There is always so much wisdom to be shared. Here is a guide to essential reading that will continue to inform your data journey.
| Title | Author | Why Read this Book |
|---|---|---|
| Capitalism Without Capital | Jonathan Haskel and Stian Westlake | |
| Collaborating with the Enemy: How to Work with People You Don’t Agree with or Like or Trust | Adam Kahane | Kahane is an actual diplomat who has facilitated solutions to international crises. Reading his book in conjunction with Edvinsson’s Data Diplomacy provides additional perspective on the necessity for empathy and respect within organizations. |
| Competing on Analytics | Tom Davenport and Jeanne Harris | |
| Data & Reality | William Kent | In Data & Reality, William Kent explores how we, people, make data, through a set of choices about what to represent and how to represent it. Written in the late 1970s, the book’s observations are even more important in the 21st century, as we are flooded with new and sometimes highly questionable forms of data. |
| Data Centric Revolution & Software Wasteland | Dave McComb | |
| Data Crush | Christopher Surdak | |
| Data Diplomacy | Hakan Edvinsson | Edvinsson takes a look at what gets in the way of data governance programs (top down control, bureaucracy, lack of understanding about how work gets done) and suggests a cross-function, diplomatic approach to improving data in organizations. |
| Data Modeling for Quality | Graham Witt | |
| Data Modeling Masterclass | Steve Hoberman | |
| Data Strategy | Bernard Marr | |
| Data Strategy & The Enterprise Data Executive | Peter Aiken | |
| Digital to the Core | Mark Raskino and Graham Waller | |
| Essentialism | Greg McKeown ISBN: 9780804137409 (paperback) $18 USD/$24 CAD | I read this book on a recent business trip. So good that I read it again when I got home. It’s an easy read, peppered with short exercises that helped me think about what is important to me. The book introduced me to the concept and helped me understand my Essential Intent. The book helped me make one choice that saved me from having to make 1000 choices later. This book will help you focus on what is meaningful in your life and to spend time on what is precious. We’ve all been exposed to some of the ideas Greg presents in the book, but his style is engaging and made me want to keep reading. Best investment of 6 hours I’ve made this year. |
| Execution – the discipline of getting things done | Cassidy and Charan | |
| Good to Great | Jim Collins | In “Good to Great” Collins researches why a few organisations outperform the market by a significant margin. The fundamental reason is cultural – the right people on the bus with a very clear vision of the destination. |
| Harvesting Intangibles | Andrew J. Sherman | |
| How to Measure Anything | Doug Hubbard | Hubbard takes a concept that many find challenging, how to quantify, and turns it on its side: any measurement is, at its simplest, a comparison. So measuring anything amounts to figuring out the appropriate comparisons and using them to learn more about the thing you want to measure. His choice to simplify the concept creates a new perspective that simplifies measurement and also shows the risks of failing to understand the assumptions built into measurement. |
| Information Driven | Robert Hillard | |
| Information Economics | Urs Birchler and Monika Bütler | |
| Intangibles: Management, Measurement, and Reporting | Baruch Lev | |
| Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men | Caroline Criado Perez | Perez assesses everyday situations through the lens of gender bias to demonstrate how assumptions about gender influence what data we collect, why we collect it, and how we interpret its meaning. In the face of claims about the value of artificial intelligence, this book gives one a reason to pause and reevaluate the risks associated with allowing machines to take biased human thinking to its logical conclusions. |
| Master Data Management | David Loshin | |
| Outside Insight | Jorn Lyseggen | |
| Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture | Martin Fowler | |
| Smart (Enough) Systems | James Taylor and Neil Raden | |
| Strategy Maps | Robert Kaplan and David Norton | |
| Telling Your Data Story | Scott Taylor | |
| The Business Value of Computers | Paul Strassmann | |
| The Data Asset | Tony Fischer | |
| The Demon in the Machine | Paul Davies | Davies, a physicist and cosmologist, has written an astonishing book about information and the role it plays in every level of our existence from the molecular level to the universal one. Two things fascinate me – firstly, the enormity of Davies’ thought and, secondly, that we struggle to manage the information just in our own organisations. |
| The Economics of Data, Analytics, and Digital Transformation: The theorems, laws, and empowerments to guide your organization’s digital transformation. | Bill Schmarzo | |
| The New Know | Thornton May | |
| Who Owns the Future? | Jaron Lanier |