Friday, May 30, 2008

21st Century Book Club: Group Turquoise Inc.

21st Century Book Club: Group Turquoise Inc.

Jimmy, Bronwyn, Mohamed, Heather, David

Our group discussion was very interesting due to the fact that our book selections depicted five very unique areas of interest. While the books portrayed a variety of issues facing management in the 21st century, we were able to draw many connections between the theories presented. Below are the titles of the books we discussed and a selection of key notes we compiled.

Books we explored:

The Age of Turbulence

by Alan Greenspan

The Medici Effect: Breakthrough Insights at the Intersection of Ideas, Concepts, and Cultures

by Frans Johansson

The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Media Mythmakers: How Journalists, Activists, and Advertisers Mislead Us

by Benjamin Radford

New Ideas About New Ideas: Insights on Creativity from the World’s Leading Innovators

by Shira P. White with G. Patton Wright

Resulting Team Insights:

Awareness of these four → guards against uncertainty in the world.

Rapid advances in technology and information are adding more layers of complexity and randomness –

more difficult to make predictions, assess risk, uncertainty.

Approaching extremes, increasing interconnectedness → reduces volatility (very fragile).

Interconnectedness → innovation, new creative ideas → research over age of innovation.

US economic issues, anti-Bush, spending money to improve health rather than on war

Expecting recession, linking political action and economy, need better action taken in order to succeed

For innovation, ask the right questions to the right people

See relationships that are visualisations = see things differently = innovation

Must get out of comfort zone to innovate → Diversity!

Current environment → Awareness; what is my evidence? Make fair analysis for truth.

Monitor claims made by corporations; things are not what they appear.

*** In an effort to innovate, we must endeavour to explore other environments and make a critical analysis as in order to evaluate the conditions of our current environment and to disprove theories.

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