TED Book Club Selection - November 2011

 Today, the lastest TED Book Club Selection arrived, Walter Isaacson's biography Steve Jobs.  What an appropriate choice!  Both TED and Jobs stand for Technology, Entertainment and Design. I've received many comments on my posts about TED book selections, showing that many people enjoy hearing what the folks at TED have chosen.  So I decided to post this, even though I've barely begun the book.
 

Jobs life is linked to three inspirations in my own life: Clayton Christensen, TED and Ian Sharp. 

 

It's said that Jobs was inspired by Clayton Christensen's book The Innovator's Dilemma, and that it was pivotal in molding his views about innovation.  I've talked about Christensen's ideas in previous posts (such as this one).  I celebrated the fact that The Innovator's Dilemma was chosen as one of the six best business books of all time(click here), and that Christensen was named the top Business Thinker (click here).  These posts explain why I think Christensen's ideas are so important, and if you examine the trajectory of Jobs' career, you can see his products as an illustration of Christensen's theories.  Consultants from Innosight (the firm founded by Clayton Christensen) had a great article about the innovation lessons learned from Steve Jobs.  I've seen lots written about Jobs recently, but that assessment is my favourite.

Jobs' life is an illustration of the very essence of the TED conference.  So many conferences bring together people with shared interests in a particular field.  They are very focused, and can often provide deep information, but seldom any true inspiration because they simply reinforce an industry's entrenched way of thinking.  TED is different - it brings together people from a wide variety of disciplines and the sparks of creative and innovative thinking fly.  Jobs similarly capitalized on the breadth and depth of his interest in technology, entertainment and design in the breathtaking innovation in his products.  In just the first few chapters, there have been appearances by people I've met at TED like Larry Brilliant and Stewart Brand, and the index reveals more to come.

The description of those early days in Silicon Valley brings back memories of my early days in  timesharing (now called cloud computing) in the early 70s in Canada.  I worked for I.P. Sharp Associates, a pioneering software and network communications company, led by the brilliant and unassuming Ian Sharp (shown at left).  Ian's penchant for hiring bright people resulted in a company full of them.    Like Jobs, many 'Sharpees' had dropped out of university  (often leaving the US motivated by the Vietnam draft).  Like Jobs, some of them had nevertheless earned a BA (brilliant & abrasive) or a BE (brilliant & eccentric).  Ian exhibited huge tolerance of eccentric behaviour as long as people were contributing and were respectful of their colleagues and focussed on solving customer problems.   Jobs' success arose, at least in part, from the diversity of his interests and his appetite for ingesting ideas from many fields. Ian's disregard for people's area of specialization meant that I.P. Sharp was seething with people from diverse backgrounds - computer science as well  as education, mathematics, biology, music and many fields.  (It was also full of 'minorities', because Ian seemed blind to nationality, religion, skin colour, or sexual orientation).

Authorized biographies often present a somewhat varnished version of events.  What has surprised me so far about this book is that it shines a glaring light on both Jobs' brilliance and his less desirable traits.  Jobs and Wozniak have just founded Apple, and Jobs' trademark chutzpah, passion and single-minded drive are already evident.  The reality distortion field has made its appearance.  So has Jobs' arrogance, although that aspect of his personality remains to be polished and honed.  His penchant for abuse and his 'anti-loyalty' is disturbing to read about.   Perhaps it's a final comment on Jobs' unfailingly high  self-esteem that he was willing to support a book that could present him in such an unforgiving light.

 

Glenburn Tea Estate

Our last stop in India was at the Glenburn Tea Estate, a large working tea plantation at an altitude of 3,200 feet in the Himalayas.  From our room we could see Mt. Kangchenjunga, the third highest mountain in the world at 28,169 feet.  (For reference, Everest is 29,029 feet.)

We had to get up early in the morning to see the mountains, because by 7 a.m., they are cloaked in cloud.  It really brings home the tales of climbers who wait for a break in the weather to make their final ascents on these huge mountains.

It's hard to express how awesome these mountains are.  That picture above was taken from 130 kms away, tipping the camera up.  On the first morning, we missed the view of the full mountain, but we now suspect the very tops of the mountains were visible that day and we mistook them for clouds.  Your eye just doesn't look that high for mountains, until you see the full range and realize "Oh my goodness, those mountains really are touching the sky!"

