Best of The Month – The Place Of Prejudice

Darrell Mann

Here’s one we missed last year. Strange that we did, given the highly paradescent title. Prejudice is always a bad thing, right? How could it possibly have ‘a place’ anywhere?

Even the scantest of internet searches will immediately … Read More

Best of The Month – Radical Help

Darrell Mann

I had the very good fortune this month to hear this month’s Best Of The Month author speak at a Summit held by the Welsh Government for 250 of its leaders. One of the themes of the day … Read More

Best of The Month – The Hidden Order Of Art

Darrell Mann

Such has been our desperation to find something – anything! – to recommend this month, we’ve found ourselves digging a long way back into business literature history. We ended up going back over fifty years to 1967. But … Read More

Best of The Month – Never Split The Difference

Darrell Mann

For a long while, my ‘go-to’ book when it came to negotiation theory was the same go-to book as the rest of the world, ‘Getting To Yes’ by Fisher and Ury. At the same time, I also know … Read More

Best of The Month – Hooked

Darrell Mann

Something of a controversial choice this month. ‘Hooked’ is pretty much the playbook for Silicon Valley start-ups intent on addicting customers to their products. The reason why seventy-nine percent of smartphone owners check their devices within fifteen minutes … Read More

Best of The Month – Crisis & Renewal

Darrell Mann

As it becomes more and more difficult to find new business books to recommend to ezine readers, we’re forced to make more and more forays into the past to look for lost classics. That search, too, becomes less … Read More

Best of The Month – Zucked

Darrell Mann

“Move Fast, Break Things”. The Facebook corporate motto. An, as it turns out, iconic example of reaping what you sow. A strategy that Roger McNamee amply demonstrates, not only allowed the most rapid rise of any corporate entity … Read More

Best of The Month – The Science Of Storytelling

Darrell Mann

Budding authors have literally hundreds of books to choose from if they’re looking for ‘help’ to make their writing better. Nearly all of them seem to be weak imitations of Joseph Campbell’s ‘Hero With A Thousand Faces’, or … Read More

Best of The Month – Lost Connections

Darrell Mann

This month’s book choice fits into the psychology end of the innovation story. It’s also about the Big Pharma industry and how their urge to sell drugs rather than cure patients ends up creating far bigger problems than … Read More

Best of The Month – The Private Life

Darrell Mann

In Henry James’s 1893 short story “The Private Life”, the narrator makes alarming discoveries about two members of his holiday party while holed up in a village in the Swiss Alps. After an evening spent listening to the … Read More

Best of The Month – AI Superpowers

Darrell Mann

One of the scariest findings from our ongoing innovation research is the amount of innovation (i.e. ‘successful step-change’) that is meaningless. Products or services that make our lives more convenient at the expense of stripping away the things … Read More

Best of The Month – The Genius Of Desperation/Inverting The Pyramid

Darrell Mann

Something of an either/or choice this month as far as reading recommendations go: football or football. American or Association. While the specifics might be different, the themes are both the same: an author with a steely determination to … Read More

Best of The Month – Excellent Sheep

Darrell Mann

There’s no such thing as a root cause in a complex system. I know that. But I also know there can be a root contradiction. Provided we understand the system at a first-principle level. In the same way … Read More

Best of The Month – LikeWar

Darrell Mann

Here’s one guaranteed to polarize. Doesn’t everything these days. Whatever one person likes, a thousand other will shortly describe as the worst thing ever. In a lot of ways, that’s kind of the premise of the book. Who’s … Read More

Best of The Month – Wait

Darrell Mann

Almost everywhere you go, in Operational Excellence world at least, the word ‘procrastination’ is a bad one. If someone accuses you of being a procrastinator, you can be sure they’re not complimenting you. We’ve argued in the ezine … Read More

Best of The Month – 13 Ways Of Looking At The Novel

Darrell Mann

A slightly tangential ‘best-of’ this month. Albeit one that is very TRIZ-like in its desire to look across wide swathes of data in order to find patterns. Jane Smiley’s search territory is literature. And, what she comes back … Read More

Best of The Month – If You Prefer A Milder Comedian, Please Ask For One

Darrell Mann

A few weeks ago, I wrote a blog article about different types of comedy. If I failed to take the humour out of the subject there, I’m now going to take a second crack at doing it here. … Read More

Best of the Month – Everybody Lies

Darrell Mann

Here’s one of those polarizing choices for our ‘Best Of’ feature. It’s pop-science, and, these days, that in itself is enough to alienate many potential readers. When book covers declare ‘New York Times Best Seller’, that’s usually a … Read More

Best of the Month – Synchronicity

Darrell Mann

To be honest, I’ve put off reading this book for a long time. It’s sat in my library, next to The Fifth Discipline since I found a copy in a junk shop several years ago. The reason I … Read More

Playing TRIZ

Christian Thurnes, Claudia Hentschel and Frank Zeihsel

Playing TRIZ (Volume 1) Games and Cases for Learning and Teaching Inventiveness

Learning and teaching inventiveness often hands us situations in which we fear completely unjustified leaps just as much as … Read More