In our opinion, reading is one of the best ways of jumping into different worlds and learning from successful peers. From the untold story of the music industry disrupter Spotify to the beauty of being a generalist, here’s what our team has been reading lately.
Innovations
Loonshoots: How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas That Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries, by Safi Bahcall
Chosen as one of Financial Times’ Summer books of 2019, Safi Bahcall’s Loonshoots will challenge how you think. She eloquently creates an entire new way of seeing how and why some people succeed and some don’t. Written with a dash of humour and a whole lot of ideas, it will spur you to facilitate innovations, think clearer and shoot for the moon. Chock-full of examples and stories, this book will show you how group dynamics can either hinder or help psychological safety, which is needed for the crazy innovators and thinkers to live and breathe. If you want to cultivate your hunger, passion and crazy dreams, this book is for you.
Success Story
Spotify Untold, by Jonas Leijonhufvud & Sven Carlsson
Investigative tech journalists Jonas Leijonhufvud and Sven Carlsson take you on a wild ride int the untold story of Spotify and detail how Daniel Ek, an intelligent and ambitious university drop-out put everything he had on an idea and how, with Martin Lorentzon as his financial partner, he managed to build Spotify into a global success story. We’d tell you what happens but we don’t want to spoil it for you (what we will say is that it includes music labels, challenges and Steve Jobs). Spotify Untold will leave you breathless and yearning for a big idea to bet on.
Business Performance
Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialised World, by David Epstein
From parenting to business, education and sports, Range is a generalists’ handbook. If you’ve ever thought that the only road to success is to start early, pick something to specialise in as early as possible and cut out any tangents, you’re in for a mind-blowing treat. David Epstein will convince you to rethink how you think, learn and live and make you reconsider everything you’ve been told about success. In Range, science meets analytical thinking and great stories. An essential for any employer, employee, parent, coach and athlete.
Goal Setting
Measure What Matters: How Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation Rock the World with OKRs, by John Doerr
In Measure What Matters, venture capitalist legend John Doerr explains tech giants like Google have successfully used the goal-setting system of OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) to achieve unprecedented growth. He first discovered OKRs as an engineer at Intel in the 1970s, when the legendary Andy Grove (that Doerr calls “the greatest manager of any era”) drove the company (that Doerr calls the best-run company he’s ever seen). Doerr used the system in more than fifty companies and wherever it was practiced, it worked. In this book, he shares case studies and incredibly successful people’s narratives to give an idea of what OKRs are and why you should start using them now.
Published 02.07.2020