Writing a Book Review of sorts can be intimidating. I’m sure it’s common to feel hesitant about being able to adequately come anywhere close to doing justice to the many inter-related ideas an author has expressed in his work. At the same time, there is an eagerness to share the insights gleaned from their work as well. The latter is what I will attempt to do here.
The book I’ll be referring to in this post is George Soros’ “The New Paradigm for Financial Markets: The Credit Crisis of 2008″. I am by no means any kind of a financial expert. While I’m sure that different people will focus on different aspects of this book, my aim is to simply express the main point that stood out for me. That happens to be the human element of the equation.
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I’ve been intrigued lately by a new section of books in the Barnes & Noble bookstore that I frequent. It is a grouping of books labelled “Thought-Provoking”.
Clearly ”Thought-Provoking” isn’t a subject that one can easily build a business idea or a keyword strategy around. People aren’t likely to go to a store or to Google looking for something “Thought Provoking”.
Either way, ”Thought-Provoking” seems to be a viable and growing category of books which might include a mix of psychology, sociology, philosophy and science. Such books are perhaps just as likely show up in the Self-Improvement section as in the Business section of a bookstore.
Perhaps this new category has been spurred by Malcolm Gladwell’s success with his books, Blink and Tipping Point. As a recent article from Timesonline.co.uk entitled, “The 10 secrets of Malcolm Gladwell’s success“, suggests, the popularity of “arcane” books like his might be due to a “sociological transformation of the past 25 years”. An interesting premise. Could there be a “more intellectually curious” business-mindset developing out there?
Are we at a turning point? As the economy slows down and people pull back to take the time to rebuild their net worth and adjust to potentially widespread structural changes, will a new mindset and new work ethic arise, too?
Might not the next ten years be a time when a new set of successes show up to challenge Gladwell’s assertion that there’s not a shortage of talent in the world but that there’s a shortage of people willing to put in the 10,000 hours it takes to become successful? Could these “Thought Provoking” books be a sign of something new to come….
Clearly we can not expect to approach the amount of change we currently face by relying on our old way of thinking about things. Our old mindset is no longer working.
Everywhere you turn, there is talk of change. I even started off planning on writing about this upcoming change. That’s when it occurred to me. I was surprised to find that everything I was writing down, regarding change, could just as appropriately be grouped under a heading of “personal responsibility”.
So, below is a list of eight observations about the kind of a mindset that I believe we will need to adopt in order to learn from our past and to successfully navigate the upcoming structural changes we all will be (or already are) facing.
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More and more, we see and hear about social media, social networking sites, and micro-blogging tools. You probably heard about how the current election was impacted (some even say won) by the grassroots efforts of social networking strategies.
Amid all of this social media enthusiasm, there have also been recent reports about how the older forms of Web 2.0, namely, blogging, is dead or at least dying. This has prompted some to wonder if we should be dropping the old tools for the new.
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Election Day is just one day. One Day that has been a long time coming. One that will soon be here and will soon be gone. But is it an end or a beginning? Either way, many will say that it will be another four years before they get their chance to vote again. But, that isn’t quite true.
The General Election is no doubt a very important decision day. Yet it need not be a once-every-four-years event. This election period has been one of the longest and most polarizing in a long time. Combine that with the current financial crisis and the recent bailout package, one good thing that has happened is that people have again found their voice. Current technology is making it so much easier to get information, to organize a collective voice, and to get those voices heard. Keeping informed on the issues and participating to our government in any way that we can (including writing to our representatives) is something we can and should continue to do, Election Year or not.
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Writing a Book Review of sorts can be intimidating. I’m sure it’s common to feel hesitant about being able to adequately come anywhere close to doing justice to the many inter-related ideas an author has expressed in his work. At the same time, there is an eagerness to share the insights gleaned from their work as well. The latter is what I will attempt to do here. 
