A personal reference shelf
People whose work I want to keep within reach.
This page is as much for me as for anyone visiting. A place to glance, remember an idea, and return to the work behind it. The list will grow.
Innovation & business
His work on disruptive innovation and Jobs to Be Done offers a way to understand why successful businesses can miss what comes next.
Look for the progress someone is trying to make. Question the assumptions that made the current model successful.
Information & invention
The mathematician and engineer whose information theory gave us a new way to understand communication, noise, and the limits of a channel.
Find the underlying structure. Leave room for play, curiosity, and a simpler way to pose the problem.
Basketball & excellence
Six NBA championships with the Chicago Bulls. A career that remains a reference point for competitive excellence.
Return to the fundamentals. Preparation and repeated effort are part of the performance.
Engineering & markets
The founder of Interactive Brokers, whose work helped move trading from manual processes toward computer-driven systems.
Look for the expensive, repetitive part of a system. An engineering improvement can change its economics.
Mathematics & investing
A mathematician who applied probability to blackjack and financial markets, testing ideas against the world outside the classroom.
Test the edge. Understand the odds and the risk before deciding how much to commit.
Decisions & uncertainty
An investment thinker whose work examines the relationship between skill, luck, and the quality of a decision.
Separate the quality of the decision from the outcome. Ask how much was skill, how much was luck, and what can be learned.
The companion shelf: books and the ideas I want to remember