Tedded - Business Book Review

“The challenge for marketers is to harness the amazing power of the World Wide Rave. The process is actually quite simple; anyone can do it, including you.”

“World Wide Rave” by David Meerman Scott is a small book on the new marketing. It is a book that encourages you to go out and give it a try. The rules of marketing have changed and will never be the same by the Internet and more importantly, social media. This book talks about “how” people use the new media to spread the ideas. Spreading ideas worldwide is no more a privilege of gigantic companies but anyone can do it, including you.

Contents

You (and I) Are Incredibly Lucky

This is the introduction to the World Wide Rave. David Meerman Scott started out with an intriguing story of The Wizarding World of Harry Potter on how telling a story to seven people can spread the idea to more than 350 million people worldwide, for free, of course. There are also a couple more interesting stories in this introduction.

Nobody Cares About Your Products (Except You)

The author explains the term, “buyer personas” and how the company (or you, or anyone) has to focus on the understanding of the market problem of your buyer personas (or target market) without obsessing with your product. Apart from many stories, the author encourages you to start writing an e-book which has replaced resume for many people (while multiplying the effect phenomenally).

No Coercion Required

Sometimes viral marketing is badly implemented which is just an extension of the old-world marketing. This short chapter tells you the difference between viral marketing and the World Wide Rave.

Lose Control

There is no such thing as a free lunch. But currently, there are millions such things as free videos, free songs, free information, free media, and so on. The author writes that trying to taking control will painfully backfire. An interesting part of this chapter tells you how to start making videos on YouTube. He also tells you how blocking social media sites, MySpace, facebook, YouTube, etc. in the workplace is a foolish way to increase productivity. Hear hear!

Put Down Roots

This chapter focuses on facebook, Twitter, and blogging. David Meerman Scott gives you advice on how to “put down roots” or participate in these social media websites.

Create Triggers That Encourage People to Share

The great site does not come with lousy contents. You need to have great contents to create the World Wide Rave and the advice for a great content is being interactive. And interaction can spread the ideas vigorously.

Point the World to Your (Virtual) Doorstep

Being in the first page of Google does not come from spending huge on SEO but rather from the content itself. You need a great content and you need the web site that synchronises with your customers. Instead of hiring an SEO, David Meerman Scott believes that you should hire a journalist instead.

…

I’ll compare this book to an ideal business book; a book that is easy to understand, distinct, practical, credible, insightful, and provides great reading experience.

Ease of Understanding: 8/10: This book is a short book and it is plainly easy to read and understand. The two points taken are from the blog-like writing which, although easy to read and understand, can be difficult to link with one another. Moreover, you might struggle a tad if you are over 30. Nevertheless, this is a straightforward book surrounding the idea of spreading ideas.

Distinction: 5/10: There have been countless books on the Internet and social media already. “World Wide Rave” is just one of them, albeit a good one. The great point of this book is that the author does not tell you how facebook, or Twitter, or YouTube work but he told you how real people used them and created a World Wide Rave.

Practicality: 8/10: The author gave you very good guidelines and instructions. One of the best parts of the book is the “Advice for generating a World Wide Rave” by the actual people who made it after their stories. However, everything depends on your contents and also your luck. However, I am fairly disappointed with the part of Venture Capitalist that creating a World Wide Rave is like investing, you hit some and you miss some. Although it’s true, it’s not particularly helping.

Credibility: 9/10: All the stories are from actual successful people including the author himself. Although David Meerman Scott did not create the World Wide Rave of more than ten millions in a week like Susan Boyle, his e-book, “The New Rule of Viral Marketing”, is an achievement. And I would like to exphasise more that “Advice for generating a World Wide Rave” is a gem.

Insightful: 5/10: The author has done a fine job in a small book. He had lots of interviews and insight from the actual World Wide Rave creators. The size of the book is the constraint but for a small book, it is insightful in its own right.

Reading Experience: 8/10: It is very fun and it is encouraging. It is not yet a revelation but it is eye opening. The book really encourages you to participate more in the social media.

Overall: 7.2/10: If you are not virtually active, this book will tell you how to be active. If you are already active, this book will give you an advice to spread your idea and become a World Wide Rave. If you already created a World Wide Rave, you can still read the book and sing your own praises! It might be time for marketing students to dump their huge 400 pages marketing communication and PR textbooks and read this book instead.

