By Beth Hester
The Technology Fallacy: How People Are the Real Key to Digital Transformation
by Gerald C. Kane, Anh Nguyen Phillips, Jonathan R. Copulsky, and Garth R. Andrus
MIT Press
How can, or rather, how should organizations respond to the mind-blowingly rapid technological and digital disruption happening across multiple industries? Along with technological disruption comes organizational disruption. The question then becomes: how do organizations best manage and adapt to this upheaval in order to harness it and leverage the advantages it offers?
The authors posit that the answers don’t lie in the technology itself, but in people: “The main problem posed by digital disruption is not the rapid pace of technological innovation, but the uneven rates of assimilating these technologies into different levels of the organization.”
Covering a range of timely and thorny topics like digital literacy, managing social networks, organizational dynamics, and the future of work, this volume gives managers a framework within which they can start to conceptualize the revolution that’s coming their way. The authors also offer practical guidance and actionable intelligence to help organizations navigate an ever evolving digital landscape.
The Upside of Uncertainty: A Guide to Finding Possibility in the Unknown
by Nathan Furr & Susannah Harmon Furr
Harvard Business Review Press
The familiar self-help adage, “Jump and the net will appear” is all well and good for people blessed with a pathological optimism. But leaps of faith that are ill considered and poorly planned can set off a cascade of setbacks severe enough to knock the wind out of even the most ambitious entrepreneur. So how do we find the proper balance between the kind of optimism that fuels innovation and success, and the fear of the unknown which can, in some people, be debilitating.
In this meticulously researched and science-based work, professor Nathan Furr, and entrepreneur Susannah Harmon Furr, lay out strategies to help people shift their perspectives and reframe how they view uncertainty in order to open themselves up to new possibilities.
This is no dry business read, as the personal stories and examples taken from a wide variety of businesses and industries resonate. Here’s a sample passage from a section titled “Regret Minimization,” “Most of us are taught to minimize risks, but that’s different from minimizing regrets. Minimizing risks reduces negative surprises, but it also reduces the chances of new things happening. Regret minimization on the other hand, is about identifying the right risks to take, the ones that define who you are now, or who you want to become.”
Kinda makes you want to take that leap…
