
The Best Business Book I’ve Ever Read (2014) - denismars
http://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Business-Adventures
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guy_c
A nice observation from the Xerox, Xerox, Xerox, Xerox chapter:

"In any case, office reproduction began to grow very rapidly. (It may seem
paradoxical that this growth coincided with the rise of the telephone, but
perhaps it isn’t. All the evidence suggests that communication between people
by whatever means, far from simply accomplishing its purpose, invariably
breeds the need for more.) "

~~~
igonvalue
That reminds me of Edward Glaeser's point from _Triumph of the City_ about the
relationship between electronic communication and face-to-face meetings:

> Today, information technology is changing the world, making it more idea-
> intensive, better connected, and ultimately more urban. Improvements in
> information technology seem to have increased, rather than reduced, the
> value of face-to-face connections, which might be called Jevons’s
> Complementarity Corollary. The nineteenth-century English economist William
> Stanley Jevons noted that more fuel-efficient steam engines didn’t lead to
> less coal consumption. Better engines made energy use effectively less
> expensive, and helped move the world to an industrial era powered by coal.
> The term Jevons’s paradox has come to refer to any situation in which
> efficiency improvements lead to more, not less, consumption—one reason why
> low-calorie cookies can lead to larger waistlines and fuel-efficient cars
> can end up consuming more gas. Jevons’s paradox applied to information
> technology means that as we acquire more efficient means of transmitting
> information, like e-mail or Skype, we spend more, not less, time
> transmitting information.

> One might think that better information technology would reduce the need to
> learn from other sources, like face-to-face meetings in cities. But Jevons’s
> Complementarity Corollary, which follows naturally from Jevons’s paradox,
> predicts that improvements in information technology can lead to more demand
> for face-to-face contact, because face time complements time spent
> communicating electronically.

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alimoeeny
I feel very uncomfortable that I cannot see what is so brilliant about this
book that Bill Gates goes on and on about it. I tried to read it and was bored
and stopped half way through it. Anybody can shed some light? Share what
you've learned, please.

~~~
sopooneo
In general, I have been horrified by the book recommendations about various
fields, by experts in those fields. I used to teach, and the masters of the
craft, folks who could silence a room with a glance, and inspired kids to
harder work than they knew possible, used to recommend books that seemed
embarrassingly trite.

I attribute it to the fact that they were natural experts, and not necessarily
book lovers. It would be like asking a sparrow for their favorite work on the
dynamics of flight.

~~~
freyr
> _I attribute it to the fact that they were natural experts_

I agree that professors often choose books poorly, but disagree with the idea
of a "natural expert." No human is born with a mathematical understanding of
flight dynamics. There may be people who grasp it relatively quickly, although
in my experience that's usually because they're relatively quick learners in
general, and because they're building on a _very strong foundation_. Yes,
there are people who are just smarter than the rest of us. But there are just
as many people, if not more, who put in tremendous effort to become experts at
which point they may appear as naturals. (Furthermore, some may downplay these
effort and cultivate this idea that they're a "natural" to impress their
colleagues and students.) It's not always obvious what sacrifices they made
along the way.

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orenbarzilai
How come everything is so dramatic this days? " The Best Business Book I’ve
Ever Read". What happened to: "Recommended reading book! you should add it to
your reading list"

~~~
sokoloff
The former sentence (assuming true) communicates something more than the
latter.

Contrast: "We're going to get some snow" versus "The biggest 2-day snowstorm
in recorded history is bearing down on us!"

"A man died" versus "World's oldest man died."

Yes, a lot of times superlatives are used for the purposes of pure link-bait
or advertising hooks, but that doesn't mean we should eliminate their usage
entirely.

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freyr
I bought and read the book a few months back. About half the book is about
businesses (mainly large corporations), while the other half is about banking
and the stock market. I think this disappointed readers who were expecting a
directly applicable "how-to" book on business.

Here's a run-down of the book by chapter, with the chapters ostensibly related
to business marked by asterisks:

    
    
        1. The Fluctuation -- on stock market volatility
    
        2. *The Fate of the Edsel* -- how Ford failed to find a product-market fit.
    
        3. The Federal Income Tax -- self-explanatory.
    
        4. A Reasonable Amount of Time -- on insider trader.
    
        5. *Xerox Xerox Xerox Xerox* -- read this online.
    
