This book explains how to understand, create, and apply revolutions in business and technology. This book provides ideas, methods, and examples and shows you how to use them to create useful and exciting innovations. Taking things apart creates revolutions is the simple, one-line answer, but the more I looked into this relatively simple idea...
"Nine field guides explore diverse topics such as urban geology and geoheritage in Metro Vancouver, the processes and postglacial adjustments of the Cordilleran Ice Sheet, and human interaction and adaptation to geological and climate changes in British Columbia"--
The Pebble and the Avalanche shows how the Internet, the auto industry, music downloading, and other rapidly evolving industries are all connected by the same dynamic -- disaggregation. Moshe Yudkowsky shows why this dynamic is crucial to survival in the 21st century marketplace, and how you can use it to bring about change in your industry. Disaggregation means taking things apart -- for example, the break-up of AT&T, which greatly improved phone service. But there are more subtle examples. Separating information from the storage medium -- digital music doesn't rely on records, tapes, or CDs; digital photographs don't require paper; and digital movies don't need film -- has enabled millions of people to create and share their work (and others') far more easily than ever before, with enormous implications. Think of this process as an avalanche: at the top of a mountain, rocks are jammed together in a solid mass. Pry some of these rocks loose and you will unleash a tremendous outpouring of energy that sweeps everything from its path. The same thing happens in technology: with the right innovation, you can pry the pieces of technology apart and unleash an outpouring of powerful ideas that shake apart whole industries. Yudkowsky details exactly how disaggregation works, describing five different ways of taking things apart, and the many ways it can be used to generate new innovations. The Pebble and the Avalanche provides strategies for successfully adapting to a disaggregation revolution, and points towards the future, identifying several industries that are about to be completely transformed by disaggregation.
A fell and ancient sorcery has thrust the kingdoms surrounding the mighty Grimwall mountains into battle with forces of great evil. When Tip and Beau, two Warrows from the village of Twoforks, try to save a mortally wounded soldier, they inherit a vital mission. The dying swordsman gives them a simple copper coin and a cryptic message: “Take the coin east to Agron, and warn all.” But the East holds terrors beyond anything Tip and Beau have ever known. Modru, the black Mage, has begun his violent reign over the Free Folk—and unleashed his army of deadly emissaries on the young Warrows. Now Tip and Beau’s mysterious quest has become a matter of life and death. For their momentous arrival in Agron will signal a war that threatens to destroy worlds far beyond their beloved Mithgar. “Some of the finest imaginative action.”—Columbus Dispatch “Evocative and compelling. Storytelling at its best.”—Jennifer Roberson
