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Experiences with business books: ideas, experiences, tips with and at reading (management/ICT)-books. Many books in this category lie on a table or stand on a bookshelf, but are seldom read. On these web-log you are defied my experiences to follow. Attention goes particularly from to renewing, “unorthoxe” books which pass the current mainstream.
Much pleasure and inspiration.

About Bertrand Weegenaar

The Dutch version can be found at www.managementboek.nl/blogs/belevenissen/

For free online available businessbooks: see list

This week I received the longawaited biography on Steve Jobs : iCon Steve Jobs : The Greatest Second Act in the History of Business written by Jeffrey S. Young and William L. Simon. The book was published in May with a lot of buzz. This was created by Apple which removed all titles by the books publisher Wiley. You can have better PR. But Jobs doesn’t seems to be the bad guy which the title indicates. Of course he isn’t the greatest human manager. But he with vision and passion he gave the world Apple, Next, Pixar and iTunes. (in a few days I will have my comments ready)

A very rare speech by Jobs on love and loss, death and dots van be found on Stanford News (thanks to the blog Smarter Stuff

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In the continue struggle in emerging markets, new competition and new technological possibilities, sustaining strategy is a challenge. John Hagel III and John Seely Brown introduce accelerated capability building, a path to implement continue innovation in your company. This in their latest book The only Sustainable Edge Why Business Strategy Depends on Productive Friction and Dynamic Specialization
Search for the edges in your enterprise, by the boundaries in the markets you operate, geographical or in the generation of customers you make products for. Technical developments in IT have shaken economical models like the transaction cost model. Development in public policies have made it easier to start companies and rearrange them across borders.

Hagel has earned his innovative marks with titles like Net Worth and Net Gain.
So this is a book you can’t afford to miss. It’s an easy read on hot themes.

More information can be found on www.edgeperspectives.com and at the weblog by John Hagel III.

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I must have missed it, but Nicholas Carr, author of the famous IT-book: Does IT matter , started to maintain a weblog: Rough Type. The first post dates April 15th. Recent blogs are on Other takes on utility computing, The view from inside the box (vs out-of-the-box thinking) and Dell’s Lexus. I advise to visit regurly or use a feedreader.

Also look at my criticOf course IT matters on Carr’s thesis

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I found the title in an add in the latest Strategy+Business. Big names like Bill Clinton, Warren Bennis and Peter Block (“Bakke has changed the nature of the game of business forever”) have praised the book highly.

Joy at Work A revolutionary approach to fun on the job is the autobiography from the man who was the founder (with Roger Sant) of Applied Energy Services (AES) one of the energy giants of the 80′s and 90′s. Bakke has worked hard to have ‘joy at work’ as a cornerstone of the company. He has 10 basic rules to create Joy at Work. In his job as CEO of AES he succeeded partly. The crisis in the energy market started by Enron had it’s effect on all energy companies. Personal and shareholders were more concerned about the stockvalue then workvalue. In 2000 Bakke resigned as CEO.
He now devotes his time to Imagine Schools that operates elementary and secundary (K12) charter schools in 10 states.

More on the Joy of Work-method (like a synopsis) on Dennis Bakke website

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My contact for Harvard Business Press publications send me 2 titles which are on my wishlist for some time now. When sparks fly Harnessing the power of group creativity by Dorothy Leonard and Walter Swap. This is a breakthrough work (originally published in 1999) which describes a method for ordinairy groups (which most are) to become creative and innovative teams “Leonard and Swap explore how all aspects of the work environment from leadership style to the promotion of passion to the use of space to maximize serendipity, can enhance innovation.” Now in paperback.
Recently Deep Smarts: How to Cultivate and Transfer Enduring Business Wisdom by the same authors, same publisher. A presentation by the authors on this subject can be found here.

The most recent work by Clayton Christensen is Seeing what’s next Using the theories of innovation to predict industry change The critics on this book, sequil to The Innovatorxb4s dillemma and The Innovatorxb4s Solution, are extremely positive. So this I have to read to make my own opinion.
More on the special site Seeing what’s next

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In an recent post I already mentioned the book Beyond Bullet Points Using Microsoft PowerPoint to create presentations that inform, motivate and inspire by Cliff Atkinson. “The proof of the pudding is in the eating”, so for my presentation tomorrow at bij Sogyo on Creating value using wiki’s and weblogs I started using the techniques described by Atkinson. A lot of tools and examples in Word and PowerPoint can be found on Cliff’s website SociableMedia.

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In an recent post I already mentioned the book Beyond Bullet Points Using Microsoft PowerPoint to create presentations that inform, motivate and inspire by Cliff Atkinson. “The proof of the pudding is in the eating”, so for my presentation tomorrow at bij Sogyo on Creating value using wiki’s and weblogs I started using the techniques described by Atkinson. A lot of tools and examples in Word and PowerPoint can be found on Cliff’s website SociableMedia.
And before I know it I’m started off writing a script, think of my storyboard and the tail I’m going to tell. Picture me sitting in a garage (my car was broke so I had to) writing down my first act. You see what’s happening, I’m getting your attention because I locate a scene! After 2 days of preparation I must say: THIS IS POWERFUL STUFF The strength of the first act is location,public and purpose, thinking out acts (arguments) and visualizing it by making pictures which will carry your story.
Atkinson lets you use the same technique used in Hollywood to create fimscripts. So where are we?, what is the audience?, what is the purpose of this story? And that will keep your audience at the tip of their chair. Even at 14:00 hours! The advantage of writing out your script and make it visual in a storyboard is that you put away all the text off screen, you normally would read aloud. Boring.
Well you can’t make this sort of presentation in an hour, but the audience will pick up the way you have put them in the first place. So buy this book and get rit of the bullet point in YOUR presentatioen.

If you want to experience how this works, you can see and hear Cliff at work in a LiveView Meeting presentation of 1 hour on Livemeeting.com (you have to use MS Explorer). It’s great.

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Everytime I ask myself, how can I do this cleverer or more efficient? Can I do this smarter? Thousands and thousands of selfhelpbooks are on the market (Wiley has build a succesful Dummies serie around this) When I saw the comments on Call to action Secret formulas to improve online results I was sold immediately and I asked the authors Bryan en Jeffrey Eisenberg for a reviewcopy. And this arrived very fast.
The Eisenbergs are experienced in the field of webwizardry. And that’s what this book is all about: creating topresults by planning, measuring, communicate to get deeper and richer traffic and in the end sell more with your site. A part of the book is specially written for it. An other part comes from columns from their newsletter Grokdotcom. (it’s free so get it!)
And with the action plans of this book I will rearrange this weblog.

If you have ideas or comments, please tell me!

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I’m a big Tom Peters fan. For years I think WOW!-projects, Branding etc. etc. On his weblog (with tons of information), and his recently started Tom Peters Wire Services on the latest trends in innovation, strategy and WOW! Dayly inspiration.
For my column in C-sharp I wanted for a while to do a special on Tom’s work. His latest book Re-image! is brilliant. In search of excellence Lessons from Americas Best Run Companies is for more then 20 years at the top of the businessbooks lists.

Thanks to the management of managementboek.nl I have received 2 sets of audio CD’s: Tom Peters: Live In London: Highlights From The Leadership Seminar and The Leadership Eleven Masterclass Both published by Red Audio.
I will close my eyes the next days for some hours and listen to the Master on Leadership and all other innovative aspects of doing business.

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