What We’re Reading from the September 15 Issue of CIO Magazine

Macrowikinomics 

Rebooting Business and the World

By Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams

These bestselling authors argue that the world cannot continue the way it’s going—that without radical change, unrest will only increase, the Earth will continue to warm, and economies will collapse. The answer, they say, lies in our unprecedented connectivity. Wikis and platforms like them connect innovative people around the world to those with the drive and expertise to bring their ideas to life. The revolution will be crowdsourced. Portfolio Penguin, $27.95

Empowered 

Unleash Your Employees, Energize Your Customers, Transform Your Business

By Josh Bernoff and Ted Schadler

Book According to the authors of Empowered, your company will never be flexible enough to keep up with the world’s changing demands or your customers’ evolving needs. But your employees can be. If, that is, IT supports and encourages the ideas of the company’s most creative, tech-savvy workers. Sometimes that just means working with them to add some unsupported consumer technology to the network. Sometimes it means setting up servers and investing thousands of dollars. To help you identify which ideas are worth what level of investment, the book includes an Effort-Value Evaluation quiz. (Read a related article by Schadler, “CIOs: Empower Your Employees’ Use of Consumer Tech.”) Harvard Business Review Press, $27.95

Technical Impact

Making Your Information Technology Effective, and Keeping It That Way

By Al Kuebler

Book Kuebler draws from his own long and varied experience as a CIO to help you keep IT relevant and make your career count. The book is brief and—perhaps as an illustration of its effectiveness—uses flowcharts and a “book map.” The map allows you to jump right to the page that covers what you want to do at your company—say, commercialize an IT function. CreateSpace, $19.95

IT Project Failures

By Michael Krigsman

Blog Sometimes projects will fail. It’s unavoidable. But Krigsman, a consultant, is determined to figure out why they failed so that doomed projects can be killed sooner, at less cost, or avoided altogether. Recent posts include a look at the government’s approach to failures, a debate about social media’s role in customer relationship management systems, and 12 signs that characterize IT projects that won’t work, including overscheduled subject-matter experts. The blog is updated about twice a week. www.zdnet.com/blog/projectfailures

Rethinking Risk

How Companies Sabotage Themselves and What They Must Do Differently

By Joseph W. Koletar

Book This book urges readers to take a more human view of risk—both its causes and how it’s assessed. Fraud, for example, is a common and costly risk for corporations, but is it accounted for as well as the possibility of a data center fire? Koletar, a former FBI special agent, recommends cultivating employees as sources of information because, when a fraud is discovered, more than 40 percent of the time it was thanks to a tip, not internal controls or an external investigation. AMACOM Books, $29.95