“What I hope you will find here is a new way of looking at your own potential and the potential of those around you.”

“The Element: How finding your passion changes everything” by Sir Ken Robinson is a book on passion, creativity, and, most importantly, education. In this book, he tells you how different people ranging from Paul McCartney (The Beatles), Meg Ryan (the actress), Paul Samuelson (the economist), Paolo Coelho (The Alchemist.. sorry, the writer) found their passion, their Element. His contention is that intelligence is diverse, dynamic, and distinct and typical hierachical and standardised education squandered them.

Sir Ken Robinson works in education and he caught eyes of millions in his all-time favourite talk in the TED conference in 2005. You might want to take a look at the 20 minutes talk before reading the book. I have found his talk tremendously inspirational and my review might be biased. But I would encourage you to also be biased and inspired by this intelligent and witty thinker.

Contents

(every chapter is filled with amazing stories of different amazing people in the world. In this briefing, I could not list all or even half of them) (I also copy (plagiarise) lots of words from the book and I hope it did not terribly violate the copyright!)

Chapter One: The Element

The chapter starts with Gillian Lynne and Matt Groening who were hopeless at school but ending up giving pleasure to millions around the world because they found their Element – “the place where the things you love to do and the things you are good at come together.” Sir Ken Robinson explained that the Element has two main features and two conditions aptitude (I get it), passion (I love it), attitude (I want it), opportunity (Where is it?).

Chapter Two: Think Differently

We take things for granted. When asked how many senses we possess; people normally answer five or six. That is taking things for granted. Psychologists and scientists assert that there are four more. Likewise, when we talk about intelligence, people often refer it to IQ. That is taking things for granted. Sir Ken Robinson tells us that three features of intelligence are that it is diverse, dynamic, and distinct. And we should rather ask “How are you intelligent?” than “How intelligent are you?”

Chapter Three: Beyond Imagining

This chapter starts with three myths of creativity. One myth is that only special people are creative. Another myth is that creativity is about special activities like the arts, design, or advertising. The third myth is that people are either creative or not. Sir Ken said they are all not true. He wrote how imagination is different from creativity and how we should develop both. There are also stories of George Harrison (The Beatles) and how he and Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison, Tom Petty, and Jeff Lynne created a wonderful album and how an American physicist, Richard Faynman won a Nobel Prize.

Chapter Four: In the Zone

“To be in the zone is to be in the deep heart of the Element.” “…it transforms our experience of the Element. We become focused and intent. We live the moment. We become lost in the experience and perform at our peak.” The Zone is the place or time where we feel the true sense of freedom and authenticity. Sir Ken Robinson wrote that we are often confined in boxes like the MBTI personality test that group people into sixteen personality types. “My guess is that sixteen personality types might be a bit of an underestimate. My personal estimate would be closer to six billion.”

Chapter Five: Finding Your Tribe

The chapter starts with Meg Ryan and how she met different people who gradually shape her Element. “Being a part of this tribe brings her to the Element.” People trying to find their Element need a place to discover themselves. Sir Ken talked about two distinct ideas; “domain” (the sorts of activities and disciplines people are engaged in) and “field” (the other people who are engaged in it). He also told us the difference between the tribe and the crowd.

Chapter Six: What Will They Think?

The three circles of constraint which are the barriers to finding the Element are personal, social, and cultural. In this chapter, he wrote about the disabled artist who would not give in to his disadvantage, the story of Paolo Coelho and his family, the Huffington Post (one of the most popular blogs) founder, and Zaha Hadid, the first woman to win the Pritzker Prize for Architecture who grew up in Iraq.

Chapter Seven: Do You Feel Lucky?

Attitude plays an important role in finding your Element. People who find their Element often say they are lucky despite difficulties and unfortunate circumstances. Sir Ken Robinson wrote about himself when he was very young and caught polio when he was four. He wrote about an accidentally blind John Wilson who played a crucial role in curing blindness for millions in Africa. According to the study of the psychologist Richard Wiseman, lucky people tend to maximise chance opportunities; they tend to be very effective at listening to their intuition; they tend to expect to be lucky; and they have an attitude that allows them to turn bad luck to good.

