A nice observation from the Xerox, Xerox, Xerox, Xerox chapter:
"In any case, office reproduction began to grow very rapidly. (It may seem paradoxical that this growth coincided with the rise of the telephone, but perhaps it isn’t. All the evidence suggests that communication between people by whatever means, far from simply accomplishing its purpose, invariably breeds the need for more.) "
That reminds me of Edward Glaeser's point from Triumph of the City about the relationship between electronic communication and face-to-face meetings:
> Today, information technology is changing the world, making it more idea-intensive, better connected, and ultimately more urban. Improvements in information technology seem to have increased, rather than reduced, the value of face-to-face connections, which might be called Jevons’s Complementarity Corollary. The nineteenth-century English economist William Stanley Jevons noted that more fuel-efficient steam engines didn’t lead to less coal consumption. Better engines made energy use effectively less expensive, and helped move the world to an industrial era powered by coal. The term Jevons’s paradox has come to refer to any situation in which efficiency improvements lead to more, not less, consumption—one reason why low-calorie cookies can lead to larger waistlines and fuel-efficient cars can end up consuming more gas. Jevons’s paradox applied to information technology means that as we acquire more efficient means of transmitting information, like e-mail or Skype, we spend more, not less, time transmitting information.
> One might think that better information technology would reduce the need to learn from other sources, like face-to-face meetings in cities. But Jevons’s Complementarity Corollary, which follows naturally from Jevons’s paradox, predicts that improvements in information technology can lead to more demand for face-to-face contact, because face time complements time spent communicating electronically.
I feel very uncomfortable that I cannot see what is so brilliant about this book that Bill Gates goes on and on about it. I tried to read it and was bored and stopped half way through it.
Anybody can shed some light? Share what you've learned, please.
In general, I have been horrified by the book recommendations about various fields, by experts in those fields. I used to teach, and the masters of the craft, folks who could silence a room with a glance, and inspired kids to harder work than they knew possible, used to recommend books that seemed embarrassingly trite.
I attribute it to the fact that they were natural experts, and not necessarily book lovers. It would be like asking a sparrow for their favorite work on the dynamics of flight.
I liked that it was written as a piece of journalism rather than a didactic exposition of vital business truth, as most other books in the genre have a tendency toward attempting. Which is appropriate, because unlike hard sciences, business has few absolutes and is heavily context sensitive.
Also the writing style was great, Brooks had a knack for making the players in these case studies colorfully come to life.
Over the years I've had both experiences where I've asked for someones recommendation and found it amazingly accurate, and found what was recommended ordinary or uninspiring. My take on it is that the way people absorb information is unique to the individual and some presentations get through that filter and some don't.
The other important thing I learned was that the filter changes, as you become more educated in a subject, you can pick up more with less if the author assumes you already know the basics. When writing for publication I sometimes felt I was explaining too much but my editor would dial that in for me, when I described to little she would gently prod me back to reality with "How the hell is someone reading this supposed to know what that means?" :-) When I went to far she would chastise me with "Everyone already knows that."
I've read Brooks, and in my opinion he writes for people who are already in the role of business leader and are trying to advance by not making the mistakes others have made. But is it brilliant? I don't know. Can it be brilliant for Bill and Warren and not for anyone else? Probably. I found it useful but not as useful as Larry Bossidy's "Execution: the discipline of getting things done" [1] which really helped me understand what "progress" was when you were a manager versus when you were an engineer and progress was "obvious" in the sense that the project got completed. But I can't say that Execution is more brilliant than Business Stories, they are just different and one was better for me.
Bottom line don't sweat it if you don't see the brilliance, note it and move on. Later if you find you can recall what you read differently, based on your experience, consider going back and re-reading it. See if it has become more, or less, brilliant given your additional understanding.
I concur to some degree: I did find it an enjoyable read, but "best business book ever"? I thought the stories were interesting, but ... no, I too failed to find it brilliant, which also makes me kind of uncomfortable.
You're not alone - I did the same, and can completely relate to the strange feeling of insecurity from "not getting" a book touted as the best-ever by Gates and Buffett.
This is how I feel about "The Rosie Project." It's Big Bang Theory in book form making fun of an autistic person. All of the jokes are about him not understanding social cues. Surprised someone like Gates thought that was funny.
I agree, the chapters could have been condensed better. I guess the brilliance is that it tells you that some of the smartest people and the biggest companies make catastrophic blunders.
A. Books that reiterate and reinforce my ideology.
B. Books that reiterate, sum up, and improve, my knowledge of something I personally and/or professionally, and very very subjectively, find interesting and/or useful (for whatever reason).
C. Books that opened my mind or lifted my sprirt.
There are probably one or two more categories.
