Remarkable Reading #35: The Entrepreneur's Playbook: More than 100 Proven Strategies, Tips, and Techniques to Build a Radically Successful Business By Leonard C.Green and Paul B.Brown and The Innovation Code: The Creative Power of Constructive Conflict by Jeff DeGraff and Staney DeGraff

The aim of this section Remarkable Reading is pay a tribute to the books that taught, share trends & insights into where our world in the 21st century is heading in a technology enabled world, and ask the right questions.

Bolded and italics quotes and references do not belong to myself  and belong directly to the author.  The focus is to share valuable insights and teachings from the book to win business for the authors.

Marketing, innovation and invention is a passionate hobby of mine, and I love reading business (biz) books about these areas - I've reviewed books on these areas here, here, & here.

As much I enjoy reflecting on older Social Media books and their early foundations here, here, here and here, I do love being up-to-date with the latest biz books on marketing & technology and product innovation.

The Entrepreneur's Playbook: More than 100 Proven Strategies, Tips, and Techniques to Build a Radically Successful Business By Leonard C.Green and Paul B.Brown is a  very timely, expedient and opportune book about methods and approaches on how to build a successful and innovative business in the 21st Century.  The marketplace is brimming with new ideas, inventions and the world of the Internet of Things combined with mobile has changed the way that we think forever.

The opportunity to create something effectual and powerful can be cluttered by mixed messages and The Entrepreneur's Playbook: More than 100 Proven Strategies, Tips, and Techniques to Build a Radically Successful Business is a radiant and liberating attempt to provide business owners with a potent and pragmatic strategy to achieve success.  Combination of practical step-by-step exercises and examples, merged with inspirational facts and case studies ensures that this is a book you have to read in 2017 as it succeeds in updating your knowledge by attuning it exactly to the contemporary 21st Century business world.

Leonard C.Green and Paul B. Brown are exemplary writers and their experience is evident not only in their distinctive writing styles, but also in the way that the book has many a different areas that seamlessly merge together into one book.  It's a enjoyable read because the writers know how to educate & instruct as well as inspire and uplift.  Get updated now!

A few key take-out's include:

Page 5 - "If you want to be more entrepreneurial, come up with a better mousetrap, as those fifty-graders did.  Instead of thinking about a new revolutionary idea that isn't in the marketplace, start by improving on something that already exists to solve a real problem people have"

Page 18

How to build a Moat

"The phrase in the subhead above is borrowed from the man who may be the great inventor who ever lived, Warren Buffet.  it's his shorthand way of referring to a business's ability to create and keep a competitive advantage in order to protect profits and market share over the long-term.  "In business, I look for economic castles protected by unreachable moats"

Page 30 "Involve your customers in your product.  Have them tell you how they use it on your website.  Make it easy for them to make comments and suggestions on how you can improve, and what products you should ass.  It's the best form of market research there is"

Page 33 - "I would love to tell you that the work-life balance is possible; but if you're starting something new, I can't.   The new idea will be taking up most of your life; that's just the way it is if you want to be successful.  I don't know anyone who has accomplished a lot who has done it in any other way.  You don't win at anything in life by giving half effort"

Page 37 - "Here's one last reason your passion for your idea is so important.  Nobody will be committed to what you're doing if they don't see your desire, your belief in your idea, and your willingness to try to accomplish it"

Page 42 - "Having a flexible working arrangement works in my firm; our people are happier and more productive in their jobs"

Page 50 - "This is no small point.  You may think you have the greatest idea in the world, but it is only the market that will tell you if you're right.  If it tells you that you need to change your product, then you need to change your product"

Page 52 - "They simply don't want to be associated with "failure". So, they get defensive when I say that failure isn't only an integral part to becoming successful, it's often essential."

Page 56 - "The dictionary defines an entrepreneur as "a person who organizes and manages any enterprise, especially a business, usually with considerable initiative and risk"

Page 59 - "You'd take bigger risks because you were bored, and you would begin to get cocky.  Stress will k eel you focused on the fundamentals of what made you a success in the first place"

Page 63 - "The ultimate victory in competition is derived from the inner satisfaction of knowing that you have done the best you are capable of and have gotten the most out of it"

The Innovation Code: The Creative Power of Constructive Conflict by Jeff DeGraff and Staney DeGraff is a outstanding new business book.  It's a book that has created a super straight-forward, uncomplicated, compelling, topical & timely formula for new and upcoming start-up's to follow in terms of building a team for a successful end outcome with product innovation and start-up success.

