How brands grow: what marketers don’t know, by Byron Sharp

Based on analysis of twenty years of rigorous purchasing data from many categories and markets, this book debunks some of the myths about how marketing builds business success. An Aussie academic who worked with the great Andrew Ehrenberg of London South Bank University, Sharp shows how a lot of marketers focus on the wrong things, and tells you what you should focus on. Read More

Beyond the Familiar, by Patrick Barwise and Seán Meehan

These two take an enterprise-wide approach to creating organic growth, with a simple, clear and actionable model. They agree with Sharp that the only differentiation really worth pursuing is to be the business that delivers on the category basics better than competitors. Their previous book, Simply Better, laid out that argument in full. This time they’re showing how to put it into practice. They place a very high value on customer feedback, Read More

“Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.”

Sign hanging in Einstein’s office at Princeton. Read More