Which of these are true for a particular recommendation depends on the reader's motivation for reading the book.
Whether it's A, B, or C, it just might not be useful to nor resonate with anyone else.
Though with B, sometimes the knowledge provided requires a certain level of experience with the subject matter. And if your experience level is either too low, or too high, the book will either not make any sense or will just seem useless, of little importance, lacking originality, or freshness.
How come everything is so dramatic this days? " The Best Business Book I’ve Ever Read". What happened to: "Recommended reading book! you should add it to your reading list"
The former sentence (assuming true) communicates something more than the latter.
Contrast:
"We're going to get some snow" versus "The biggest 2-day snowstorm in recorded history is bearing down on us!"
"A man died" versus "World's oldest man died."
Yes, a lot of times superlatives are used for the purposes of pure link-bait or advertising hooks, but that doesn't mean we should eliminate their usage entirely.
I bought and read the book a few months back. About half the book is about businesses (mainly large corporations), while the other half is about banking and the stock market. I think this disappointed readers who were expecting a directly applicable "how-to" book on business.
Here's a run-down of the book by chapter, with the chapters ostensibly related to business marked by asterisks:
1. The Fluctuation -- on stock market volatility
2. *The Fate of the Edsel* -- how Ford failed to find a product-market fit.
3. The Federal Income Tax -- self-explanatory.
4. A Reasonable Amount of Time -- on insider trader.
5. *Xerox Xerox Xerox Xerox* -- read this online.
6. Making the Customers Whole -- about how a large investment firm crumbled
when a single large speculative investment fell through, and how the
stock exchange stepped in to repay the firm's customers.
7. *The Impacted Philosophers* -- on an anti-trust investigation of General
Electric (perhaps Gates related personally to this).
8. The Last Great Corner -- about stock price manipulation
9. A Second Sort of Life -- about David Lilienthal, who went transitioned from
a career in government to investment banking.
10. *Stockholder Season* -- on what it's like, as an individual stockholder,
to attend a stockholder meeting.
11. *One Free Bite* -- on intellectual property and non-compete agreements.
12. In Defense of Sterling -- about how the central banks of the world
cooperate to maintain stability across currencies.
Many of these stories would be particularly relevant if you ran a multinational corporation or were one of the world's wealthiest investors. I think it's no accident that Bill Gates and Warren Buffet enjoyed this book so much.
I happened to enjoy the parts about Wall Street, so I enjoyed the book. The comparisons to Michael Lewis are apt. It was most interesting for me to see how many of the same economic issues being discussed today (income inequality, intellectual property, corporate misconduct, the extraordinary power and influence of the banking industry, etc.) were discussed in nearly the exact same terms 50+ years ago. It doesn't give you the sense that great progress has been made on these fronts, and perhaps we'll still be complaining about the exact same things in 2065.
Its possible he's using some site wide tool to monetize and that added the link automatically. Though the graphics suggest he did it with some forethought.
I think its also kind of funny that I stopped reading this article half way through and jumped to the link since I was so curious if it was going to have a tag code. That says a lot about the nature of affiliate marketing.
BTW, I don't see anything particularly wrong with it.
Everything I've read about this book, apart from comments by Bill Gates, prevented me from reading it. Does anyone have any recommendations of better business books?
I was incredibly inspired by Isaacson's Jobs biography. To learn that someone so flawed can achieve such greatness is inspiring. I also read it almost like a mystery novel, trying to decipher what he was actually doing that was creating such value. I've read a number of Isaacson's other books but none were as inspiring. I did enjoy most of them though.
Any other recommendations of business books I should actually read?
I guess it's a matter of taste as I greatly preferred Business Adventures to the Jobs biography. The Jobs book, while informative, felt like it was missing something. I got a better sense about the guy watching his old NEXT era PBS interviews than I did Isaacson's bio, which too often felt like a recounting of major events shoehorned into what Isaacson decided the theme of Jobs' life was.
I'd still recommend reading BA because the writing style is first rate (and unexpectedly funny). It's also worthwhile for the realization that, due to it's mid century setting, that while the materials and ideas of the business world have changed since the books time, people really haven't, thus business itself really hasn't changed as much as you might otherwise conclude.
If your looking for business entertainement books, check out Michael Lewis (the guy behind money ball). I really like The new new thing, flash boys and boomerang.
Some Iconic Business Books I loved and are Worth Reading IMHO.
