Book Reviews
The Big Nine: How the Tech Titans and Their Thinking Machines Could Warp Humanity Amy Webb Public Affairs (March 2019) So many questions: Great peril or great opportunity? Both? Neither? Who decides? As author Shoshana Zuboff explains, The Age of…
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Gods and Robots: Myths, Machines, and Ancient Dreams of Technology Adrienne Mayor Princeton University Press (November 2018) “The great river network of mythic narratives with all its tributaries” That is how George Zarkadakis characterizes the narrative arc in Adrienne Mayor…
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The Ideal Team Player: How to Recognize and Cultivate the Three Essential Virtues Patrick Lencioni Jossey-Bass/An Imprint of John Wiley & Sons (2016) How and why teamwork remains the ultimate competitive advantage because it is so powerful…and so rare This…
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Company of One: Why Staying Small Is the Next Big Thing for Business Paul Jarvis Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (January 2019) How and why to “start small, define growth, and keep learning” According to Paul Jarvis, “blind growth is the main…
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The AI Advantage: How to Put the Artificial Intelligence Revolution to Work Thomas H. Davenport MIT Press (October 2018) Charting “the path of artificial intelligence and cognitive technologies in mainstream businesses” In the first chapter and throughout the narrative of…
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Turning the Flywheel: A Monograph to Accompany Good to Great Jim Collins HarperCollins (2019) How to generate and then sustain momentum of your organization’s flywheel Over the years, I have read and reviewed all of Jim Collins’ books and interviewed…
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The Quantum Labyrinth: How Richard Feynman and John Wheeler Revolutionized Time and Reality Paul Halpern Basic Books (2017) A brilliant analysis of two “explorers of the extraordinary possibilities in physics” This book was written so that non-scientists such as I…
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Unlocking the Customer Value Chain: How Decoupling Drives Consumer Disruption Thales S. Teixeira with Greg Piechota Currency/An Imprint of Crown Publishing Group (February 2019) Like other chains, this one is only as strong as its weakest link. With the assistance…
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The Formula: The Universal Laws of Success Albert László Barabási Little, Brown and Company (2018) Following the five laws doesn’t guarantee success but ignoring them usually guarantees failure Albert László Barabási explains why people succeed or fail. He focuses on…
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Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Mostly Noisy World Cal Newport Portfolio/Penguin (February 2019) How to thrive “in our current moment of technological overload” I agree with Cal Newport that the impact of technological tools on most…
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