by Brad Stone for Businessweek in Dec 2013.
"The Secrets of Bezos: How Amazon Became the Everything Store" by Brad Stone by Businessweek in Oct 2013 – excerpted from his book The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon.
"Amazonfresh is Jeff Bezos' Last Mile Quest for Total Retail Domination" by J.J. McCorvey for Fast Company in Aug 2013 – on the company and its efforts around the connected areas of same-day delivery and groceries. As McCorvey wrote in the piece, "it's the so-called last-mile problem--you can ship trucks' worth of packages from a warehouse easily enough, but getting an individual package to wind its way through a single neighborhood and arrive at a single consumer's door isn't easy. The volume of freight and frequency of delivery must outweigh the costs of fuel and time, or else this last mile is wildly expensive." Amazon has already been moving forward in this effort, with huge investments in warehouses (and willingness to no longer fight state sales taxes that typically get incurred with warehouse presence a state) as well as local delivery options that complete with existing carriers. As I read the piece by McCorvey, it looks as if Amazon building a hyper-efficient network around fulfillment of goods, just as they built networks around the cloud and running the websites of other companies with Amazon Web Services and networks around self-publishing with Kindle Direct Publishing.
"Why the Amazon Naysayers Should Be Scared" by Brad Stone for Businessweek in Apr 2012 – looks at the recent excellent financial results from the retailer, with improving margins while at the same time making large investments in infrastructure (facilities and people). Pretty interesting stuff from Stone that also makes reference to Amazon focusing efforts on publishing and the Kindle with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos recently saying that "16 of our top 100 bestselling titles are exclusive to our store.”
"Amazon vs. Publishers: The Book Battle Continues" by Brad Stone for Businessweek in Apr 2012 – on Amazon wanting to move towards print-on-demand publishing and the traditional publishing houses fighting them.
"Las Vegas: Startup City" by Brad Stone for Businessweek in Feb 2012 – on Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh and his backing of development efforts in the area around headquarters for the Amazon division. It’s an interesting look at personal for-profit efforts that also have an altruistic bent.
"Amazon's Hit Man" by Brad Stone for Businessweek in Jan 2012 – details the new in-house publishing imprint at the web retail giant, with the concept having Amazon hold tighter control over book pricing and distribution by cutting out traditional publishing houses and signing agreements with the authors themselves. It’s an interesting approach led within Amazon by Larry Kirshbaum, the former head of Time Warner Book Group and has already resulted in agreements with Tim Ferriss, James Franco and Penny Marshall.
“Amazon, the Company That Ate the World” by Brad Stone for Businessweek in Sept 2011 – on the company's tablet entry, the Kindle Fire. The company as a whole has done a lot right over the years and early indications are that they've created a compelling offering.
"Why I Sold Zappos" by Tony Hsieh for Inc. in June 2010 – excerpted from his book Delivering Happiness and contains some fascinating info about the requirements of investors. This idea of running a company for shareholders brought to mind two different posts that I wrote which were less about stories I came across and more about my views, one I wrote in 2010 about running a public company (and which links to this piece by Hsieh) and one I wrote in 2012 about stock valuation.
Apple
“Tim Cook Speaks Up” by Tim Cook for Businessweek in Oct 2014.
"Tim Cook Interview: The iPhone 6, the Apple Watch, and Remaking a Company's Culture" by Brad Stone and Adam Satariano for Businessweek in Sept 2014.
"As Software and Hardware Advance Together, the Next Innovation Wave Rises" by Ashlee Vance for Businessweek in Sept 2014 – on the great advantage held by companies like Apple, Tesla Motors and Nest (now part of Google).
"Runner-Up: Tim Cook, the Technologist" by Lev Grossman for Time Magazine in Dec 2012 – from the Person of the Year edition of Time and on the Apple CEO. While the entire piece an interesting one, what stood out to me was mention of the hours put into his job. Remarkable anecdote from Grossman on Cook with "He wakes up at 3:45 every morning (‘Yes, every morning’), does e-mail for an hour, stealing a march on those lazy East Coasters three time zones ahead of him, then goes to the gym, then Starbucks (for more e-mail), then work."
