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There are quite a few books about ‘collaboration’. Recently one was added to the list: ‘Collaborating in the social era’ . I had the pleasure to read Oscar Berg ’s new book twice. Once in ePub format and then in paper. And I must say I enjoyed reading the book and highly recommend you read it too. Reason to read the book The first reason I enjoyed it is because I’ve been following Oscar’s writing ( blogging ) for years now. It’s great to see his writing has been collected, structured and extended into this book. Intranatverk did a great job publishing it. The second reason is the fact that many books you read about collaboration are theoretical. They give us general and more strategic things to think about. And these kinds of books have their own right. I enjoy them as well. On the other hand, after finishing those books, I can feel lost. What steps can or should I take? Oscar’s book is not about that. For one, it’s clear that Oscar is not only a consultant, but has done ...

You may have never seen this. But my blog contains a list of books I'm reading at the moment. I just finished reading 'Making it all work' by David Allen. I re-read his book 'Getting things done' every year to review the way I'm working and apply new GTD elements to my productivity framework. But I thought I'd read Allen's newest book instead this year. I'll review 'Making it all work' soon and share it with you as a blogpost. I enjoyed reading this book as it goes into the philosophy and mechanisms behind GTD. Currently I'm reading 3 books: As I told you I'm reading 'What Technology Wants' by Kevin Kelly. Not an easy book, but fascinating. I'm almost finished reading it and hope to review it in January. And I just started reading 'The Information' by James Gleick and 'The Living Company' by Arie de Geus. Have you read one of these books? If so, leave a comment and tell me what you think o...

I read ‘TheTipping Point’ a long time ago. Then I wrote a short, boring blogpost telling you I read it. Recently I thought: I’m going to write a longer book review about Malcolm Gladwell’s book. In this way I can remember its contents more easily and, if you haven’t read it, inspire you to read it. Concepts ‘The Tipping Point’ was my first Gladwell book. I wanted to read it because of my interest in social media and social networking (- later his take on the effect of social media in revolutions was highly debated …). The book is not about social media and social networking (tools). It’s about the underlying concepts of social media and networking. And, as I’ve said before , those concepts are important to understand. Tipping What is the book about? The subtitle of the book is: ‘How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference’. In his own words: “ The Tipping Point is the biography of an idea, and the idea is very simple. … Ideas and products and messages and behaviors s...

Are millennial really that different? Do they play, learn, communicate, work and create differently than their parents? Are they smarter or dumber? More or less social? And if so, what should we know about them? More importantly, what should management and companies know about them, because they are the future. Lots has been written about the so called millennials or Generation Y. I've been following the news and research on them. When Don Tapscott wrote a book about being 'grown up digital ' I thought I'd read it. At that time I was becoming more skeptical about the stories about Gen Y. In daily practice I was seeing older colleagues quickly picking up new ways of working, while young colleagues were very reluctant to use new media. Technically I'm not a millennial. I don't belong to the 'Net Generation'. The generation that has been "bathed in bits". According to Tapscott someone's part of the Net Generation when you're born bet...

Malcolm Gladwell is a great story writer. I've enjoyed reading three of his books: The Tipping Point , Blink and Outliers . (I'll review the first two later on.) I like the way he delves into topics that intrigue many of us and comes up with an answer you wouldn't expect. Success Outliers  is also such a book. In this book Gladwell wants to understand what success is. It's about men and women who do things that are out of the ordinary. They are 'outliers'. The book wants to show there is something wrong with the way we make sense of success. It's not (only) about personal qualities (passion, talent, hard work). Or what a successful person is like. It also depends on where and when a person grew up. In fact: "It is only by asking where they are from  that we can unravel the logic behind who succeeds and who doesn't." (p.19) Succes,  Time & System Gladwell shows that our notion it is the best and the brightest who effortlessly rise ...

A while back I read Wikinomics , by Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams. I really enjoyed it. So when they published a new book, Macrowikinomics. Rebooting Business and the World , I was curious, bought and read it. The book Wikinomics was about the power of mass collaboration for business. But this new model of collaboration goes beyond a business or technology trend. It's a "more encompassing societal shift". So, this new book wants to show how wikinomics and its core principles can be applied to society and all of its institutions. Principles What are the wikinomics principles? The 6 principles summarized for you with a quote. Collaboration - "... the collective knowledge, capability, and resources embodied within broad horizontal networks of participants can accomplish much more than one organization or one individual can acting alone. Of course, hierarchies won't disappear from the economy in the foreseeable future. Nor are we likely to see large top-...

Writing reviews about the books I´ve been reading isn't easy I find. For some reason when I finish a book I postpone writing a review for a long time. I'm open to tips to posting it soon. Review while you're reading? Block the calendar, focus and type it out? Well, I hope to share my comments on a couple of great books I've read. Free by Chris Anderson, Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, Macrowikinomics by Don Tapscott & Anthony Williams, Grown up digital by Don Tapscott and The Fifth Discipline by Peter Senge. These books were an interesting and enjoyable read. Currently I'm reading two books and planning to read three more. I'm reading The Cluetrain Manifesto by Levine et al (actually re-reading it, with the 'Cluetrain-10-years-later-commentary') and What Technology Wants by Kevin Kelly. The other three books that are waiting on my desk are: The Living Company , The Information and The Power of Pull by John Hagel, John Seely Brown & Lang Div...

Some time ago a friend asked me to give him a list of my favorite books about information and knowledge management. I emailed them to him, but I'd also like to share my list with you. I'd like to hear how this list relates to your favorite IM and KM books. If you would recommend other books, please leave a comment with the title! Here's my list (in no specific order): Chun Wei Choo, Information Management for the Intelligent Organization . Basic book on information management. Thomas Davenport, Thinking for a living . About the characteristics of knowledge work. Peter Drucker, The Effective Executive . Must read because the term 'knowledge worker' is used in this book for the first time. John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid, The Social Life of Information . Great book stressing that information is social. This is mainstream now, but at the time this book was published it wasn't... Mathieu Weggeman, Kennismanagement . [Dutch] The Dutch book...

As you may know I enjoy reading books. I try to review them on my blog every now and then. After finishing a book I regularly stop and think who else could be interested in this book (employees and friends). Sometimes I also wish I could discuss its contents and translate it to the company I work for, for instance. I was wondering: Are there companies you know of, that do this structurally? Is that encouraged by management or was this initiated by employees (bottom-up)? And how are those group book reviews organized? Are the conclusions disseminated in any way? I know Google has something in this direction, Authors@Google , which is very interesting. The talk itself is clearly shared via Youtube. The non-Google-related questions from the audience are also shared. The Google-related ones are not. But what does Google do with the answers to those questions? Does Google try to implement the author's findings if possible? Love the picture taken from the NY Times, by the way! ...

This didn't come up in my feeds, but I accidentally ran into it: There's a new book out by Ichijo & Nonaka (- you know, from "The Knowledge Creating Company", written with Takeuchi ). It's titled: "Knowledge Creation and Management: New Challenges for Managers" (2007). Looks very interesting! It's not only written by them, but lots of great Knowledge Management thinkers have been asked to write one or more chapters. I ordered it and hope to read it soon and let you know what I think of it. Samuel