Use Your Noodle and Get The Boodle (aka Think and Grow Rich by Napolean Hill - that was his proposed but rejected title),
Influence, The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini,
Be My Guest - Conrad Hilton Autobiography,
Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography,
The Success System That Never Fails - W. Clement Stone,
Winning Through Intimidation - Robert Ringer,
Scientific Advertising - Claude Hopkins,
The Ultimate Marketing Plan - Dan Kennedy,
How to Win Friends and influence People - Dale Carnegie,
The Psychology of Intelligence - CIA Manual - Richard Heuer https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intellig... ,
There are literally thousands of books worth reading, but the above are the ones I found to be the most enlightening.
'Business' is a large topic - anything in particular? Marketing? Finance? Customer Development? Management? etc?
Books that I'd recommend: Anything by Peter Drucker, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni, Made to Stick by the Heath Brothers, Blue Ocean Strategy by Kim and Mauborgne, among others. I'm sure plenty others here will also give you other recommendations that seem more 'start-up' like too.
I remember reading this when it was posted back in July. I thought it was on HN I saw it, but searching for other posts linking to this article came up empty.
This book was re-released because of this recommendation. Gates I'm guessing coordinated with amazon to get it back for sale, as previously the rare copies were prohibitively expensive.
> But the final outcome of the struggle was still uncertain late in
1968. McLuhan, for one, was convinced that all efforts to preserve
the old forms of author protection represent backward
thinking and are doomed to failure (or, anyway, he was convinced
the day he wrote his American Scholar article). “There
is no possible protection from technology except by technology,”
he wrote. “When you create a new environment with one
phase of technology, you have to create an anti-environment
with the next.” But authors are seldom good at technology,
and probably do not flourish in anti-environments.
That summaries all the government effort with copyright
guy_c|11 years ago
"In any case, office reproduction began to grow very rapidly. (It may seem paradoxical that this growth coincided with the rise of the telephone, but perhaps it isn’t. All the evidence suggests that communication between people by whatever means, far from simply accomplishing its purpose, invariably breeds the need for more.) "
igonvalue|11 years ago
> Today, information technology is changing the world, making it more idea-intensive, better connected, and ultimately more urban. Improvements in information technology seem to have increased, rather than reduced, the value of face-to-face connections, which might be called Jevons’s Complementarity Corollary. The nineteenth-century English economist William Stanley Jevons noted that more fuel-efficient steam engines didn’t lead to less coal consumption. Better engines made energy use effectively less expensive, and helped move the world to an industrial era powered by coal. The term Jevons’s paradox has come to refer to any situation in which efficiency improvements lead to more, not less, consumption—one reason why low-calorie cookies can lead to larger waistlines and fuel-efficient cars can end up consuming more gas. Jevons’s paradox applied to information technology means that as we acquire more efficient means of transmitting information, like e-mail or Skype, we spend more, not less, time transmitting information.
> One might think that better information technology would reduce the need to learn from other sources, like face-to-face meetings in cities. But Jevons’s Complementarity Corollary, which follows naturally from Jevons’s paradox, predicts that improvements in information technology can lead to more demand for face-to-face contact, because face time complements time spent communicating electronically.
acchow|11 years ago
alimoeeny|11 years ago
sopooneo|11 years ago
I attribute it to the fact that they were natural experts, and not necessarily book lovers. It would be like asking a sparrow for their favorite work on the dynamics of flight.
cjf4|11 years ago
Also the writing style was great, Brooks had a knack for making the players in these case studies colorfully come to life.
ChuckMcM|11 years ago
Over the years I've had both experiences where I've asked for someones recommendation and found it amazingly accurate, and found what was recommended ordinary or uninspiring. My take on it is that the way people absorb information is unique to the individual and some presentations get through that filter and some don't.
The other important thing I learned was that the filter changes, as you become more educated in a subject, you can pick up more with less if the author assumes you already know the basics. When writing for publication I sometimes felt I was explaining too much but my editor would dial that in for me, when I described to little she would gently prod me back to reality with "How the hell is someone reading this supposed to know what that means?" :-) When I went to far she would chastise me with "Everyone already knows that."
I've read Brooks, and in my opinion he writes for people who are already in the role of business leader and are trying to advance by not making the mistakes others have made. But is it brilliant? I don't know. Can it be brilliant for Bill and Warren and not for anyone else? Probably. I found it useful but not as useful as Larry Bossidy's "Execution: the discipline of getting things done" [1] which really helped me understand what "progress" was when you were a manager versus when you were an engineer and progress was "obvious" in the sense that the project got completed. But I can't say that Execution is more brilliant than Business Stories, they are just different and one was better for me.
Bottom line don't sweat it if you don't see the brilliance, note it and move on. Later if you find you can recall what you read differently, based on your experience, consider going back and re-reading it. See if it has become more, or less, brilliant given your additional understanding.