"iPad: The PC Killer" by Peter Burrows and Jim Aley for Businessweek in Mar 2012 – covers Apple's dominance with the iPad and Burrows and Aley offered up some ideas that seem to make a lot of sense... with the first two being around why the iPad has done so well and third around business conditions it created. In terms of product success, the authors note both how Apple able to take a longer view approach to a market given fewer product offerings and that the iPad helped by being a follow-on product to the iPhone (a positive both in terms of consumer familiarity with the concept and Apple utilization of the iOS software and App Store). Most interesting to me from the piece was the idea put forth by Burrows and Aley that the iPad so dominates the market that competitors can't expect to simply offer up a comparable alternative and expect it to sell. If a product offering in the same pricing or performance ballpark as the iPad, customers will simply pick what they already know to be good. There is still success that can be had by other companies, but it either through breakthrough competing technology (which nobody has brought yet) or slicing off a piece of the market and going after that.
“Apple's Supply-Chain Secret? Hoard Lasers” by Adam Satariano and Peter Burrows for Businessweek in Nov 2011 – on Apple combining great consumer experience with supply-chain competitive advantage.
“Apple, with or Without Steve Jobs” by Brad Stone and Peter Burrows for Businessweek Jan 2011.
"Invincible Apple: 10 Lessons From the Coolest Company Anywhere" by Farhad Manjoo for Fast Company in July 2010 – lots of interesting things in list format from the company Manjoo notes as being now the largest technology company in the world.
“Commencement Address to Stanford University” by Steve Jobs in June 2005.
Tankchair, Twitter, Declara, Netflix & Facebook
"The Incredible Stair-Climbing, Self-Parking, Amphibious Wheelchair" by Joshua Green for Businessweek in June 2014 – on the company Tankchair LLC. Really a great story about Brad Soden and the company that came out of his desire to improve quality of life for his paralyzed wife and now helps many seriously injured veterans.
"The Hidden Technology That Makes Twitter Huge" by Paul Ford for Businessweek in Nov 2013 – on the amount of detail that each and every tweet contains, and how that detail can then be sliced, diced, categorized and segmented.
"Declara Co-Founder Ramona Pierson's Comeback Odyssey" by Ashlee Vance for Businessweek in Sept 2013 – on an absolutely remarkable person and as Vance wrote, Pierson out of college was in the U.S. Marines (who paid for her final years at U.C. Berkeley) and "worked with algorithms to help calculate the position of Russia’s nuclear silos and guide F-18 fighter missions" until she in 1984 was hit by a drunk driver and spent 18 months in a coma. About this cataclysmic injury, Vance wrote "Passersby saved her life. One massaged her heart to keep it beating; another used pens to open her windpipe and vent her collapsed lung so she could breathe. The crude handiwork kept Pierson alive long enough to get her to a hospital." Next in the story Vance wrote of Pierson's rehabilitation, including the equally fascinating time she spent in a senior citizens center with the residents helping her get better. Vance then covered how Pierson became an accomplished blind rock climber, cross-country skier, and cyclist. Additionally, she after leaving the senior citizens center studied psychology and received a master’s degree in education and then PhD in neuroscience. In terms of her Pierson's work efforts, Vance covered in the piece how she served as CTO of Seattle public schools and developed database software around the students and their learning. Still utilized today, this software led Pierson to forming and then selling the educational company SynapticMash prior to starting last year in Palo Alto, CA her current company, Declara. Geared towards both education and businesses, Vance notes how Declara "a type of social network that links everyone in a company or an organization. With the help of algorithms developed by Pierson and others, Declara’s system learns how people interact, what types of questions they’re looking to answer, and who can best answer them."
"Netflix, Reed Hastings Survive Missteps to Join Silicon Valley's Elite" by Ashlee Vance for Businessweek in May 2013 – a piece that starts off with the sentence from Vance that "on a normal weeknight, Netflix accounts for almost a third of all Internet traffic entering North American homes."
