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<![CDATA[Steve added 'The Myths of Innovation']]>
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4555878
to: The Myths of Innovation (Hardcover)byScott Berkun
A quick, must-read for any of you engineers or techies out there!
He lists and then debunks many of the favorite innovation myths we technical folks live by, for example, "The Myth of Epiphany," "The Myth of the Lone Inventor" and "People Like New Ideas."
Much of it helps describe to us technical folks why the rest of the world does not accept our proposed solutions based on their sheer genius and obvious (to us) improvement!
(I am still in the middle of reading this one, and would cite a few interesting passages from it if it was not still on my desk at work where I am reading it at lunchtime... and where several other fellow engineers have expressed interest in borrowing it from me when I am done with it.)
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<![CDATA[Steve added 'All Marketers Are Liars: The Power of Telling Authentic Stories in a Low-Trust World']]>
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4555785
to: All Marketers Are Liars: The Power of Telling Authentic Stories in a Low-Trust World (Hardcover)bySeth Godin
This book is interesting from a marketing perspective in that he says that spending time and effort to convince people logically is a waste of resources.
People have worldviews that change slowly, and the best way to convince them of something is to translate your product or idea into their way of looking at the world. Telling people a truthful story that matches with their way of seeing the world with what you have to say is the easiest way to get folks to pay attention, especially in these days of mass media oversaturation.
This works for commercial products, ideas and anything else in general (such as trying to get particular family members to agree to your way of thinking... )
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<![CDATA[Steve added 'Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die']]>
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4556048
to: Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die (Hardcover)byChip Heath
If you are a business person, teacher, or just someone trying to get your idea across, this is a great book to read!
Written by brothers Chip and Dan Heath, one a professor of organizational behavior at Stanford, the other an education consultant and former researcher at Harvard Business School. They look at the key aspects of what makes some ideas and stories stick in people's minds. They boil things down to 6 key principles of simplicity that make things stick in people's memories.
Some of the cases they analyze are urban legends, because these seem to get around fast and are remembered long after they are heard. For example, have you heard about the traveling businessman who went back to his hotel room with a woman he met at the bar, only to wake up in the bathtub, full of ice, with one kidney cut out of him?