Building company culture through a library
“Renegades are the people, with their own philosophies,
They change the course of history, everyday people like you and me
We’re the renegades, we’re the people with our own philosophy
We change the course of history, everyday people like you and me”
— Afrika Bambaataa — Renegades of Funk
We all stand on the shoulders of giants that came before and books remain the best way to access and share the gems inside the living monument that is human knowledge. This is why I recently started a library for our startup, AVA Technologies. Our first product, the AVA Byte, mixes disciplines from manufacturing, consumer electronics, plant science, biotechnology, app development, and cutting edge computational cloud development. This is a lot to take on, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Being more focused on the theoretical than the practical, I have consumed a fair share of audiobooks. I have learned to live by the concept that one good question gives you five more good questions. The books on my list have provided a positive feedback loop of curiosity, and driven much of the interdisciplinary and inter-industry knowledge that I brought with me to AVA.
Every book impacted me on a personal and professional level. They were all crucial to helping uncover and inform my personal Massively Transformative Purpose (MTP). My MTP is to help build the future by accelerating the transition of physiological goods towards zero marginal cost. In other words; working on projects that will make food, power, shelter, and clean water abundant and ever closer to costing nothing.
The AVA library has been carefully curated in direct support of the goals and impact we are achieving at AVA. Many great books that are currently relevant will be ordered later as I wanted to do this on a budget. Jeff Bezos has a famous creation myth at Amazon about how his first desk was a cheap door from Home Depot that he stacked on some bricks. I’m not a fan of the poor ergonomic and design consequences of doing that in our office so as both homage and rebellion against the concept, I chose to order all books through Amazon at the cheapest rate, new or used, with reasonable delivery times.
Everyone in the team is encouraged to contribute their own personally influential books in a collaborative curation of what I hope will become a tangible cultural asset of our company, in an evermore digitized and dematerialized age. By building the library, my goal is to create a way to start institutionalizing the documentation, analysis and interpretation of the authors of each book into the project and company via the people on the team, and the culture they form together.
I have sorted the lists into four categories that I’m calling Stacks. I took inspiration from StackExchange because it sounds cool, and frames things in a similar way to describe the informational architecture these books represent as it relates to each potential reader, and how it will affect their development in life, project, and career. The AVA Stack includes the other stacks.
Thanks for reading, I hope you find a book that brings a new perspective or inspiration into your life.
Mike’s Life Stack
The Vertical Farm: Feeding the World in the 21st Century — Despommier, Dr. Dickson. Food is personal. We can do things better, if we care enough to try.
The Prince — Machiavelli, Niccolò . One of two books assigned as life reading in a Live Sound course I took at music production school by a rock and roll anthropologist named Bo Cairo. This book does not have to be wielded in malicious intent. Influence and power are as much art as fact. An easy book to come back to many times.
The Lean Startup — Ries, Eric — Foundational reading for everyone. Don’t build something until you find out what your first customers want. It represents the evolution of key elements of The Toyota Way into the digital and business worlds.
The Art of War — Tzu, Sun . As the warrior seeks to learn from the artist, the artist can also learn from the warrior.
Sapiens — Harari, Yuval Noah. One of the most mind-blowing documents ever written.
Entrepreneur Stack — Start with these if you want to make sure you are playing this century’s game, ie. there’s more to it than win-lose.
Bold: How to Go Big, Create Wealth and Impact the World — Peter Diamandis — Peter is the greatest teacher I have in my mission. His books are a great entry point into what defines the world today, and how we can use that knowledge to make change.
Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think — Peter Diamandis — Just watch some Peter Diamandis videos and see if you get hooked.
The Toyota Way to Lean Leadership — Liker, Jeffrey K. — Foundational reading for manufactured goods/hardware/logistics businesses. This book tells the story about how Toyota executives were inspired by the just-in-time logistics of the American grocery store ‘Milk Run,’ and built an industrial powerhouse of the 80's.
Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future — Peter Thiel — Monopolies are bullshit, but understanding the difference between creating incremental and exponential value improvement isn’t.
Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things. William McDonough & Michael Braungart — McDonough, William — Foundation circular economy reading.
Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action — Simon Sinek — Simon is a great writer. It’s been a while, but this book intersects with the Toyota Way and Lean Startup by the common thread of incessantly asking why.
The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story — Michael Lewis — An epic story of the prototype silicon valley quirky billionaire obsessed with yachts.
Futurist Stack — What you should probably know.
Machine, Platform, Crowd — Andrew Mcafee, Erik Brynjolfsson — A hidden gem. Already know what Machine to Machine (M2M,) Digital Platform, and Crowd-Source mean? Good, then read this book.
How to Run the World: Charting a Course to the Next Renaissance — Khanna, Parag — If the Twentieth Century was about centralization, whether through capitalism, communism, or fascism, then the Twenty-First Century appears to be about decentralization.
The Fourth Industrial Revolution — Klaus Schwab — The age of automation is upon us. The founder of the World Economic Forum provides and initial framing of Industry 4.0 from his unique intersection in engineering, business and geo-politics.
Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future — Ashlee Vance — Even the most inspiring people aren’t perfect. Before his success, there was much pain. Elon’s story informs some of what is behind his drive, and provides context for the monumental spaceflight accomplishments of SpaceX.
Exponential Organizations: Why new organizations are ten times better, faster, and cheaper than yours (and what to do about it) — Salim Ismail, Michael Malone, Yuri Van Geest — Building a company based on how things used to be won’t prepare it for today, never-mind tomorrow.
The rest of the AVA Stack:
Plant Factory — Toyoki Kozai, Genhua NiuMichiko, Takagaki
Steve Jobs — Walter Isaacson
Good To Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…And Others Don’t — Jim Collins
The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon — Brad Stone
Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature — Janine M Benyus
Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies — Jim Collins, Jerry Porras
Snow Crash: A Novel — Neal Stephenson
The Book of Five Rings — Miyamoto Musashi
The Metronome Effect: The Journey To Predictable Profit — Shannon Byrne Susko
Crossing the Chasm, 3rd Edition: Marketing and Selling Disruptive Products to Mainstream Customers — Geoffrey A. Moore
In The Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives — Levy, Steven
The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More — Anderson, Chris
The Toyota Way Fieldbook — Liker, Jeffrey K.
The Martian: A Novel — Weir, Andy
Value Proposition Design: How to Create Products and Services Customers Want Osterwalder, Alexander
Featured Artists:
Rage Against The Machine, Cover of Renegades of Funk by Afrika Bambaataa, Produced by Rick Ruben
Rage stands alone as unique in the worlds of rock and hip hop. It is both and neither at the same time. I prefer the cover over the original, and both versions stick out as alien in their level of originality.
