READING LIST
The best coaches are avid readers. Below, we will list and update coaching books. It's a great resource to come to if ever you're looking for more inspiration, and more books to add to your reading lists.
Pep Confidential: Inside Guardiola's First Season at Bayern Munich: The Inside Story of Pep Guardiola's First Season at Bayern Munich
'Write about everything you see. Be as critical as you like' Pep Guardiola to Martí Perarnau, summer 2013
Martí Perarnau was given total access to Bayern Munich during season 2013-14. This book represents the first time in the modern era that a writer has got this close to one of the elite teams of world football.
At the invitation of Pep Guardiola, he shadowed the Catalan, his staff and his superstar players during training and on matchdays. Bayern smashed domestic records on their way to the double, but were humiliated by Real Madrid in the Champions League semi-final. Perarnau was with them every step of the way.
Perarnau is with Guardiola as he is courted by the world's greatest clubs during his sabbatical in New York. We hear Guardiola explain in detail the radical tactical moves which transform Bayern's season and reprogramme the players who will win the World Cup with Germany. Perarnau talks exclusively and in fascinating detail with players such as Arjen Robben, Manuel Neuer, Philipp Lahm, Thiago Alcântara and Bastian Schweinsteiger.
Pep Confidential is much more than the story of a season it is also a lasting portrait of one of the greatest coaches in sport.
Pep Guardiola: The Evolution
For three extraordinary seasons at Bayern Munich, Marti Perarnau was given total access around the German super club - to its players, its backroom staff, its board members and, above all, to its manager, Pep Guardiola. In the follow-up to his critically acclaimed account of Guardiola's first full season at Bayern, Pep Confidential, Perarnau now lifts the lid on the Catalan's whole tenure in Bavaria.
Pep Guardiola: The Evolution takes the reader on a journey through three action packed seasons as Bayern smashed domestic records yet struggled to emulate that dominance in Europe, analysing Guardiola's management style through key moments on and off the field. Perarnau reveals how Guardiola improved as a manager at Bayern despite failing to land the ultimate prize in European football, examines his decision to leave Germany to take up the challenge at Manchester City and how his managerial style will continue to evolve in the Premier League.
This is more than the story of three seasons with one of the biggest clubs in the game. It is a portrait and analysis of a manager and the footballing philosophies that have beguiled the world.
Gold Dust: How to Become A More Effective Coach, Quickly: How to become a better communicator
People talk about sports from a technical and tactical standpoint, but it's only a tiny part of coaching. The best sports coaches get their success because of their ability to connect and relate to their athletes. The experiences athletes have generally come from the environment created by the coach. As a coach, you can help optimise this environment by the way you connect with your athletes, and how you communicate to them.‘Gold Dust: How To Become A More Effective Coach, Quickly’ delves deeper into the importance of building connections in sporting environments, and how you can do it. The foundations, skills, techniques and behaviours within the book will enable you to create an environment that makes for a better experience for you and your athletes.This book has got stories and experiences from coaches at the top of their game across different sports, including First Team Managers, Head Coaches, Academy Managers and Elite Youth Coaches.
Black Box Thinking: The Surprising Truth About Success
Whether developing a new product, honing a core skill or just trying to get a critical decision right, Black Box Thinkers aren't afraid to face up to mistakes. In fact, Black Box Thinkers see failure as the very best way to learn. Rather than denying their mistakes, blaming others, or attempting to spin their way out of trouble, these institutions and individuals interrogate errors as part of their future strategy for success.
How many of us can say that we have such a healthy relationship with failure?
