Competing Against Luck review
I just finished up reading Competing Against Luck: The Story of Innovation and Customer Choice written by Clayton Christensen, Taddy Hall, Karen Dillon, David S. Duncan. I’ve been following the Jobs-to-Be-Done theory for a few years. There’s a good Udemy course on the interviewing technique but I have been waiting for a book dedicated to the topic. Christensen originally touched on this in his book The Innovator’s Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth. A few books have been recently published around Jobs-to-Be-Done and this is the first one I’ve read.
Hacking Growth review
I’ve been interested in growth for a while, which means that I’ve been reading Sean Ellis’ writing for a long time. He’s one of the originators of the term ‘Growth Hacking’ due to work that he’s done with startups. I started reading his book, Hacking Growth: How Today’s Fastest-Growing Companies Drive Breakout Success ( coauthored with Morgan Brown), while on vacation, but wasn’t able to finish it until now. Through a mix of reading and having someone moving into a growth role, I wanted to connect the dots and was looking for more structure.
Updated Design
This has been a loooooong time coming, but I’ve finally updated the design of this site. I initially forked the design of another site, but wanted something simpler and more clean. I borrowed heavily ( stole) from Zach Holman. A few thoughts while going through this process:
- There aren't any photos on this site, so I'd like to update the current design with more photos. I don't want to completely rip off Zach's site, but I do like how he uses the hero images in each post. I started with a very similar look, but just didn't feel good lifting his design.
- I also feel the css is pretty ugly. It's a mess of Bootstrap 4, the default minima theme from Jekyll and my additions. I feel there is a lot of opportunity to simplify the css and use more of the Bootstrap defaults.
- While I've felt this since the end of 2016, I'm planning on writing more frequently about work and other topics. Everyone says the same, why is this different now? I'm not sure other than I tend to have a lot of ideas pop into my head during the week and think I should write on that.
2017
2016
Designing for People
I just finished reading Henry Dreyfuss’ Designing for People. This book was on several ‘must read’ design book lists and reviews said this was a classic about Industrial Design. Sold!
Designing Products People Love
I was excited to get Designing Products People Love from Scott Hurff after hearing about it on a podcast (sorry, I don’t remember which one). This book was an enjoyable and fast read. I found many really great take aways and learnings that I’d share, be sure to pick up a copy and read it yourself. There are many more great ideas than those I have included here. Let me know what you learned from this book.
Book Reviews Coming
I’ve been trying to do a lot of reading. I amassed a library of design, tech, product and philosophy (and more). This would help keep me accountable to read regularly and in writing reviews, but would also help me retain the major learnings. If someone else learns something from them, so much the better. I’m not going to add affiliate links to these, but that may change in the future after I’m internet famous. (The last part is sarcastic).
The Most Valuable Work You Aren't Doing
What is the most valuable work you aren’t doing? Product discovery.
Do the work
Do the work.
Building a product
I’m excited with this opportunity to build and release a product that is all me. The domain is a problem that I’ve been thinking about for a long time and have done nothing but thinking about for a while. The user persona is one that I have a fair understanding of: people building products using lean.