"Facebook: The Making of 1 Billion Users" by Ashlee Vance for Businessweek in Oct 2012 – on engineering at the company and how it basically launches a new site version with tweaks each and every day.
Book reviews
Being Mortal by Atul Gawande
Being Mortal by Atul Gawande was a remarkable book with the subtitle “Medicine and What Matters in the End” from the doctor and author. The book covers a lot of ground on the subject of health choices for people aging or with catastrophic medical conditions and seems it can be broken down into three related categories of (1) doctors who treat the elderly, (2) where those in need live and (3) the decisions that are made around care.
Doctors who treat the elderly
Gawande fairly early in the book writes of how when people in the past died of illness it was more frequently a sudden death, but now illness leading to death is often a case of peaks and valleys until there then becomes one calamity after another as the body stops working. With there now being more ways to prevent death, the doctor-patient relationship becomes more important and Gawande notes how the approach of a given doctor to their patient can either be paternalistic, informative or in the best scenario, interpretive based on someone's desires about their care. This is especially the case with the elderly, but the branch of medicine that deals with aging, geriatrics, doesn't get enough attention and doesn't have enough doctors. People are less interested in going into geriatric care in part because patients don't have one discrete and interesting problem to try and fix, rather they have fifteen that are being pushed forward by the aging process. Additionally, care for the elderly is typically not really about the devices or expensive procedures that would be covered by Medicare. Rather it’s about looking for common problems and attempting to head them off in a quest to preserve quality of life for as long as possible. It’s noted in the book that the biggest danger facing many elderly is falling and risk factors for falling are poor balance, taking more than four prescription medications and muscle weakness.
Where those in need live
Gawande also writes extensively about how and where the elderly live, often in their homes for as long as they can, then with younger family members, in assisted living facilities or communities and nursing homes. In relation to assisted living facilities and nursing homes, Gawande notes how many hate living there as in the quest to provide a safe environment, caregivers can take away from the elderly their basic rights to privacy and making their own decisions, even if those decisions not always the healthiest. The result can be a dehumanizing with the elderly finding themselves in situations they simply don't want to live, safe or not. Gawande does note there’s another path that can be sought out and gives examples. There’s services like Athens Village in Ohio that people can join and which help them stay in their homes, "living centers with assistance" that were started by Keren Brown Wilson who then created the Jessie F. Richardson Foundation, New Bridge on the Charles in Boston, Peter Sanborn Place and the Green House concept, with one of its facilities the Leonard Florence Center for Living that all about not forcing the elderly to sacrifice autonomy to live in some form of assisted living facility. In some cases the facility will also include pets and frequent visitors, something to help the people living there both feel empowered and have a purpose. There might be a slight drop off in safety from more regimented facilities, but studies have shown that people are happier, require less emergency care and tend to live longer.
Decisions about care
Related to this idea of people being empowered to make decisions about their lives is the notion of people having frank discussions with doctors and especially family members about what choices they want made on their behalf, including what level of risk they want taken and what amount of pain and infirmity they're willing to suffer in order to have a shot at getting better. For some people they’re willing to take huge risks to have better health, but for others, they’d rather not take as large of a chance that they could get worse as the result of treatment, especially if that treatment may not buy that much more healthy time. The choice is all about one’s life and what it could potentially be like, for better or worse, and having the patient set the direction based on guidance from the doctor, with the alternative medical professionals or family members having to make the decisions on behalf of someone incapacitated. If left to doctors and family members, the natural inclination is going to be to press forward for a cure, but too often this may be bullheadedly pursuing a medical fix to a problem that's simply going to result in death. At the same time, it could well be that a patient has given direction that they’re willing to proceed with risky procedures that could make them worse, but as long as they understand, it’s the choice they’re making. This is where the idea of the doctor as someone who provides guidance based on a patient’s wishes, things that matter to them and risk tolerance, becomes so important. The role of medicine is to heal, but also to provide council based on the wishes of patients.