Learning from failure has the status of a cliché, but this book reveals the astonishing story behind the most powerful method of learning known to mankind, and reveals the arsenal of techniques wielded by some of the world's most innovative organizations. It also reveals the dangers of failing to learn from mistakes. In healthcare, hundreds of thousands of patients die from preventable medical errors every year due to a chronic lack of Black Box Thinking
The Bolt Supremacy: Inside Jamaica's Sprint Factory
Of the ten fastest 100-meter times in history, eight belong to Jamaicans. How is it that a small Caribbean island has come to almost totally dominate the men's and women's sprint events? The Bolt Supremacy opens the doors to a community where sprinting permeates conversations and interactions; where the high school championships are watched by 35,000 screaming fans; where identity, success and status are forged on the track, and where making it is a pass to a world of adoration and lucrative contracts. In such a society there can be the incentive for some to cheat. There are those who attribute Jamaican success to something beyond talent and hard work.
Award-winning writer Richard Moore doesn't shy away from difficult questions as he travels the length of this beguiling country speaking to anti-doping agencies, scientists and skeptics as well as to coaches, gurus, superstar athletes and the young guns desperate to become the next big thing. Peeling back the layers, Moore finally reveals the secrets of Usain Bolt and the Jamaican sprint factory.
Range: How Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World
In this landmark book, David Epstein shows you that the way to succeed is by sampling widely, gaining a breadth of experiences, taking detours, experimenting relentlessly, juggling many interests – in other words, by developing range.
Studying the world's most successful athletes, artists, musicians, inventors and scientists, Epstein demonstrates why in most fields – especially those that are complex and unpredictable – generalists, not specialists are primed to excel. No matter what you do, where you are in life, whether you are a teacher, student, scientist, business analyst, parent, job hunter, retiree, you will see the world differently after you've read Range. You'll understand better how we solve problems, how we learn and how we succeed. You'll see why failing a test is the best way to learn and why frequent quitters end up with the most fulfilling careers.
The Sports Gene: Talent, Practice and the Truth About Success
In this ground-breaking and entertaining exploration of athletic success, award-winning writer David Epstein gets to the heart of the great nature vs. nurture debate, and explodes myths about how and why humans excel.
Along the way, Epstein:
- Exposes the flaws in the so-called 10,000-hour rule that states that rigorous practice from a young age is the only route to success.
- Shows why some skills that we imagine are innate are not – like the bullet-fast reactions of a baseball player.
- Uncovers why other characteristics that we assume are entirely voluntary, like the motivation to practice, might in fact have important genetic components.
Bounce: The Myth of Talent and the Power of Practice
Essential reading for an astounding summer of sport; If you've ever wondered what makes a champion, Bounce has the answer.
What are the real secrets of sporting success, and what lessons do they offer about life? Why doesn't Tiger Woods "choke"? Why are the best figure skaters those that have fallen over the most and why has one small street in Reading produced more top table tennis players than the rest of the country put together.
Two-time Olympian and sports writer and broadcaster Matthew Syed draws on the latest in neuroscience and psychology to uncover the secrets of our top athletes and introduces us to an extraordinary cast of characters, including the East German athlete who became a man, and her husband - and the three Hungarian sisters who are all chess grandmasters. Bounce is crammed with fascinating stories and statistics.
The Greatest: The Quest for Sporting Perfection
What can Roger Federer teach us about the secret of longevity?
What do the All Blacks have in common with improvised jazz musicians?
What can cognitive neuroscientists tell us about what happens to the brains of sportspeople when they perform?
And why did Johan Cruyff believe that beauty was more important than winning?
Matthew Syed, the 'Sports Journalist of the Year 2016', answers these questions and more in a fascinating, wide-ranging and provocative book about the mental game of sport.
How do we become the best that we can be, as individuals, teams and as organisations? Sport, with its innate sense of drama, its competitive edge, its psychological pressures, its sense of morality and its illusive quest for perfection, provides the answers.
Rebel Ideas: The Power of Diverse Thinking
Where do the best ideas come from?
And how do we apply these ideas to the problems we face - at work, in the education of our children, and in the biggest shared challenges of our age: rising obesity, terrorism and climate change?
