Higgs Discovery: The Power of Empty Space - Randall (2013)

Lisa Randall is the Frank J. Baird Jr. Professor of Science at Harvard University.  Randall studies theoretical physics and cosmology and is considered one of the most cited and highly influential theoretical physicists in the field today.

Higgs Discovery is a short eBook that Randall wrote immediately following the discovery of the Higgs Boson on July 4, 2012.  The first part of the book describes the study being conducted by Cern at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which spans the border between France and Switzerland.  Randall has written two previous books about the search for the Higgs Boson at the LHC.  The Higgs Discovery includes a chapter from each of those books that focused on the significance of the Higgs and why it was important to verify what was, up until July 4, 2012, and accepted, but theoretical construct.

At the time of Randall's writing, the discovery had not been confirmed as the actual Higgs particle.   This did not happen until September 12, 2012.  None-the-less, the experiment had definitely discovered a new particle and the news caused a great deal of excitement not just in the scientific community, but also among the general public.

The Higgs Boson confirmed the existence of the Higgs Mechanism, which has long been thought as the way that subatomic particles acquire mass.  The discovery of the Higgs Boson provided evidence for the first time that such a process did indeed exist.  While not the sole focus of the experiments being conducted at the LHC, finding the elusive Higgs was definitely the Marque investigation.

11 Rules for Creating Value in the Social Era - Merchant (2012)

Nilofer Merchant has served as a CEO and then a board member of a NASDAQ-traded company.  She has also consulted with numerous Fortune 500 companies including HP, Nokia, Adobe, Symantec and Yahoo!  She is a frequent contributor to the Harvard Business Review and has written a previous book entitled, The New How: Creating Business Solutions Through Collaborative Strategy.  She lectures on innovation and marketing at Stanford University.

11 Rules begins with an obituary for "Traditional Strategy."  This clever personification of the business model taught in business schools throughout the nation prizes marketing data, stability, control and scale.  The Traditional Strategy decides what it wants to produce and then sets about convincing the consumer that they want or need it.

Merchant contends that we have moved into a new "Social Era" where consumers expect to be co-creators of products. They require businesses to be agile and responsive to their wants and needs.  Businesses run using the Traditional Strategy are ill-equipped to meet these new demands.

Merchant states that "the Social Era is about connecting things, people and ideas." Hierarchical controls, large inventories and huge payrolls, typical of successful companies using the Traditional Strategy, serve as barriers to success in this new era.

As in much of the literature on motivation and innovation today, Merchant stresses the need to establish shared purpose among workers.   She states that purpose is a much more powerful motivator than money.  When shared purpose is coupled with shared power, people will self-organize to reach a goal.

The Rules

1. Connections create value.
2. Power in community.
3. Collaboration > controle.
4. Celebrate Onlyness.
5. Allow all talent.
6. Consumers become co-creators.
7. Mistakes can build trust.
8. Learn. Unlearn. (Repeat).
9. Bank on openess.
10. Social purpose unleashes ownership.
11. There are no answers.

How Will You Measure Your Life - Christensen (2012)

Clayton Christensen co-authored this book with James Allworth, an Australian student attending the Harvard Business School and Karen Dillon, the former editor of the Harvard Business Review.

Christensen, widely recognized as a leader in the study of innovative business practices, has published numerous books on disruptive innovation in the marketplace.  "How Will You Measure Your Life?" grew out of a commencement speech that Christensen gave at Harvard in 2010.  Christensen delivered the address after suffering a heart attack and being diagnosed with the same cancer that had killed his father.   As Christensen embarked on writing "How Will You Measure Your Life?" he experienced a stroke that effected his expressive language.  With the help of his family and co-authors, he persisted and the book was published in May 2012.

In "How Will You Measure Your Life?" Christensen goes beyond the world of business and demonstrates how the same systems that one uses to make good decisions in business can be applied to even more important decisions in life.  The author describes how many of his fellow Harvard Business School graduates went on to highly successful lives.  Yet, many saw their personal lives crumble around them.  In some cases such as Jeffrey Skilling, CEO of Enron, they even ended up in jail.  As the name implies, "How Will You Measure Your Life?" focuses on how to live an ethical, as well as a successful, life.

Christensen reviews his theory of disruptive innovation.  He provides several interesting anecdotes including one where he was invited to address the secretary of defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff as they struggled to learn how to deal with an entirely different type of enemy.  As "market leader," the US Armed Forces understood how to fight large successful military establishments such as the Soviet Union.  Today, however, they must deal with a completely different type of foe that has mastered new military tactics "down market."

