Book Reviews
The Art of Explanation: Making Your Ideas, Products, and Services Easier to Understand Lee LeFever John Wiley & Sons (2013) A brilliant explanation of how to explain more successfully so that you as well as others really “get it” Exposition…
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Hostage at the Table: How Leaders Can Overcome Conflict, Influence Others, and Raise Performance George Kohlrieser Jossey-Bass/A Wiley Imprint (2006) How to avoid becoming or remaining a “hostage” to self-defeating expectations of you (including your own) The title of this review was suggested by Ernest…
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The Six Disciplines of Breakthrough Learning: How to Turn Training and Development into Business Results Calhoun W. Wick, Roy V. H. Pollock, Andy Jefferson, and Richard Flanagan Pfeiffer/A Wiley Imprint (2003) Note: This is an excellent example of a book…
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Creative Conspiracy: The New Rules of Breakthrough Collaboration Leigh Thompson Harvard Business Review Press (2013) How and why focused, individual work can achieve innovation breakthroughs when combined with structured team interaction However different they may be in many respects, all…
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This Will Make You Smarter: New Scientific Concepts to Improve Your Thinking John Brockman, Editor Harper Perennial/HarperCollins (2012) Here are dozens of perspectives on what are, for most people, new scientific concepts for self-improvement Edge.org is a website offering an abundance of…
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Unrelenting Innovation: How to Build a Culture for Market Dominance Gerard J. Tellis Jossey-Bass/A Wiley Imprint (2013) How to avoid or overcome “the incumbent’s curse” to achieve market dominance By nature, books about innovation should contribute something new and/or something…
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Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation Tim Brown HarperBusiness (2009) How to use design thinking to convert a need into a demand I recently read two books (this one written with Barry Katz and Roger…
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Lincoln: A President for the Ages Karl Weber, Editor and Contributor PublicAffairs/Participant Media (2012) Even without Spielberg’s great film with which it is associated, this book would still be a stunning achievement. Those who have already seen Steven Spielberg’s film may be surprised to learn…
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The Oz Principle: Getting Results Through Individual and Organizational Accountability Roger Connors, Tom Smith, and Caig Hickman Portfolio/Penguin Group (2004) Note: I recently re-read this book while formulating questions for an interview of its co-authors and found it even more…
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The Architecture of Innovation: The Economics of Creative Organizations Josh Lerner Harvard Business Review Press (2012) How to combine two traditional models for innovation “within a powerful system that consistently and efficiently produces new ideas” By nature, books about innovation…
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