Insightful examples of how companies can innovate in a digital age.
An expert on “disruptive” technology suggests how both startups and established companies can innovate and not get lapped by the competition.
Jones (On Innovation, 2012), former Kayak.com chairman and founder of Travelocity, returns to the subject of innovation in a book, part memoir and part self-help, that draws on his long experience as a tech company leader. The author begins by considering how the proliferation of computers has influenced business models of successful companies. He then shows how “disruption” happens when the core offerings of a business become obsolete because a nimble, fast-moving competitor refuses to play by the established rules of the industry while also offering value. As an example, he discusses how mobile phones and phone-based computing present both an opportunity and a threat to today’s companies. In thematically driven chapters, he draws on his own experience at Travelocity—initially a major disruption in the travel agent market—and keeps his text “snackable” (no need to read the book straight through to pick up ideas). Jones also discusses innovations like product subscriptions (such as software as a service), cloud computing as a way to avoid excessive asset ownership, and marketing through bundling and packaging the products of one company with those of others. Jones focuses on broad trends, connecting his topics—like machine learning, blockchain, and drones—to innovative business choices that allow people to profit from these newly available resources. In the second part of the book he offers advice on business models and finding a niche in a rapidly-changing disruptive industrial marketplace. Every chapter begins with an inspiring or challenging quote, discussing how it connects to the concept covered. This device and others help to keep the tone informal and user friendly even when the author deals with high-level business challenges. One of the most thought-provoking aspects of the book is that it aims to show how to avoid a potential problem—having your business disrupted—but in the end advocates for becoming the disruptor. As a result, the book reads more like a guide to developing the right mindset for today’s marketplace challenges than a how-to manual for protecting a company from disruptive threats.
Insightful examples of how companies can innovate in a digital age.Pub Date: Sept. 2, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5439-7750-9
Page Count: 235
Publisher: On Inc.
Review Posted Online: Feb. 23, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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