Resurrecting a 45-year-old book, Bill Gates included Business Adventures: Twelve Classic Tales from the World of Wall Street on his 2014 summer reading list. His enthusiasm ("Warren Buffett recommended this book to me back in 1991, and it's still the best business book I've ever read"-and claims it's Warren Buffett's favorite business book, too) was contagious. With prodding by Gates's team, the out-of-print book was reissued as an e-book by Open Road, and as I write this post it's Amazon's #1 best seller in commerce and #2 in books.
John Brooks originally published these business stories in The New Yorker, so it goes without saying that they are well written. Describing the stock market as "the daytime adventure serial of the well-to-do," Brooks devotes the first chapter to a blow-by-blow account of the "little crash" and rapid recovery that occurred in the last week of May 1962. On Monday the Dow dropped more than it had on any day except October 28, 1929. By Thursday, after the Wednesday Memorial Day holiday, it closed "slightly above the level where it had been before all the excitement began."
The infrastructure in place at the time could not cope with the overwhelming trading volume. On Tuesday, May 29, "there was something very close to a complete breakdown of the reticulated, automated, mind-boggling complex of technical facilities that made nationwide stocktrading possible in a huge country where nearly one out of six adults was a stockholder. Many orders were executed at prices far different from the ones agreed to by the customers placing the orders; many others were lost in transmission, or in the snow of scrap paper that covered the Exchange floor, and were never executed at all.
It's neither Big Data nor innovation, despite all the business books and management gurus touting the disruptive potential of each.
It's the simple question, right there on the tip of your tongue.
A new book demonstrates just how far an inquisitive mind can take you.
Change usually starts with a question. Inquiry has toppled monarchs and empires throughout history.
It's the basis of one of the earliest forms of education - the Socratic Method - used to train young minds in the rigours of critical thinking.
Yet, it's a mostly ignored business tool, overlooked by executives trained in the MBA arts that "tend to place more value on answers, pronouncements, and promises," according to author Warren Berger.
Questions also overturn business empires.
Group items tagged 