Chapter Eight: Somebody Help Me

Most people who found their Element often have mentors who help them. The important lesson from this chapter is that mentors have four significant roles, recognition, encouragement, facilitating, and stretching.

Chapter Nine: Is It Too Late?

“Lady Di could be bicycling nude down the street giving this book away, and no one would read it.” was the comment Susan Jeffers received from a publisher directing at her book “Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway” before it had been sold millions of copies. And she only started writing properly into her forties. People’s life expectancy has risen in the past century and although we cannot be a gold medalist in Olympics when we are sixty but Sir Ken Robinson wrote about lots of successful people who found their Element later in their lives. “One of the fundamental precepts of the Element is that we need to reconnect with ourselves and to see ourselves holistically.”

Chapter Ten: For Love or Money

Not all those who find their Element have to be professionals. Sir Ken Robinson shows us the new way of looking at amateur. The word derives from the Latin word amator, “which means lovers, devoted friend, or someone who is in avid pursuit of an objective.” In this chapter, you will find lots of people who find their Element as an amateur; they do not do it for a living, just the love of it. Sir Ken tells us the difference between leisure and recreation. While leisure offers a respite, a passive break from the challenges of the day, “recreation carries a more active tone – literally of re-creating ourselves.”

Chapter Eleven: Making the Grade

Sir Ken Robinson focuses on education in this chapter and the most renown example would be Sir Richard Branson, the founder of Virgin. The problem with an education system is the hirarchy of disciplines (subjects) in schools and the other is that conformity has a higher value than diversity. There are more college graduates now than ever and degrees worth less now. More people who graduate in this generation could not find job because they need higher degree, the so-called academic inflation. In this chapter, Sir Ken tells us the new, alternative education system that might turn schools into, an analogy of, high quality customised restaurant rather than a fast food chain with standardised and unimaginative products.

…

I’ll compare this book to an ideal business book; a book that is easy to understand, distinct, practical, credible, insightful, and provides great reading experience. Although this book is not purely business but it can be directly applied.

Ease of Understanding: 9/10: This book is written in plain English and it is a really easy read. It is very harmonious and stories are weaved perfectly into the content of the chapters. Most stories are filled with conversations and clear points.

Distinction: 8/10: We all know the power of passion and how it affects our lives. Apart from numerous stories from people whom Sir Ken Robinson encountered, there is a fundamental distinction in the book which is how conventional education system is hindering the creativity of children.

Practicality: 5/10: There are two sides to view the book; one is that the author, Sir Ken Robinson, did not offer any sound and practical advice for readers to follow; the other view is that there is no specific guideline to reach your Element. He said that intelligence is diverse, dynamic, and distinct. There are numerous kind of intelligence, linguistic, musical, mathematical, spatial, kinesthetic, interpersonal, and intra-personal. Intelligence is dynamic; it does not follow a linear pattern. And it is distinctive; it is as unique as a fingerprint. Thus, it’s yours to find.

Credibility: 9/10: All the stories in the book are real, not fictional or theoretical. All the findings are either scientific or psychological findings. There is no reason not to believe him. The one point taken is that although his advices in education are exceptionally inspiring and true, we do not know the extent of it. Nobody knows if we follow the advice especially in education, how it may play out. It might be good but not as great as Sir Ken expected or it might be even better.

Insight: 8/10: All the stories in the book are extraordinary and the book is a great compilation of great and inspiring stories. The psychological findings are sufficient and intriguing albeit not too deep.

Reading Experience: 10/10: This is, by far, the most inspiring book I have read. From the introduction, regarding the stories in the book, “None of them have “perfect” lives. But all of them regularly experience moments that feel like perfection. Their stories are often fascinating.” he continues “But this book isn’t really about them. It’s about you.” So, if you read the book with an open mind, you will find a way to discover your Element. The range of people in the book is astonishingly diverse and I hope that one of them will trigger your imagination to reach your Element. I cannot praise it enough.

