One of the authors, Jason Fried, also has a column on Inc that is well worth a review.

Articles I really enjoyed include:

Don’t Exaggerate Your Size

Why I Run a Flat Company

Go Ahead, Raise Your Business’s Prices

I find the way Jason writes is very straight forward and to the point – much like the software his company 37Signals creates!

One thing I highlighted when I withdrew was that I have always read extensively and while I needed to read a huge amount during my studies what I was reading was being dictated to me – while not essentially bad I didn’t have time to read what I really wanted to.

Anyway to cut a long story short, while I have occasionally posted about the books I have read I haven’t posted about them all so I thought I’d list my recent reading – excluding a dozen or so novels!

I don’t necessarily recommend you read all the books below but I have certainly found all of them quite interesting, even some that weren’t quite what I expected (Global Citizens for example)

Every Bastard Says No – The 42 Below Story

- Justine Troy & Geoff Ross

Trade Me – The Inside Story

- Micheal O’Donnell

What the Dog Saw

- Malcolm Gladwell

A simpler Time – A memoir of love, laughter, loss and billycarts

- Peter Fitzsimons

The Brand Gap

- Marty Neumeier

Zag

- Marty Neumeier

Fletchers – A Centennial History of Fletcher Building

- Paul Goldsmith

The Design of Business – Why Design Thinking is the Next Competitive Advantage

– Roger Martin

Making Ideas Happen – Overcoming the Obstacles between Vision and Reality

– Scott Belsky

Getting Real

- Jason Fried, Heinemeier David Hansson, & Matthew Linderman

Rework

– Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson

The Fry Chronicles – An autobiography

- Stephen Fry

Global Citizens – Our vision of the World is Outdated

- Mark Gerzon

Think Twice – Harnessing the Power of Counterintuition

- Michael J. Mauboussin

Wired for Thought – How the Brain is Shaping the Future of the Internet

- Jeffery M. Stibel

Think Twice also reinforced my own thinking with regards specifically to business books. You can’t simply read a book and follow the steps outlined to become successful. Successful people take what they read/learn and apply it with their own thoughts and ideas. I enjoy reading what has wokred (and not worked) for various people and companies but I don’t attempt to apply these ideas verbatim.

US Technology Guru Peter Thiel to Invest in Xero

Leading online accounting software provider Xero Limited [NZE:XRO] today announced that Peter Thiel, the San Francisco based investor and Silicon Valley authority, has agreed to invest NZ$4 million to support Xero’s expansion into the US market. He will also join Xero’s US Advisory Board.

This is a really good step forward for Xero and provides a great investment and partner to really have a great crack at the US market.

On a side note, earlier this year I  read the PayPal wars book one of Peter’s earlier investments. While the stroy is a number of years old it was still an interesting read and always interesting to see the different tactics employed by companies when threatened by a competitor with deep pockets.

This recently released book is a great history of one of New Zealand’s most successful businesses – Trade Me.

Originally I planned to read this on my flight from Auckland to San Francisco on Sunday night, however I ended up sitting next to Sam Morgan and almost felt embarrassed! We did share a joke about it and as it turned out I mostly slept or talked to Sam about one of his new ventures, Pacific Fibre (which incidentally is turning from an idea into realitiy very quickly!)

I ended up reading the book on my flight from San Francisco to Houston and thoroughly enjoyed it. The book has been well thought our and Michael “MOD” O’Donnell has done well to provide insights into how different aspects of Trade Me developed. The chapters on the purchase by Fairfax were especially interesting, not only from the point of view of the $ involved, but how Fairfax dealt with Trade Me after the purchase. You just need to look at the numbers since 2006 to see that to a large extent Trade Me have been left to do what they do best.

That said. it was interesting to read the current CEO’s (Jon MacDonald) take on what has internally been called “Trade Me’s Secret Sauce” Originally ten principles that Sam developed in 2005 for the company, Jon has updated these 5 years on, the underlying theme remains the same, however with staff numbers having increased by 87 (from 60 to 147) since 2005 it is not surprising the principles are a little more ‘corporate’ – in a good way!

If you are interested in the original principles you can jump over to Rowan Simpson’s blog where he wrote extensively about this topic – though don’t use that as an excuse not to buy the book!

At the end of the book Michael outlines a series of statistics about Trade Me on the assumption the book took the reader a week to read. I managed to read it in less than 3 hrs but even still during my flight from San Fran to Houston the following would have happened:

27,000 Items have been listed on Trade Me

5,000 Items have sold to some of the 72,000 people who visits the site

250,000 Automated emails have been sent to members “on everything from confirming buyer addresses for an iPod to automatic searches for twin carb Fiat manifolds.”

5,800,000 pages have been served to New Zealanders

In 3 hrs! In Micheal’s own words “That’s a lot of love in anyone’s language“

PS: For additional reading on my current trip also keep an eye on http://blog.cadimageworld.com

Yesterday I read Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson – the guys behind 37signals and products such as BaseCamp and Highrise.

