Information Technology Strategy: Class 12 – Book Reviews (part 1)

Last Monday we had students present the following readings; Wikinomics, The Cluetrain Manifesto and Getting Real. It’s amazing to me how well Cluetrain has held up after being in print for 10+ years. Wikinomics was written in 2006 and Getting Real was written a while ago. One of the students commented on how long ago Wikinomics had been written and I definitely loathed the experience of reading outdated materials when I went through the program. The difference is that relevance is not necessarily determined by the passage-O-time. There are books that have been written several years ago that are still relevant. And yet, I understand this perspective and share it in regards to online media. Due to my personalized feed on Twitter and going to Fark, I’ve come to expect information immediately. When I go to CNN and see that they haven’t updated their content in the last hour, I’m dismayed. This is the new expectation and finding up-to-date/timeless books/content to share is challenging. I select items that answer the following.

• What will have the longest lasting impact?
• Will this/has this remain(ed) true?

All three teams did an excellent job on their presentations and the goal was to get all students to apply what they heard in these presentations into their final projects. Hopefully they’re not too underwater to accomplish that.

Next class, we’ll finish up with The World is Flat and see our first final project on improving the TeleTech business model.