12Sided, The Blog

The upside of pursuing an MBA has been the rekindling my interest in reading actual books. Here are some of the books completed this summer:

Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson
A solid, quick and entrepreneurial read by the 37 Signals guys.

Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead: What Every Business Can Learn from the Most Iconic Band in History by David Meerman Scott and Brian Halligan
Some great lessons on when to zig when everyone zags.

The Financier by Theodore Dreiser
Dreiser’s tale based on the life of Charles Yerkes, financier and “robber baron”. It took about 100 pages for me to root for the main character, Frank Cowperwood.

4 Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferriss
Enjoyable and eye-opening read. Worth checking it out.

A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
A different historical and enlightening read. I was amazed at how interconnected many of the great men of science have been throughout history.

Born to Run by Christopher McDougall
An addictive read. Made me ditch my orthotics.

Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard by Chip Heath and Dan Heath
Another great book by the Heath brothers. Some useful strategies that I have been able to successfully implement.

No More Mister Nice Guy by Robert A. Glover
I came across this book from The Art of Manliness blog. At some point everyone has a lack of confidence. This book has some great ideas on how to get it back.

Came across this and found it interesting. Happy Summer.

The Double Think:The Value of Stories

Came across this on Inc. and it is worth the 20 minutes.

Check: Fred Wilson: 10 Ways to Be Your Own Boss

Long time, no-post. Been busy in the good way. A trend over the past few years is talk of commoditization of products, features and generally everything. Is the current market seems to be headed towards rampant commoditization? Check these two excellent articles that say this is not true.

MIT Review: The Myth of Commoditization

WSJ: Raise Your Prices!

Happy reading.

Interesting read in the latest Forbes on Wal-Mart and Patagonia’s efforts on sustainability. Patagonia pioneered and is helping Wal-Mart. Funny, that did not make it in to the most recent Patagonia catalog that hit my mailbox. Glad to see that sustainability is gaining mainstream traction.

Forbes: Wal-Mart, Patagonia Team To Green Business

Worthwhile read at Mitchel Joel’s blog. Check it out.

Six Pixels of Separation: People Should Not See Marketing

I have been a big fan of Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip and Dan Heath. It is engaging and practical and a worthwhile read. I have found myself recommending it lately. Great resources on their website as well.

I am looking forward to digging into their new book Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard. As part of the inevitable book launch, they have been producing articles and blog posts fast and furious. I came across this one on Van Halen from Heather Hamilton and her excellent One Louder blog. Turns out that the brown M&M’s were used as a signal to make sure their contracts were read and understood.

I never did get to see Van Halen in their prime (pre-Hagar). Since I grew up in Chicago, we will always have that summer of 1984, Jump and the Chicago Cubs. I did get a chance to catch DLR at the House of Blues in Hollywood for a New Year’s Eve bash a few years ago. No doubt DLR is a party. Great time and great show. I still truly think that “Panama” should be the national anthem of Panama.

Fast Company: Business Advice From Van Halen

Heather Hamilton: As suspected, David Lee Roth is a business genius.

Interesting color profile personality test. Check it out.

USA Today: Favorite colors test shows CEOs are different; take the test

Great read on customer service over @ Inc. Great way to improve product and process simultaneously. Would your organization obsess like this? Maybe you should.

They say, “Why would you pay an engineer $150,000 to answer phones when you could pay someone in Arizona $8 an hour?” If you make the engineers answer e-mails and phone calls from the customers, the second or third time they get the same question, they’ll actually stop what they’re doing and fix the code. Then we don’t have those questions anymore.

Inc. The Way I Work: Paul English of Kayak

Lots of chatter about iPad as the Kindle killer. The chatter is bunk. Kindle has a specific target audience, a niche. That niche loves the Kindle. Niche is the new critical mass.

Look at some of the advantages Kindle has:

1. Battery Life. Kindle can last up to 7 days without a charge. Seriously.
2. Content delivery. Kindle has it included. No extra charges or higher price tag.
3. Readability. Do you want to read a backlit screen all day?
4. Opening an App Store that people will care about.

The iPad is a very slick device, but it will not be the only one to change the tablet game. Apple App Store developers will start to run into some of the issues that cross-platform mobile developers are dealing with. Namely screen size and incompatible devices. Apple has been very smart with their device hardware and software release cycles. This will become more difficult as different devices begin to proliferate. The iPad will face way more competition than the iPod. Repeating success is, in fact, harder than initial success. Other players and other platforms (HP, Asus, Dell, Everyone on Microsoft or Android) are ready this time. My take is that the biggest losers will be the publishers. Their pricing models will now be more fully exposed to the buying public. That new knowledge will suppress their margins.

On of the better reads on the “Kindle killer” iPad at TechFlash: 5 reasons why the iPad is not a Kindle killer

Disclosure: The wife is employed by Amazon, does not work on Kindle, and does not read my blog.