What We're Reading
At Creative Thirst we believe that creativity and innovation grow from interaction and continuous learning. When learning is a part of a culture where thinking is nurtured, our collective aspirations are set free and we can create results that truly make a difference.
Our library is open to all of our employees and partnered clients for the benefit of all by developing our minds. The human mind was designed to share ideas, so if you’ve read any good books lately let’s sit down over a cup of coffee and discuss our thoughts.
We practice serious creativity and encourage you to pick up a book from our reading list or suggest one that we may have not read yet. We’re always looking to expand our thinking.
Take a peek into what we’re feeding our brains:
Web Analytics: An Hour A Day
Avinash Kaushik
From the Publisher:
Web Analytics: An Hour A Day is the first book by an in-the-trenches practitioner of web analytics. It provides a unique insider’s perspective of the challenges and opportunities that web analytics presents to each person who touches the Web in your organization. Rather than spamming you with metrics and definitions, Web Analytics: An Hour A Day will enhance your mindset and teach you how to fish for yourself.
Avinash Kaushik is a expert in web analytics and author of the top-rated blog Occam’s Razor. In this book, he goes beyond web analytics concepts and definitions to provide a step-by-step guide to implementing a successful web analytics strategy. His revolutionary approach to web analytics challenges prevalent thinking about the field and guides readers to a solution that will provide truly informed and actionable insights.
Web Analytics Demystified: A Marketer's Guide to Understanding How Your Web Site Affects Your Business
Eric Peterson
Web Analytics Demystified - A Marketer's Guide to Understanding How Your Web Site Affects Your Business is intended to be exactly that, a useful guide to help you get more out of your current online investments.
Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
Robert B. Cialdini
Quite seriously the best book ever written on the science of persuasion. This book is essential for understanding the psychological foundations of marketing and selling both online and off.
I'd like to also share a great video showing how LinkedIn leveraged several persuasive principal outlined in Robert Cialdini's book on the web.
Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't
Jim Collins
From the Publisher:
Based on an extensive five-year study conducted by Collins and a research team he affectionately refers to as "the Chimps," Good to Great defines and analyzes the practices that allowed 11 companies to make the rare transition from solid to outstanding performance. One of the first surprises of the book is the list of companies Collins focuses on: Circuit City, Gillette, Walgreens, and Wells Fargo haven't been touted as top performers in that way that GE or Coca-Cola, for instance, have. Nonetheless, the companies chosen have all met the rigorous criteria that Collins developed to measure the good-to-great transition. Some of the other revelations in the book concern the lack of correlation between executive compensation and corporate performance; the fact that technology did not in itself engender corporate transformation; and the scant attention that these upward-trending companies paid to such issues as managing change or motivating people.
Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies
Jim Collins and Jerry Porras
From the Publisher:
Drawing upon a six-year research project at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, Collins and Porras took eighteen truly exceptional and long-lasting companies — they have an average age of nearly one hundred years and have outperformed the general stock market by a factor of fifteen since 1926 — and studied each company in direct comparison to one of its top competitors. They examined the companies from their very beginnings to the present day — as start-ups, as midsize companies, and as large corporations. Throughout, the authors asked: "What makes the truly exceptional companies different from other companies?"
Blue Ocean Strategy
W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne
From the Publisher:
Blue Ocean Strategy presents a systematic approach to making the competition irrelevant and outlines principles and tools any company can use to create and capture blue oceans. A landmark work that upends traditional thinking about strategy, this book charts a bold new path to winning the future.
The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More
Chris Anderson
From the Publisher:
In the most important business book since The Tipping Point, Chris Anderson shows how the future of commerce and culture isn't in hits, the high-volume head of a traditional demand curve, but in what used to be regarded as misses - the endlessly long tail of that same curve.
What Sticks: Why Most Advertising Fails and How to Guarantee Yours Succeeds
Rex Briggs and Greg Stuart
From the Publisher:
This is a comprehensive and solutions-oriented book that outlines how any marketer, at any level, can guarantee their advertising succeeds.
Marketers cannot ignore the findings or the solutions revealed in What Sticks, such as: * Why 47% of the advertising campaigns studied didn’t work and what you can do to guarantee yours does * How to spend the same advertising budget, but get better results * How to get your CFO and CEO to eagerly increase your marketing & advertising budget * How to forecast next year’s advertising budget (Hint: It’s not by using last year’s spending!) * How to immediately fix your advertising by applying these principles and real nuggets of wisdom
Small Pieces Loosely Joined: A Unified Theory of the Web
David Weinberger
From the Publisher:
In this one-of-a-kind book of social commentary, David Weinberger takes us beyond the hype, revealing what is truly revolutionary about this new medium. Just as Marshall McLuhan forever altered our view of broadcast media, Weinberger shows that the Web is transforming not only social institutions but also bedrock concepts of our world such as space, time, self, knowledge -- even reality itself. The Web would be important enough if it hooked up our species on a global scale. But, Weinberger argues, it is doing much more than that. Unlike previous technologies such as the phone or fax, the Web is a permanent public space that gathers value every time someone posts a Web page, responds on a discussion board, or replies to a mail list. More and more of our lives together are being lived in this new, second world that intersects the real world in ways we have only begun to understand.
