Thought leadership by design

Just a quickie to share with you a book I stumbled onto and find rather insightful: “Thought Leadership by Design”.

I will order a few of those and distribute them to all my business contacts… it is, as they claim one of those “no-frills” books I like. You can actually read it and it is actually worth it.

On the “no-frills” line, I strongly urge you to take a peak at getAbstract.com which produces timely abstracts of business books that you can scan and decide for yourself if you really want to invest the time to actually read through the full 300-page version. Very useful indeed in this time-constrained world of ours.

Technorati Tags: digital design, user experience

What is this thing called culture?

Seen on Amazon.com… we are still 2 months away from the official release, which brings me to the following 3 questions for you:

1. What is this thing called? Culture?
2. What is this thing called culture?
3. What! Is this thing called culture?

Technorati Tags: harry potter

The Google story

I just finished The Google Story and believe it to be a very good book for several reasons.

First, on a personal note, it reminded me of my time at Netscape (NASDQ:NSCP) as the author does a good job of giving the reader the sense of focus and urgency typically found in pre-IPO start-ups.

Then the book is well written, with short chapters and many well-illustrated anecdotes and data. It made me grasp not only the extent of the Google economy (specifically the long tail of medium to small businesses either advertising on or living from ads served by Google) but also the brain power, drive and business acumen of its two founders.

It also does a good job of stressing (as always in such cases) the luck they had when growing their business. I mean, being private, fully funded and thriving in the Silicon Valley when the bubble burst made it extra-easy to hire talent at a cheap… this is luck and has nothing to do with strategy or execution.

Last, it makes it clear that Google is here to stay and has become a large established company in which it may now be difficult to have a tangible impact.

Still looking for the next big opportunity …