Complexity & Resilience – Public Intelligence Blog

2009/10/312009/10/31

Review: Business Stripped Bare–Adventures of a Global Entrepreneur

5 Star, Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth, Best Practices in Management, Biography & Memoirs, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Change & Innovation, Complexity & Resilience, Consciousness & Social IQ, Disease & Health, Economics, Education (General), Environment (Solutions), Leadership, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Philosophy, Priorities, Survival & Sustainment, Technology (Bio-Mimicry, Clean), Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Water, Energy, Oil, Scarcity

Inspirational and Practical as Well

October 31, 2009

Richard Branson

I picked this up half-price at Copenhagen airport, and I liked it so much I have ordered Screw It, Let's Do It (Expanded Edition): 14 Lessons on Making It to the Top While Having Fun & Staying Green.

I must note that normally I would reduce one star–Virgin Books evidently has no clue–or no interest–in using the many Amazon tools provided to publishers (I am one) and therefore we are not seeing so little as a Table of Contents and the Index (always huge for me in evaluating a non-fiction book for possible purchase) or even better, “Look Inside the Book,” which is no harder than uploading the book pdf via Amazon Advantage. Bad dog.

Here are my fly-leaf notes.

Continue reading “Review: Business Stripped Bare–Adventures of a Global Entrepreneur”

2009/10/31

Review: Prisoner of the State–The Secret Journal of Premier Zhao Ziyang

5 Star, Best Practices in Management, Biography & Memoirs, Civil Society, Complexity & Resilience, Country/Regional, Economics, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), History, Leadership, Power (Pathologies & Utilization)

Editors Did Great, Could Have Gone Extra Mile

October 31, 2009

Zhao Ziyang

Most people miss the two bottom lines that I found engaging:

1. China's government is a screwed up bureaucracy with petty egos just like ours.

2. China produced moderate pragmatist Premier Zhao Ziyang, promoted him, and empowered him.

With all due respect to all those wailing and moaning about the years of house arrest, this book is phenomenal for documenting the above two points alone, and Premier Zhao Ziyang will stand in history as one of the greatest leaders along with Mao Zedong (their rendition, I always preferred Mao Tse-tung) and Deng Xiaoping.

2009/10/182009/10/18

Review: 75 Green Businesses You Can Start to Make Money and Make A Difference

5 Star, Best Practices in Management, Censorship & Denial of Access, Change & Innovation, Complexity & Resilience, Consciousness & Social IQ, Culture, Research, Economics, Environment (Solutions), Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution

Phenomenal Overview, Reference, Exceeded Expectations

October 18, 2009

Glenn Croston

I bought and read this book along with Green Intelligence: Creating Environments That Protect Human Health and Careers in Renewable Energy: Get a Green Energy Job.

This book is everything I could have wanted and more–it exceeded expecations. For each of 75 “opportunities” sorted within eleven chapters it provides a summary table (Market Need, Mission, Knowledge to Start, Capital Rquired, Timing to Start, and Special Challenges, along with a multi-page discussion and a variety of “sidebar” elements that vary but generally address Related Trends, In the Long Run, Green Leader, Industry Information, Information Resource, Eco-Tip, or Eco-Issue.

Continue reading “Review: 75 Green Businesses You Can Start to Make Money and Make A Difference”

2009/10/112009/10/11

Review: The Design of Business–Why Design Thinking is the Next Competitive Advantage

6 Star Top 10%, Best Practices in Management, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Change & Innovation, Complexity & Resilience, Culture, Research, Economics, Education (Universities), Environment (Solutions), Future, Intelligence (Commercial), Intelligence (Government/Secret), Intelligence (Public), Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Philosophy, Public Administration, Strategy, True Cost & Toxicity, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution

In Its Niche Beyond a Six–In Larger Context a Four

October 11, 2009

Roger Martin

First off, what got me to buy this book does not appear in the book at all–the author on record as saying that Wall Street was not designed to make money for its investors, only for its mandarins–the same is true of how universities are designed, businesses, etc. but that one observation really got my attention. I bought the book before BusinessWeek featured it as one of four in the October 5th edition (Europe version), and after looking the others over, chose this one.

In the larger context of changes to the Earth that now take three years instead of ten thousand years, as an entire literature flourishes on The Philosophy of Sustainable Design, Green to Gold: How Smart Companies Use Environmental Strategy to Innovate, Create Value, and Build Competitive Advantage and Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution, the book is a four for narrow-casting and lack of context, but you can use Phi Beta Iota, the Public Intelligence Blog, to search and sort among my other 1,400 reviews, so no penalty is warranted, This book will be scored Beyond 6 Stars at PBI/PIB for the simple reason that it addresses the core need of all eight tribes of intelligence (academia, civil society, commerce, government, law enforcement, media, military, and non-governmental organizations), to re-design away from the Industrial Era waste (where Six Sigma stops), and to instead envision how the world could and should be, and set out to achieve that–a prosperous world at peace.