While controversial is probably too strong a word to describe the book it certainly is not your standard business guide. When you boil it down the book could almost be described as common sense though I expect there are many who would disagree!

Some of the section headings that show this non-conventional approach to starting a business include:

Ignore the real world

Learning from mistakes is overrated

Planning is guessing

Build half a product, not a half-assed product

Throw less at the problem

Good enough is fine

Underdo your competition

I could go on and on but you can see the theme. As book it was certainly an easy read and I was surprised how quick I got through it.

That said I think I will read it again soon as there was an enormous amount to take in – though as with all my reading I take all the ideas and concepts with a grain of salt and adopt aspects that I feel will benefit my business and me most.

I have recently read Making Ideas Happen by Scott Belsky that is all about the execution side of ideas. You’ll notice the book is from a website called the 99 percent – highlighting that the ideas is only the first 1%.

The book gives a number of good pointers as to how to turn ideas into reality while at the same time highlighting why in many cases ideas never see the light of day. It talked about the challenges in team building and leadership that also hinder many ideas.

The recent issue of Idealog had an article on the Casualties of coincidence which looks at plagiarism and how many ideas emerge at the same time from different places. At the end of the article there was a link to a Malcolm Gladwell article that talks about the fact that many of histories great inventions were actually invented by more people than receive credit.

The article is a great read and it talks about a firm that has been set up simply to invent ideas which reinforces the theory that the idea is only the start.

If you enjoy Gladwell’s article then I also recommend his latest book What the Dog Saw – a collection of articles he has written for the New Yorker.

Last Friday at our lecture on Quantitative Methods we had a two-hour test on confidence intervals, hypothesis testing and regression. Then on Saturday we had to hand in our 3,000 word essay for Managing People and Organisations. The essay covered a personal case study using the four frames from Bolman and Deals Reframing Organisations.

However, to really indicate how fast time is flying by, yesterday I received the course outlines for our next two papers:

Operations and Supply Chain Management

Financial Reporting and Control

Within 15 days our first quarter will be wrapped up and we’ll have a brief break before launching straight into quarter two!

While the iPad is not simply Apple’s answer the Amazon Kindle it is interesting that a couple of years back Jobs said the whole concept of Amazon’s Kindle is fatally flawed because people don’t read anymore.

Maybe Job is getting older as in the words of Benjamin Franklin:

For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged, by better information or fuller consideration, to change opinions, even on important subjects, which I once thought right but found to be otherwise.

As to the question of when this will arrive in New Zealand (we are still waiting for the Kindle) who knows.

I’m sure later today Chris Keall from the NBR will have more information so i’ll keep this post updated.

Update:

OK I was wrong – actually Kelly Gregor from NBR did an update!

Evaluating how people use your website is a challenging task and it is extremely hard to pretend you are viewing your own website for the first time.

Website Usability is a fairly hot topic and not surprisingly the web is a great resource of information.

Here are just a few links for anyone who may be interested:

Homework! Interface Design Basics for Developers

Minimising Complexity in User Interfaces

Rowan Simpsons Archives – Usability

Also for anyone who is really interested the first book to buy is Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug – a very simple and easy read.

The book follows a series of studies undertaken on neuro-marketing and looks at various influences in our buying decisions.

The book deals with subjects like whether grotesque anti-smoking advertisements discourage or encourage smoking, and how rituals and religions can influence buying decisions.

The findings in the book are extremely interesting and certainly made me stop to think about what thoughts go through my mind when I’ve made various purchasing decisions.

More and more companies are actually conducting brain studies prior to launching new products, tv shows etc.

It is definitely a worthwhile read for anyone involved in selling and marketing, or who simply has an interest in how we tick.

From the many interesting studies and examples the following information regarding a well known ritual may interest/surprise you:

Let’s pretend we’re at a beachfront bar in Acapulco, enjoying the mellow ocean breeze. Two ice-cold Coronas coming right up, along with two slices of lime. We give the limes a squeeze, then stick them inside the necks of our bottles, tip the bottles upside down until the bubbles begin to get that nice fizz, and take a sip. Cheers.

But first, let me pester you with a multiple-choice question. The Corona beer-and-lime ritual we just performed – any idea how that might have come about? A) Drinking beer with a lime wedge is simply the way Latino cultures quaff their Coronas, as it enhances the beer’s taste. B) The ritual derives from an ancient Mesoamerican habit designed to combat germs, since the lime’s acidity destroys any bacteria that may have formed on the bottle during packaging and shipping. C) The Corona-lime ritual reportedly dates back to 1981, when on a random bet with his buddy, a bartender at an unnamed restaurant pooped a lime wedge into the neck of a Corona to if he could get other patrons to do the same.

If you guessed C, you’d be right. And in fact, this simple, not-even-thirty-year-old ritual invented on a whim by a bartender during a slow night is generally credited with helping Corona overtake Heineken in the U.S. Market.