Mark Dowds

My Current Book List

I just finished an online teaching session on the EduFire business channel called The 10 Thing You Need to Build a Great Company. Here are the basics of the content I walked everyone through in a movie format. Some folks were interested in learning about my recommended reading list so I thought I would put it up here for general consumption.

Here are the books I am currently working through:

The Knack – Norm Brodsky

Notes on the Synthesis of Form – Christopher Alexander

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions – Thomas Kuhn

Lone Survivor – Marcus Luttrell

The Winner-Take-All Society – Robert Frank

The UltraMind Solution – Mark Hyman

Nudge – Richard Thaler

Bit Literacy – Mark Hurst

 

Books I recently finished and benefited from:

The Knowing Doing Gap – Jeffrey Pfeffer

Are you ready to Succeed – Srikumar Rao (I also took his course which is outstanding)

 

All time winners:

The end of Management – Cloke Goldsmith

The Tipping Point – Gladwell

Dialogue – Isaacs

Synchronicity – Jaworski

The Fourth Turning – Strauss

The Age of Spiritual Machines – Kurzweil

Leadership and the new Science - Wheatley

 

I have more lists here: http://www.shelfari.com/markdowds

Book Reviews in 140 Characters

Over the past couple of weeks I have been quiet and catching up on some reading. Most of the books are noted on my shelfari but no doubt few of you click on the shiny covers so I thought it only reasonable to give you less than 140 characters on each:

Reality Check by Guy Kawasaki: I loved his sections on the lies of entrepreneurs, VC's, and engineers. The start-up checklists are also worth buying the book for. Good buy.

Cultivating Communities of Practive by Wenger, McDermott, and Snyder: A helpful guide on managing knowledge that helps the reader understand the less obvious benefits derived from communities of practice.

The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki: A must read for those who still believe finding experts is more important than finding how to engage the masses. It will mess with your head.

The Social Life of Information by John Seely: A review of the shift from information to knowledge and a great backdrop for those of us building companies in an experience economy.

Iconoclast by Gregory Berns:  A neuroscientist perspective on how mentally insane and different true entrepreneurs are. If you are one you have to read it to discover you are mad. 

My reading list for the next few week:
Crowdsourcing by Jeff Howe
Entrepreneur Journeys by Sramana Mitra
The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder
The Warhol Economy by Elizabeth Currid

I will write a review on these sometime also. Why did I choose on 140 characters for each review? Well for one it fits into an SMS text. In addition one thing that Twitter and other micro-messaging systems are teaching me is that brevity is beautiful. We are all tempted to write novels and be verbose on a lot we talk about. Learning the discipline of being precise is an asset in this world of information. The shorter and more precise our communication becomes in these coming days will help our voice to be heard and hopefully at the same time reduce the amount of emails we have to wade through on an average day.

The Go-Giver

I read a little red book called the Go-Giver a reframe on the term go-getter.

It is a simple read targetted to business leaders in a conversational style much like the Blanchard series.

Here is the meat if you want to skip to the end:

The Five Laws of Stratospheric Success:  

The Law of Value
Your true worth is determined by how much more you give in value than you take in payment

The Law of Compensation
Your income is determined by how many people you serve and how well you serve them

The Law of Influence
Your influence is determined by how abundantly you place other people's interests first

The Law of Authenticity
The most valuable gift you have to offer is yourself

The Law of Receptivity
The key to effective giving is to stay open to receiving‬

The Gum Thief

I just finished Douglas Coupland's "The Gum Thief". It is a fantastic read. I read it in a day and a half on and off. I couldn't put it down. I am a big fan of Coupland. A couple of years ago I went to hear a reading he was doing of JPOD with Brydon in Guelph. He mentioned his inspiration as Vonnegut which is always a winner. This book is carries his usual dry wit with a sense of humanity and life.

In previous Coupland novels he mocks Microsoft and Apple and in this one his bone of contention is with Staples. It had me thinking and smiling the whole way through. If you are into thoughtful and humorous fiction it is one to pick up for the holidays...