A key part of this discussion and patient decision around their care has to do with hospice care, which is often provided in the home. Covered by Gawande is how hospice care not something that’s simply the last step before death, but something that’s designed to have people feel as good and fulfilled as possible for each day they’re still alive, a concept of living for the best possible day. Additionally, hospice care doesn't have to mean giving up curative treatment as it could be done concurrently with treatment for the illness at the same time there’s palliative care designed to make someone as comfortable, fulfilled and happy as possible. Studies have shown many cases of patients receiving hospice care actually living longer than those without it. The big take-away from this discussion of hospice care is that patients should hopefully be making the decisions themselves on their care after discussions with medical professionals willing to advise on the best options based on people’s wishes for how they want to pursue treatment. People need medical help, they need council and they need to live their lives in a way that they've got as much control as possible over what happens in it. It’s fascinating reading from Gawande that definitely goes way beyond the idea of a doctor and the medical community as simply being there to try to fix a health problem. Great book, highly recommended.
Factory Man by Beth Macy
Factory Man by Beth Macy is an interesting book about offshoring, rural America and where income equality comes from. The book tells the story of John Bassett III and his Vaughn-Bassett Furniture Company that employs more than 700 people in the South and manufactures entirely in America. While it provides a largely positive view of both the man and company, which has a section about Macy's book on its website, it's definitely not a puff piece, but rather an account of a family, company, industry and the costs of globalization on U.S. manufacturing. The book was an excellent one and further information on it can be found in a New York Times review by Mimi Swartz as well as Businessweek Q&A with Macy.
Abundance by Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler
Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think by X Prize founder and Singularity University co-founder Peter Diamandis and author and entrepreneur Steven Kotler was a solid read about actions around earth's available resources. The book early on contains the statement "technology can make the once scarce now abundant" and Diamandis and Kotler write throughout the book about exponential technologies, with the solving of one problem then serving as a multiplier and having positive downstream impacts in other areas.
Covered as the probably the most important basic need is that of access to clean water. If this can be solved, people’s health can improve, hunger be reduced and time freed up to do other productive things. The authors note how we need entirely new approaches to water, not simple conservation and some of the innovations both here now and potentially to come are inventor Dean Kamen’s company DEKA Research in New Hampshire and its Slingshot that generates clean water from anything wet, no matter how dirty, a smart grid to allocate water usage and smart toilets that can generate freshwater, fertilizer and power. In relation to food supply, it’s noted that we spend too much money and energy moving food, and the solution is to "move the farm" and do vertical indoor farming through hydroponics. Additionally, fish farming, genetically engineered seeds and in-vitro meat grown from stem cells (as meat from animals can both be a source of disease and requires roughly 2,500 gallons of water per pound) are all written about as things that can bring about abundance in relation to food, with the science of designing food systems that mimic the natural world being known as agroecology.
Diamandis and Kotler cover how some of the areas of improvement in energy availability are solar power, biofuels, like those being worked on by Craig Venter and his company Synthetic Genomics Inc., and nuclear power. Also covered is both a local level smart energy grid that can store energy during the day and then release it at night and a large scale energy grid for widespread distribution of power based on demand. Robotics was additionally noted as an enabler of abundance, with mention of the company Willow Garage in Menlo Park and Intuitive Surgical in the Bay Area that makes the da Vinci system surgical robot. Also in relation to health was stem cell treatments and growing artificial organs out of cells using 3-D printers, which are a fascinating innovation even if not using cells to build stuff. In terms of information and education, Diamandis and Kotler mentioned the internet's ability to disseminate information quickly as a key enabler of abundance and in the future, the potential benefit of the Internet of Things, basically devices in the home that all have unique IP addresses, along with education advances and personalized learning like through the Khan Academy and game learning.