[1] http://www.amazon.com/Execution-Discipline-Getting-Things-Do...
davidw|11 years ago
http://davids-book-reviews.blogspot.it/2014/12/business-adve...
I concur to some degree: I did find it an enjoyable read, but "best business book ever"? I thought the stories were interesting, but ... no, I too failed to find it brilliant, which also makes me kind of uncomfortable.
AVTizzle|11 years ago
kelukelugames|11 years ago
Codhisattva|11 years ago
sumedh|11 years ago
ghostunit|11 years ago
powertower|11 years ago
A. Books that reiterate and reinforce my ideology.
B. Books that reiterate, sum up, and improve, my knowledge of something I personally and/or professionally, and very very subjectively, find interesting and/or useful (for whatever reason).
C. Books that opened my mind or lifted my sprirt.
There are probably one or two more categories.
Which of these are true for a particular recommendation depends on the reader's motivation for reading the book.
Whether it's A, B, or C, it just might not be useful to nor resonate with anyone else.
Though with B, sometimes the knowledge provided requires a certain level of experience with the subject matter. And if your experience level is either too low, or too high, the book will either not make any sense or will just seem useless, of little importance, lacking originality, or freshness.
orenbarzilai|11 years ago
sokoloff|11 years ago
Contrast: "We're going to get some snow" versus "The biggest 2-day snowstorm in recorded history is bearing down on us!"
"A man died" versus "World's oldest man died."
Yes, a lot of times superlatives are used for the purposes of pure link-bait or advertising hooks, but that doesn't mean we should eliminate their usage entirely.
freyr|11 years ago
Here's a run-down of the book by chapter, with the chapters ostensibly related to business marked by asterisks:
Many of these stories would be particularly relevant if you ran a multinational corporation or were one of the world's wealthiest investors. I think it's no accident that Bill Gates and Warren Buffet enjoyed this book so much.I happened to enjoy the parts about Wall Street, so I enjoyed the book. The comparisons to Michael Lewis are apt. It was most interesting for me to see how many of the same economic issues being discussed today (income inequality, intellectual property, corporate misconduct, the extraordinary power and influence of the banking industry, etc.) were discussed in nearly the exact same terms 50+ years ago. It doesn't give you the sense that great progress has been made on these fronts, and perhaps we'll still be complaining about the exact same things in 2065.
Mahn|11 years ago
yeonhoyoon|11 years ago
aakilfernandes|11 years ago
I think its also kind of funny that I stopped reading this article half way through and jumped to the link since I was so curious if it was going to have a tag code. That says a lot about the nature of affiliate marketing.
BTW, I don't see anything particularly wrong with it.
ghostunit|11 years ago
They are all politicians (or else they wouldn't be where they are), so everything they do has an angle.
bko|11 years ago
I was incredibly inspired by Isaacson's Jobs biography. To learn that someone so flawed can achieve such greatness is inspiring. I also read it almost like a mystery novel, trying to decipher what he was actually doing that was creating such value. I've read a number of Isaacson's other books but none were as inspiring. I did enjoy most of them though.
Any other recommendations of business books I should actually read?
cjf4|11 years ago
I'd still recommend reading BA because the writing style is first rate (and unexpectedly funny). It's also worthwhile for the realization that, due to it's mid century setting, that while the materials and ideas of the business world have changed since the books time, people really haven't, thus business itself really hasn't changed as much as you might otherwise conclude.
guiomie|11 years ago
davemel37|11 years ago
Use Your Noodle and Get The Boodle (aka Think and Grow Rich by Napolean Hill - that was his proposed but rejected title), Influence, The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini, Be My Guest - Conrad Hilton Autobiography, Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography, The Success System That Never Fails - W. Clement Stone, Winning Through Intimidation - Robert Ringer, Scientific Advertising - Claude Hopkins, The Ultimate Marketing Plan - Dan Kennedy, How to Win Friends and influence People - Dale Carnegie, The Psychology of Intelligence - CIA Manual - Richard Heuer https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intellig... ,
There are literally thousands of books worth reading, but the above are the ones I found to be the most enlightening.
codyZ|11 years ago
Books that I'd recommend: Anything by Peter Drucker, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni, Made to Stick by the Heath Brothers, Blue Ocean Strategy by Kim and Mauborgne, among others. I'm sure plenty others here will also give you other recommendations that seem more 'start-up' like too.
q-base|11 years ago
wodenokoto|11 years ago
Anyone know if there is a prior discussion?
aram|11 years ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8020621
Codhisattva|11 years ago
brianbreslin|11 years ago
guiomie|11 years ago
Codhisattva|11 years ago
lukasm|11 years ago
That summaries all the government effort with copyright
tessierashpool|11 years ago
illumen|11 years ago