Natasha Singer writes for The New York Times about Professor Natasha Dow Schüll’s research examining how people have begun to use technology to alter their behavior. “It is not really about self-knowledge anymore,” says Schüll. “It’s the nurselike application of technology.”
The Economist highlights “Strategy Rules,” a new book co-authored by Prof. Michael Cusumano that draws lessons from the careers of three tech executives. “The book provides plenty of insight to help navigate a world that is ever more driven by IT.”
Richard Waters reports for The Financial Times about “Strategy Rules,” a book co-authored by Prof. Michael Cusumano that draws lessons from the careers of tech giants Steve Jobs, Andy Grove, and Bill Gates. The authors “boil their observations down to five lessons, some of which offer more teachable moments than others.”
Ty Burr reviews Prof. Alan Lightman’s Book “Screening Room” for The Boston Globe. “Lightman bends his nostalgia through the prism of a writer’s creativity the way light through a projector blooms into a story on the screen,” notes Burr.
John Winters of WBUR reviews Professor Alan Lightman’s memoir of growing up in Memphis, “Screening Room: Family Pictures.” “I’d wanted to write a book about Memphis for many years and also to explore more of the complex relationship between my grandfather, my father and myself,” says Lightman.
In a piece exploring the possibility of time travel, BBC News reporter Sean Coughlan highlights Prof. Brad Skow’s new book about the concept of time. Skow argues that, “past moments or experiences are just as real as the present, but are inaccessible in another part of time.”
James Surowiecki writes for The New Yorker about Professor Zeynep Ton’s book “The Good Jobs Strategy,” in which she argues that companies benefit when they invest in employee compensation and training. “These companies end up with motivated, capable workers, better service, and increased sales,” explains Ton.
Gary Beach writes for The Wall Street Journal about Professor Erik Brynjolfsson’s predictions on how technology will change the workforce. “I wouldn’t be surprised if one-third, or more, jobs were eliminated by new technologies in the next decade,” says Brynjolfsson. “Millions of new jobs, however, will be created.”
Greg Satell writes for Forbes about Professor Zeynep Ton’s book “The Good Job’s Strategy,” in which she argues that maintaining a well-trained and well-paid workforce can lead to greater profits. “A higher paid workforce results in less turnover, better customer service and greater efficiency,” writes Satell of Ton’s findings.
Paul Krugman writes for The New York Times about Professor JoAnne Yates' book “Control Through Communication.” In her book, Yates examines the history of the filing cabinet and the “coevolution of information technology and the business world before the digital age.”
Writing for Forbes, Andy Boynton and William Bole examine MIT Visiting Scholar Michael Schrage’s new book ‘The Innovator’s Hypothesis: How Cheap Experiments Are Worth More than Good Ideas.” “[Schrage] argues that even good ideas are ‘the enemy’ of innovation because they distract people from what’s most important—making sure you could do something useful with the ideas."
David Slocum of Forbes lists “The Second Machine Age” by Prof. Erik Brynjolfsson and Dr. Andrew McAfee as one of the best creative leadership books of the year. Brynjolfsson and McAfee, “explore the forces reinventing fields as diverse as medicine, retail, and transportation and having far-ranging implications for creative collaboration, business leadership and policy-making alike.”
Professor Clapperton Mavhunga speaks with Jasmine McNealy of New Books in Technology about his childhood, the history of innovation in Africa, and his new book, “Transient Workspaces: Technologies or Everyday Innovation in Zimbabwe.”
Wall Street Journal reporter Chris Gay profiles several books examining the financial crisis, highlighting Prof. Simon Johnson’s book “13 Bankers.” In the book Johnson and his co-author, “trace two centuries of government attempts to grapple with the power of big finance,” Gay writes.
Professor Craig Wilder received a Hurston/Wright 2014 award for his book “Ebony & Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America’s Universities,” writes DeNeen L. Brown for The Washington Post. According to the judges, Wilder’s book “brilliantly exposes the blood-soaked ties between slavery and high education and higher education in America.”