Recent Network Content
Why Most Business Books Suck
In my estimate 95% of business books published each year are total crap. Someday, I'll write up my own theories about this fascinating segment of the book world. In the meantime, blogger "Uncle Saul" has a wonderful critique on why business books suck and how they fail to serve entrepreneurs in particular. Excerpts:
Entrepreneurs Need Tactical Guidance - Obsessing about strategy is a luxury that only Big Dumb Companies ("BDC's") can afford. Entrepreneurs must define a series of skirmishes, they do not need to devise elaborate battle plans. Entrepreneurs need only develop a basic strategy and craft an evolving and iterative tactical plan which guides them in the general direction dictated by their overall strategy. Although a few books attempt to act as entrepreneurial field guides that offer tactics in specific areas (e.g., selling, marketing, PR, etc.), their usefulness is often limited. Books that highlight tactics are valuable for entrepreneurs whose specific circumstances match those outlined in the text. However, specific tactics are often difficult to translate into markets outside of those described in such books.
Entrepreneurs Have Corporate ADD - A pithy format, offering bite-sized data, serves entrepreneurs well. If you prefer to pour through 400-page academic tomes, you may be a nice person, but you are probably not an entrepreneur.
Entrepreneurs "Get It" - Consistent with their Corporate ADD, entrepreneurs tend to excel at digesting numerous disparate facts and making quick, gestalt decisions. This inherent impatience causes entrepreneurs to quickly become frustrated with books that repeatedly reinforce their central point through multiple examples, analogies and anecdotes.
Entrepreneurs Are Contrarians - In general, the use of multiple examples is an appropriate means of convincing someone to change their behavior. However, since most entrepreneurs have no allegiance to the status quo, they find books which rely on numerous examples as a means of changing the reader's behavior to be frustrating and largely irrelevant.
(hat tip: Todd @ 8CR)
###
In a piece in Forbes on how Amazon could change / dominate book publishing, the author says the publishing industry is "archaic beyond belief, it's an industry that treats its most important asset--the author--badly."
Seesmic du Jour 148: Are they Hot or Not?
As promised, Dan Dubno shows us the technology that tells us who is hot and who is not. Then… Read More »
Vonage Talk – Looks Like a Good Deal
If you're a Vonage customer, Vonage Talk is a cheaper way to make calls to ordinary phones from your… Read More »
Fake Steve To Rednecks, Dell: Suck It, Baby!
Fake Steve continues to just knock the cover off the ball with his posts. Maybe there's something freeing about posting… Read More »
So You Want to Be a Venture Capitalist - New York Times
Well worth a read - in case you thought it was easy picking winners. Be prepared for 6 -… Read More »
Insanity? Why A Bootstrap Entrepreneur Raised $17 Million in Venture Funding
If you've been following OnStartups.com for any period of time, you likely know that I'm not a big advocate… Read More »
Morning Chuckle
» OnlyOnce
Morning Chuckle From an internal email thread we had here, mainly from Angela, our VP People: So, I’ve just… Read More »
The Garnish is the Spice of Life
» 2-Speed
Although I’ve worked hard all my life, I’m an inherently lazy person. This is especially true when it comes… Read More »
public speaking
for the first time today we spoke in public about boxee. it was an investor-oriented conference organized by our… Read More »
Welcome to the Mesh
Brad Feld recently mentioned in a post Microsoft's new product called, "Live Mesh". I thought it looked interesting enough… Read More »
Feeling Great About Moutain Biking
On Friday night, I picked up a new Fuel EX9 mountain bike from Trek and I've managed to get at… Read More »
