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In the current economic climate, the “Downturn” as the BBC has so brazenly logo-ized it, when banks are running and companies are being crunched like so many cornflakes eaten during the breakfast news, tech companies need all the good advice they can get. This is where Guy Kawasaki, entrepeneur, evangelist, venture capitalist, blogger, and guru can help.
Kawasaki’s latest book – Reality Bites – sucks up to no one, but teaches you to suck down, it takes no bull shiitake and overturns much of the received wisdom of Si-Valley. Moreover, Reality Check is the self-professed “irreverent guide to outsmarting, outmanaging, and outmarketing your competition. If Bubble 2.0 is about to burst, then irreverent advice of this kind could mean the difference between a startup never getting off the blocks before reality bites.
Now, I’ve never quite got the hang of speed reading, boredom, tiredness, and aching eyeballs will often mean I take ten times as long as the average reader to plough through a lacklustre book.
With Kawasaki it has been very different. It has been a long read for me (and I’m still not quite finished as I write this review), but that’s most definitely not because of boredom or tiredness, it’s because I’ve been in and out of my chair as he triggers new thoughts and ideas with almost every paragraph. Each page I turn I come across a new idea that I cannot wait to work on, write about, implement, or even just use to create my latest tweet. And I’m not even running a tech startup, if that’s how I feel reading his words, then I suspect anyone hoping to storm the market with a new gadget, program or their latest paper will get even more out of it than me.
If there were some way to read and work at the same time without compromising either, I’d have Guy sitting on my desk every day. His ideas seem to transcend the jargon and bozo explosions of the day, anyone – individual entrepreneur, blogger, fledgling CEO, head of department – would do well to keep him close to hand while they build their business plan, work on their prototype and develop their team.
All of what Kawasaki discusses is about people whether he’s explaining the top ten lies of venture capitalists or how old geezers can capture or enrapture the youth market, whether he’s telling you about how late he came to blogging or how creating a community is not just the latest fad, something scientists are beginning to recognise.
And, that’s no bull shiitake.
You can visit Guy Kawasaki’s website here (and read his blog), get the latest true rumours via his Truemors site, or check out aggregated headlines from top news sources and blogs in almost every field of endeavour you care to mention at Alltop.com, and yes, of course, there is a science.alltop.com