Book review: Creative Disruption by Simon Waldman

It's not often your boss gives you a book to read so it was with some surprise when my superior slapped a copy of Creative Disruption on my desk and wholeheartedly recommended it.

Normally I imagined work book clubs to be about discussing the latest chick-lit novel over the water cooler or a cup of instant coffee, but to have something stimulating to get my teeth into during the commute home was a welcome challenge.

Creative Disruption is an excellent book, it grabs the digital age head on and dismantles it for all to see. It pulls no punches about how the internet has transformed our lives since the early 1990s and fundamentally changed the way we do a lot of things, most of all, how we do business. As a journalist, the chapters which focus on the storm some traditional media companies face as their traditional profits erode and revenues evaporate was particularly poignant.

But the best thing about this book is the author's enthusiasm for the web and that it's not all doom and gloom. And this is a view I share.

Simon Waldman is clearly a man who 'gets it', not just someone who has an iPad and therefore thinks he knows exactly how technology now works because he can spend hours playing Angry Birds and converse with his teenage son about it. This is a guy who knows the goal posts have fundamentally shifted.

The book gives some great examples of corporate reinvention, with companies staying true to their core products and beliefs but learning to use technological change as a force for good inside their businesses. Waldman talks of technology rockstars tearing up the rule book inside companies which have become too comfortable with the way they do business.

Waldman seems to have really done his research and spent a lot of time interviewing the people whose views really matter to put together his book.

It's an inspiring read and for young journalists and professionals like me it's inspiring. It makes you realise that behind all the doom and gloom, profit warnings and bloggers taking pot shots that there are business models there - it just needs some real thought, new ideas and a hell of a lot of hard work to make them happen.