Building Strong Brands
David A. Aaker
From the publisher:
As industries turn increasingly hostile, it is clear that strong brand-building skills are needed to survive and prosper. In David Aaker's book, Managing Brand Equity, managers discovered the value of a brand as a strategic asset and a company's primary source of competitve advantage.
Storytelling: Branding in Practice
Klaus Fog, Christian Budtz, Baris Yakaboylu
From the publisher:
As a concept, storytelling has won a decisive foothold in the debate on how brands of the future will be shaped. Yet, companies are still confused as to how and why storytelling can make a difference to their business. What is the point of telling stories anyway? What makes a good story? And how do you go about telling it so that it supports the company brand? This book is written for practitioners by practitioners. Through real life examples, simple guidelines and practical tools, the book aims to inspire companies to use storytelling as a means of building their brand - internally as well as externally.
Home Page Usability: 50 Websites Deconstructed
Jakob Nielsen, Marie Tahir, Marie Tahir, Marie Tahir
From the publisher:
Quick. You have 10 seconds to show your face to the world. What does your homepage say? In a world of information overload and dying dot.coms, your homepage must grab the attention of visitors, tell them where they are, and let them know where they can go. Does your site pass the test? Homepage Usability is all about making that first impression. Is your tag line effective? Can visitors find your search box? How difficult is the page to navigate? What percentage of your homepage is devoted to actual content? By putting 50 of today's top sites to the test, web usability experts jakob Nielsen and Marie Tahir show you what makes for good -- and not so good -- first impressions. This book contains hundreds of examples that you can employ on your own homepage. Apply the best. Avoid the worst.
Designing Web Usability: The Practice of Simplicity
Jacob Nielsen
From the publisher:
Can you afford to be less knowledgable than your competitors? Over 100,000 Internet professionals around the world have already bought this book. Users experience the usability of a site before they have committed to using it and before they have spent any money on potential purchases. The web is the ultimate environment for empowerment, and he or she who clicks the mouse decides everything. Jakob Nielson, shares with you the full weight of his wisdom and experience. From content and page design to designing for ease of navigation and users with disabilities, Nielsen delivers complete direction on how to connect with any web user, in any situation.
Train of Thoughts: Designing the Effective Web Experience
John Lenker
From the publisher:
John Lenker provides insight for how Web enterprises must interact with people to be successful in the twenty-first century. This book is non-technical and is written not only for Web designers and developers, but also for any stakeholder in a Web enterprise that has a vested interest in ensuring that their online resources become more meaningful and valuable. In Train of Thoughts, you'll learn to: understand what motivates people's online behavior and then convert that motivation into online results; communicate with people effectively online so that they really understand what the value proposition of an online resource is; combine forward-thinking information design techniques with systems that pave experiential pathways for people to journey along in pursuit of their interests and goals; properly employ personalization to build relationships; understand the true role of creativity online; uncover screen-space designs that aid and inspire the mind; reconcile business objectives with stakeholder needs; approach process in a way that keeps projects on time, on budget, and on target; create online resources that actually work when they're completed; actualize creative vision appropriately for the Web.
About Face 2.0: The Essentials of Interaction Design
Alan Cooper, Robert Reimann
From the publisher:
Cooper’s insights are unified by one powerful idea: organize software development around people, not technology. Meaning what? Among other things: Understand users’ goals -- not just the tasks they perform to achieve them. Design first, code second. Separate design and programming responsibilities. Design for behavior, not form -- otherwise, you’ll spent months “iterating” out bad interactions and still wind up with a deeply flawed product.
Cooper and Robert Reimann weave together strategy and tactics -- an approach that’s as reasonable as it is rare. After all, you can’t just “follow a cookbook” (or for that matter, a style guide). There’s no “perfect dialog box” for every user. What’s more, many crucial design issues go far deeper than the surface of a CRT. So Cooper offers powerful tools for understanding your users and how they interact with software.
Experience Economy: Work Is Theater and Every Business a Stage
B. Joseph Pine, James H. Gilmore, James H. Gilmore, James H. Gilmore
From the publisher:
With The Experience Economy, Pine & Gilmore explore how successful companies - using goods as props and services as the stage - create experiences that engage customers in an inherently personal way. Why does a cup of coffee cost more at a trendy cafe than it does at the corner diner or when brewed at home? It's the value that the experience holds for the individual that determines the worth of the offering and the work of the business.
