My favorite books from 2005
I just love the lists of best books that are so prevalent at the beginning of the year. I am always looking for new ideas, inspiration and just plain "good reads." So I've decided to offer up just a few of my own favorite books of 2005, and would like to invite you to share yours with me. Better yet, write a review of your favorite business or personal development book and send it to [email protected]. I'll either include it in my newsletter or my blog. Here are some of my favorite reads from 2005.
Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant by W. Chan Kim and Rena Mauborgne
From Publishers Weekly
Kim and Mauborgne's blue ocean metaphor elegantly summarizes their vision of the kind of expanding, competitor-free markets that innovative companies can navigate. Unlike "red oceans," which are well explored and crowded with competitors, "blue oceans" represent "untapped market space" and the "opportunity for highly profitable growth." The only reason more big companies don't set sail for them, they suggest, is that "the dominant focus of strategy work over the past twenty-five years has been on competition-based red ocean strategies."
The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less by Barry Schwartz
From Publishers Weekly
Psychology professor Schwartz provides ample evidence that we are faced with far too many choices on a daily basis, providing an illusion of a multitude of options when few honestly different ones actually exist. The conclusions Schwartz draws will be familiar to anyone who has flipped through 900 eerily similar channels of cable television only to find that nothing good is on. Whether choosing a health-care plan, choosing a college class or even buying a pair of jeans, Schwartz, drawing extensively on his own work in the social sciences, shows that a bewildering array of choices floods our exhausted brains, ultimately restricting instead of freeing us.
Get Back in the Box : Innovation from the Inside Out by Douglas Rushkoff
From Publishers Weekly
By touting the value of thinking "outside the box," business experts have inspired an obsession with growth, competition and offbeat concepts, says Rushkoff (Cyberia; Coercion; etc.). In fact, he insists, the secret of success lies inside the box; businesses that focus on their core competencies, their customers' needs and their work environment come up with better innovations in the long run than those that rely on flashy ad campaigns, focus groups or off-site consultants.
It's Your Ship: Management Techniques from the Best Damn Ship in the Navy By D. Michael Abrashoff
"The most important thing a captain can do is to see the ship from the eyes of the crew." This belief has successfully guided D. Michael Abrashoff, the captain of one of the U.S. Navy's most modern and lethal warships. Abrashoff has revolutionized how to handle such challenging problems as excessive costs, low morale, sexual harassment, and constant turn-over. Business managers will benefit from Abrashoff's guiding belief that focus should be on empowering your people rather than on chain of command.
The Success Principles: How to Get From Where You Are to Where You Want to Be by Jack Canfield
From Publishers Weekly
Many of the principles are familiar—e.g., "Take 100% Responsibility for Your Life"—but Canfield has a nifty way of summarizing them ("Reject rejection"), and some are inventive: "Become an Inverse Paranoid" means see the world as out to help you instead of out to get you. He also offers specific techniques, such as positive-thinking exercises and visualizations.
The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life by Twyla Tharp
From Publishers Weekly
Perhaps the leading choreographer of her generation, Tharp offers a thesis on creativity that is more complex than its self-help title suggests. To be sure, an array of prescriptions and exercises should do much to help those who feel some pent-up inventiveness to find a system for turning idea into product, whether that be a story, a painting or a song. This free-wheeling interest across various creative forms is one of the main points that sets this book apart and leads to its success.
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