Instead of relying on full harmony, Jeff DeGraff and Staney DeGraff put forth the case that the best results are achieved through conflict - or as the cover title suggests "The creative power of constructive conflict".  The success of your start-up is entirely dependent on a number of key factors that include product innovation, marketing & teamwork. This book focuses on what sort of team to build to ensure that your start-up is adaptive & fluid.  The book is successful in detailing the core traits of team members, what characteristics and features define them, why it is vital to ensure you do  have a combination of these when building a start-up (a bit like the TV series THE BIG BANG THEORY or SILICON VALLEY), and what combinations of team members together and why they are so effective.

Jeff DeGraff and Staney DeGraff are both very erudite and well-educated on the topic - world best's, and their ability to ensure that organizations take an active understanding of their employees in terms of the diverse characteristics a group can bring together.  The theory of the Sage, the Artist, the Engineer and the Athlete is ingeniously extraordinary and very effective.

Group dynamics with varying personalities who conflict ensure that the end output is the most remarkable &  innovative.  One needs to ensure that the final outcome and timings are secured so that the dynamics and conflict of a diametrically different group is not distracted.

Here are a few top take-out's:

Page 3 - "When it comes to innovation, our dominant worldviews impede creative thinking.  The most effective innovation solutions are almost always hybrids, processes that combine multiple perspectives, so it's imperative that we learn to break free of our own biases and preconceptions"

Page 6 - "A worldview is more than a type or a style.  It's a collection of deeply held beliefs about how we interpret and experience the world.  A dominant worldview is a comprehensive conception of the world from a specific standpoint.  We derive these views from our personal experiences as well as the cultures in which we are socialized, for we are neither self-contained nor self-created"

Page 7 - "In today's snappy corporate speak, forms of creative leadership are like statement blazers or ultra low-rise jeans: they're either in or they're out.  Every year, the most popular businesses magazines claim that a certain type of person is the most innovative of the moment"

Page 8 - "But in reality, it's crucial to work with people who have different skills than you and to run a wide variety of plays in order to increase the likelihood that one of them will work"

Page 15 - "The Artist embraces revolutionary growth through wild experimentation and an extreme rejection of conventions.  These radical explorers are drawn to breakthrough innovation projects.  They create grand visions and are likely to try expected solutions"

Page 16 - "The fundamental difference between the Artist and the Engineer is in the magnitude of the innovation.  The risky Artist wants breakthrough innovation that can disrupt the way we think and live.  The reliable engineer prefers to tinker with the current system and continuously improve every aspect"

Page 16 - "Those who have the Sage dominant worldview seek out connection, harmony, and togetherness.  They are mentors, facilitators , team-builders who work with a set of shared values"

Page 27 - "When four intensely different- and in many ways opposing- viewpoints come together, conflict is a given.  Bit conflict doesn't have to be a bad thing.  In fact, conflict is the very force that will bring about the best outcome in almost any given innovation initiative."

Page 35 - "The same people who are great at starting a project are not the same people who are great at getting the project to scale"

Page 39 - "Seek out people who aren't afraid to speak their mind and who won't back down from their differing opinions"

Page 67 - "The most valuable innovations don't have extraordinary stories and they're not cool, shiny, or sleek.  They're plain and understated, they blend in with their surroundings - they're the inventions that don't catch our eye.  They're hidden in plain sight"

Page 108 - "A culture of everyday learning is the new normal. In many ways, the Sage's perspective dominates our current creative landscape where collaboration and the perpetual drive to learn more reign supreme"

 If you are working on a start-up now or planning to start a business, I thoroughly recommend both these books if you need some uncomplicated simple, practical, topical, pragmatic and accessible advice with remarkable writing styles.

You can purchase a copy of The Entrepreneur's Playbook: More than 100 Proven Strategies, Tips, and Techniques to Build a Radically Successful Business  here, connected with him on LinkedIN here, checkout his Bloomberg biography here, you can connected with author Paul B.Brown on LinkedIN here, and  follow him on Twitter here.

You can purchase a copy of The Innovation Code: The Creative Power of Constructive Conflict  here, follow Jeff DeGraff on Twitter here, visit his website here, LIKE him on Facebook here, follow him on LinkedIN here. You can connect with Staney DeGraff on LinkedIN here, Facebook here, and visit the Innovatrium website here.  

Thank you and wishing you continued success,

Praz aka Prashant

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Email: Prashanthh2016@gmail.com