A public service series. We read and discussed important and prominent books so that you could spend your time doing other things. Except we didn't always read them either.
Not up on the current literature of technology and organization?
Don’t worry.
We read it so you don’t have to.
Well, maybe we don’t.
But we always have plenty to say.
This week, we look at David Weil’s Fissured Workplace, a book about what is happening to the workplace in the age of Uber, Taskrabbit and Mechanical Turk.
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Do you see all the talent that you have in your organization?
The movie Hidden Figures brings some welcome attention to the forgotten human computers who did the calculations for the manned space program. However, as much as we might like to think that the story of Katherine Goble Johnson and NASA’s West Area Computers was an isolated anomaly, we quickly discover that it is not.
All organizations have hidden, unappreciated workers, as the book When Computers Were Human shows.
David Alan Grier
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This episode looks as look at an Indian book on Innovation and asks “How is it really different from an American book?” Jameela, our Bangalore Office Manager, as always, has ideas. Lots of ideas.
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Three questions. What is Enterprise Architecture? Does it have anything to do with the Starship Enterprise? And why should we care? Rohit from IT joins the podcast in this episode to explore this idea on one of our “We Read It So You Don’t Have To” episodes.
Rohit from IT: Noah Masur
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We Read It So You Don’t Have to. There is so much new information published every day that one person can’t possible read it all much less get any perspective on it. Take Automation, Autonomous Cars, Machine Learning. All of these technologies pose new challenges to the organization and at the same time, they represent forces that are quite old. In this episode, we take a look at a new book on these topics, Industry 4.0, and an old one Automation.
Sullivan from the Policy Office Josh LaForce
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Who better to review a book about Harvard Business School than two generations of Entrepreneurs? Vinny the CTO brings the expertise of success. He founded SidePocket in the 1980s and led it to a brilliant, albeit short, life. Maddie brings the perspective of hard experience. She is the founding CEO of WatcherDogz, which is her second company. Between the two of them, they debate the question, “Why is Harvard Business School like a squirrel?”
Vinny the CTO: Geoffrey Grier
Maddie the 8-year-old Entrepreneur: Zoe Anastassiou
Mr. Skippy: Himself
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Was the Internet designed to withstand a nuclear attack? Common story. Is it true?
Rohit and Penelope Othmar explore the origins of the Internet when they review the book Imagineers of War by Sharon Weinberger, a book that discusses the history of ARPA, the Advanced Research Projects Agency. The answer is not as straightforward as we might like.
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Agile Ideas. Agile Development. Agile Software. Agile, and its variants, are the methods of modern industry and modern commerce. Yet, they are as old as industry itself. They become prominent when circumstances demand it.
Anna and Rohit read one of the founding texts of the Agile movement, The Machine That Changed the World and explain why they read it so you don’t have to.
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You’ve intended to read The Second Machine Age, by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAffee but just haven’t found the time. It’s an important book, to be sure, and explains a lot about the future of work. But it’s fat. And it’s say on your Amazon wish list for what, three years?
This is how we can help. Sulley from our Policy Office and Maddie, our in house entrepreneur have carefully read the book (more or less) and present a detailed and careful summary for your edification. Remember, we read it so you don’t have to.
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