Burra Lodge  at Glenburn is the original bungalow built in 1859 by a Scottish tea company, and magnificently restored by the current owners.  The Water Lily Bungalow (shown at the left) was built in 2008 and has been furnished with antiques and tasteful decor, right down to traditional antique baths and gorgeous teak floors.





Our room in the Water Lily Bungalow was named the RungDung Suite after the nearby river. 

That window seat was my favourite spot to sit and read and absorb the mountains.  My husband chose the patio for the same view.

One of the lovely features of Glenburn was the large dinner table which seated all 18 people staying there.  (There were several children as well, who were fed before the grown-ups.)  Glenburn is very popular with expats who live in Delhi and want to escape the chaos for a serene holidays, and most of the guests fell into this category.  Our place cards seated us with different people each night and the conversation was lively and entertaining.




Another great thing about Glenburn was the wonderful gardens.  We hadn't seen a lot of flowers growing in gardens in India.  (In fact, I was always curious where those thousands of flower petals came from for all those rangolis we saw).  But Glenburn was a refreshing burst of flowers for souls starved of flowers.  We talked to the gardener one day, who said he had been taking care of Glenburn's gardens for over 50 years!  Here are some of the lovely flowers:

Turbans

During our recent trip to India, I became fascinated with turbans.  There were many beautiful turbans, in a variety of colours, and wrapped in rather exotic patterns.  One man demonstrated to me how he wrapped his turban - he did it so efficiently it was amazing.

These turbans aren't simply decorative though.  The colours of the turban indicate who you are; for example in one region shepherds wore an orange turban, in another area yellow.  Although we were assured many times that the caste system is dead in India, most of our guides self-identified the caste they were from, and often identified others that way.  So it still seemed fairly top of mind to me.

I've appended some photos of turbans I particularly liked.  You'll notice that most of the men wearing these turbans are older, so perhaps the practice is melting away with the younger generation. The exception is where I was taking pictures of hotel employees wearing local dress; they were much easier to pose so there are a few of those

Best 50 Business Thinkers

Clayton Christensen has been ranked #1 in the Thinkers50 assessment of the best business thinkers of our day.  The Thinkers50 uses ten criteria to evaluate thinkers: originality of ideas; practicality of ideas; presentation style; written communication; loyalty of followers; business sense; international outlook; rigor of research; impact of ideas and the elusive guru factor.  The thinkers are judged by a panel of advisors and includes votes from people who have answered the question "Who is the most important living management thinker?"  

Christensen's work is covered in several books, but his most influential contribution comes from the formulation of disruptive innovation theory first proposed in The Innovator's Dilemma, recently named one of the best six business books of all time by The Economist.  (see my post on this topic here).

Christensen's acceptance speech is a departure from straight business talk.  He waxes philosophic about the parallels between business theory and its application to personal life.  He refers to Mintzberg's work on the difference between deliberate and emergent strategy - the deliberate  being a unwavering pursuit of a specific intention with a fixed strategy, the emergent being a process where a series of actions in response to external situations or realities develop into a strategy.  Clay uses this framework to conclude that he doesn't want to leave it to chance what kind of person he wants to be (deliberate strategy), but that he entrusts how he gets there to emergent strategy that adapts to unknown threats and opportunities.  He is integrating this kind of thinking and discussion into his teaching at the Harvard Business School.

   

 I was proud to see several Canadians featured on the list.  

Roger Martin, Dean of the Rotman School of Management (and my boss, since I teach there as an Adjunct Professor), vaulted to sixth place.  Martin is best known for the concept of integrative thinking as a way of solving business problems, and design thinking as a path to success in business. 

At the ninth rank is another Canadian (who also happens to teach at Rotman), Don Tapscott,  who writes on impact of technology on society, including such books as Growing Up Digital and Wikinomics.

Can we count Malcolm Gladwell as Canadian?  He was born in England and now lives in the US, but he grew up in Canada.  So let's count him as Canadian.  Gladwell is one of those journalists who investigates patterns and presents new possibilities in clear and understandable language.  Books such as The Tipping Point, Blink, and Outliers have engaged the public in presenting new ways of thinking of things.  Gladwell made it as #10.

Coming in 30th position was Henry Mintzberg of McGill University, recognized for his work on organizational theory and emergent strategy (as described above).

 I heard recently that publishers estimate that only 30% of the business books people buy are actually read.  This kind of honour helps filter the books that I really should be out reading.