Archive for the ‘2008’ Category

Best business books of 2008 (so far)

Thursday, July 31st, 2008

It’s been a great year for business books, in my estimation, so rather than hold off till the end of the year, here’s a first-half “best of” list for your perusal:

The Opposable Mind” – Roger Martin. How the greatest business innovators can resolve paradoxes and therefore create new markets.

Presentation Zen” – Garr Reynolds. Radical rules for creating and delivering powerful business presentations.

Rain Making” (2nd edition) – Ford Harding. Finally, a book about selling that doesn’t shout, but quietly gives commonsense, useful advice on every page.

Groundswell” – Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff. Describes the business impact of social media technologies like blogs, social networks, forums, etc. It would be important just for the subject matter. Delightfully, it’s also very well researched, documented, and written.

Senior Leadership Teams” – Ruth Wageman, Debra Nunes, James Burruss, Richard Hackman. Illuminating a hidden corner of company dysfunction–the leadership team that can’t work together–and demonstrating the practices that can overcome it.

Brain Rules” – John Medina. A delightful, story-filled book that illuminates how the brain works, and how we can change our behaviors to be nicer to our brain and to others’.

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Most interesting discoveries of CTIA Wireless 2008

Friday, April 4th, 2008

As I wait in the Las Vegas airport for my flight home, here are the most interesting discoveries I made at this year’s show.

Chargebox
– they sell a neat vending machine to recharge cellphones.

Wildwave – a Canadian company that creates and distributes mobile digital content.

Jygy – an SMS-based social network tool (disclosure: I know some of the leadership of Jygy, though this week was my first look at the system)

dial2do – one of several voice-to-text companies at the show, their software is focused on processing oral commands, such as composing and posting Twitter updates completely by voice.

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