Book Review: How Google Works

I've been a google fan for a long time. I've read some books earlier about how they work, but when I heard that Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg have been giving their name and content to the book How Google Works, I had to read it.

Book takes a broad view on how the work is been done at Google. In many times it does spent time on talking about values, but ideas of the values are then clarified with concrete examples. Overall the book is comprehensive view to Google as their high management sees it.

Book is structured quite nicely. It starts with culture, goes through strategy, talent handling, decision making, communication, innovation and then finishes with the moonshot ideology. Other that the just the high level themes there are concrete ways of working for each section.

I found the book interesting and important. Everyone in the product development industry would benefit of reading it. Every company can't work like google, they do have special possibilities due to such a strong position in the web, but still there's lot to learn to many companies.

I highly recommend this book to everyone interested on making companies better.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Kirja-arvostelu: Henkka Hyppönen Pelon hinta

Sorry for the English speaking readers this review is in Finnish. Reason is that this book hasn't been published in any other languages than in Finnish.

Henkka Hyppösen Pelon hinta tuli minulle lukuun pienen kirjakerhomme kautta. Ollakseni täysin rehellinen, en usko, että olisi kirjaa muuten lukenut. Pidän kyllä Henkka Hyppösestä ja hänen tavastaan esiintyä, mutta oli vaikea nähdä häntä tiedekirjailijana.

Tämä ajatus Henkka Hyppösestä kirjan kirjoittajana, kummitteli mielessäni koko kirjan alkuosan. Olen myös lukenut tosi vähän suomenkielistä kirjallisuutta viimeiseen kymmeneen vuoteen, niin meni pitkään päästä sisälle koko kirjaan.

Aihe sinänsä oli mielenkiintoinen ja siellä oli muutamia tosi hyviä tarinoita pelosta. Lisäksi aihetta käsiteltiin monesta eri näkökulmasta ja tuotiin hyvinkin erilaisia tutkimuksia esiin.

Jossain kirjan puolivälissä alkoi jo tuntua, että Henkka Hyppönen oli halunnut laittaa kaikki hyvät tarinat ja tutkimukset samaan kirjaan ja välillä yhteys pelkoon oli jo aika kaukaa haettua. Tämä vaivasi koko lopputeosta, kaikesta yritettiin tehdä pelkoa ja pelolle koitettiin löytää hintansa. Esimerkkinä laskelma siitä kuinka monta yritystä Suomessa jää perustamatta pelon takia, se laskelma oli jo aika kaukaa haettua.

Sinänsä kirja oli soljuva ja helposti luettava. Tekisi mieli suositella kirjaa monille, mutta toisaalta taas aihepiiristä on varmasti parempiakin kirjoja. Jos Henkka Hyppösestä pitää TV tai radio-ohjelmien perusteella, niin ehkä tähänkin opukseen kannatta tutustua.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Book Review: Soccernomics: Why England Loses, Why Germany and Brazil Win

I didn't book Soccernomics to read, only because of soccer. I wanted to read it to understand the power of data analytics. It turned out to be interesting also from soccer point of view.

Book looked soccer from all the different angles. It explained the economics of soccer, how money does mean a lot in soccer. Also it explained why some team are better on their transfers. But it does talk also quite much about what's happening in the field.

The whole idea of the book is to analyze countries and their enthusiasm towards soccer. Then based on many different data select, which are countries that will in the future dominate soccer.

I liked the book very much. It was just the season of Leicester winning the Premier league, which kind of destroyed some of the thoughts of the book. Most probably Leicester was a one season wonder and can be explained as a statistical bias. Still for the sake of soccer, I wish the thoughts in the book don't happen exactly as they predict.

It was an interesting book and I recommend to read it. Statistics and statistical analysis is field that will grow all the time, when more and more data becomes available. This is a good start to understand it more.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Book Review: Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design

I can't remember who recommended the book Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design to me, but I'm glad someone did. It's an excellent book about happiness and how our homes, neighborhoods and commuting affect to our lives.

Book introduces really many interesting facts about how other people and the neighborhood affect to our happiness. Happiness have always been interesting topic for me, so I was keen on reading more about the subject. I've always had a hunch about how important your neighbors and the contacts with them are, but this really gave some good statistics about it.

Happy City goes through data and experiments around the world on how cities and streets affect to us. For almost 100 years cities have been build to run by cars and with current population, it has actually made us less free. Many people spend enormous amount of times in cars and are unhappy because of that.

Book also discusses a lot about cars versus other ways to commute. Maybe on that end, book is bit US centric, but many of the things affect to everyone around the world. Commuting affects to us a lot, the way you commute, how long you commute and with whom you commute affect in numerous ways. Book introduces many interesting studies about the subject. One example was a study that said that commuting to work over 45 minutes raises a risk of divorce by 40%. Book is full on nice anecdotes and studies like this.

As with any other book, it's good to have critical eye on the studies and ideas, but those definitely will raise thoughts for everyone. It's an excellent book and quite easy to read. I recommend the book to everyone.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Book Review: Talk like Ted by Carmine Gallo

I've recently been more and more involved in public speaking events. Eventhough I've read other books about the subject, I wanted to give Talk Like TED: The 9 Public-Speaking Secrets of the World's Top Minds a try.

As you could expect, book was made interesting to read. It covered variety of topics related to speaking via TED talks. Some of the TED talks were familiar to in advance, but some I had to watch right away to get more understanding about those.

The book is divided to three main categories: Emotional, Novel and Memorable. Under these topic book goes through all the important parts of creating a great speech. Book backs up the ideas with proper research and still keeps ideas easy and understandable.

Ideas as such were mainly familiar to me, but it still was interesting to read more about those. Storytelling and emotionally appealing to the audience is difficult, but works really well. Keeping audience focused is always difficult and this book introduced some good ideas for myself for that purpose.

As a Finn and European, I have to say that book is quite American. Having some experience on presenting in different countries, all the things don't work as well in different countries as they do in US. That's just a good to keep in mind, still the ideas are great and you need to find ways how to benefit those with your audience.

Overall I really liked the book. It's easy and enjoyable to read. It's full of great ideas and gives good tips for all presenters. I highly recommend to read this book,. Everyone will benefit from it.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen