What book have you read that when you were done reading it, you said proudly, "I have learned lots of things?" Who recommended it, and what did you learn?
Two books that I have read this year that I learned lots of things:This is a great business book and whether you have a job or you own a company you can take something away from this book. I literally could not put it down! There were tons of little business tidbits that made you think. A couple of interesting points:1. Amazon had to re-imagine warehousing and distribution and create a set of algorithms based on a near limitless amount of possibilities and then assign the appropriate algorithm to your individual shipping order. The average person just now expects this level of service with their prime membership and might even complain if it is a day late. They have no idea how difficult it is!2. Amazon Prime was based on CostCo's membership model. Jeff Bezos had a meeting with CostCo's CEO Jim Sinegal. This is when Amazon was trying to be profitable and actually were raising prices to appease investors and such. Sinegal's approach was "value trumps everything" and explained the CostCo business model and philosophy to Jeff. So this was like a religious experience for Bezos and he went back to Amazon and like a crazy man slashed prices 20% to 3o% and later started Amazon Prime.It also goes into the ruthless business tactics of Jeff Bezos but if you are consumer you appreciate the savings and you kind of look the other way. (That's what I did)Another Book: This is about the war between Nintendo and Sega in the 90s:Tons of great learning stuff in this book. Here are a just a couple of things to share:1. Nintendo has a closed business model and had 90% of the home video game industry. Third party software developers had to play by Nintendo's rules and sign a contract and actually buy Nintendo's cartridges for their own games. Nintendo was making so much money on Mario plus any third party developer game they would take a majority of the profits. So Sega was able to enter the market with an open business model that was friendly to developers. It's kind of like what we see today with iOS vs. Android.2. Sega CEO Tom Kalinske had the impossible task of making Sonic the Hedgehog into a Brand like Mario. Sonic was a terrible creature and laughable mascot. But he did it! With marketing genius. This is one of the great marketing books I've come across because it opened my eyes to marketing strategy and science. Happy reading and be well. :)