STRATEGY CENTRAL

I picked up The Orange Code: How ING Direct Succeeded by Being a Rebel with a Cause off my stack this week. I can already see why so many have been raving about it. Written by ING Direct founder and CEO Arkadi Kuhlmann and Bruce Philp, founder of GWP Brand Engineering*, this is [...]

A couple years ago Dan Roam published a book called The Back of the Napkin.  Loved it!  I wrote a review on it and have used the ideas extensively in my consulting work.

I got my copy of Roam’s follow-up, Unfolding the Napkin earlier this week.  Let me tell you right now, if you didn’t [...]

Sometimes you trip across a book and you know right away that this is a book that will influence your conversations for a long time.  Different: Escaping the Competitive Herd by award winning Harvard Business School professor Youngme Moon is that kind of book and a very intriguing read.

Well written in a style that is [...]

Where did business strategy originate?  When was it that understanding the business idea might make a difference?  The Lords of Strategy, by Walter Kiechel, III, is a fascinating new read that details the history of business consulting.  The short course in determining interest in it?  If you’ve read Michael Porter, Tom Peters, Jim Collins or [...]

Picked up Making Ideas Work by Scott Belsky.  Very practical.  All about how to get organized to actually make ideas happen.  50 pages into it, this is a great book.  I picked up some great ideas from Getting Things Done.  This is similar, but way more focused on the practical steps that help ideas to [...]

Every once in a while a book comes along that is really packed with ideas.  Way more often a book will have an idea or two…maybe even a few.  Steering Through Chaos is one of the former.  Packed is the best way to describe it.

The subtitle gives a very good overview of the content: “Mapping [...]

The last few months have taken me on a fascinating journey into design thinking.  Books like The Design of Business by Roger Martin, Tim Brown’s Change by Design, and Design-Driven Innovation by Robert Verganti have given me a language and a way of thinking about organizational design.

The latest step in the journey?  Design Thinking: Integrating [...]

What motivates what you do?  Is it money?  Is it reward or recognition?  Turns out that what motivates most of us isn’t what we’ve thought.  You may remember author Daniel Pink from his bestseller, A Whole New Mind.  He’s back with an intriguing take on motivation.  [...]