Executive Decision

Megan Murphy

What book should every businessperson be reading right now?

Proust Was a Neuroscientist, by Jonah Lehrer (Houghton Mifflin, $24). "I love this book because it studies the relationship between neurological intuitions and their translation into art. Lehrer does an amazing job of explaining neuroscience, its relationship to the arts, and how the study of both makes us better people. I learned that understanding our perceptions and senses allows people to communicate their experiences and grow both intellectually and emotionally. Lehrer studies the works of Marcel Proust, Paul Cézanne, Walt Whitman, Virginia Wolff and others as he breaks down human understanding into the categories of sight, hearing, language, taste and memory. Each of those senses explains a different part of our humanity while teaching us to trust ourselves and our own decisions. ... This book offers a great way to learn about art luminaries while learning about the science behind their work."

Megan Murphy, founder and digital curator of Artocracy.org, Spokane

Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies

By Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff

(Harvard Business Press, $29.95)

Suddenly, it seems, everybody's got to be a nerd. Not only do you have to know how to make and market a car under traditional rules, but you have to write a blog letting everyone know why your car has more going for it than the next company's. Not only are you told to advertise in print and on television, but you're advised to keep track of your products' reception on social networking sites such as Facebook.

If you're interested in finding out what shoe color will be the next hot seller, you have to test-market through online community forums. And that advertisement you just readied for the Seattle or Spokane market? Now you have to worry about how some tech-head will recut it for YouTube.

Computers have been an amazing resource for entrepreneurs large and small, but the authors of Groundswell ? both analysts with Forrester Research, a Massachusetts technology and market research firm ? point out that they've also engendered an unexpected social phenomenon, an up-from-the-masses "groundswell" that's compelling companies to change their publicity and marketing practices.

Embrace social-networking technologies, online ratings of purchases, more subtle but ubiquitous Web promotion of products, tagging and wikis, or risk being left behind. "The groundswell has changed the balance of power," declare Li and Bernoff, who have collected here numerous examples of corporations (including Dell, General Motors and Best Buy) experimenting with computer technologies to enhance their public perception, and thus their sales. Wake up and smell the Twitter.

"The groundswell is: A social trend in which people use technologies to get the things they need from each other, rather than from traditional institutions like corporations.

Looking at it this way, you can see that the roots of the groundswell reach way back before MySpace. On eBay you buy from other people instead of a store. Craigslist lets you find a job or a babysitter without searching through newspaper want ads. Linux is an operating system [for computers] created by engineers working together, rather than depending on a big company like Microsoft. Rotten Tomatoes[.com] lets you make moviegoing decisions based on reviews from other regular people. BitTorrent[.com] helps people get music from each other without going to a music store, just as Napster did in 2000.

Compared to the way things were in 2000, though, the trend of people connecting with and depending on each other online is clearly accelerating. That's why now is the time to understand the groundswell, where it comes from, and where it's going."