4 Books on Innovation

Innovate or Die

August 21st, 2021

Innovation is defined as "a process by which a domain, a product, or a service is renewed and brought up to date by applying new processes, introducing new techniques, or establishing successful ideas to create new value". As I try and expand my learning / reading outside the performance & nutrition realm, one of my main interests is innovation in other areas that can translate to my world. Over the past two years, there have been four books that have focused on innovation that have allowed me to think outside the box. Two of these books were tougher reads that challenged pre-conceived thoughts about business and technology. The other were biographies of two of the most successful entrepreneurs on the planet who have created two of the most disruptive businesses in history. These books have dug into how some of the smartest people in the world have pivoted and innovated to produce success in their respective areas. Hopefully, this short list can provide some ideas for reading outside the norm of training, coaching, and food, but still have applicable lessons that can be applied to improving performance & health. Listed below are the books with links if desired.

Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future

The first book I would recommend would be Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future. Regardless of your personal feelings about him, Elon Musk is arguably the most intelligent / influential person in the entire world. He runs the world's largest electric car company (Tesla), sends rockets into space and lands them back on Earth to re-use the parts (SpaceX), has plans of redesigning city-travel (Boring Company), and is developing a brain-microchip to potentially cure neurological conditions (Neuralink). He has singlehandedly changed the car, space, and energy industries. This book gives an in-depth overview of Elon Musk's life and elaborates on the early struggles of Tesla, SpaceX, and Elon's personal life. SpaceX and Tesla should have gone bankrupt numerous times. Even with all of his success, Elon Musk still hasn't reached his ultimate goal, which is to live on Mars. To be honest, I couldn't put this book down because it is incredible what one person has been able to design and create. I am still amazed how he runs two of the most innovative companies in the world at the same time and has the capability to move the entire crypto asset class up or down 25% with a single tweet. This book is more entertainment than anything, but highly recommend.

Personal Takeaway: Invest your energy in solving large problems that can improve the world. For me, that would be nutritional knowledge / support and positive health behaviors

2. The Age of CryptoCurrency

Several years ago, multiple financial gurus that I follow started recommended bitcoin, ethereum, and other cryptocurrencies as the next best investment thesis. At first, I was very skeptical of this magic internet money and didn't comprehend how this bitcoin could change the financial ecosystem. This led me to buy and read The Age of CryptoCurrency. This book is a no-brainer if you want to learn more about the blockchain technology or are on the fence about investing in cryptos. It digs into what the blockchain technology is, how bitcoin was created, how it could be adopted across the globe, and most importantly, reasons it could fail. It is not a super easy read as some of the terminology and concepts are still above my head and I probably will never fully grasp completely. Even though it is a pretty complex space, the main message is that blockchain technology will keep evolving as a way to make our lives cheaper, more secure, and more efficient. With the constant technological improvements, mainstream adoption, and investments from deep pockets, I am as bullish as ever on the future of blockchain technology for practical day-to-day solutions. I believe that cryptocurrencies are a diversified asset class that should be part of every single person's financial portfolio.

Personal Takeaway: Buy bitcoin and Ethereum. Invest more on dips.

3. The Lean Startup

One of my latest reads, The Lean Startup gives unorthodox ideas on how to create, analyze, and learn differently in your business or organization to properly measure growth and success. Contrary to other business / organizational development books, the Lean Startup creates a framework to measure success faster and more efficiently and not just based upon "vanity measurements". This could apply directly to the performance setting, especially with such an emphasis on new technologies in today's sport and fitness culture. One of the main concepts of the book, the "minimum viable product" allows you to measure whether an initial idea has merit without spending excessive time, energy, effort on features that are not important to what you are actually measuring. Even though Lean Startup can get a little repetitive at times and took me a while to read to fully digest some of the concepts, it has a lot of applicable ideas and tactics to use when creating a new product or program.

Personal Takeaway: Make decisions off of metrics that are actually relevant to your main goals.

4. The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon

When you think about innovation...think Amazon. You can order anything from your couch and they have developed the infrastructure and logistics to deliver it to your door within 24 hours for the cheapest price you can find. Not to mention, they are one of the largest advertising companies in the world and most of the biggest companies in the world use Amazon's servers to store their data and run their apps / websites (AWS). The Book, The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon, goes into how Amazon was founded by Jeff Bezos as a book store in the early days of the internet. He used initial money from family / friends to start the business and constantly innovated throughout the years to survive the internet bubble. Included are multiple stories of unorthodox business decisions and tactical decisions that went completely against the norm. The main points of emphasis in this book are Jeff Bezos' ruthlessness, relentless pursuit to make the customer experience better (cheaper, more efficient, simpler), and his constant push to find ways to put Amazon out of business to make it a stronger company for the future. Just like the Elon Musk book, this book is an entertaining read and will give you a little more appreciation about how Amazon was founded and has pivoted over the years to become the behemoth it is today.

Personal Takeaway: Make the athlete experience more efficient and learn new skills outside your current skillset.

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