Gain a new perspective on core and emerging technologies - from robotics to virtual reality - and the related leadership challenges. Put these technology books on your reading list
Let’s hope – for all the curveballs that 2020 threw our way – that one of the unexpected benefits of this tumultuous year has been a little more time to tick some books off your reading list. Last year at this time, we recommended a number of then-forthcoming titles for CIOs looking to take a deeper dive into technology topics, from AI to the ins and outs of technology experimentation and innovation.
This year, we are again offering up our recommended technology reads for the new year, beginning with an overview of the technology likely to top the agenda in 2021.
Our book recommendations also include explorations of the social nature of next-gen robots and smart products, the crucial role of design in the digital era, an examination of the very real AR and VR entering the enterprise, new looks at agile transformation and the critical role of developers, a warning about the shortcomings of machine learning, and a couple of rich how-to tomes for fueling imagination and innovation in an organization.
[ Read also: 10 leadership books to stretch your skills in 2021 and How to build strong teams: 8 must-read books. ]
Let’s dig in:
By: Harvard Business Review (HBR), David Weinberger, Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, Darrell K. Rigby, and David Furlonger
Book description (via the Harvard Business Review Store): “Business is changing. Will you adapt or be left behind? In “The Year in Tech, 2021: Tools for Preparing Your Team for the Future,” you’ll apply the ideas from “The Year in Tech, 2021: The Insights You Need from Harvard Business Review” to help your team (and you) better understand the fast-moving issues around technological innovation, how it affects your company and your industry, and what you need to do now to prepare your company for the future.”
Why you should read it: This two-for-one is already out and offers up a look at the technology that will dominate the year ahead using a decidedly strategic lens. The hard copy compendium of articles curated by editors at HBR takes a comprehensive look at the tech that will dominate 2021. The added ebook includes a slide deck that highlights the most critical information presented in each article; discussion questions in two useful formats for each; and two HBS case studies, which contextualize the insights. IT leaders can use these to think over, discuss, and debate these ideas with their stakeholders and teams.
By: Laura Major and Julie Shah
Book description (via Amazon): “‘What to Expect When You’re Expecting Robots’ offers a vision for how robots can survive in the real world and how they will change our relationship to technology. From teaching them manners to robot-proofing public spaces to planning for their mistakes, this book answers every question you didn’t know you needed to ask about the robots on the way.”
Why you should read it: Most robots, to date, have been mere tools, performing simple tasks with significant human oversight. However, the next generation of robots will be truly social, operating on their own in our complex world. Indeed, robots are already wandering the aisle in grocery stores, managing emergency rooms, making deliveries, and zipping through warehouses.
Whether they do these things well, argue robot designers Laura Major and Julie Shah, will depend on whether we’ve built them to know how to behave as social entities. That will require collective effort to ensure “that the new intelligent robots are harnessed to the task of enhancing human well-being.”
By: Carla Diana
Book description (via Amazon): “Think how commonplace it is now for people to ask Siri for the weather forecast, to deploy Roomba to clean their homes, and to summon Alexa to turn on the lights… But the reality is, these first-generation “smart” products aren’t very smart. Sure, they can be programmed to perform any number of functions, but we’re clearly seeing only the tip of the iceberg in terms of capability and how such products can enhance our lives. How do we take it to the next level? In a word: design.”
Why you should read it: Follow up “What to Expect When You’re Expecting Robots” with this examination into digital product development - coming in March. Head of design for Diligent Robotics, Diana has created a range of digital products, from robots to connected home appliances. She explains how experts like herself can humanize machines – and offers a number of use cases already in development. Diana seems ideally suited to instruction: She writes and lectures on the social impact of emerging technology, wrote the world’s first children’s book on 3D printing, LEO the Maker Prince, and co-hosts the Robopsych Podcast. Here, she delivers an engaging and informative book. It includes clear guidelines for conceptualizing, building, and optimizing products using approaches such as vision imagery, scenario storyboarding, video prototyping, and behavior charting.
By: Cliff Kuang and Robert Fabricant
Book description (via MacMillan Publishers): “In ‘User Friendly,’ Cliff Kuang and Robert Fabricant reveal the untold story of a paradigm that quietly rules our modern lives: the assumption that machines should anticipate what we need. Spanning over a century of sweeping changes, from women’s rights to the Great Depression to World War II to the rise of the digital era, this book unpacks the ways in which the world has been – and continues to be – remade according to the principles of the once-obscure discipline of user-experience design.”
Why you should read it: This book comes with some serious accolades: “User-friendliness is the cognitive lubricant that makes us love the stuff we use,” says Ellen Lupton, author of ‘Beautiful Users: Designing for People.’ “This fascinating book unveils how – and why – that love was crafted.” Design thinking guru and CEO of IDEO Tim Brown calls this book “compulsory reading for the current age, in which business and society have turned to design in pursuit of growth and change. But design means little without empathy, and this book lays out a remarkable tale of how that insight became truth.” In light of the tremendous changes of 2020 and 2021, the book may offer even greater value to IT leaders now. (And speaking of design, this offering is now available in paperback, in time for some post-holiday reading.)
By: Jeremy Dalton
Book description (via Amazon): “Augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) are part of a new wave of immersive technologies that offer huge opportunities for businesses, across industries and regardless of their size. Most people think of AR or VR as a new development in video gaming like Pokemon GO, or an expensive marketing campaign by the Nikes of the world. The truth is, businesses of any size can put these new technologies to immediate use in areas that include training and development, customer experience and design, as well as data and information management. Reality Check dispels the common misconceptions of AR and VR, such as them being too expensive or not easily scalable, and details how business leaders can integrate them into their business to deliver more efficient, cost-sensitive and exciting business solutions.”