In this bold and inspiring new book, Matthew Syed - the bestselling author of Bounce and Black Box Thinking - argues that individual intelligence is no longer enough; that the only way to tackle these complex problems is to harness the power of our 'cognitive diversity'.
Rebel Ideas is a fascinating journey through the science of team performance. It draws on psychology, economics, anthropology and genetics, and takes lessons from a dazzling range of case-studies, including the catastrophic intelligence failings of the CIA before 9/11, a communication breakdown at the top of Mount Everest, and a moving tale of deradicalization in America's deep South.
The Expected Goals Philosophy: A Game-Changing Way of Analysing Football
Professional gamblers have used Expected Goals to make millions through football betting. Club scouts have used Expected Goals to identify hidden gems in the transfer market. And the media have recently started using Expected Goals to offer more profound insight in their broadcasts.
Despite this, most ordinary fans still don’t understand what the Expected Goals method is – or appreciate the significant impact that it is set to have on the sport in coming years.
Expected Goals (otherwise known as xG) was originally conjured up by a small corner of the online football analytics community. It didn’t take long for professional gamblers to begin using xG to predict match outcomes. These bettors utilised the Expected Goals method to turn over hundreds of millions of pounds from the bookmakers.
The Numbers Game: Why Everything You Know About Football is Wrong
Football has always been a numbers game: 4-4-2, the big number 9 and 3 points for a win. But what if up until now we've been focusing on the wrong numbers? What if the numbers that really matter, the ones that hold the key to winning matches, are actually 2.66, 53.4, 50/50, and 0 > 1? What if managers only make a 15% difference? What if Chelsea should have bought Darren Bent?
In this incisive, myth-busting book, Chris Anderson, former goalkeeper turned football statistics guru, and David Sally, former baseball pitcher turned behavioural economist, show that every shred of knowledge we can gather can help us to love football and understand it even more. You'll discover why stopping a goal is more valuable than scoring one, why corners should be taken short, and why it is better to improve your worst player than to buy a superstar.
You'll never play, or watch, a game of football in quite the same way again.
Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game
Moneyball is a quest for the secret of success in baseball. In a narrative full of fabulous characters and brilliant excursions into the unexpected, Michael Lewis follows the low-budget Oakland A's, visionary general manager Billy Beane, and the strange brotherhood of amateur baseball theorists. They are all in search of new baseball knowledge-insights that will give the little guy who is willing to discard old wisdom the edge over big money.
Teach Like a Champion: 49 Techniques That Put Students on the Path to College
Teach Like a Champion offers effective teaching techniques to help teachers, especially those in their first few years, become champions in the classroom. These powerful techniques are concrete, specific, and are easy to put into action the very next day. Training activities at the end of each chapter help the reader further their understanding through reflection and application of the ideas to their own practice.
Among the techniques:
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Technique #1: No Opt Out. How to move students from the blank stare or stubborn shrug to giving the right answer every time.
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Technique #35: Do It Again. When students fail to successfully complete a basic task from entering the classroom quietly to passing papers around doing it again, doing it right, and doing it perfectly, results in the best consequences.
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Technique #38: No Warnings. If you′re angry with your students, it usually means you should be angry with yourself. This technique shows how to effectively address misbehaviors in your classroom.
The Coach's Guide to Teaching
The best-selling author of Teach Like a Champion and Reading Reconsidered brings his considerable knowledge about the science of classroom teaching to the sports coaching world to create championship caliber coaches on the court and field. What great classroom teachers do is relevant to coaches in profound ways. After all, coaches are at their core teachers.
Lemov knows that coaches face many of the same challenges found in the classroom, so the science of learning applies equally to them. Unfortunately, coaches and organizations have a mixed level of understanding of the research and study of the science of learning. Sometimes coaches and organizations build their teaching on myths and platitudes more than science. Sometime there isn't any science applied at all.