Overall: 8.2/10: Am I biased? Probably. I am biased because Sir Ken Robinson gave a twenty minutes talk that changed the way I look at my life. I am biased because his book gave me inspiration that I look into the future with optimism and with passion. I am because that this book make me feel that “I” can pursue my dream with my creativity and intelligence. I am biased because this book tells me that my Element is there and it is for me to find it. So yes, I am biased in my review and I deeply hope that you will be biased like me and you will live the life you love. There is no one-size-fits-all but if any of my friends and family members want me to recommend a book on my shelf, they will fortunately get the same answer, The Element.

“Not once, Immelt says, did he question whether he was prepared and able to lead GE.”

“Jeff Immelt and the New GE Way: Innovation, Transformation, and Winning in the 21st Century” by David Magee is the latest GE book on the seven to eight years since Jeff Immelt took over from Jack Welch as the CEO of one of the most admired companies in the world. Days after he was in position, there came 9/11; and his job has never been easy from the beginning. David Magee put the life of Jeff Immelt into this book.

Contents:

[Contents of the book will be very brief because in the 233 pages book (excluding appendices and references); each chapter has, on average, only 14-16 pages.]

Chapter 1: Following a Leader

The first chapter is about Jeff Immelt’s life in college and how he began his career life at GE. David Magee also wrote on Jeff Immelt’s character since he was a child.

Chapter 2: Confidently Seize Opportunity

This chapter is on his career progress in GE from Plastics to Appliance onto becoming a candidate of CEO and finally took it.

Chapter 3: Strength in Crisis

After Jeff Immelt took the role as a CEO, 9/11 came and he faced tremendous task of leading GE through tough time. Moreover, the Enron case did not help GE in the stock market.

Chapter 4: Appearances can be Deceiving

This chapter focuses on how GE took over an, then, unattractive wind power business and made it thrive.

Chapter 5: Understand Context

GE experienced a bad times in the stock market in the early 2000s and David Magee told us how Immelt dealt with it. Immelt’s personal strategy for overcoming tough times includes:
– Commit to learn every day
– Work hard with passion
– Give people a reason to trust
– Have confidence
– Be an optimist

Chapter 6: Cultivate Big Ideas

This chapter is on how Jeff Immelt focuses on innovation. Unlike his predecessor, Jack Welch, Jeff Immelt emphasises more on science and technology for the new businesses.

Chapter 7: Invest in Innovation

Jeff Immelt has created new tools to foster innovation in GE through enhanced laboratories, among other things.

Chapter 8: Use Your Ecomagination

Jeff Immelt has geared GE towards environmentally friendly businesses. Wind and solar energy are obvious examples. There are also new innovation in pipeline such as Organic LEDs and Smart Electric Grid.

Chapter 9: Maintain Core Values

GE’s core values have not changed; Integrity, Performance, and Change. David Magee wrote on how Jeff Immelt has zero tolerance towards integrity violation, how he and GE are still committed to performance as ever, and how change is always encouraged.

Chapter 10: Make Growth a Process

Like his predecessors, Jeff Immelt always focuses on growth and develops growth leaders to develop the company around six key elements; technology, commercial excellence, customer focus, globalisation, innovation, and developing growth leaders.

Chapter 11: Create a Learning Environment

“It’s all about learning.” The key to GE continuous progress is how leaders foster the learning environment in the organisation. The chapter shows how Jeff Immelt develops more learning sessions in GE.

Chapter 12: Find the Future

This chapter is about emerging markets around the world such as China, India, Russia, Brazil. GE’s three keys to effective globalisation are; 1 Use size as an advantage. 2. Create customer optimization, and 3. Leverage capabilities.

Chapter 13: Plant Many Seeds

GE is still expanding their businesses in various fields. Moreover, Jeff Immelt reorganised GE into four divisions; Technology Infrastructure, Energy Infrastructure, GE Capital, and NBC Universal.

Chapter 14: Find Opportunity in Adversity

This chapter is about the ongoing economic crisis and the stock market and how Jeff Immelt is coping with them.

Chapter 15: Leadership for the New Century

(This chapter is just a brief conclusion, albeit a grand name)

…

I’ll compare this book to an ideal business book; a book that is easy to understand, distinct, practical, credible, insightful, and provides great reading experience.

Ease of Understanding: 7/10: This book is written in plain language. Most of the contents are from articles in the business magazines. It is an easy and fast read without deep analysis. The drawback is the flow of the book which lacks solid structure. Titles of the chapters, sometimes, are not really relevant to contents.

