Learning From the Experts: Our 2018 Top Reads + Top of 2019 List

One of our favorite ways to stay on top of the latest thinking is through our monthly book club! Below are some of our favorite reads that inspired us in 2018, and a couple we have on our wish-list to read in 2019.

2018 Books:

Predicting the Turn – Dave Knox

If you haven’t read this book yet, you might want to consider it if…

• You are a company whose industry is facing a state of disruption or digital transformation.
• New startups are driving innovation or winning market share in your industry, threatening to leave you behind.

Predicting the Turn details how BigCos can predict, embrace, and even become leaders in industry disruption by embracing and leveraging startup strategies and partnerships. Through a mixture of tech acquisitions, investments in startups, new strategic partnerships, and new product and service innovation, companies can be transformed and future-proofed.

Predictably Irrational – Dan Ariely

This book is for you if you’ve found yourself thinking the following…

• Our consumers don’t always act as we would expect them to.
• I’m unsure how the intersection of psychology, economics, and marketing impacts consumer behavior in the marketplace.

In this ever-relevant and entertaining read, Dan Ariely explains why people act irrationally, and how one can begin to predict and affect decision making. You’ll also get a glimpse into the creative experiments that led to the insights presented.

Dare To Lead – Brené Brown

We recommend this book for those who are facing these challenges…

• Leaders in your organization avoid the tough conversations of giving honest and productive feedback.
• Perfectionism and fear are keeping people from taking smart risks or creating and sharing bold ideas to meet changing demands and the insatiable need for innovation.
• When something goes wrong, teams are rushing into ineffective solutions rather than sticking to problem identification and solving.
• Your organization’s values are gauzy and assessed in terms of aspirations rather than actual behaviors that can be taught, measured, and evaluated.

Dare to Lead provides a straightforward and actionable approach to tackling these problems by unpacking how to achieve what Brené Brown calls “Daring Leadership”. The reader is guided to the heart of daring leadership with insights on its key principles. Check out our deep dive on this book.

Herding Tigers – Todd Henry

This book can help leaders who…

• Recently moved from a creative role into a management role, and are having difficulty being effective in their new position.
• Work with creative teams, and are looking for ways to better influence their creative output.
• Have to juggle management’s expectations for systematized output with pushback from a creative team who desires a specific environment for being productive.

Todd Henry’s Herding Tigers provides the insights and skills for leading in a way specific to maximizing the creative potential of a team. We had the opportunity to interview Todd, and encourage you to check out our recap of the Facebook Live conversation.

Scaling Lean – Ash Maurya

We recommend this book if…

• You’re looking for a lean approach to evaluating the viability of an idea, concept, or business model.
• You need better metrics than revenue for tracking progress and the potential for future growth.
• The insights you’re gathering aren’t getting you any closer to successful ideas, concepts, or business models.

Scaling Lean is an excellent resource for entrepreneurs, innovation teams, and brands looking for a more efficient approach for evaluating and measuring the potential for innovation. We were grateful to have a conversation with Ash Maurya on this book.

Hacking Growth – Sean Ellis

This book can help companies that struggle with…

• Attaining, retaining, engaging, and motivating a customer base.
• Your current growth strategies have grown stale or are no longer effective.
• You have ambitious goals of increasing market share.

Hacking Growth provides a methodology for increasing market share with cross-functional teams and lean, iterative testing that focuses on the customer. This approach to growth can help entrepreneurs and BigCos alike. Read more about this book on our previous posting.

And here are just a few on our list for 2019…

Imagine It Forward – Beth Comstock with Tahl Raz

This book is about all about change and the daily challenges change presents. Beth Comstock uses big picture examples and her personal story to provide an inspiring way to overcome the difficulties of change and push our lives forward. Come join us in NYC in January when we interview Beth!

What we hope to learn: New tools and mindsets for helping guide our team and clients toward positive change.

Testing with Humans: How to use experiments to drive faster, more informed decision making – Giff Constable

This next book is all about experiments, and how to use them to maximize learning. Giff Constable explains why experiments can be effective tools for entrepreneurs, innovation teams, and product teams to improve the chances of success.

What we hope to learn: Practical ways to improve our transactional research skills when conducting experiments for Assumption Based Development.

The Intrapreneur’s Journey: Empowering Employees to Drive Growth – Hugh Molotsi

Intrapreneurs often face a tough uphill battle when trying to develop an innovation culture in BigCos. This book teaches practical tools for driving growth by tapping into your team’s passion, a model for assessing your organization’s innovation programs, and a “recipe” for taking a company from no innovation to a cohesive program that effectively drives growth.

What we hope to learn: Hands-on methods to share with our clients to help them successfully achieve innovation and growth.

Radical Candor – Kim Scott

Author Kim Scott leverages her leadership experience at Google and Apple to provide a simple, yet effective approach to management that focuses on caring personally for your employees and challenging them directly.

What we hope to learn: At TGG, our culture relies heavily on authenticity and feedback. We’re looking forward to learning the ins and outs of “Radical Candor”, and using the lessons to strengthen our ability to care for and challenge each other.

The Messy Middle – Scott Belsky

Much has been written on the importance of starting something new, and finishing strong. This read focuses on “The Messy Middle”, how to endure the volatility the journey of innovation brings, and how to optimize along the way.

What we’re hoping to learn: Inspiration for how best to help our client teams see their ideas through and bring them to market in a successful way.

These are just some of the books we will be diving into in 2019. We’re looking forward to incorporating the lessons to improve our mission of helping our clients innovate and grow like startups!

Don’t have time to read? We feel you. A big part of the reason why we host a book club internally is because we recognize that it is tough to fit in reading books; so we rely on one another to share learnings and important takeaways so that even if only a few of us were able to finish the book, we can still all gain the high-level takeaways.

Besides hosting your own internal book club, Blinkist is another great way to get the gist without spending a few weeks diving in deep.