Actually, ” Disrupt! Think Epic. Be Epic” is not the full title of this very interesting book by Bill Jensen. The title goes on to succinctly describe the book, “25 Successful Habits for an Extremely Disruptive World.” Published by Net Minds Corporation, this book was released to very positive reviews earlier this month, August 2013.
Ever since Clayton Christensen, the Harvard Business School professor first wrote about ” disruptive innovation” the words, “disruptive” and ” disrupt” have gained new meaning in the world of business and technology.
Bill Jensen who has done huge amounts of research on the future of work, and whose passion is to simplify work takes an innovative (and, need I say ” disruptive”) approach to the structuring of this book. Instead of writing about different facets of disruption in today’s world and how they affect us, and lecture on what needs to be done, Jensen instead speaks to 100 men and women he believes are the “heroes of disruption”. These “100 Disruptive Heroes” come from different countries, have varying backgrounds and have made significant impact in what they are passionate about.
Jensen uses interviews with them to communicate the key points effectively. After all, there’s nothing as meaningful as hearing it straight from the person who has done it. I found it fascinating that Jensen’s heroes were selected by an equally interesting process. It involved asking people who they admired for being disruptive and getting them to recommend others whom they admired and so on. Finally a team of experts chose the final 100 who include, amongst others, Marissa Mayer, current CEO of Yahoo; and Silicon Valley author and thought leader, Guy Kawasaki,
Jensen’s premise is:” The people who will succeed today are those who figure out how to benefit from, or take advantage of, continuous disarray, disorder and disruption.” This will be an age of continuous personal disruption. Jensen identifies 25 habits he considers essential to ride out the storm and succeed in “today’s crazy world.”
A major benefit for readers is the free, “How To” Addendum with checklists for every habit and all the heroes’ interviews are on YouTube for additional viewing.
Some reviews of the book:
“Rollicking, fast-paced, turbo-charged. Bill Jensen urges us to embrace the power of originality. Read this book, then go disrupt something!”
— William C. Taylor, Co-Founder, Fast Company; Author, Practically Radical“This is really, really cool. I actually sent this to my mom, which I almost never do.” — Jamie Heywood, Chairman of PatientsLikeMe and one of 100 Great Disruptive Heroes
“Rollicking, fast-paced, turbo-charged. Bill Jensen urges us to embrace the power of originality. Read this book, then go disrupt something!”
— William C. Taylor, Co-Founder, Fast Company; Author, Practically Radical“This is really, really cool. I actually sent this to my mom, which I almost never do.” — Jamie Heywood, Chairman of PatientsLikeMe and one of 100 Great Disruptive Heroes
“Progress depends on the unreasonable man: George Bernard Shaw said that of his time. And Bill Jensen relentlessly champions that idea in ours. He’s collected the wisdom of some of the most successful unreasonable men and women in the world. You cannot afford miss any of their secrets in this masterful book!”
— Michael Bungay Stanier, Senior Partner of Box of Crayons and author of Do More Great Work
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