Distinction: 8/10: This is the only book on Jeff Immelt available.

Practicality: 2/10: There is no guideline on how to do anything in this book; it might be the purpose of the author. This book is a great compilation of what Jeff Immelt said. There are some lists of what GE and Jeff Immelt have done (see Chapter 5 above); and that is as far as the content goes.

Credibility: 5/10: The credibility of the sources is excellent because they are in quotations. However, there are some interpretations and journalism by the author that make this book a bit unconvincing. Everything Jeff Immelt did seems to be the right way and is taken for granted. David Magee unavoidably compared Jeff Immelt to Jack Welch and he praised Jeff Immelt for lots of things that he did but Welch did not do such as innovation sessions. There are countless features that the two are similar and the author seems to praise Immelt because he followed it nicely. I am not in the position to judge which CEO is better but the overall tone of the book is 100% pro Jeff Immelt (in everything he did) which is over the top.

Insightful: 3/10: Although this book has the most quotes from Jeff Immelt and other GE executives, it is extremely shallow. Analysis is non-existent in the book. Everything in this book is as deep as what Jeff Immelt and others said without any further and deep investigation. As I mentioned earlier, things, in this book, are taken for granted.

Reading Experience: 5/10: The good point is that this is an easy read and it can be fun if you don’t think about it too much. However, the tone of the book makes everything Jeff Immelt did a stroke of genius and it even seems that David Magee was occasionally having a go at Jack Welch which is ridiculous.

Overall: 5.0/10: The title “the New GE Way” is a massively misleading title because it is basically the same GE we have known. Under Jeff Immelt, GE has the same GE way with the new leadership, updated and refined business models, and enhanced management tools. Unlike other “GE” books (especially by Jack Welch), this book provides you with little insight and no guideline. But if you really admire GE (like me), I think that you will buy the book anyway. All in all, the book will make you know Jeff Immelt much more. Instead of “Jeff Immelt: the New GE Way”, the title should have read “Jeff Immelt: 7 years as a GE CEO mini biography” and I would have been disappointed slightly less than I am. By the way, I will be patiently waiting for a book by Jeff Immelt himself if he writes one. Skip this one if you can.

It has been seven months since I started reviewing business books with my rating method. Personally, I think it’s successful not because there are numerous people reading my blog but by the impact I had on, even on a few, people. I have great and valuable comments in my blog and the helpfulness rating in Amazon.com is not bad at around 80% albeit very few people rated them.

I will make an analysis on the 20 books I’ve reviewed so far.

(disclaimer: this analysis is based solely on my personal reviews and it has no scientific or academic data to support it.)

EoU - Ease of Understanding

Dist - Distinction

Prac - Practicality

Cred - Credibility

Ins - Insight

RE - Reading Experience

…..

The highest rating out of 20 books is “Winning” by Jack and Suzy Welch at 8.0/10. However, I reviewed this book years after I read it and it might not be fair to other book. Thus, the runner-up is “Business Stripped Bare” by Richard Branson at 7.8/10. The lowest score is “Six Disciplines Execution Revolution” by Gary Harpst followed by “Tribes” by Seth Godin.

On the average scores of each attribute, “Ease of Understanding” has the highest at 7.75 not that I am intelligent but because nowadays, books need to capture broader market and they need to be easy to read since readers seem to have less patience nowadays. The lowest average score is “Practicality.” I believe that authors do not want to write their books like Dummy’s guide to … but sometimes it would help the readers if the authors really do focus on what can the readers do after reading.

There is no obvious correlation between each attribute. However, the “Read Experience” seems to be the most probable determinant of the overall book rating probably reading experience is an instillation of every dimension of the books.

Ease of Understanding:

Highest: “Reality Check” by Guy Kawasaki (9), “The Ten Commandments for Business Failure” by Donald Keough (9), and “Tuned In” by Craig Stull, Phil Myers, and David Meerman Scott(9)

Lowest: “The Brand Bubble” by John Gerzema and Ed Lebar (5)

The determinant of the Ease of Understanding comes from the structure of the book and how different parts of the book are woven together. The notable attribute of “Reality Check” is its structure and bullet points writing style. “The Ten Commandments for Business Failure” is written casually and every point is easy to grasp. “Tuned In” has the most obvious step-by-step structure with nice stories. On the other hand, “The Brand Bubble” tried to put lots of things into the mix and each point of the book is not in sync.