Also noted were the new philanthropists, those like Jeff Skoll, Pierre Omidyar, Warren Buffett and Bill and Melinda Gates, putting huge sums of money towards fixing difficult problems and one interesting thing in the book was the distinction between the top and bottom of the pyramid in terms of people globally and their standards of living, and how large improvements may well come from the bottom. These individuals collectively have great spending power, huge needs and likely more than wealthier people in developed countries would benefit from force multipliers, like when someone get a basic need like clean water, it frees up time to be productive in other areas.
All in all, it was a very interesting book and makes the case well that prospects for the future not as bad as they sometimes seem.
Show Your Work by Austin Kleon
Show Your Work by Austin Kleon was a good book that followed up on and provided much more detail than Kleon's prior excellent book, Steal Like An Artist. The subtitle of Show Your Work is "10 Ways to Share Your Creativity and Get Discovered" and some of what Kleon writes is noted below...
1. You don't have to be a genius. Be part of a group contributing something and remember to be an amateur; amateurs know that contributing something is better than contributing nothing. Think about what you want to learn and make a commitment to learning it in front of others. You can't find your voice if you do to use it; talk about the things you love and your voice will follow. Read obituaries and keep in mind that they're not about death, they're about life, and second acts.
2. Think process, not product. Take people behind the scenes of your creative work and show the idea and then all the steps to the idea. Kleon quotes journalist David Carr as saying "you have to make stuff, nobody is going to give a damn about your resume; they want to see what you made with your own little fingers."
3. Share something small every day. Don't worry too much about the big picture, just focus on what you do in a given day, do that and then give a daily update, whether that update be a blog post, tweet, LinkedIn update or whatever gets your message out. Also keep in mind that most of your work isn't great, but you have to get it out there to let people decide.
4. Open up your cabinet of possibilities. Don't be a hoarder, share your tastes, you may not have great output yet, but you do have tastes.
5. Tell good stories. Work doesn't speak for itself, people really do want to hear the story behind work. Structure is everything, a good pitch is three acts, where you've been, where you are now, where you want to go and this same principle can be applied to storytelling about others. Talk about yourself at parties, figure out how to describe who you are and what you do and don't describe yourself as aspiring if you really are doing something, it's ok to wear it.
6. Teach what you know. Share your trade secrets.
7. Don't turn into human spam. You want hearts, not eyeballs and practice the vampire test and be done hanging with people that suck the life out of you. At the same time, find the people similar to yourself... "identify your fellow knuckleballers."
8. Learn to take a punch. Let people take their best shot at you and don't feed the trolls.
9. Sell out. Kleon on the topic of selling out quotes from a great interview with Dave Eggers.
10. Stick around. The phrase "don't quit your show" is used along with "you can't plan on anything; you can only go about your work. You can't count on success; you can only leave open the possibility for it, and be ready to jump on and take the ride when it comes for you."
It was really solid stuff in the book and at the end Kleon both notes the blog on his website and book twitter hashtag #showyourwork.
Flash Boys by Michael Lewis
Flash Boys by Michael Lewis was a really detailed look at high-frequency trading in the financial markets and a disquieting read due to in the types of predatory activity taking place at the expense of average investors. The book began with a description of a fiber cable line run between stock market locations in Chicago and New Jersey and how the speed of the line would enable millisecond advantages in receiving financial data for those paying to access the line.
This speed advantage, how money can be made off, and how it's advantage can be mitigated was covered by Lewis in part through the story of Brad Katsuyama, beginning with his experiences as a New York- based trader for Royal Bank of Canada. Katsuyama started with RBC in 2002 and in 2006 began to notice trouble buying stocks, as prices would bump up between the time he would begin and then complete transactions. What was occurring is a concept known as front-running, where people (through a speed advantage) would figure out what investors were trying to do and then make money off it. High- frequency traders in a span of milliseconds were seeing that a buyer for a given stock was out there, then purchasing it themselves to drive up the price and selling it at a profit to people like Katsuyama and investors he would purchase on behalf of.
