Book Reports.

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

INNOVATOR'S DILEMMA by Clayton Christensen

Harvard Perfesser Christensen explores how come successful corporations fail and vanish. His book is filled with chalky perfesserese and lotsa graphs & charts that are meaningless to the average reader. A choir of perfessers call the book a 'masterpiece' and 'revolutionary'.

Pish Posh.

There's nuthin in the book that the world hasnt known forever:
1. Folks will buy your mousetrap till someone makes a better or cheaper one.
2. The board of directors is fucking clueless and there for the extra income that comes with the gig.
3. Managers are lazy and refuse to improve a business model that aint
broke.
4. AND...some starving entrepreneur is gonna eat your lunch if you arent careful.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

ALL THE KING'S MEN by Robert Penn Warren.

Pulitizer Prize 1946. 3 Oscars for the film version.

The story of a small town chump named Willie Stark who questions the bullshit at city hall and pays for it. Then he earns a law degree and sets out to right wrongs. He gets elected governor, by and by, and becomes the most corrupt politician in his state.

Willie Stark is the king of mother fuckers.

The writing is loaded with errors but the story is so compelling it sux you in from the first page. It reminds me of Faulkner's A LIGHT IN AUGUST; its that good.

 

[TE999]

INNOVATOR'S DILEMMA by Clayton Christensen

Harvard Perfesser Christensen explores how come successful corporations fail and vanish. His book is filled with chalky perfesserese and lotsa graphs & charts that are meaningless to the average reader. A choir of perfessers call the book a 'masterpiece' and 'revolutionary'.

Pish Posh.

There's nuthin' in the book that the world hasn't known forever:
1. Folks will buy your mousetrap till someone makes a better or cheaper one.
2. The board of directors is fucking clueless and there for the extra income that comes with the gig.
3. Managers are lazy and refuse to improve a business model that ain't
broke.
4. AND...some starving entrepreneur is gonna eat your lunch if you aren't careful.

Typical academic. Making the simple complex and the complex indecipherable. It's all a matter of 'publish or perish' with that crowd no matter how esoteric or banal the subject matter. No one reads boring tomes like that but fellow academics and the NYT Review of Books.

 

[sr71plt]

No one reads boring tomes like that but fellow academics and the NYT Review of Books.

And, apparently, JBJ.

I edit quite of a bit of foreign policy stuff in this vein--but as it pays well, I don't care who reads it.

 

[TE999]

And, apparently, JBJ.

I edit quite of a bit of foreign policy stuff in this vein--but as it pays well, I don't care who reads it.

How do you stay awake reading that gobbledygook? I mean B-O-R-I-N-G!

 

[sr71plt]

How do you stay awake reading that gobbledygook? I mean B-O-R-I-N-G!

The topics aren't boring. Those sometimes trying to hack them up from a "new" angle to justify publishing are quite often boring.

I'm working on the history of U.S. torpedos now, which wouldn't be boring if they weren't shooting for a high wordage and thus have to beat around the bush to tell the story.

 

[TE999]

I'm working on the history of U.S. torpedoes now, which wouldn't be boring if they weren't shooting for a high wordage and thus have to beat around the bush to tell the story.

That was quite a checkered history as I recall...US torpedoes were crap until 1944 and even then couldn't hold a candle to the Japanese "Long Lance' types.

 

[sr71plt]

That was quite a checkered history as I recall...US torpedoes were crap until 1944 and even then couldn't hold a candle to the Japanese "Long Lance' types.

Yep. They had them set so they went under the ships rather than into them. (And the designers kept saying it was the fault of the sailors.) Didn't work for spit until 1943.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Christensen, INNOVATOR'S DILEMMA, wrote several books about making better mousetraps. And all of them are variations of his mousetrap theme: public schools, healthcare, etc. He has dandy ideas if you can tease them from the tangled perfesserese.

One of his ideas is: Most MDs are incompetent diagnosticians (true) for anything beyond garden variety ailments. Gozillions of dollars are wasted while your MD struggles to determine what your problem is. So Christensen suggests that MDs be forced to default to skilled diagnostic teams like the HOUSE teevee character.

 

[Liar]

Christensen, INNOVATOR'S DILEMMA, wrote several books about making better mousetraps. And all of them are variations of his mousetrap theme: public schools, healthcare, etc. He has dandy ideas if you can tease them from the tangled perfesserese.

