One of the great books you should read, especially if you are in an industry which thrives and dies with innovation, is the Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton Christensen

It chronicles how seemingly rational decisions ( like listening to the customer) may still fail the company in the face of other company’s innovations which may be disruptive. In short, what the author is saying is that you have to be very intuitive and perceptive on the rules of the game. If you master the rules, and make decisions on how to maximize returns based on such rules, it is still important to keep your ears very closely to the ground as these rules slowly change because of new technologies or new business models.

There are various disruptive technologies, like computer and communications convergence, the slow evolution towards wireless vs wired, the shift from flash memory as a storage tool vs the hard disk, the shift of hard disk vs tape as storage backup , the shift from paper based news to internet, the shift of rich desktops to web based solutions, and others.

A free excerpt of the book can be read here in Businessweek’s Page.

Five stars out of Five.

One of the things I started doing was looking and submitting to blog carnivals.

They are listing which help group blog topics together and present a listing of what are the best blog articles on that topic on a particular period.  I submitted some of my entries, and some of them listed.  These blogs are most likely of interest since they are mostly of the same topics which is about entrepreneurship, business management, and personal development growth.

I would like to point to you
- Carnival of Customer Service Edition 5.
-the Carnival of Powerful Living May 7 edition.
- The Blog Carnival of Observations on Life.
- Carnival of Personal Development May 6 edition.
- Carnival of Money Growth & Happiness.

Incidentally listing in carnivals not only gives your readers a lot of other great reads on the topics, but also gets you more readers, as well as better links for your blog.