A02: 11 Books to read on Mental Model Innovation
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Last weekend, we had a compelling session with the SaaS veterans from the Unicorn realms along with their VCs who partnered with them early-on. One area that really piqued my interest was the worldview of unicorn founders and the books that really shaped their mental models.
Entrepreneurs in the Innovation (Start-ups, Corporate Innovation hubs) ecosphere have worked on their business model innovation to build defensible moats, which provides them leverage in the hyper-competitive red oceans. A step above the business model innovation is the mental model innovation. Let’s break it down:
Mental Model: A mental model is an explanation of how something works as a sort of concept, framework, or worldview that you carry around in your mind.
Innovation: It is the creation, development, and implementation of a new idea (product, process, or service) with the aim of improving efficiency, effectiveness, or competitive advantage.
So, what are the inputs to form new mental models?
1. Books: This is an important tool at your disposal that provides you an alternative perspective. I have jotted down a few, based on my limited exposure.
2. Network: With due respect to the law of averages, forge connections with people who are outside your circle of influence. If you are a software professional, find a group of designers and take feedback on your ideas. If you are a business professional and stuck in an echo-chamber, engage with technologists or behavioral psychologists to learn about a research topic, well beyond your MBA curriculum.
3. Media: Be cognizant of the fact that your mind is a fertile ground and time is your most valuable currency. So, limit the digital/online social media noise intake via the mainstream channels and switch off the digital nudges via your Apps that de-stabilize your focus.
4. Experience: Train your muscle memory via a multitude of experiences either by traveling, a running regime, teaching, or experimenting with new crafts (music et al). Try to start at least one novel activity that you haven’t done in your earlier weeks.
5. Time: This is the most important and tricky one. If you are caught up in your domestic drudges (life as BAU), it will be hard for you to devote time to a change in your mental model construct. Either detach yourself via meditation/self-care/me-time channels or take some time off (if you can) from your life to rewire your neurons.
If you have drowned yourself in the podcast’s economy (Naval, The knowledge project with Shain Parrish, Masters of Scale with Read Hoffman, The Joe Rogan experience) during the lockdown season of 2020, you may refer to these 11 books before graduating to frame alternative narratives.
1. Start with Why by Simon Sinek: He gives anecdotes of business leaders and how they inspire and communicate to trigger action amongst their teams. Many marketing professionals would rate this work as cliched, but for a novice, it is a good book to glance through.
2. Thinking Fast & Slow by Daniel Kahneman: 'Nothing in life is as important as you think it is, while you are thinking about it.' Kahneman describes the brain's cognitive errors by giving exceptional examples throughout the pages.
3. The Undoing Project by Michael Lewis: If you have read Liar's Poker and Moneyball, you will definitely appreciate the genius of this financial journalist in his book 'The Undoing Project' where he describes the relationship between Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky from the behavioral economics standpoint.
4. Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: Sometimes known as the founding father of positive psychology, Mihaly touches upon topics that interest us all in these trying times: Happiness, meaning, work, stress, life, and culture, etc.
5. The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb: Borrowing the term 'black swan' from the Poet Decimus Junius Juvenalis's work, Taleb has outlined the extreme impact of the unpredictable events and our tendency to find simplistic explanations for these events, retrospectively. Even Sequoia capital referenced to this former options trader's words in this year, 2020 memo.
6. Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari: In Jerusalem, a friend introduced me to the works of Yuval Noah Harari. If you happen to go to Mahane Yahuda Market or the National Library of Israel on a Sunday evening, you may hear a multitude of stories about the origins of the work of Yuval Harari. Nevertheless, you will definitely enjoy the deep alternative point of view that Yuval has essayed in Sapiens through the chapters.
7. Principles: Life and Work by Ray Dalio: It is a masterpiece in rational thinking and radical open-mindedness which focusses on the blind spots of humans in discovering the truth. (Whisper: ego, emotion, etc)
8. How not to be wrong by Jordan Eilenberg: This book focuses on the application of simple and profound maths to day-to-day life and how not to be deceived by mathematical traps. Entrepreneurs have vouched to have read this book before defining their vanity metrics in their investor pitch-decks.
9. Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke: Like in poker, there are two things that determine how our lives turn out – the quality of our decisions and luck. Annie Duke explains how we can optimize both our decisions and luck to get the best possible outcomes.
10. Superforecasting by Philip E. Tetlock and Dan Gardner: For confused souls, this is a masterclass on decision making. Aggregating the judgment of many people frequently beats the accuracy of the average group member. Philip explains that this doesn’t mean crowds are always smarter – aggregating the judgments of people who know nothing produces nothing.
11. The Arthasastra by Chanakya (Not by Thomas Trautman): There is a possibility that many of your fundamental questions have already been answered in this historical treatise.
Also, please share your innovative insights from any of the books you would have read during the lockdown?
P.S. The first four books were also referenced in our SaaStock Bangalore virtual meet-up, this September(the recording will be made available for all the participants). Also, a few of the innovative ideas around future mobility and AI/Data science will be announced by the UK-India Innovation Challenge Fund this week.