While there are thousands of books and websites a coach can consult to better understand technical and tactical aspects of the game, there is nothing for a coach to consult that explicitly examines the teaching problems on the field, the court, the rink, and the diamond. Until now.
Wings of Change: How the World's Biggest Energy Drink Manufacturer Made a Mark in Football
Wings of Change is the story of how the world's biggest energy drinks company made its mark in football. After years of success in beverages and extreme sports, Red Bull took over their local club, SV Austria Salzburg, controversially changing its name, crest, colours and history. While Red Bull were going strong, they faced a backlash from supporters who claimed they were damaging the integrity of the sport. Angry displays were seen at the ground and fans formed a phoenix club to honour the history of their former team. Similar projects soon followed in New York, Leipzig, Sao Paulo and Sogakope and again provoked hostility. Within a few years, Red Bull had captured the attention of the footballing world, developing an exciting line of talent across the globe. Now an established force in football, Red Bull's two most successful teams, RB Salzburg and RB Leipzig, are more prominent than ever. This book reveals how Red Bull changed the game, exploring their successes, controversies and innovations.
Born to Run: The Hidden Tribe, the Ultra-Runners, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen
At the heart of Born to Run lies a mysterious tribe of Mexican Indians, the Tarahumara, who live quietly in canyons and are reputed to be the best distance runners in the world; in 1993, one of them, aged 57, came first in a prestigious 100-mile race wearing a toga and sandals. A small group of the world's top ultra-runners (and the awe-inspiring author) make the treacherous journey into the canyons to try to learn the tribe's secrets and then take them on over a course 50 miles long.
With incredible energy and smart observation, McDougall tells this story while asking what the secrets are to being an incredible runner. Travelling to labs at Harvard, Nike, and elsewhere, he comes across an incredible cast of characters, including the woman who recently broke the world record for 100 miles and for her encore ran a 2:50 marathon in a bikini, pausing to down a beer at the 20 mile mark.
Changing Your Story: How To Take Control Of Your Life, Create Change And Achieve Your Goals
We all love stories. They make us feel, help us connect, relate to one another, and make sense of our lives. Bill Beswick is a storyteller who has 20 powerful life lessons to share from his work with his clients at the top of their fields to help us all overcome our fears, boost our performance and achieve success.
Leading sports and performance psychologist, Bill Beswick, sees sport as a story of human connection. When faced with physical challenges, pressure and fatigue, the mind is the athlete and the body is simply the means. With an exclusive foreword written by British gold-medal Olympian Adam Peaty, Changing Your Story explores how the way we think and feel is vital for releasing positive energy and improving our performance. Beswick's 20 lessons will bestow resilience and guide you through the process of harnessing the full power of your physical abilities.
Outcasts! The Lands That FIFA Forgot
Outcasts! The Lands That FIFA Forgot examines the much tarnished reputation of FIFA, the governing body of world football, and just how they justify the exclusion of some 'nations' from their organisation while welcoming others. For two years, Steve Menary traced the incredible journeys of the teams that FIFA refuse to recognise - either for reasons of political expediency, or because FIFA just believed they could not compete with the likes of Montserrat on the world stage. Intrigued by just why anyone would want to play for such no hoper 'nations', he became drawn into a scene which surprised him in its positive approach to both the beautiful game and nationalism, and eventually resulted in the FIFI (Federation of International Football Independents) 'Wild Cup', featuring teams from officially non-existent countries such as Zanzibar, Greenland, Tibet and Northern Cyprus, being successfully staged in Germany prior to the FIFA World Cup in 2006. Along the way, he discovered the dentist from Greenland who risked his career to play for his 'country', the pitch battle amongst kit manufacturers to sponsor the Tibetan national football team and why the Gibraltan 'national' football team might just force an end to centuries of dispute over the rock between Britain and Spain.