One of his ideas is: Most MDs are incompetent diagnosticians (true) for anything beyond garden variety ailments. Gozillions of dollars are wasted while your MD struggles to determine what your problem is. So Christensen suggests that MDs be forced to default to skilled diagnostic teams like the HOUSE teevee character.

Are there enough of those?

 

[Liar]

There's nuthin in the book that the world hasnt known forever:
1. Folks will buy your mousetrap till someone makes a better or cheaper one.

Except, that's not quite true. People will not stop buying your mousetrap just because someone makes a better and cheaper one.

The list of better mousetraps that never made it to the top is endless.

In order for the new and improved mousetrap to take over, it needs timing, luck and momentum. How much momentum depends on the market. Different markets have different friction - things that slow down and sometimes halts the introduction of new products. Because it's too costly to develop/market/distribute, or the market is naturally rigged for oligarchy, mechanisms ensuring free competition is corrupted, what-have-you.

The perfect example of an almost zero friction market is Internet services. Google made the best web search site, and it was free and easy to switch to for the end user. Compare that to, for instance, car fuel. Imagine you construct a motor tht runs on some new type of gas. It's awesome - cheap, virtually emission free, energy efficient, never breaks down, and the fuel (whatever it is) is also pretty cheap to make.

Who will buy it? Nobody, until somebody first builds the infrastructure to deliver the new gas to the pumps.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

LIAR

Christensen claims most ailments are common stuff all MDs are familiar with, but they absorb huge amounts of insurance money experimenting with ailments they arent familiar with. Regional diagnostic centers should be able to cope with the real puzzles since most ailments are common. Christensen proposes that MDs be paid for success NOT fruitless time wasting.

A friend of mine spent years being treated for pain in his mouth. His MD tried all he knew to do, without success, and settled for a strong pain reliever that let my friend sleep at night and endure the pain at work. I talked my friend into looking for a specialist. He found one, and with two office visits he was pain free. The first visit diagnosed the problem, the 2nd visit was for day surgery to fix the problem.

 

[Liar]

LIAR

Christensen claims most ailments are common stuff all MDs are familiar with, but they absorb huge amounts of insurance money experimenting with ailments they arent familiar with. Regional diagnostic centers should be able to cope with the real puzzles since most ailments are common. Christensen proposes that MDs be paid for success NOT fruitless time wasting.

Agreed. I hired a guy to repair some old plumbing last month. I didn't hire him to fail.

But I could have agreed to pay him a nominal fee, if he came, took a look at the place and said "Sorry, can't help ya, you need a welder."

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

LIAR

I agree, and I think Christensen makes the same recommendation. If your MD is clueless, refer you to a diagnostic center, DONT try accupuncture and hypnosis and examining chicken entrails for years.

 

[Dragonlipz]

Yep. They had them set so they went under the ships rather than into them. (And the designers kept saying it was the fault of the sailors.) Didn't work for spit until 1943.

Capitalism (the suppliers of the shit merchandise) at its finest................

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

SEVEN CLUES TO THE ORIGIN OF LIFE by A.G.CAIRNS-SMITH

Crystals are the ancestors of DNA, and God really did create man from clay.

In this short book (131 pages) Cairns-Smith makes a convincing argument that crystals like clay are what you need to get the show on the road, and how improbable the other theories are. God likes his science simple.

The writing is clear and easy to read.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_Cairns-Smith

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

NIGHT SHIFT by Stephen King.

This is King's first anthology of short stories. The stories remind me of my first car; it was a pile of crap and the most wonderful set of wheels on the road! The stories are like a broken beer bottle; they lack the elegance of, say, a samurai sword but they do the job just the same.

The Foreward is the best part of the book. In 1978 King is starting to sizzle and full of OH MY GOSH astonishment and enthusiasm for his good fortune and the writing craft. After 1990 he's just another gook sewing women's underpants for FRUIT OF THE LOOM, all day-every day. The thrill is gone.

In the Foreward he crystalizes what horror is all about; I've read all of his interviews and articles, and never come across this SK jewel before. THE WRITERS JOB IS TO LEAD THE READER TO THE CASKET FOR A LOOK-SEE. This may be the secret to excellent dramatic writing.