Christensen cautioned against the common misinterpretation by business leaders who confuse incentives with motivators.  He described the work of Frederick Hertzberg who developed the "Two-factor Theory" of motivation consisting of "Hygiene Factors" and "Motivators."  Hygiene Factors are things, such as compensation, supervisory practices and company policies that can cause dissatisfaction.  They do not, however, motivate.  Motivators are intrinsic factors that relate to the work itself.  Christensen highlights the paradox that it is possible to love your job and hate it at the same time.

Christensen also discusses the need for empathy in determining what customers truly need.  He observes that many companies "improve" products with no particular effect on sales.  This is because they guess at what the customer needs.  Careful observation, however, often reveals a completely different need that manufacturers never even considered.

Rather than focus on the product, Christensen recommends trying to determine what "job" the customer is is actually "hiring" the product to accomplish.  At this point, the author turns his attention to schools.  To educators and other adults, schools are a job that students must get done.  From the student's perspective, however, school is not the job, but rather the tool to get the job done.  Students want schools to make them feel successful and to help them make friends.  Christensen contends that most schools fail miserably at these tasks.  He further laments that school reformers generally focus on dimensions that are totally irrelevant to the student.

Why is it so difficult for large, successful corporations to innovate?  Christensen contends that it is due to the well accepted business theory of marginal vs. full costs.  As companies look at doing something completely new, they see the full costs, which lowers margins.  If they attempt to simply leverage what they already have, they do not include the full cost into their calculations, which makes incremental change more attractive.  Unfortunately, the resources that they are leveraging are generally ill-equipped or even unwilling to make the necessary changes that true innovation requires.

Christensen warns, "Thinking on a marginal basis can be very very dangerous."

Creating Innovators - Tony Wagner (2012)

Tony Wagner is the innovation education fellow at the Technology and Entrepreneurship Center at Harvard.  He is also the former co-director of the Change Leadership Group at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.  Wagner collaborated with Robert A. Compton, a video producer, who has produced numerous full length documentaries on global education.  Compton produced video clips with several of the people interviewed for the book.  The videos were embedded in the eBook edition.  They are also available at: www.creatinginnovators.com

Creating Innovators presents an interesting compliment to "Creativity" by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.  Csikszentmihalyi studied the characteristics of people who had distinguished themselves in their respective fields for their creativity and innovation.  His subjects, for the most part, were over 60 years of age and had already accrued a portfolio of accomplishments.

Wagner's study was similar to that of Csikszentmihalyi although his subjects were very different.  Wagner interviewed young entrepreneurs and innovators between the ages of 21 and 31.  While they had all demonstrated innovative and entrepreneurial skills, for the most part they had not yet achieved wide spread recognition for their accomplishments.

Almost all of Wagner's subjects had supportive parents who encouraged their children to take risks, explore their interests and solve their own problems.  They provided time for creative play and eschewed "helicopter parents" who hover over their children and structure their every moment.

The subjects in Csikszentmihalyi's study reported a different relationship with their parents, although the effect may have been the same.  Csikszentmihalyi noted that a significant number of the people in his study grew up in homes where the father had died while the subject was just a child.  The author suggested that this might have given more latitude to the child to develop skills and assume responsibility early.

One consistent finding of both studies was the perception that school had played no productive role in the subjects' lives.  In both studies, however, the subjects described some adult that had served as a mentor and inspiration.

Both Csikszentmihalyi and Wagner conclude that creativity and innovation emerge through a process.  Wagner describes the process as evolving through three developmental stages: Play (early childhood), Passion (adolescence) and Purpose (adulthood).  He suggests that each stage is simply a refinement of the previous one.

Wagner also describes specific skills that the innovator develops as they pass through these stages: 1) Critical thinking and problem solving, 2) Collaboration, 3) Agility and adaptability, 4) Initiative and entrepreneurship, 5) Acessing and analyzing information, 6) Effective written and oral communication, and 7) Curiosity and imagination.

Wagner is very critical of education in America.  He notes that the one size fits all model of education stifles creativity and innovation.  He provides examples of how subjects in his study were undervalued and sometimes punished for being different in school  He, along with several business leaders from companies such as Apple and Google, observe that schools prize individual accomplishments and "right" answers, yet these are not what innovative companies need or value.

Wagner is equally critical of even the most prestigious of American Universities.  His interviews reveal that the college professors who had the greatest impact on the innovators in the study are often on the fringes of the universities.  They tend to work with students in applied, rather than theoretical classes and they often are paid less because they are ineligible for tenure track positions.  Wagner questions the focus on research over instruction in many of the nation's top universities and calls for educational leaders at every level to re-examine current educational practices.