The Quality of Madness: A Life of Marcelo Bielsa
He has coached some of the greatest names in world football - Gabriel Batistuta, Carlos Tevez, Javier Mascherano, Juan Sebastian Veron and Ander Herrera. He has been cited as a mentor by Pep Guardiola, Mauricio Pochettino and Diego Simeone.
Yet Marcelo Bielsa remains one of the great enigmas of world football - a fabulously innovative and obsessive coach, who has transformed Leeds United, Marseille and Athletic Bilbao. He also lasted two days at Lazio and led Argentina to their greatest footballing disaster.
Featuring interviews from across South America, Europe and Yorkshire, The Quality of Madness is a comprehensive and compelling biography, tracing Bielsa's story from growing up as a member of one of Argentina's most remarkable families to his revival of Leeds.
Bielsa has long been known as 'El Loco' - the Madman - and yet as Tim Rich's revelatory study reveals, there is mercurial method and audacious logic to the madness.
Pep's City: The Making of a Superteam
Over three seasons in England, Pep Guardiola has built something the Premier League has never seen before: a team that dominates games like no other, scoring goals and collecting points and trophies at record-breaking pace.
Throughout that journey, the Spanish journalists Lu Martín and Pol Ballús have been embedded with the club, reporting this inside account of how a phenomenal team was constructed: from the recruitment of Guardiola himself, to the backroom staff that provide the platform for his team and the superstar players that have set a new standard in British football.
No other sportswriter has had this kind of access to Guardiola and his team during their three seasons in Manchester. The result is exclusive, in-depth interviews and profiles of every key figure at City, and the inside stories on the decisions that have shaped the team, including the defensive transformation that saw Guardiola change his goalkeeper and full-backs ahead of his record-breaking 100-point season of 2017-18; the dinner date with Sergio Agüero that changed the course of the City striker's career; and close-ups on every big game in the thrilling finale to the 2018-19 title race.
Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography
'Pep' Guardiola has transformed Barcelona into arguably the greatest club side of all time, and this entertainingly perceptive biography explains how.
Guardiola spent the majority of his playing days with Barca and was an integral part of Johan Cruyff's European Cup-winning 'dream team'. But it was on retiring from playing that he really made his mark on the club. After travelling the world, he became a coach of the Barcelona reserve team, and a year later, in 2008, he was appointed the first-team manager. The club went on to win an unprecedented 13 of the 16 competitions they entered under his leadership, and he became the youngest ever manager to win the Champions League. Then, at the end of the 2012 season, after having been awarded the FIFA WORLD COACH OF THE YEAR, he resigned following four years of unprecedented achievement. He immediately became the most sought-after free-agent in football, and his next move was keenly anticipated.
Some call Guardiola's influence on Barca revolution, others evolution. Whatever the answer, the impact he has had goes beyond football. He represents a style, a club, a country and even old-fashioned values, at a time when they seem so scarce. Guillem Balagué's insightful book reveals how Pep Guardiola's Barcelona played the 'Beautiful Game' - and won.
Mastering the Premier League: The Tactical Concepts behind Pep Guardiola's Manchester City
Mastering the Premier League is the story behind the success of Pep Guardiola at Manchester City. It offers an in-depth look at the tactical concepts underlying a footballing superpower - revealing who does what, how and why. Discover the secrets of the game model developed by Guardiola that sets City apart from the rest. When Guardiola joined Manchester City in 2016 there were doubts that he could replicate his successful model of football in the English game. But after a single season of acclimatisation we saw those doubts shattered as City won the Premier League in 2017/18 with a record 100 points. Beyond the trophies and the records, however, lies a yet more intriguing story - of how Guardiola adapted and perfected the tactical principles that had made him so successful at Barcelona and Bayern Munich. Who played the key roles on the field, enabling Manchester City's successes of 2017-19. And why the other Premier League sides were unable to stop the City juggernaut sweeping aside all in its path.
Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...and Others
The Challenge
Built to Last, the defining management study of the nineties, showed how great companies triumph over time and how long-term sustained performance can be engineered into the DNA of an enterprise from the very beginning.
