This book – The Future Arrived Yesterday – by Michael S. Malone – is a proposal by the author (I keep writing doctor as I’m in the hospital and I’m tired when I writing this) on how to re-structure corporations to handle the changes in the future. He proposes a new structure – the “Protean” corporation – as an organizational structure to better adapt to the changing conditions in the future. A “Protean” corporation, according to the Michael S. Malone, is a corporate structure that has a more “permanent” core along with a more nebulous “cloud” that serves that core. Read more »
I just finished reading “Team of Rivals – The Polical Genius of Abraham Lincoln” by Doris Kearns Goodwin. I enjoyed reading this book – in large part because of how much respect and admiration I have for Abraham Lincoln. I think Lincoln has become one of the people that represents the greatness of America – one of our heroes. I would definitely recommend this book – but if you don’t like to read you might try an audiobook version as it’s 700+ pages.
This book took an interesting approach – constrasting Lincoln with some of his rivals – those who would become part of his cabinet during his presidency. It was fascinating to understand more the context of the life of Lincoln – in terms of what was normal for a man of his era to experience. It was an age of America where many men went “West” – to create for themselves a new life – one of economic opportunity. Lincoln was a complex man – suffering from depression, anger – but all of those life experiences culminated in a powerful personality as President.
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I enjoyed reading “What Would Google Do?” by Jeff Jarvis. This book, despite the title, was not so much about Google but about the impact of Google/Internet has had on companies – especially looking to the future. Overall this book was a good read – as you can tell Jeff Jarvis is a college professor by the insights he has into the effect of Google. If you wondering what the future will possibly be like for many businesses in an Internet age I would highly recommend this book.
For my own sake (and hopefully yours) I will now note some of the items I really learned from this book:
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I just read Planet Google by Randall Stross – a book about Google (can you Google about Google or would that cause some kind of time space distortion). The book starts with the beginning of Google – in the academic world – an takes us through a brief history of Google – in it’s different aspects – search, book search, Gmail, etc. Google started out small – but ambitious – to organize all information in the world.
I agree with the author – that Google’s timing was great – with the growth of cheap, but plentiful hardware, the explosive growth of web and the failure of it’s competitors. The book points out what I’ve heard before – that Google has and still values it’s engineers. Google seems to be a different company – less focused on money and shareholder value than other companies. It helps that their core search business is a major revenue source – simple but very profitable. This gives them a ton of cash to pursue other ventures – a luxury most companies don’t have.
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Book Review/Notes: China INC. – by Ted C. Fishman
This was a pretty interesting book – I feel like I learned a lot (which is something of the point of a non-fiction book – to learn something). This book gave me a better insight into the world of china – how different their culture is – and how that works for their benefit in the world economy. They are an economic powerhouse – but a different one than America is. I learned of the strengh of their nearly unlimited labor pool – as well as how intertwined their economy is with ours. This book was was published in 2005 – so it’s a few years out of date – as it doesn’t address the recession of 2008-2009. That said, I think there are a lot of items to learn from this book:
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Here’s what I’m reading now:
- “CHINA INC.” – by Ted C. Fishman (reading this one – interesting information about how China has come to be a world superpower)
- “CHINA ON THE BRINK” – by Callum Henderson
- I’m also listening to some “Business Management” recordings from Stanford that I got from iTunesU – this is a pretty neat feature of iTunes that has free “college” type content available to watch/listen. I pulled down a few and converted them to “audiobooks” to listen on my iPod.
Book Reviews | andrew | 
February 27, 2010 4:41 pm | 
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