The Book Judge Conrad Chua

How does a company or an industry face up to the digital disruption? Will Page's answer is that it has to recognise what is going on, take a leap of faith, discard the old model and go with something new. He knows a thing or two about this because he was the Chief Economist at Spotify, a company that has completely transformed the music industry through streaming. 

This change did not come easily and the music industry had to be dragged kicking and screaming to embrace streaming. Page argues that all companies need to learn the lessons from the music industry and think of how they are going to swing for something new. 

The internet has made it so easy for anyone to get access to information and data. But that data and information by themselves don't translate to knowledge. If anything many people feel overwhelmed by data and the often contradictory conclusions that experts might draw from the same set of data.

How can you cut through all that noise and gain insights that can translate to action? Scott E Page suggests building your own mental model Swiss Army knife. His book the Model Thinker introduces models that explain many aspects of society and economies, and he encourages you to use a battery of models to draw your own conclusions. You will learn about the friendship paradox, or why your friends are likely to be more connected than you are. Or how the composition of the compensation committee can explain why CEO pay has increased so much in the US compared to Germany. 

But most importantly, you will learn tools that can help you understand the world, and what you can do in your own personal life. 

When you get into business school or enter business, people keep telling you to build your network to get ahead.. Networks are terribly important but if all you do is focus on the transactional nature of network building (think amassing lots of Linkedin connections) you lose out on building deep relationships. You don't have to make every network connection a deep relationship but you do need a small number of exceptional relationships to get further in your career and personal life. 

Carole Robin and David Bradford have taught Interpersonal Dynamics to Stanford GSB MBAs for decades. These highly-driven students call this the Touchy Feely course and consistently rate it a top course every year. 

Bradford and Robin have put their learnings from teaching the course in this book Connect. It isn't a book you are supposed to read from cover to cover (although I did do that for the purpose of this review) just like their course is not designed to be taught lecture-style. Instead, the book and course requires a huge amount of emotional investment on your part. So at the end of each chapter you have to do some self-reflection and go out to apply what you learn in a relationship of your choosing. It is daunting but decades of Stanford GSB MBAs have found this tremendously useful. 

Digital transformation is a recurring theme in business cases, corporate bedrooms, and flip charts in consulting companies. Is there any hope for industries such as newspapers and higher education in the face of disruptions from companies such as Google, Facebook, the Khan Academy and Udemy? What explains the continued success of the New York Times and the Economist when so many other newspapers and magazines continue to lose market share and money?

Bharat Anand argues that many people focus too much on product and not enough on the connections between users, products and functions. At best, this means leaving money on the table. At worst, it means your company no longer has a place at the table. 

The book the Content Trap looks at all this and more. This episode will look at why bundling works for suppliers and consumers, something I am painfully beginning to understand as I look at the number of streaming services I am paying for. 

There is this saying that you are the average of your 5 best friends. If you think of your organisation, then hiring 5 best people would raise everyone's game. But how do you find one of these stars, let alone 5? Will stars in another company necessarily be good for your organisation? Were they actual talents or supported by the unique environment in their previous company?

Claudio Fernandez-Araoz is an expert in spotting and recruiting talent. The book It's Not the How or the What but the Who captures his wisdom from years with McKinsey and Egon Zehnder. 

This episode highlights lessons like what kind of talent does your organisation need at this stage in its development, what are key leadership assets you need to look for, and answers the question : are survivors of near death experiences good leaders for your organisation. Spoiler :- they are good, but not in the ways you think. 

We have all watched movies where a good but flawed individual gives in to some impulse and commits a crime that causes his or her life to spiral out of control. Most of us think that we are moral individuals that will make the right decision and stop ourselves from crossing the line. But will we?

Eugene Soltes takes an interesting look at white collar crime. He interviewed many executives convicted of white collar crime with his academic lens. He does not try to cast moral judgement on them but examines what led them to make that fateful decision to commit a crime. And the reasons are things that you and I could be subjected to : meeting investor expectations ahead of a quarterly earnings call, trying to keep a company afloat in the face of the better-funded establishment. And he made me think :- what is the difference between an executive exaggerating or not being clear about the impact of a clinical trial vs Steve Jobs' reality distortion field everytime he stepped on stage to introduce a new Apple product.

Most importantly, this book made me more aware of the situations where I could make an immoral decision and what I could do to stop myself crossing the line. For that reason, this book deserves to be on the Book Judge,