But what about the company that is not born with great DNA? How can good companies, mediocre companies, even bad companies achieve enduring greatness?
The Study
For years, this question preyed on the mind of Jim Collins. Are there companies that defy gravity and convert long-term mediocrity or worse into long-term superiority? And if so, what are the universal distinguishing characteristics that cause a company to go from good to great?
My Turn: The Autobiography
Johan Cruyff is widely regarded as one of the greatest players in football history. Throughout his playing career, he was synonymous with Total Football, a style of play in which every player could play in any position on the pitch. Today, his philosophy lives on in teams across Europe, from Barcelona to Bayern Munich and players from Lionel Messi to Cesc Fabregas.
My Turn tells the story of Cruyff's life starting at Ajax, where he won eight national titles and three European Cups before moving to Barcelona where he won La Liga in his first season, in 1973, and was named European Footballer of the Year. He won the Ballon d'Or three times, and led the Dutch national team to the final of the 1974 World Cup, famously losing to West Germany, and receiving the Golden Ball as the player of the tournament.
While on the field Cruyff was in total control, off the field his life was more turbulent with a kidnapping attempt and bankruptcy. After retiring in 1984, he became a hugely successful manager of Ajax and then Barcelona when he won the Champions league with a young Pep Guardiola in his team. In 1999 Cruyff was voted European Player of the Century, and came second behind Pelé in the World Player of the Century poll.
Luis Suarez: Crossing the Line - My Story
Luis Suárez was a young boy already in love with football by the time his family moved from the countryside to Uruguay's capital, Montevideo. The guile and trickery of the street kid made an impact with the country's biggest club, Nacional, before he was spotted by Dutch scouts who brought him to Europe.
Suárez was lured from Ajax to Merseyside by another iconic number 7, Kenny Dalglish. From that moment, he terrorised Premier League defences, driving a resurgent Liverpool towards their most exciting top-flight season in 24 years.
But there is another side to Luis Suárez: the naturally fiery temperament which drives his competitiveness on the pitch. There was the very public incident with Patrice Evra of bitter rivals Manchester United, and the biting of Chelsea defender Branislav Ivanovic.
Then during the World Cup finals in Brazil, in a physical encounter against Italy, he bit defender Giorgi Chiellini on the shoulder. Banned from football for four months, derided by the press, he was marched out of the country.
Every Moment Matters: How the World's Best Coaches Inspire Their Athletes and Build Championship Teams
How do the world’s most successful coaches get the best from their athletes? How do top coaches design practices, inspire their players, and build teams that sustain their excellence season after season? How do they instill high-performing behaviors? Do they coach men and women differently? What about coaching their own children? Most importantly, are these secrets available to the rest of us coaching youth, high school, and college teams? In Every Moment Matters, renowned coach educator John O'Sullivan has collected hundreds of interviews with top coaches, sport scientists, psychologists, and athletes and distilled them into a blueprint for becoming a more effective and inspiring leader. Great coaches realize something that others do not: every moment matters! You must be intentional about everything you do. Whether you are coaching your local youth soccer team, leading your high school football program, or competing for an NCAA championship, Every Moment Matters will give you the tools and strategies to become the coach you always wished you had, and the coach today's athletes are craving. Get ready to have your best season ever!
The Artist: Being Iniesta
Andrés Iniesta was twelve years old when scouts invited him into Barcelona's famous La Masia academy. Shortly after he joined the club, Barca legend Pep Guardiola remarked of him, 'This lad is going to retire us all.'
Iniesta rapidly became a permanent fixture in the Barca midfield, propelling the club to a raft of trophies, including eight La Liga championships and four Champions League titles. With his country he has won the European Championship twice, and scored the winning goal in the 2010 World Cup final.