Why you should read it: Immersive technologies have the power to transform every aspect of the enterprise, from marketing and sales to service and support. And in the socially distanced world of the near future, AR and VR are more attractive than ever. PwC’s Dalton has become a well-known evangelist for immersion, spreading the news of its potential for some time. He offers exclusive case studies from Lloyds Banking Group, Honeywell, and IKEA to showcase the practical uses of immersive technologies in day-to-day business, highlighting immediate benefits in the areas of design, training, data and information, and telepresence.
Let’s look at five more must-read books:
Gain a new perspective on core and emerging technologies - from robotics to virtual reality - and the related leadership challenges. Put these technology books on your reading list
By: Michael Spayd and Michele Madore
Book description (via Amazon): “Most organizational leaders know agility is paramount to survival in a world of unprecedented volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA). That’s why so many keep attempting Agile transformations even after previous initiatives have failed. But the truth is, both organizations and leaders need new ways of thinking – they need to upgrade their organizational ‘operating system.’”
Why you should read it: Not feeling very agile, despite your adoption of the eponymous methods? Organizational and agile transformation coaches Michele Madore and Michael Spayd teamed up on this book, explaining their own approach to scaling agile transformations. They offer methods for understanding what an organization’s agile method can and can’t do and how they may be counterproductive. There’s also information on how companies can restructure their existing models and create a unified and practical system for mapping what’s going on and what may need to change. Pair this with Doing Agile Right: Transformation Without Chaos, from Bain & Company’s Darrell Rigby, Sarah Elk, and Steve Berez, which came out in May.
By: Jeff Lawson
Book description (via Amazon): “Software developers are sought-after, highly paid, and desperately needed to compete in the modern, digital economy. Yet most companies treat them like digital factory workers without really understanding how to unleash their full potential. Lawson argues that developers are the creative workforce who can solve major business problems and create hit products for customers — not just grind through rote tasks. From Google and Amazon to one-person online software companies — companies that bring software developers in as partners are winning.”
Why you should read it: Software developer and Twilio CEO Lawson illustrates that leading companies disrupting their industries using software do three things well: they understand why software developers matter more than ever, they understand developers and how to motivate them, and they invest in their developers’ success.
By: Brian Christian
Book description (via Amazon): “Today’s machine-learning systems, trained by data, are so effective that we’ve invited them to see and hear for us – and to make decisions on our behalf. But alarm bells are ringing. Recent years have seen an eruption of concern as the field of machine learning advances. When the systems we attempt to teach will not, in the end, do what we want or what we expect, ethical and potentially existential risks emerge. Researchers call this the alignment problem.
“In best-selling author Brian Christian’s riveting account, we meet the alignment problem’s ‘first responders,’ and learn their ambitious plan to solve it before our hands are completely off the wheel.”
Why you should read it: Machine learning is at the top of the business agenda, and IT leaders will play a pivotal role in helping their organization assess and address the biases and blind spots of AI enablement. Programmer and poet Brian Christian (author of bestseller Algorithms to Live By) looks at everything that can (and often does) go wrong when we apply machine learning, as well as the movement to address these shortcomings.
By: Martin Reeves and Jack Fuller
Book description (via Amazon): “We need imagination now more than ever — to find opportunities in adversity, rethink our businesses, and discover new paths to growth. Yet too many companies have lost their ability to imagine. What is this mysterious capacity? How does imagination work? And how can organizations keep it alive and harness it systematically? ‘The Imagination Machine’ answers these questions and more. Drawing on the experience and insights of CEOs across several industries, as well as lessons from neuroscience, computer science, psychology, and philosophy, BCG's Martin Reeves and Jack Fuller provide a fascinating look into the mechanics of imagination and lay out a six-step process for creating ideas and bringing them to life.”
Why you should read it: While not a nitty-gritty tech treatise, this how-to book from Reeves and Fuller of Boston Consulting Group explains the difference between incremental changes and the paradigm shifts that are essential to an organization’s success, particularly during times of disruption. They offer a concrete six-step process for IT leaders who need to increase imagination, along with games for breaking through stubborn mindsets and stoking the idea generation engine.
By: Scott D. Anthony, Paul Cobban, Natalie Painchaud, and Andy Parker
Book description (via Harvard Business Review Press): “Leaders have experimented with open innovation programs, corporate accelerators, venture capital arms, skunkworks, and innovation contests. They’ve trekked to Silicon Valley, Shenzhen, and Tel Aviv to learn from today’s hottest, most successful tech companies. Yet most would admit they’ve failed to create truly innovative cultures. There’s a better way. And it all starts with the power of habit.
In ’Eat, Sleep, Innovate,’ innovation expert Scott Anthony and his impressive team of coauthors use groundbreaking research in behavioral science to provide a first-of-its-kind playbook for empowering individuals and teams to be their most curious and creative — every single day.”
Why you should read it: Anthony and his team at consultancy Innosight uncover what they call a collection of “BEANS” – behavior enablers, artifacts, and nudges — that they’ve seen leaders harness to instill innovation throughout their organizations. In addition to the instructive nature of these stories of what they call “normal organizations doing extraordinary things,” they offer tools to help IT leaders uncover their own hacks and habits for building and sustaining an innovative culture.
[ Learn more about hybrid and multi-cloud: Get the free eBooks, Hybrid Cloud Strategy for Dummies and Multicloud Portability for Dummies. ]
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10 must-read technology books for 2021 - The Enterprisers Project
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