Marcos Moret
All about how people make decisions and generally comprehend the world around them - massively informative and worth the slog.
Fiction, about a guy who runs a failing factory, and via as series of dialogues with a mysterious mentor and his team, figures out how to transform it into the star plant in the division. I was a bit sceptical about the story format, but it really works - an entertaining and yet highly educational and elightening introduction to Theory of Constraints (TOC) - basically all about identifying and attacking bottlenecks in your production process. Superb.
Centres around systems thinking in the organisation, encouraging a more holistic view of the links between actions and outcomes. Provides some really useful models of the main types of interaction, and full of great case studies, meaning you can immediately reference the ideas here against the issues you'll be familiar with in your workplace. Slight niggle - in need of tighter editing to remove significant amout of fluff, which somewhat dilutes the book's impact.
Suitable whether you're new to Scrum or looking for some case studies (of which there are lots) - just a pity it's not better-written.
Great bio and guide to living a successful life from the ex world chess and tai chi champion.
Strange and brilliant book - a philosophy lesson and father and son roadtrip all-in-one.
Compelling history of the industrial wars behind the rise and fall of the twentieth century 19s great information empires.
Fascinating account of Lockheed's secret ‘Skunk Works' facility, and how they went about achieving technological advances that were generations ahead of their time, including the U-2, Blackbird, an Stealth Fighter.
Great collection of tools for understanding, designing, reworking and implementing business models.
Greed and loathing at Salomon Brothers in the mid-‘80s - a riveting rollercoaster of a read.
Too difficult to follow for a non- data scientist. You can't explain this stuff without a lot of diagrams, videos etc.
Educative and entertaining run-through of how to write a good comic strip, from the master Eisner.
Intel's Grove on company and industry strategic inflection points (crisis points) and how to not only survive but exploit them. Contains some fascinating business stories from Intel's past, encompassing some key moments in the tech industry's evolution.
Brilliant graphic novel about the evolution of logic, centred on Bertrand Russel's earlier years, and providing tantalising references to the influence this movement would eventually have on the internet and computing.
The autobiography of the clever chap who won the race to decode the human genome. At times it's pretty hard-going as he really gets into the detail of the politics between the competing bodies in the race, and some of the science becomes a bit difficult to follow, leaving the storytelling as a bit of an afterthought. Still worth a read - just be ready to skip good-sized chunks every now and again.
About the history of encryption, with sometimes quite technical explanations offset by some memorable stories, like how the US used Navajos to communicate on the battlefield, in lieu of an unbreakable code.
Excellent - the way the book's been put together uses ‘the latest research in cognitive science and learning theory...' - which basically means this is really easy to work through and absorb.
Compact and engrossing autobiography from the company's founder. The McDonalds franchise ‘system' is a thing of business beauty, and this book gives some great and inspiring insights into how he went about achieving it all.