Here's The Thing: I am so powerful

Books

Marty Neumeier: Zag
Picks up where Ries and Trout left off.
W. Chan Kim: Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant
Almost brilliant. Their discussion of how to create new markets (kind of like differentiation on steroids) is fantastic. I would have liked to have seen just a wee bit more "how-to."
Darrell Mullis: The Accounting Game : Basic Accounting Fresh from the Lemonade Stand
If you want to really understand accounting (and you'd better), this book brings it home. Deceptively simple, it uses the lemonade stand throughout as its analogy. From balance sheets to cash flow, you'll finally start to see it.
Harry G. Frankfurt: On Bullshit
This one's fun because, well... it's about bullshit :)
Al Ries: The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR
Al is the grandad of modern marketing. In this book he is reborn and explains why traditional advertising doesn't work the way it used to. And tells you what works instead.
Harry Beckwith: Selling the Invisible : A Field Guide to Modern Marketing
This was the first business book that I ever really connected with. I reread it often. If you run a service business, read it. If you don't? Read it.
JACK STACK: The Great Game of Business
When I read this, it became so obvious: Give your people a stake in the game, good or bad, and they will learn to love it the way you do.

November 2008

Here's The Thing