Creativity - Csikszentmihalyi (2007)

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is a psychology professor at the University of Chicago.  He is best known for his identification of a phenomenon that he coined "Flow."

"Creativity" is Csikszentmihalyi's most recent book.  It reports on the results of 91 interviews with exceptional individuals that were conducted between 1990 and 1995.  The interviewees all had to have had a significant impact on the direction of their domain.

Creativity involves the interaction of three elements:

1.  The Domain, or culture that contains symbolic rules,
2.  An individual who introduces novelty into the symbolic domain,
3.  The field comprised of individuals with expertise capable of evaluating and validating innovation within the domain.

Csikszentmihalyi observes that Creativity is a property of a system rather than an individual.  While individuals may be personally creative or brilliant, Creativity with a "Capital C" requires the three elements described above.

Based on his interviews, the author found that creative people tended to have many paradoxical traits.  They tended to be humble and proud, introverted in some ways but also extroverted in others.  They tended to be passionate about their work, but also very objective about it.  Creative individuals tended to be very open to new ideas, but had an tremendous amount of perseverance.  The most common trait that they shared was a love of the creative process for its own sake.

The author identifies five steps in the creative process.  These are:

1. Preparation - becoming immersed in the problem.
2. Incubation - subconscious analysis and/or manipulation of the problem or issue.
3. Insight - the aha! moment
4. Evaluation
5. Elaboration - the work.

Creativity, Csikszentmihalyi contends, is a recursive, rather than a linear process.

The individuals interviewed reported that school had little effect on their lives or success.  In fact, some seemed to suggest that school threatened to destroy their creativity.  On the other hand, most did mention individual teachers who had had a positive effect on their lives.  These teachers recognized the potential of the student and provided them with additional challenges.

The creative individuals did not appear to be shaped by their environments.  In fact they took very diverse paths.  Some had very happy childhoods while others had tragic ones.  Many had lost a father early in life.  All of the interviewees had an intense drive to succeed.

While some research has suggested that creativity peaks in a person's thirties, this was not the case with the sample interviewed.  In fact, they reported higher levels of creative productivity much later in life.  This was attributed to a greater foundation of knowledge.

The book concludes with strategies that individuals, teachers and parents can use to stimulate creativity.

Disrupt - Luke Williams (2011)

In Disrupt, Luke Williams describes a process that he calls "Disruptive Thinking."  Williams states that it is a cookbook approach to innovation.  In developing the process, Williams seems to have taken many of the disruptive innovation concepts introduced by Clayton Christensen in his 1997 book entitled, "The Innovator's Dilemma" and combined them with the Design Thinking process developed by Tim Brown at IDEO.

In fact, the Disruptive Thinking and Design Thinking processes are strikingly similar with their emphasis on empathy, an anthropological approach to research, rapid prototyping and a belief that innovation grows out of failure not success.  The process has five stages:
1. Craft a disruptive hypothesis
2. Define a disruptive market opportunity
3. Generate several disruptive ideas
4. Shape them into a single, disruptive solution
5. Make a disruptive pitch to convince internal and external stakeholders to invest in or adopt what you've created. NOTE: The stages are quoted from the book.

While the process itself and the underpinning philosophy were not particularly original, Williams did offer some good advice.  Prior to beginning the process, Williams recommended that the innovation team identify cliches within the market they wish to disrupt.  Then he explained that the team should invert the cliche and explore the feasibility of the new perspective.  He provided several examples including a soft drink company that decided that drinks should not be sweet and that they should be expensive.  This, of course, inverted the common wisdom of the soft drink industry.  The company was Red Bull and went on to produce a highly successful product.

Williams also provided guidelines for making a successful pitch.  His step-by-step instructions for the presentation were designed to capture maximum attention and to generate excitement about the product.

A word of caution when considering what the author himself describes as a cookbook approach to innovation.  Bruce Nussbaum, former assistant editor for Business Week and now a professor of Innovation and Design, contends that the reason that Design Thinking has had a negligible impact on business, despite its popularity, is because CEOs have implemented it in cookbook fashion.  Here is a link to Nussbaum's analysis.

http://www.fastcodesign.com/1663558/design-thinking-is-a-failed-experiment-so-whats-next

The Quantum Universe (And Why Anything That Can Happen Does) - Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw(2011)

The Quantum Universe: And Why Anything That Can Happen Does, was co-authored by Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw.  While a relatively short book, I found it to be very difficult to understand at times.  Cox and Forshaw set out to demonstrate the validity of many of the theories of Quantum Mechanics such as Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, Schroedinger's equation and Pauli's Exclusion Principle.  While Cox and Forshaw were able to explain these theories clearly, the mathematical equations that they offered as proof were far beyond my skill level.

