CFO Bookshelf Blog

Technology with the advancement of generative AI is seemingly moving at a pace we’ve rarely seen with other innovations. How does any organization step back and figure out how to adopt digital and AI technologies to support its strategic objectives? That’s where Rewired comes in. The subtitle for this new book is The McKinsey Guide to Outcompeting in the Age of Digital and AI. Our guest is Eric Lamarre, one of the co-authors of this practical playbook.

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I’m unsure if I’ve ever mentioned this on the podcast, but I have an accounting background. However, I consider myself a corporate finance guy, not an accounting professional. I say this because I’m not a fan of accounting books unless they include some business history in the content. Even though it’s accounting-centric, I found More Than a Numbers Game by Tom King hard to put down because the business history in this book is fascinating and useful.

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My first impressions stuck with me when I went through my second reading of Next Generation Retail by Deborah Weinswig and Renee Hartmann. This fascinating book about the new technology behind product messaging and deliverability are not just for retailers and big brands. Anyone in direct-to-consumer manufacturing and professional services firms will gain many ideas from this book. Our discussion with Renee Hartmann spanned from the metaverse to retail media during this episode.

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Derek Lidow is a former business founder of a major global semiconductor company that he ultimately sold. Today, he’s a professor at Princeton, where he teaches entrepreneurship, the topic of his newest book, The Entrepreneurs. This book is rich with historical stories of entrepreneurs doing the same things in the past as they are doing today. Big ideas include swarming, unintended consequences, the role of outsiders, society’s impact on entrepreneurs, and Schumpeter’s observations.

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While prepping for this episode, I started thinking about Walter Chrysler and John Jacob Raskob. With a great sense of urgency, both men built the tallest skyscrapers of their kind in the 1930s. But for what purpose? The author of The Birth of a Building first approaches the conception of a building from a philosophic point of view as he explains the idea, the financing, the design, and the construction of a real estate project.

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Curiosity drives much of the content on this podcast, and when Erik Hanberg’s book, The Little Book of Boards, showed up in my email, I felt compelled to buy it for several reasons. Of the six or seven boards I’ve served on, some have been boring experiences, others have been exceptional. I was curious if this book would have been valuable to me during my first board experience, which wasn’t great–it definitely would have been.

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Not only is Neil Dahlstrom the author of the business historical narrative Tractor Wars, but he’s also the Branded Properties and Heritage Manager at John Deere. Before that, he was Deere’s Corporate History and Archives Manager. Neil admits he wanted to be Indiana Jones when he grew up and even worked in a museum in high school. During this conversation, we learn what a corporate archivist does and how to start a company archive.

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Consumers are familiar with the cola wars, the PC wars, the FedEx/UPS wars, and the fast-food wars. But the tractor wars? Neil Dahlstrom is a historian and archivist for John Deere, and he’s the author of Tractor Wars, a historical narrative of the race to be the top manufacturer of power farming at the turn of the twentieth century. Will it be International Harvester, Ford, or the much smaller player, John Deere?

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