Book notes, 2018 to 2022

The Everything Store

Brad Stone

Bezos is an innovative and financial business genius, an entrepreneur and a leader who is only just getting started. Enough said.

The Four

Scott Galloway

Galloway analyses the successes of what I would call four of the greatest business stories of the modern era, and he is thought-provoking throughout.

He gives you the entrepreneurs behind the businesses, the industries they disrupted, and the organisations they built. Informative and, unusually for the genre, genuinely riveting.

I look forward to the continuation of the story and the rise of the fifth horseman.

Blockchain Revolution

Don and Alex Tapscott

An easy and enjoyable read on a complex and frequently misunderstood subject.

The point that stayed with me is that blockchain lets parties who do not trust each other share a database that is cryptographically secure. Complex processes like contract negotiation get cheaper, faster and simpler as a result. The opportunity to redefine the business landscape is significant.

Digital Gold

Nathaniel Popper

A fast-paced thriller following the rise of Bitcoin and the early investors, adopters and technologists who birthed an industry.

Well written, engaging and informative throughout. Recommended for the adventure and for the history lesson.

Machine, Platform, Crowd

Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson

An excellent overview of the transformation taking place between minds and machines, products and platforms, and the core and the crowd.

The authors are strong on the economic benefits of digitisation and on what it actually does to an organisation, using practical examples and real cases rather than assertion.

I recommend it, and the corresponding MIT business strategy course, to anyone interested in not being left behind as we move from a product-driven to a customer-centric economy.

Elon Musk

Ashlee Vance

Musk leads with purpose over profit, aligning ambition and self-belief to deliver what he sees as the future.

A revealing insight into one of the great modern-day explorers: a true entrepreneur, a curious innovator and a self-assured risk-taker.

Subscribed

Tien Tzuo

Focus on enjoyment, not ownership. Why own an asset when you can subscribe and still enjoy the benefits of owning it?

Tzuo built the subscription business model and explains it through practical examples rather than theory. A subscription business is the rare genuine win-win: the supplier earns predictable annuity income, and the customer gets the benefits of ownership without the upkeep and maintenance costs.

You will hear more of him as the subscription economy takes hold.

Billion Dollar Whale

Tom Wright and Bradley Hope

Exceptionally well researched, fast-paced and engaging. The inside story of Jho Low and the 1MDB scandal, moving from Hollywood parties to designer yachts to the boardrooms of the major investment banks, and through the manipulative lives of politicians and fund managers.

Highly recommended and thoroughly enjoyable, while highlighting most of what is wrong with society today: greed and materialism, in a politically motivated and money-driven world.

Stealing Fire

Steven Kotler and Jamie Wheal

An inspiring and insightful read on the commonalities in the altered states of consciousness shared by high-powered business executives, US marines and elite athletes.

It is a book about getting more out of life, and out of our bodies and minds, in pursuit of happiness and success.

Bad Blood

John Carreyrou

My favourite read of 2019.

A gripping account of how the pursuit of power leads to deceit and manipulation, and one of the most enthralling and disturbing books I have read. It exposes both the innovative potential of human intellect and the egotistic drive of human nature.

It reads like a Hollywood thriller, and it captures the euphoria of the high-growth tech industry at its very worst.

We Are the Nerds

Christine Lagorio-Chafkin

Easy, entertaining and insightful. Reddit is a site many people have never used and one of the most visited on the internet, which is itself worth understanding.

The highlight for me was the role played by Paul Graham, who inspired, mentored and funded a generation of young, smart, ambitious technology entrepreneurs.

The narrative follows the founders closely, including their aspirations and their personal struggles, which makes it an intimate read rather than a corporate history.

The Obstacle Is the Way

Ryan Holiday

Holiday explains how to turn the low points into positive ones and use them as a source of growth rather than a source of negativity.

It draws on Stoicism, the ancient Greek philosophy of enduring adversity with perseverance and resilience: focus on what you can control, let go of everything else, and treat each new obstacle as an opportunity to get better, stronger and tougher.

I found the audiobook particularly inspiring. The real-life examples are easy to relate to and there is something to take from every one of them.

Blitzscaling

Reid Hoffman

Even if you are not scaling a new concept, Hoffman offers answers on executing the key elements of business strategy, and a methodology that applies in most scenarios.

The objective is not going from zero to one but from one to a billion, as quickly as possible, passing the milestones that lead to market ownership, pricing power and customer loyalty. Growing at that pace takes passion, an innovative mindset and strategic focus.

He is good on the shifts and challenges specific to each stage of a company's life cycle: designing business models that sustain growth, hiring and managing through it, and how the founder's role and the culture have to evolve as the business matures.

A hugely inspiring read, and the source of the point I keep returning to: growth strategy has to be anchored in economic value and financial metrics.

Endure

Alex Hutchinson

Highly recommended to anyone interested in the forces that drive high-performance athletes and professionals to succeed.

Hutchinson explains how mental capacity overrules raw physical strength and endurance. Is it the instruction from the brain or from the muscles that determines what we do, and therefore whether we achieve what we set out to achieve? His answer is that a key element of endurance is how the brain responds to distress signals, and that the response can be trained.

Well written, engaging and an intriguing study of human potential and how we reach it.

The Power of Habit

Charles Duhigg

We are all the product of our habits, sometimes to our benefit and sometimes to our detriment. Our lifestyle and daily behaviour are the product of habits we have trained our minds and bodies to live by.

Change the daily habits for the better and you gain control over your time and energy. Every activity has the potential to become a habit for the good. Practise a positive habit and it becomes routine; once routine, it shapes the day. How you start, endure and end the day is integral to personal growth and success, and the discipline to make a habit routine is what gets you there.

Duhigg's case is that habits are not destiny. They are science, and they can transform businesses, communities and lives.

Atomic Habits

James Clear

An inspirational read, full of valuable advice. Clear motivates the action plan for a more fulfilling and richer day-to-day life through practical, meaningful anecdotes.

Every day we have the opportunity to create new habits and build on old ones, to eliminate the negative and strive for the positive in ourselves: better performance, more motivation, and a genuine can-do attitude in everything we do.

I recommend it, in print or as an audiobook, to anyone seeking to be a better, more effective and more honest version of themselves.

Listened to on audiobook, May 2021.

The Bezos Letters

Steve Anderson

Bezos is a strong example of how to apply a growth mindset.

Anderson takes one significant lesson from each of Bezos's annual shareholder letters and builds an insightful overview from them. Each principle of success becomes a practical lesson you can apply to your own. He is engaging throughout, and the book gives real clarity on how Bezos thinks.

Listened to on audiobook, March 2021.

Stolen Focus

Johann Hari

The best audiobook I listened to this year, and an important one, because we all take time for granted.

Time is the only asset we have no direct control over and cannot buy. We do have the power to decide how we use it, and by focusing our energy on defined objectives we can make the most of what we have. Ironically, it is the resource we lose sight of most often, without noticing.

Hari is honest and practical, drawing on his own experience, and he asks probing questions while also offering answers from his research. He deals squarely with the reality of living in a fast-paced, technology-dominated world, and every reader and parent will recognise themselves in it.

Recommended for anyone interested in stealing back their time and owning their journey.