Distinction:

Highest: “Influence” by Robert Cialdini (9), “Outliers” by Malcolm Gladwell (9), and “The Future of Management” by Gary Hamel (9).

Lowest: “Six Disciplines Execution Revolution” by Gary Harpst (2)

Distinction comes from how the author and the book looks at something from a unique perspective. It takes a careful but courageous creativity to look at the same things differently. “Influence” looks at sales from the perspective of deep psychology with astounding findings. “Outliers” look at success in a way people rarely thought about, Opportunity and Legacy. “The Future of Management” sees management from a genuine vantage and analogy. The lowest score is “Six Disciplines Execution Revolution”; the word revolution is a deadly overstatement. It is like a university textbook, but worse.

Practicality:

Highest: “Who” by Geoff Smart and Randy Street (9), and “Winning” by Jack and Suzy Welch (8).

Lowest: “Tribes” by Seth Godin (1)

Practicality is difficult to achieve by a book but “Who” did a great job by elaborating a step by step guide on recruitment. It covers essential things and tell you exactly how to implement. “Winning” is another great example; the one you will hear Jack Welch screamed “DO THIS, DO THAT.” Most books do not focus on actions and “Tribes” is not a very good example. The book does not tell readers to do anything. It only tells you some stories and hope you find your own way, if there is any.

Credibility:

Highest: “Winning” by Jack and Suzy Welch (10), and “Business Stripped Bare” by Richard Branson (10)

Lowest: “Outliers” by Malcolm Gladwell (2)

It does help if you write something you are really good at. Jack Welch is arguably the CEO of the 20^st century and Richard Branson is one of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs. You can have high credibility with other people’s researches but the best proof is when you can do it yourself, then, you can expect others to believe you. Although “Outliers” views the world from a different angle, it fails to convince the world. There are lots of things that Malcolm Gladwell did not cover and it is hard to believe picking few examples and write rules around them.

Insight:

Highest: “Influence” by Robert Cialdini (9), and “The Brand Bubble” by John Gerzema (9)

Lowest: “Tribes” by Seth Godin (4), and “The Little Book of Bull Moves in the Bear Markets” by Peter Schiff (4).

Taking too many researches from other people might not build your credibility but they pack your book with interesting findings. “The Brand Bubble” is not the best written book but the amount of work and effort of the authors to write about lots of deep stuffs is insightful and we learn a lot from it. Likewise, “Influence” has a (very) long list of references and you can talk about the stories in the book all day. On the other hand, you should not write things based solely on your opinion. “Tribes” by Seth Godin is very shallow and “The Little Book of Bull Moves in the Bear Markets” has very little insight, just speculations.

Reading Experience:

Highest: “Reality Check” by Guy Kawasaki (10), and “Business Stripped Bare” by Richard Branson (10).

Lowest: “Influence” by Robert Cialdini (2), and “Six Disciplines Execution Revolution” by Gary Harpst (3).

“Reality Check” is very humorous and funny while “Business Stripped Bare” is exciting and adventurous. They are the books with emotions and they even entertain the readers. “Execution Revolution” by Gary Harpst did the opposite. It lacks emotion, dull, and boring. It is like a summary of a textbook. On the other hand, you should not reinforce a negative emotion from readers like “Influence.” Read my review for the details but all in all, you should not piss off the readers!

…

All in all, although I have no experience or knowledge to write a book, I come up with an easy guideline to write a better book from a reader’s point of view.

DOs;

- Write a book with a concise structure in plain language

- Look at the subject from a different point of view

- Tell readers what they have to do

- Write something you are truly good at

- Do research, and do some more

- Put feelings and emotions into the book

DONTs:

- Don’t write simple stuff with a rocket-scientifically complicated theory with a mess up structure

- Don’t try to write a textbook (there are a lot of them already)

- Don’t write what you know just to show off; tell people what to do

- Don’t think readers are thick; don’t think they will always believe you

- Don’t base everything solely on your own opinion

- Tell a story, or a journey…. Don’t just write a book