What’s the magic by which the Word document you’ve been working on for so many weeks and months is transformed into a book? Jo Bottrill, head of Newgen UK, is a book production expert who’s worked with thousands of authors to perform exactly that magic, and in this conversation he…
As a project manager, Rob Kerr was accustomed to evaluating options and allocating scarce resources for maximum impact. The magic happened, however, when he started taking those tools out of the office and applying them to life: ‘We were making better decisions as a family. We were being a bit…
“When faced with personal challenges and business challenges, it’s going to take a lot of energy to overcome them. So why not use that energy wisely and focus on the things you can influence and forget about the stuff you can’t?” Rob Law, aka Trunki Daddy, has faced more personal…
Designers look at life differently, and writers can learn a lot from their approach. Niki Schafer’s aim as an interior designer is to design happiness into her clients’ homes. And while she was writing her book on ‘dwellbeing’, she discovered how to capture the joyful state of creative flow kinaesthetically,…
A few of my favourite moments from the last few Extraordinary Business Book Club episodes, and this time it’s all about grit – which seems to be an inevitable ingredient in the writing of a business book. Ayse Birsel on optimism and finding the best answers in the worst places Elaine Halligan,…
‘When you’re being creative, all you’re trying to do is see the same things differently, and from that, see if you can drive new ideas, solutions and new value.’ Ayse Birsel, multi-award-winning designer, decided to try an experiment. She tried to catch herself being creative and reverse engineer exactly what…
Have you ever thought of business as art? Edgar Papke and Thomas Lockwood, experts in organizational culture and design respectively, wanted to encourage leaders to design their businesses consciously for innovation and collaboration with their book Innovation by Design. And what better way than to write collaboratively? This is a…
‘If you want to be a good designer, you don’t really bring an ego to the work, you listen to what people say and you try and design the most customer-centric thing that you can and I’ve tried my best to bring that mentality to writing. A book ultimately is…
It’s The Extraordinary Business Book Club’s half-century episode! And we’re celebrating with an extraordinary selection of Best Bits from episodes 41-49: Michael E. Gerber on creating a legacy David Taylor on being the best you Martin Goodyer on the single strong idea Heather McGowan on visualizing information Emma Serlin on the psychology…
Giles Colborne is an expert in creating beautiful user experiences, which means making things simple and putting the user first. Writing a book, he says, is no different: You have to have a number of things very clear in your mind. You have to understand, at a very deep level,…
