I expected this to be good and it was better than I anticipated! I didn't know much about Apple or Steve Job's history. Jeffrey Young and William Simon give a great overview of Steve's corporate career.

The historical coverage on Pixar was the most interesting. As a young aspiring entrepreneur, I found it great to read about a man of vision like Steve Jobs still taking 10 years to figure out exactly where the economics were behind commercializing Pixar.

For those who don't know, it actually started as a hardware company serving other movie production companies. They would create short animated films as a way to promote their hardware at industry conferences. They finally caught their break with Disney.

The format of this book is fascinating. The author wrote the book and then Larry wen through and commented on the story. Those comments are included as footnotes at the bottom of each page. Larry's responses really add color to the stories & wonderful perspective.

The part of the book I found most interesting is the early stories of selling Oracle Databases. At this point Oracle would send in sales "swat teams" (led by many of today's software leaders) who would setup database systems in a day to demonstrate the power of relational databases.

I often reflect on this when doing demonstrations in a sales presentation. I believe it is important to help the customer see your solution through their everyday experiences. Obviously, this can be done many different ways included just being a good presenter.

In my experience, one key thing has been to get full sets of their data and doing explorations for them at Peak Strategy (www.peakstrategy.net) or actually lifting a publishers website look & feel now at mSpoke (www.mspoke.com). I realize you can run the risk of doing free consulting, but this is a risk I'm willing to take. Obviously, it is a risk Oracle is also willing to take.

Jim Collins is a true business thought leader. The themes that he writes about are great in this book and also his prequel Built to Last.

In this book, I especially like his review of Level 5 Leadership. The basic concept is that great leaders have amazing ambition but it is focused on the cause or organization and blended with a level of personal humility that avoids organizations becoming focused on their personality. While I'm not there yet, it is something that I aspire to achieve.

This should be required reading for every aspiring entrepreneur. The basic theme is that entrepreneurs spend too much time working in their business (doing their service or making their product) that they don't spend time working on their business (improving processes, experimenting with new approaches, etc…) He has some great ideas how to change this and get entrepreneurs focused on improving their business and creating true enterprise value.

This is an issue we struggle with perpetually at mSpoke. It is really difficult to make time for strategic management meetings, when you are worried about closing the next deal, delivering to a customer, or raising the next round of financing. However, E-Myth serves as a great reminder to us all.

When I left Carnegie Mellon and joined Peak Strategy, I purchased a copy of this book for everyone in the company. The reason was simple, I wanted to ensure that we stayed focused on being "remarkable." Seth lays out a quick & compelling argument that "remarkable" products end up being the category killers. I agree completely and therefore always want to stay focused on being part of remarkable organizations. Luckily I have had the privilege of doing this over the last few years.

I met Rich Florida right before the Rise of the Creative Class was released. I actually read one of his final drafts. Over the next 2 years, we started a consulting company together (Catalytix) & grew to be great friends. I also worked for him on some research at Carnegie Mellon University.

Rich sets up a wonderful challenge early in the book, asking which 50 year period during the 20th century involved the most change. As he walks you through the answer and pulls out critical themes you begin to understand the significance of this new "class" or sector of society.

My first marketing professor in college said marketing is "figuring out what people want and giving it to them." The reason I would recommend every marketer read this book is he identifies certain trends in society that really have a huge impact on what this sector of the economy wants and this sector has great spending power.

Tim Saunders is the former Chief Solutions Officer at Yahoo. Now he is a speaker & author full-time. Once you meet Tim you never forget him! He lays out a few key principals for professional success. Rather then try to summarize, read Tim's summary for Fast Company when the book came out.

While I don't want this blog to become a site that overtly pushes my Christian Worldview, I must admit that under the category of 'professional development' Hugh Hewitt's book is a must-read. It really helped shaped a lot of my thinking about goals & ambitions for my life.

Hugh is a well know radio personality today. Hugh is a graduate of Harvard and Michigan Law. He got his start in politics working for Reagan & Nixon. He is a Christian, but has appeal well outside Christian circles. This book provides great insights into "success" in today's world.