strand reviews

Hello and welcome to the Strand Review of Books, with me, Toby Chapman-Dawe. Today’s guest is Melissa M. Reeve, the author of Hyperadaptive – Rewiring the enterprise to become AI-native. Melissa was the first VP of marketing at Scaled Agile, and is co-founder of the Agile Marketing Alliance – you can find out more at hyperadaptive.solutions, which points out that most organizations have AI champions and no system behind them.For me, this is close to a playbook or – if I can put it this way – a thinkbook with actions. It’s a proper, researched, thoughtful read that helps create a map or landscape of the new world of machine intelligence. Published by IT Revolution of Portland, Oregon, with a very pretty Moebious strip on the front, 275 pages or so packed with ideas, available of course from Amazon and all good bookshops.

Hello and welcome to the Strand Review of Books. Today I am delighted to be with Joana Lenkova, author of From Foresight to Action - Your strategic decision-making playbook. Joana served as LEGO Group’s first Futurology Director, and has held roles at The Walt Disney Company, AB InBev and Société Génerale – and Joana is founder of Futures Forward, a London-based strategic consultancy.What does Joana think is missing from corporate strategy, and why is the futures-thinking part due for more attention? Given the title, From Foresight to Action, how does the book bridge the gap between the brilliance of an idea and taking action?Thank you to Joana Lenkova, author of From Foresight to Action – Your strategic decision-making playbook. This really is a playbook – not a workbook, a playbook – that helps you unfold your strategy, and touches on marketing, AI, stress-testing, sustainability and much more. On the jacket there’s a nice quote from Serhiy Kalinovsky of Mondelez International: “Joana is one of the most credible voices in corporate foresight, translating complex methodology into practical action.”From Foresight to Action Published by Wiley, and available of course from Amazon and all good bookshops.

Hello and welcome to the Strand Review of Books. Today I am delighted to be joined by Sandhya Sabapthy, author of Burn Bright, Build Slow – How to build a just climate future. Sandhya is founder and CEO of Kaleidoscope, which describes itself as a sustainability and business resilience foundry that helps scale profitable, purpose-driven products and services.The style of the book is both polemic and story. For example, Sandhya writes the Chief Sustainability Officer, and how in many ways the title shows failure rather than success – and Sandhya also comments that a successful Chief Sustainability Officer could be seen through the lens of driving commercial strategy, capital allocation and operating decisions. The three main sections of the book - Business, Planet and Human - cover enormous ground, from carbon credits to marketing and margins.Burn Bright, Build Slow – How to build a just climate future: a thought-provoking book written in a very different style – constantly challenging thought patterns woven in with stories and properly referenced sources. Burn Bright, Build Slow was beautifully published by Epic on 1st July this year, available of course from Amazon and all good bookshops.

Hello and welcome to the Strand Review of Books. Today I am delighted to speak with Visha Kudhail, author of Authentic Marketing – Combining human thinking and creativity with technology to inspire audiences.Among other things, Visha hosts the Behind the Face of Success podcast and chairs the Data and Marketing Association Media Council, and is currently global brand and advocacy director at Talon One, the platform that powers loyalty, promotions, and gamification for brands of every size.You could probably find many of the chapter headings in what I might call a ‘standard marketing book,’ for example ‘Audience-first thinking’ and ‘The power of brand voice.’ What makes Authentic Marketing different?How is AI impacting marketing, and in particular the struggle to balance clickbait and fakery against authenticity?Thank you so much to Visha Kudhail, author of Authentic Marketing – Combining human thinking and creativity with technology to inspire audiences. There’s plenty to like, based on real-world stories of business experience from Pinterest, Google, YouTube and more, combined with sky-blue thinking. Part of a marketing strategy series published by Kogan Page, available of course from Amazon and all good bookshops!

Hello and welcome to the Strand Review of Books. Today I am delighted to speak with Ann Padley, co-author with Jenny Millar of The Pricing Sprint – 12 steps to unlock the power of pricing. Ann is senior partner at Untapped Pricing, a boutique consultancy that helps organizations design and implement pricing strategies that better reflect the value that they create. Jenny is the founder and CEO of Untapped Pricing, and former eBay executive.The book blurb says that companies lose out on millions, not because their product is wrong or their costs are too high, but because they’ve misjudged something far more complex: what people value.Pricing occurs at the ‘uncomfortable intersection of money, value and human behaviour.’ Why is pricing such a challenge?Thank you so much to Ann Padley, co-author with Jenny Millar of The Pricing Sprint – 12 steps to unlock the power of pricing, designed to help you create a commercial pricing strategy, nicely published by Bloomsbury Press, available of course from Amazon and all good bookshops!

Hello and welcome to the Strand review of Books. Today I am delighted to welcome Natalie Johnson, co-author with Rebecca Johnson of Leading the Culture Journey: Elevating Everyday Actions to Create Extraordinary Workplaces. The book aims to demonstrate the proposition that, at work, culture shapes everything – your energy, your wellbeing, the relationships your team members have with one another, and your company’s performance – and how to build a culture that transforms your organization into a dynamic, vibrant, and healthy place to work.Leading the Culture Journey – Elevating Everyday Actions to Create Extraordinary Workplaces, published by Wiley, is full of examples, references and calls to action with some thought-provoking action plans and reviews, available of course from Amazon and all good bookshops.

Hello and welcome to Anthony Tasgal, possibly better known as Tas, author of The Art in Marketing Book – Why we need less science and more art in marketing. Tas is author of seven other books, including the best-selling The Storytelling Book, and The Classical Marketing Book- – Marketing Lessons from the Greeks and Romans and is a self-described ‘man of many lanyards’ as a trainer, author, TEDx speaker, brand strategist and lecturer.In a book with section headings such as How’s your mayonnaise and The Greeks had a word for it and The monstrous worship of facts, what’s The Art in Marketing Book about, and why should Percy Punter purchase it? The Art in Marketing Book – Why we need less science and more art in marketing is absolutely packed with gems from art, science, the classics and the antichrist of marketing, a cracking read at 140 pages and an absolute steal at £9.99, published by LID Publishing and available of course, from Amazon and all good bookshops.

Alberto Torres lives on the fault lines of technological change; he has a PhD from Stanford in computer science, and among many senior roles has worked at Bang & Olufsen, Hewlett-Packard, McKinsey, Nokia and now latterly as a member of Adobe’s International Advisory Board. The Z-Curve: Navigating your business through technological disruption... If like me you enjoy great tech stories with a good splash of film references to bring the storytelling alive – for example, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Die Another Day, and even a little William Blake – The Z-Curveis a gripping read that, dare I say it, even made me think. Highly recommended, beautifully published by LID Publishing in hardback at £19.99 and available of course from Amazon and all good bookshops.