Jim Champy’s new book (Outsmart) is a good read but nothing groundbreaking. See my review here

I’ll take a look at Stall Points.

i’ll be interested in hearing how champy’s book is. having met him and having reported on the reengineering wave that he helped launch, i’ve followed his work, and i’ve been disappointed by everything he’s done since reengineering. it seemed he was churning out books just to stay on the lecture circuit. i hope this one’s better.

as for me, i’m enjoying ‘deals from hell.’ it has some counterintuitive and seemingly very sharp insights into mergers and acquisitions. bruner is a smart guy.

i’d also recommend ‘stall points.’ it draws on a lot of research to suggest how companies can avoid the growth plateaus that afflict many businesses. it’s a bit of a dull read, and some of their stories are off–they say, for instance, that rod canion was pushed out as ceo of compaq because of dell’s success, even canion left in 1991, and dell wasn’t a major factor until the latter half of the ’90s, when the internet kicked in–but their prescriptions are smart.

There are a bunch of books I’m reading. The joy of starting a new business.

I just got: Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics. I haven’t started it yet, but I’m sure you can guess the purpose.

I just finished a couple books that I highly recommend:

The New Brand World by Scott Bedbury. He was the director of marketing at Nike in the late 80s/early 90s and he describes the motivations and reasons, mistakes and success behind Nike. Then in the mid-90s he took over as the director of what was at the time a fairly small coffee shop, Starbucks. I think they had about 200 stores at the time and with a small budget and no direct advertising, he set out to make them the most famous global brand in the world. Good read.

Superclass by David Rothkopf is spectacular. It describes the emergence of the global superclasses. Think the Davos man. The 6,000 most influential people in the world. What the class means and how its changing the world.

Post American World by Fareed Zakaria. Describes how the world has changed and what he thinks will happen and why in the next 50 years.

On my list to read is Outsmart by Jim Champy.

Being the incredible geek that I am, I write summaries on books that I read. If you’re interested I could send some to you.

Andy

I read Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond but didn’t realize he had another book out….i’ll be picking that one up soon.

The other books seem extremely interesting…I’ll be looking into them as well.