        6. Making the Customers Whole -- about how a large investment firm crumbled
           when a single large speculative investment fell through, and how the 
           stock exchange stepped in to repay the firm's customers.
    
        7. *The Impacted Philosophers* -- on an anti-trust investigation of General 
           Electric (perhaps Gates related personally to this).
    
        8. The Last Great Corner -- about stock price manipulation
    
        9. A Second Sort of Life -- about David Lilienthal, who went transitioned from
           a career in government to investment banking.
    
        10. *Stockholder Season* -- on what it's like, as an individual stockholder, 
            to attend a stockholder meeting.
    
        11. *One Free Bite* -- on intellectual property and non-compete agreements.
    
        12. In Defense of Sterling -- about how the central banks of the world 
            cooperate to maintain stability across currencies.
    

Many of these stories would be particularly relevant if you ran a
multinational corporation or were one of the world's wealthiest investors. I
think it's no accident that Bill Gates and Warren Buffet enjoyed this book so
much.

I happened to enjoy the parts about Wall Street, so I enjoyed the book. The
comparisons to Michael Lewis are apt. It was most interesting for me to see
how many of the same economic issues being discussed today (income inequality,
intellectual property, corporate misconduct, the extraordinary power and
influence of the banking industry, etc.) were discussed in nearly the exact
same terms 50+ years ago. It doesn't give you the sense that great progress
has been made on these fronts, and perhaps we'll still be complaining about
the exact same things in 2065.

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Mahn
Kind of surprising that Bill Gates would go through the trouble of setting up
an amazon referal link for his article.

~~~
yeonhoyoon
My guess is that the profits from the referral link goes to Gates foundation
for charity.

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bko
Everything I've read about this book, apart from comments by Bill Gates,
prevented me from reading it. Does anyone have any recommendations of better
business books?

I was incredibly inspired by Isaacson's Jobs biography. To learn that someone
so flawed can achieve such greatness is inspiring. I also read it almost like
a mystery novel, trying to decipher what he was actually doing that was
creating such value. I've read a number of Isaacson's other books but none
were as inspiring. I did enjoy most of them though.

Any other recommendations of business books I should actually read?

~~~
guiomie
If your looking for business entertainement books, check out Michael Lewis
(the guy behind money ball). I really like The new new thing, flash boys and
boomerang.

~~~
hnnewguy
Pretty much everything he writes is a good read. He takes his liberties here
and there (especially with _Flash boys_ ), but he is an intelligent man with a
knack for story-telling. Very easy reading.

So add _Moneyball_ , _Liar 's Poker_, _The Big Short_ (good telling of the
2007 financial crisis), _Panic_ (contrasts before and after news articles
around financial crises) and _The Blind Side_ to the list.

(Don't let _The Blind Side_ motion picture scare you off. The book has a lot
of on-and-off-the field football strategy that I found interesting.)

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wodenokoto
I remember reading this when it was posted back in July. I thought it was on
HN I saw it, but searching for other posts linking to this article came up
empty.

Anyone know if there is a prior discussion?

~~~
aram
Here it is:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8020621](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8020621)

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Codhisattva
This is an interesting follow up for sure
[http://www.gatesnotes.com/Development/Great-Books-on-
Science...](http://www.gatesnotes.com/Development/Great-Books-on-Science-and-
Innovation)

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brianbreslin
This book was re-released because of this recommendation. Gates I'm guessing
coordinated with amazon to get it back for sale, as previously the rare copies
were prohibitively expensive.

~~~
guiomie
I bought it at Chapters/Indigo today, to my surprise they had 3 copies. You
think it ended up on bookshleves because of his endorsement ?

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lukasm
> But the final outcome of the struggle was still uncertain late in 1968\.
> McLuhan, for one, was convinced that all efforts to preserve the old forms
> of author protection represent backward thinking and are doomed to failure
> (or, anyway, he was convinced the day he wrote his American Scholar
> article). “There is no possible protection from technology except by
> technology,” he wrote. “When you create a new environment with one phase of
> technology, you have to create an anti-environment with the next.” But
> authors are seldom good at technology, and probably do not flourish in anti-
> environments.

That summaries all the government effort with copyright

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tessierashpool
saved you a click: John Brooks, "Business Adventures."

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illumen
The comments on that blog are... a real insight into humanity.

