As a patent attorney, I do not often see books about patents that are likely to be interesting to the general public. The Invisible Edge: Taking your Strategy to the Next Level Using Intellectual Property by Mark Blaxill and Ralph Eckardt is an exception. It contains some very interesting and engaging stories, and at the same time it makes a convincing case for the use of intellectual property as a central tool in gaining a competitive edge.

The book starts with a Tiger Woods story on the first page. Mark O’Meara had a good but not spectacular golfing career until 1998 when at the age of 41 he won the Masters and the British Open. His sudden form improvement was attributable to a new type of golf ball. O’Meara’s friend Tiger Woods started using the new type of ball, and then everyone else followed. The main ball manufacturer then started making the new type of ball, but they ran into trouble because the new ball was patented. I suspect that this story and others like it are tweaked for dramatic effect, but they certainly help to make the book interesting.

The authors say that you can determine the strength of a company’s patent position by the number of times that company’s patents have been cited by other patents; in my view the usefulness of information derived from patent citations is marginal at best. The authors deny that there is any problem with patent trolls; in my view the purpose of the patent system, to encourage innovation which creates economic growth and ultimately benefits everyone, is not assisted by someone who buys up old patents from a bankrupt company at a bargain price and then uses them to extract unreasonable royalties from others.

The book’s central thrust is about the importance of intellectual property, with particular emphasis on patents. I think that this message is a vital one. Almost all economic growth over the last 200 years has been attributable to technological improvements, and future economic growth will depend on more innovation. Patents have been important in encouraging innovation. The book does not acknowledge the many failings of the current patents system, but it is still a great read.

A video review of this book is available at my new site, BusinessLessons.org.

What is it that makes some countries rich, while others remain poor? If only we could identify the right elements, perhaps everyone could be rich. The United States became rich because of its managerial culture, which was built on a Puritan worldview, according to Kenneth and William Hopper in their book The Puritan Gift: Reclaiming the American Dream Amidst Global Financial Chaos.

The authors say that traditional American society had four characteristics:

1. A conviction that the purpose of life, however vaguely conceived, was to establish the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth;
2. An aptitude for the exercise of mechanical skills;
3. A moral outlook that subordinated the interests of the individual to the group; and
4. An ability to assemble, galvanise and marshal financial, material and human resources to a single purpose.

The authors say that management of major corporations in the United States reflected these virtues during the golden age of management which lasted until the early 1970s. The rate of economic growth in the US has deteriorated since the 1970s because of the advent of “professional management”, consisting of people who do not have technical engineering skills and who focus on financial manipulation rather than the core technical competence of an organisation.

The authors have still not forgiven the British for the American Revolutionary War. British management practices are universally condemned, the authors conveniently omitting to mention that Great Britain became wealthy long before the US did. Australian management practices are roundly condemned on the basis of the country’s British origins and the fact that Australian managers are wasting the country’s resources in a spendthrift way, because the authors once read in a book that Australia, with a land area just 19% smaller than that of the US, can only manage a sustainable population of 8 million people.

Notwithstanding these idiosyncrasies, this is a very useful and thought-provoking book. It provides a useful corrective to the prevalent but mistaken belief that economic growth is fuelled by a “greed is good” mentality. While I think that the book’s criticisms of modern management techniques are overstated, I think they do provide useful starting points for examining management techniques rather than just accepting them unequivocally.

A video review of this book is available at my new site BusinessLessons.org.

How often do you find that all the people in the room are nodding their heads and agreeing that radical change is essential, but then they go away and do absolutely nothing about it? It is really difficult to get other people to change when you do not have the power to compel them; it is often really difficult to get yourself to change when you know you should. Chip and Dan Heath explain why change is difficult and how you can tackle it in their book Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard.

Problems with change manifest themselves in many different ways. Sometimes other people fail to see the need for change that you see. Sometimes the amount of change required seems so enormous that people are unable to motivate themselves to get started. Sometimes change falls victim to procrastination. Sometimes old habits seem too deeply ingrained.

The good news is that the authors have clear, practical advice which tackles all of these situations. It involves a rider, an elephant and a path. If you can just direct the rational rider, motivate the emotional elephant and shape the path, you can make difficult changes happen.

The book is filled with interesting stories which are enjoyable to read while at the same time making the authors’ advice easy to understand and remember. I normally find good books either entertaining or useful; this is one of the rare ones that is both useful and entertaining.

A video review of this book is available at my new site, BusinessLessons.org.