Lewis details in the book how this unfair advantage for high-frequency or high-speed traders has been enabled due to new market parameters such as multiple stock exchanges that receive buy or sell signals at slightly different times, dark pools within a given financial institution where stock transactions can occur with notice only going to the institution or those who pay to access information within the dark pool, traders paying for co-location close to trading sites to get a speed advantage, fees and kickbacks to exchanges for buy or sell orders, and multitudes of different trade types (particularly "flash orders" that aren't really orders, just fake market signals) utilized by high-frequency traders to suss out information on what's going to occur so they can then get in front of the intentions of investors who don't enjoy the same speed advantage.
Covered in Flash Boys is how Katsuyama after seeing the market predation that was occurring sought to educate others in the industry on it and then created a new stock exchange to try to limit the amount of market advantage enjoyed by high-speed high-frequency traders and have buying and selling of stocked be based on actual company valuations and investor intention. The new stock exchange is IEX and some of the particulars around trading on it include a limited number of order types and no co-location for the purpose of speed along with requiring where firms could connect with the exchange so no speed advantage would exist. IEX opened on October 25, 2013 and on December 19 Goldman Sachs became the first large investment bank to show its agreement with the principles of IBX by sending a huge volume of trades to them. One interesting thing about Goldman doing this is Lewis in the book also tells the story of Sergey Aleynikov, a former Goldman staffer who was arrested in 2009 for stealing Goldman code, but really appears to have done little wrong, other than show in a way the limitations of Goldman in high- frequency trading.
It's a fascinating book by Lewis that was covered by 60 Minutes around the time of its publication and recently written about in The Guardian as having triggered political attention (or at least public statements about paying attention) to needed regulatory changes around high-speed trading and front- running activities.
Hatching Twitter by Nick Bilton
Hatching Twitter by Nick Bilton was about some compelling people that came up with a pretty revolutionary business. Reading the book reminded me of a fascinating piece by Clay Travis about Twitter as a platform for disseminating all types of communication and Bilton in Hatching Twitter writes a highly entertaining book that I found myself at times wondering how accurate it all was, but the people portrayed (with the possible exception of a seemingly batty CEO Coach) and their actions struck me as quite plausible, especially given the presence of power, prestige, money and strongly held beliefs.
Detailed in the book is how Twitter began in 2005 out of a podcasting startup, Odeo, which was founded by Noah Glass and funded by Ev Williams who made his money by starting and then selling Blogger to Google. With $200K in Odeo, Williams became CEO and around this time, Jack Dorsey and Biz Stone joined the company and then the podcasting website idea basically got killed when Apple said they were going to have Podcasting on iTunes, leading to Dorsey’s idea of building something around a “status update” message similar to what was up on AOL instant messaging. Glass came up with the name Twitter for the venture and was completely enthused about the human connections the idea could foster, but then fired from the company by Williams as the lead investor lost confidence in and disagreed with Glass on many things.
Twitter hit big at the 2007 South by Southwest conference in Austin, TX and when roles and leaders were then established, Dorsey was the first CEO with 20% of the company, Williams as the lead investor 70%, Stone and Jason Goldman around 3% each with the remaining 4% split up among other employees. Not long after this, Williams and Dorsey began to have disagreements and Venture Capital investors Fred Wilson and Bijan Sabet came into the picture and sided with Williams on feelings of unhappiness with the CEO.
In 2008, Dorsey was forced out as CEO, but not from the company and he then accepted any and all press requests that came his way and burnished his reputation and perceived role at Twitter at the same time that he began the payment processing company Square. Additionally, Peter Fenton came in as a Twitter investor and would prove a Dorsey ally as the former CEO began to undermine Williams and, along with the aforementioned unbelievable CEO-coach Bill Campbell, force Williams out as CEO with him being replaced in the summer of 2010 by then COO Dick Costello.
There are lots of salacious details throughout the story from Bilton and it makes for entertaining reading that of course portrays some people in a better light than others, but all seems plausible and makes a fascinating read on the people behind a remarkable communication tool.
