Some of them lend themselves very well to being compressed, like 'crossing the chasm'. Others, like 'founders at work' are really impossible to summarize.
I find it sort of interesting that he lists both 'The Black Swan', as well as the stories/autobiographies. One of the points of the former is that a lot of the big successes are just luck - being in the right place at the right time and having enough skills to capitalize on the opportunity. But beyond that, there is often nothing in particular that can be copied to 'achieve success'. It's an interesting book, and I'm still wrestling with it.
I haven't read The Black Swan, but I read Fooled by Randomness. He has a secondary point that because most successes are just luck and yet people don't want to admit it, there are large profit opportunities to be made by betting on improbable events. That's really entrepreneurship in a nutshell - usually, if you look at the businesses that actually net billion dollar payouts while they're younger, you'll say "There's no possible way that can succeed." And that's why the founders make so much money when they do.
(Of course, 99% of the businesses where there's no possible way it can succeed don't actually succeed, and you get back to Taleb's argument again.)
Some of them lend themselves very well to being compressed, like 'crossing the chasm'. Others, like 'founders at work' are really impossible to summarize.
I find it sort of interesting that he lists both 'The Black Swan', as well as the stories/autobiographies. One of the points of the former is that a lot of the big successes are just luck - being in the right place at the right time and having enough skills to capitalize on the opportunity. But beyond that, there is often nothing in particular that can be copied to 'achieve success'. It's an interesting book, and I'm still wrestling with it.