Behind the wonderfully graceful passing and movement, and the accolades and trophies he has garnered, there exists an intelligent and thoughtful man who, until now, has let his beautifully skilful feet do the talking. In The Artist: Being Iniesta, the Spanish maestro paints a vivid self-portrait, in his own words but also in those of his coaches, team-mates, opponents, friends and family. The result is intriguing.
The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything
The Element is the point at which natural talent meets personal passion. In this hugely influential book, world-renowned creativity expert Ken Robinson considers the child bored in class, the disillusioned employee and those of us who feel frustrated but can't quite explain why - and shows how we all need to reach our Element.
Through the stories of people like Vidal Sassoon, Arianna Huffington and Matt Groening, who have recognized their unique talents and made a successful living doing what they love, Robinson explains how every one of us can find ourselves in our Element, and achieve everything we're capable of.
With a wry sense of humour, Ken Robinson shows the urgent need to enhance creativity and innovation by thinking differently about ourselves. Above all, he inspires us to reconnect with our true self - it could just change everything.
Fear and Loathing in La Liga
It’s Messi vs Ronaldo, it’s Catalonia vs Castilla. It’s the nation against the state, freedom fighters vs Franco’s fascists. It’s majestic goals and mesmerising skills, red cards and bench brawls. It’s the best two teams on the planet going face to face and toe to toe. It’s more than a game. It’s a war. It’s Barcelona vs Real Madrid.... Only, it’s not that simple.
From the wounds left by the civil war to the teams’ recent global domination, historian and expert on Spanish football, Sid Lowe lifts the lid on sport’s greatest rivalry. Lowe has spoken to the biggest names and the forgotten heroes who defined their clubs. Men like Alfredo Di Stéfano and Johan Cruyff as well as the only survivor of the most politically charged game in history, the Barcelona striker who knocked Madrid out of the European Cup for the first time ever, and the president who celebrated his club’s defining moment by taking a midnight dip in the Thames.
The Wisdom of Crowds
In this fascinating book, New Yorker business columnist James Surowiecki explores a deceptively simple idea: Large groups of people are smarter than an elite few, no matter how brilliant—better at solving problems, fostering innovation, coming to wise decisions, even predicting the future.
With boundless erudition and in delightfully clear prose, Surowiecki ranges across fields as diverse as popular culture, psychology, ant biology, behavioral economics, artificial intelligence, military history, and politics to show how this simple idea offers important lessons for how we live our lives, select our leaders, run our companies, and think about our world.
Loonshots: How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas That Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries
What do James Bond and Lipitor have in common? Why do traffic jams appear out of nowhere on highways? What can we learn about innovation from a glass of water? In Loonshots, physicist and entrepreneur Safi Bahcall reveals a surprising new way of thinking about the mysteries of group behaviour and the challenges of nurturing radical breakthroughs. Drawing on the science of phase transitions, Bahcall shows why teams, companies, or any group with a mission will suddenly change from embracing wild new ideas to rigidly rejecting them, just as flowing water will suddenly change into brittle ice. Oceans of print have been written about culture. Loonshots identifies the small shifts in structure that control this transition, the same way that temperature controls the change from water to ice. Using examples that range from the spread of fires in forests to the hunt for terrorists online, and stories of thieves and geniuses and kings, Bahcall shows how this new kind of science helps us understand the fate of companies and empires.
Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets
Everyone wants to succeed in life. But what causes some of us to be more successful than others? Is it really down to skill and strategy or something altogether more unpredictable? This book is the word-of-mouth sensation that will change the way you think about business and the world. It is all about luck: more precisely, how we perceive luck in our personal and professional experiences. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the markets we hear an entrepreneur has vision or a trader is talented, but all too often their performance is down to chance rather than skill. It is only because we fail to understand probability that we continue to believe events are non-random, finding reasons where none exist. This irreverent bestseller has shattered the illusions of people around the world by teaching them how to recognize randomness. Now it can do the same for you.