The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon by Brad Stone
The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon by Brad Stone was a thoroughly reported and well written look at Bezos and what the company he founded has done so far. Amazon is described in the book as a hugely challenging place to work at and Bezos someone who can be difficult to work for. That said, it was interesting to read of how Bezos would hire really smart people into the company and then find something for them to work on. Also fascinating about working at Amazon is per direction from Bezos, PowerPoint presentations are never done within the company. Instead six page narratives are written, with meetings beginning by everyone reading the narrative. The idea behind the narrative documents is both keep the focus on customers by having them be like a press release and to encourage employees to critically think through an idea.
One interesting thing from the introduction to the book was a conversation between Bezos and Brad Stone with the author being asked how he'll handle the narrative fallacy, a concept written about by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a noted statistician and writer who has decried the propensity people have for seeking simple explanations for complex events, when in reality there's often many factors, including those of the random variety. The response Stone wrote into the introduction was one that seems a good idea in many pursuits, in putting the book together given this narrative fallacy idea he wanted to "acknowledge its potential influence and plunge ahead anyways."
Another author that Stone referenced Bezos influenced by is Clayton Christensen who wrote The Innovator's Dilemma about how companies are afraid to threaten or cannibalize their existing markets, with The Everything Store referencing how brick and mortar companies like Barnes & Noble and Wal-Mart fell into this trap, contributing in large part to the success of Amazon.
Also of note was how when Bezos would set low prices for products or services (as Amazon often manically does) it would be for a variety of reasons, ranging from simply providing the lowest customer price to putting pressure on a competitor and/or acquisition target to the fascinating to me idea of not pricing too high lest high margins bring in more competition. Overall, it was a fast read and interesting business book from Stone.
Ingenious by Jason Fagone
Ingenious by Jason Fagone was an interesting book that covered a group of remarkable automotive inventors and the thread pulling together the aforementioned inventors was their respective efforts at winning the Automotive X Prize. The contest was started by Peter Diamandis out of his successful X Prize for private space travel, which featured teams attempting to win a $10M prize by sending three passengers to 100 kilometers into space and safely back, and then repeating it two weeks later.
The Automotive X Prize was an attempt by Diamandis to kick start an industry just as the original X Prize helped launch prize space travel, but rather the intent of this contest was to push forward automotive hyper fuel efficiency. The contest went through various iterations of how it would run and it wound up with a target of 100 MPGe (or MPG equivalents) and a $10M total prize purse split into three divisions with one $5M prize and two different $2.5M prizes available. Entrants had to satisfy the MPGe threshold along with meeting various performance and safety benchmarks. If multiple cars within a division satisfied all criteria for winning the prize, then a 100 mile race would decide the winner.
What stood out the most in Fagone’s book were terribly interesting characters, and great stories about them that clearly came from thorough reporting done. The people and teams featured most prominently were the West Philly Hybrid X team of high school students led by former math teacher Simon Hauger, Oliver Kuttner and the “Very Light Car” from his Edison2 team and Kevin Smith and his team Illuminati Motor Works. Towards the end of the book Fagone wrote about the electric car industry and its most successful entry to date in Tesla Motors and while Tesla certainly an interesting company led by a fascinating guy, what drives (no pun intended) Ingenious forward is the bootstrapping efforts and entrepreneurial spirit of people like Kuttner and Smith and their work with physical objects in their hyper- efficient cars.
If I were to quibble with Ingenious, the blend of different characters written about made it at times hard to keep apart who was being written about, but that was primarily a difficulty just in the beginning of the book, and perhaps was a function of the chapter titles not always being terribly descriptive of the topics or people they covered. Regardless of this minor annoyance for me, it was definitely a compelling read on terribly interesting people trying to accomplish something great.
