I am including reviews on several books related to business
here:
CREATING THINGS THAT MATTER
by David Edwards focuses on
innovations that last. In particular, Edwards discusses the value of
interdisciplinary work, stressing the need to perceive art and science as
one. Of course, this is critical for any
environment that we create for our students and one with which the district is continually
grappling. In the second part of his
text, Edwards explains three elements of the Creator’s Cycle: Ideation, Experimentation,
and Exhibition. As teachers, I believe
that we encourage the first two, but are less than successful at creating
authentic audiences for student work AND for our own educator ideas and piloted
lesson plans. Edwards spends the third part of this text reviewing the
Grassroots Creator Movement (GCM) and includes several diagrams illustrating
the emotions and actions involved. Both business students and educators will be
interested in Edwards’ writing on creativity (one of the 4 c’s of 21st
century learning with critical thinking, communication, and collaboration)
; they may also be intrigued by his thoughts
on other “c’s:” challenges, curiosity, community, and cultural/commercial
contrast. For an additional text on human-centered design, consider The
Fuzzy and the Techie (2017) by Stanford-educated venture capitalist Scott Hartley
which is also in our collection.
THE PAN-INDUSTRIAL
REVOLUTION by Richard D’Aveni
is subtitled “How New Manufacturing Titans Will Transform the World.” D’Aveni
is a professor at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business and he makes a thorough examination of history
(beginning with early 1980s experiments) and growth of 3D Printing, now called additive
manufacturing (AM). Building on his
extremely popular Harvard Business Review article on this topic, D’Aveni
explores subtopics like machine wars, platform wars, and branding strategies
for AM. While a key part of his audience will be manufacturers and business
managers who are interested in this industry, our Business students will find
aspects of this text and its future orientation to be valuable, too. For
example, I can readily see a teacher assigning Chapter 12 (“The Path to
Tomorrow”) which provides useful overview of the four phases of adoption for
this technology. He contends that much
of AM currently lies in the “early adoption” phase and is very positive about
growth through mainstream and ubiquitous adoption with diagrams interspersed
throughout the text. D’Aveni also provides several pages of sources and a
helpful index. Kirkus gave THE
PAN-INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION a starred review and called it “essential
business reading.”
INVISIBLE WOMEN by Caroline Criado Perez offers an intriguing, if sometimes dense, look
at “Data Bias in a World Designed for Men.”
Perez, a feminist advocate, explores workplace and medical issues in
addition to numerous other examples from daily life where the use of data
perpetuates bias and discriminates against women. Her examples fit nicely with recent press
coverage like “A Fix for Gender Bias in Health Care? Check” from The New York Times. Perez
provides nearly seventy pages of references and relevant links which have
already been of great benefit to our student researchers. Her work raises so many subtle decisions
favoring men (e.g., calorie count on treadmills based on average male weight). However, (perhaps because of living in
London?) she does not include much discussion of the impact of data and
discrimination in sports; that is a bit surprising given the disparities in media
coverage and recent lawsuit by the US National Women’s Soccer
Team. Perez does include fairly lengthy
sections on parental leave and unpaid work, which again could tie to recent
media coverage (“Women Did Everything Right. Then Work Got ‘Greedy’”). Overall, INVISIBLE WOMEN offers an
important look at systemic bias that merits further discussion and research. 
JULIET'S SCHOOL OF
POSSIBILITIES by Laura
Vanderkam is subtitled “A Little Story About the Power of Priorities” and is reminiscent
of business fables like Who Moved My Cheese? Or Fish! Vanderkam also
has a popular TED Talk
about work/life balance and she has produced several podcasts on related
topics. Her new text introduces Riley Jenkins, a twenty-something who has always
excelled through hard work and yet receives a poor performance review as well
as concerned feedback from friends and family. Riley heads to a weekend women’s retreat where
she meets Juliet, a working Mom who finds time to mentor Riley and others,
offering advice like: “We always have time for what matters to us.” And “You
cannot do everything. The choice to meet one expectation is always a choice to
not meet another.” Using the power of
story, JULIET'S SCHOOL OF
POSSIBILITIES is an inspiring and relatively quick read which concludes
with several introspective exercises to help readers contemplate how they would
like to spend their time. 