One interesting aspect to this book was the integration of chemistry and quantum mechanics.  This was necessary to understand the formation of matter.  The authors also provided some examples of how Quantum Mechanics impact our daily life, noting that it is the tendency for electrons to repel each other (Pauli's Exclusion Principle) that keeps us from "falling through the floor."

Because of the Uncertainty Principle, the authors stated that the study of Quantum Mechanics can never offer more than a set of probabilities.  Indeed, this is the very aspect of the study that led Einstein to scoff that "God does not roll dice!"

I found this to be a difficult read, although others with a better background in chemistry and math, may find it more accessible than I.

Steve Jobs - Walter Isaacson (2011)

Walter Isaacson is the CEO of the Aspen Institute.  He has also served as the chairman of CNN and the managing editor of Time Magazine.  Isaacson has written biographies of Einstein, Benjamin Franklin and Henry Kissinger.  Jobs repeatedly asked Isaacson to write his biography.  Jobs agreed to allow absolute access and would not read or comment on the biography until after it was published.  He did, however, reserve the right to review and comment on the cover prior to publication.

In this biography, Isaacson interviewed family, friends, critics, competitors and partners of Steve Jobs.  He also reviewed news and magazine articles, books, emails and other artifacts that chronicled the evolution of Jobs throughout his life and career.  The biography provides a deeply personal as well as historical perspective on Steve Jobs and, to a lesser degree, Apple.

Throughout this rather lengthy portrait, Jobs emerges as a complex and driven individual with an uncanny sense for design and marketing.  Although not particularly talented in the realm of engineering or computer science, he possessed a spectacular ability to identify and appreciate talent and potential.

Jobs' passion for elegant design served as the catalyst for the success of Apple and Pixar.  Small flaws that appeared irrelevant to others could drive Jobs to emotional tirades that often left those around him frustrated and angry.  Design, to Jobs, was a spiritual expression rooted deeply in the eastern philosophies that he embraced early in life.  He sought simplicity in every aspect of his products. This simplicity would speak to the end user's intuition rather than intellect.

Isaacson describes how Jobs' personal life, especially the realization that he was adopted, influenced his personal and professional life.  Although, raised by loving parents, parents whom Jobs certainly loved deeply, he still felt a sense of abandonment.  Ironically, he later abandoned his first daughter, born out of wedlock.  Despite numerous attempts, he was never able to reconcile with his daughter.  Jobs often displayed a selfish and self-absorbed personality, which made long-term relationships difficult.  None-the-less, he did have devoted family and friends.

One of Jobs' most pronounced characteristics was what others have termed his "reality distortion field."  This enabled Jobs to dismiss limitations, which led to great accomplishments.  At the same time, it led him to ignore or reject realities such as the paternity of his first daughter and later, the seriousness of his illness.

Interestingly, Isaacson notes that the experience that most influenced Jobs' ultimate success was the failure of his second company NeXT.  This led him to recognize that best products were not necessarily market successes.  Jobs learned that his obsession with design could, in fact, lead to products that were more than the market could bear.

The biography of Steve Jobs described his ultimately unsuccessful bout with cancer.  In this case his strong personality and mystical beliefs may have led to his demise.  Having been diagnosed with a rare and treatable form of pancreatic cancer, Jobs chose not to have surgery, but attempted to treat the disease through diet and holistic means.  Later, when he found that this was not working, he chose to have the surgery, but the cancer eventually spread leading to a liver transplant.  While this extended his life, he eventually succumbed to the disease.

Some interesting facts:

1.  In 1977 Apple was valued at $5,309.  By 1980, it was valued at $1.79 Million.
2.  In May 2000, Apple's market value was one-twentieth of Microsoft's.  By May 2010, Apple had surpassed Microsoft as the most valuable technology company.  In September 2011, Apple was worth 70% more than Microsoft.  And in February 2012, Apple stock was more valuable than Microsoft and Google combined, according to Complex.com.
3.  Apple made 300 millionaires.
4.  At age 25, Jobs was worth $256 million.

Some interesting quotes:

1.  "Design is the fundamental soul of a man-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers.
2.  "You can't win on innovation unless you have a way to communicate to customers..."
3.  "If you don't cannibalize yourself, someone else will."
4.  "I never rely on market research.  Our task is to read things that are not yet on the page."