“Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.” Bill Gates Bill's observation about our ability to over-hype the near future and underplay the long term really holds true in bullish markets. You can see it at the moment, both in the hype surrounding next … Continue reading The last big bubble burst
Category: Bookshelf
Books I’ve read/am reading/have bought but not necessarily gotten around to actually reading yet.
Brad Stone's The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon is a fascinating, kind of authorised, insight into the man behind today's biggest online retail brand. Reading it has taught me a few things: ***** from a one-time Amazon interviewee I never, ever want to work for Amazon (and from my fleeting experience with their … Continue reading Book review: The Everything Store
Over a decade ago I was introduced to a book that had a major influence over my subsequent career. Strategic Planning for Information Systems by John Ward and Joe Peppard constructed a model of IT management driven by business outcome rather than technology. It's also one of the most impregnable books I've never finished. Ian's new book … Continue reading Book Review: Disrupt IT by Ian Cox
I'm currently reading Nassim Nicholas Taleb's Antifragile. It's not the easiest of reads (a prequel written after a sequel starts on a bad footing - just ask George Lucas) but a fascinating concept - that the opposite of "fragile" isn't "robust" or somesuch (which are just neutral concepts) but rather "antifragile" where things get stronger … Continue reading Digital fragility
At the core of Nicholas Lovell's book The Curve is a central assumption: if the costs of reproducing and distributing a product drop to as near as dammit zero, then the price of those products will inevitably drop to zero. If you have a business that's model is based on a markup percentage on … Continue reading Bookshelf: The Curve
Now that I'm back into the swing of rail commuting, I'm listening to podcasts again at a fair rate. Here's the current playlist (for the record, the player I use is the Android App BeyondPod) Radio 4's Documentary of the Week: http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/radio4/r4choice/rss.xml A fairly random selection, but there's been some corkers recently - particularly a … Continue reading The podcast playlist
I'm currently about half way through Malcolm Gladwell's latest book, David and Goliath. The core of his thinking appears to be that where we often see the underdog as having disadvantage against the overdog, actually what are often regarded as advantages can be anything but. It's thought provoking, and as ever with Gladwell incredibly well … Continue reading The Malcolm Gladwell Effect
Back in my days of building software for a living, bug-tracking lists were something of a necessity. Build up a list of problems, and attempt to fix as many of the serious ones as you can before you release the software. Rolf Dobelli's book The Art of Thinking Clearly is a bug-tracking list for … Continue reading The Art of Thinking Clearly
At the recent Silicon Beach event I was lucky to be able to meet and chat with agency legend Andy Law. I didn't know he was an agency legend until talking to him (man - for most of the time Andy's been in the agency world, I was nestled in the world of tech). … Continue reading Implosion
An old friend of mine yesterday asked me to share a list of the things I've been reading recently. Thought I'd share more widely: 50 Economics Ideas You Really Need to Know: your really need to know (50 Ideas) a bluffer’s guide to economics Adland: A Global History of Advertising another self-explanatory title. Useful to … Continue reading The Book Shelf
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