It’s December, and the time to embrace the holiday season ahead. Perhaps you are looking for a gift, or maybe you are looking for something to read during the holidays. Good books to get you into a reflective mood, to decide how you can strengthen your reinvention capacities and powers in 2018. What we got here for you: a selection of the best three books from 2017 when it comes to understanding change, and getting better, stronger, and more prepared to deal with change effectively. So, here we go!
We start the top three with a book by Thomas L. Friedman, a veteran journalist, a great writer, and probably well-known to some of you from his book The World Is Flat. Friedman has many other books too, but what we got here for you is something really in the Reinvent-yourself category. Thomas thinks and talks about global changes that are happening and massive global trends that are shaping our reality, but it all gets down to the personal level. The title of the book is Thank You For Being Late, and the subtitle, An Optimist’s Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations.
You know how I obsess over the speed of change and acceleration, and this is THE book that gets to help you understand that age of acceleration. Instead of getting depressed and overwhelmed by it, it is nothing but an optimistical guide. The name of the book made me smile the moment I saw it on the shelves.
Thank You For Being Late reminds us that it is not always about speeding up. That today, it is more important than ever, to slow down, to be late for certain things, to take time for some things. Which is precisely what we also communicate to you in our Reinvention is Not a Quick Fix video. This book could be your how-to-guide in understanding the speed of change, and instead of running ahead of it, learning how to center yourself in the eye of the storm.
The second selection is a book that I already shared on my Instagram account. You probably saw it on Facebook as well, but in case you haven’t, this is your Reinvent-your-company category book. It’s entitled Machine, Platform, Crowd: Harnessing Our Digital Future, penned by a pair of fantastic authors, Andrew Mcafee and Erik Brynjolfsson. They have been tracking technology and dived deep on everything that has to do with digital technologies, artificial intelligence, business model innovation, and especially, how your company can get prepared for this mean world in which a new type of solutions are reshaping our reality all the time.
Of course, on the Machine side, both authors speak about artificial intelligence. They talk about many other things that are defining our society today too. On the Platform, it is a continuation of the conversation, and how does platform business work. Apple store is a typical example of such type of business. The idea is that you don’t create the solutions themselves, but you instead create a platform which anyone can use to sell their products or services. For instance, the apps that anyone of us can design, then use Apple store to sell as own product.
And Crowd is all about the power of collective intelligence. These three significant trends–three new realities–are reshaping the way our businesses should compete or organize among other things. Excellent selection for those of you techies, and excellent for those of you in executive position, leadership or management ones, that aim on pondering more in-depth on how to deal with new digital technologies, artificial intelligence, and business model innovation.
Finally, the third book is one that comes from MIT Media Lab. Penned by two authors, Jeff Howe and Joi Ito, the title of the book is Whiplash: How to Survive Our Faster Future. And this is really in the Reinvent-the-world category. It is a book that profoundly reshapes or offers new principles of reshaping the operating systems of our world: how do we do anything; what do we consider good or bad?
The authors offer helpful, specific principles – the new principles of designing the global order. Some of them–for me–amazingly on-spot. For instance, competence over maps, which is my favorite. Very often in business and in personal life, we think about understanding the landscape. Remember how in strategy, Michael Porter was suggesting that we do industry analysis so that we can map out the ‘strategic terrain,’ all with the purpose to understand who is in this business already. Well, the authors are arguing that today maps are almost irrelevant because the moment you map out the terrain, it is already changing.
You might finish the industry analysis, and by the time you are through with it, there are five, six, ten… hundreds of new competitors already there. Maps just become irrelevant, and it is more about how you build a compass on life, or in your business. In your community, or in your country. That is just one of nine principles. More awe-moments will follow as you progress to more principles, for example, bracing the risk rather than continually build towards safety. While it is a book in the reinvent-the-world category, it can also help you out personally as it embraces a lot of practical aspects.
We hope that these three books will come handy to you during the holiday seasons. We hope that you are getting ready to close this year with a strong and powerful commitment to reinvention and that you are also preparing some New Year resolutions too. But that’s something we might discuss in a next video! Until then, see you soon!
P.S. In case you missed our previous video, check it out here. We explore how being afraid of change is normal, and how being stuck in that fear is more a matter of a choice.
Finding good books to read can at times appear to be a troublesome prospect. However, in this age of global Internet communities and online sharing, you’re never far away from an incredible find. Courtesy of the Internet, and traditional means, we have bunch of lists of ways to find yourself an incredible new author or new book.