Plan B by David Kord Murray
Plan B: How to Hatch a Second Plan That's Always Better Than Your First by David Kord Murray was an interesting follow up to Murray’s Borrowing Brilliance and Plan B lays out Murray's 11 "Principles of Adaptive Management." The principles themselves can be found in a book synopsis by Harvey Schachter for the Toronto newspaper Global and Mail and the ones that struck me as most interesting are the following:
Principle of Problems - The idea behind this was that an owner or employee should figure out what problem their business trying to solve. This very much reminded me of the book How Will You Measure Your Life? by Clayton Christensen, James Allworth and Karen Dillon with an idea expressed there being to consider what job a product or service fills. On the same topic of writing by Christensen, Murray refers to him at the end of Plan B in a chapter on evolving plans and strategic evolution vs. tactical alternations.
Principle of Solutions - This as described by Murray was about the importance of tactics, especially as they align with strategy. Concept from the book is that too often tactics are overlooked in importance, and it's an examination of tactics that can reveal what will work in an endeavor... with the example given of finding the tactics that would be used to successfully return to Earth the Apollo 13 crew after an equipment failure.
Principle of Force - This was one of those situations where an idea from someone made me think of a similar concept I've seen elsewhere previously. Specifically, what I took from Murray in this chapter was the notion of being expert at the most niche thing possible. I may have seen other writers expound on this as well, but the person I recall who covered it was Tim Ferriss is his book The 4-Hour Workweek.
Principle of paper plans - Concept simplified was that the important thing isn't the plan itself, but the thinking through of the business idea that's required to actually write the plan.
Principle of Multiple Futures - This somewhat ties into the idea of paper plans and them not being the end-all, be-all, but the idea I took from Murray in this section was the best way to make predictions is to make a lot of them and best way to plan for outcomes is to consider a lot of them. Basically, things won't often turn out exactly like we expect so multiple outcomes should be considered along with potential reactions to them.
Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
Walter Isaacson is an accomplished biography writer and the start of his book Steve Jobs includes mention of how the late Apple co-founder didn’t ask for any editorial control and convinced Isaacson to write it so there would be an account of him done by someone trusted. The tradeoff for that which Jobs acknowledged was there would be some stories and details showing him in a negative light. All in all, though, Jobs comes across as a remarkable individual and the following are some of the things noted by Isaacson that stood out as particularly interesting:
Differences between Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak – The two met while in high school and were draw to one another by shared interest in electronics as well high intellects. Where they diverged was both socially and in terms of motivations. Wozniak was a brilliant programmer while Jobs wasn't nearly as technical, but could both conceptualize and sell very well. Early on, the two developed technology that Wozniak would have given it away, but Jobs pushed for selling something he knew people would want. This initial successful partnership eventually led to the creation of Apple.
Non-traditional lifestyle choices and views of the world – Jobs at an early age because interested in LSD, fad diets and Eastern Spirituality and Zen Buddhism... to the point of leaving his job at Atari to go to India searching for enlightenment and a guru.
Almost immediate judgments made – Other people & their ideas would oft be decided by Jobs to be either great or horrible. This same hair-trigger determination could then be reversed at a moment's notice, at times with Jobs proposing as his own an idea previously rejected.
Favoring of open rather than closed systems – Jobs early on decided to not license the Macintosh operating system (different than Microsoft and their approach with Windows) and instead had hardware and software bundled together. This same closed system approach came out later on with development of the iTunes store, apps and Apple stores.
Championing of Design over Engineering – Jobs would seek for and identify great design and push for that in the products sold, oftentimes to the chagrin of engineers who would have to figure out how to make work the design. This was a topic throughout Jobs career and he talked about Apple products being "at the intersection of humanities and technology."
A respect for the creative – This manifested itself both in the appreciation of great design, focus on stellar advertising and actions taken while running Pixar. Jobs had respect for people who he viewed as truly creative and that led to him following the lead of John Lasseter and other Pixar creative types requesting money to make animated shorts. This work that was outside of Pixar's initial core hardware business eventually led to Toy Story being made... and started the company on the path to taking over leadership of Disney Animation.
Isaacson wrote an excellent biography of Steve Jobs and as previously stated, the book wasn't designed by Jobs to be his legacy, but perhaps he would want his famous June 2005 Stanford commencement speech to serve as such.