Publications & Resources

Innovative Thinking

Digital Disruption: Unleashing the Next Wave of Innovation
James McQuivey

The barriers to entry in your market just vanished. Unexpected competitors are swarming in. Are you ready?

You always knew digital was going to change things, but you didn’t realize how close to home it would hit. In every industry, digital competitors are taking advantage of new platforms, tools, and relationships to undercut competitors, get closer to customers, and disrupt the usual ways of doing business. The only way to compete is to evolve.

James McQuivey of Forrester Research has been teaching people how to do this for over a decade. He’s gone into the biggest companies, even in traditional industries like insurance and consumer packaged goods, and changed the way they think about innovation. Now he’s sharing his approach with you.

McQuivey will show you how Dr. Hugh Reinhoff of Ferrokin BioSciences disrupted the pharmaceutical industry, streamlining connections with doctors and regulators to bring molecules to market far faster – and then sold out for $100 million. How Charles Teague and his team of four people created Lose It!, a weight loss application that millions have adopted, achieving rapid success and undermining titans like Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig in the process.

Regardless of your background and industry, you can learn how to be a digital disruptor too. First, adopt the right mindset: Take risks, invest as cheaply as possible, and build on existing platforms to find the fastest path to solving a customer’s problem.

Steve Jobs
Walter Isaacson

Based on more than 40 interviews with Jobs conducted over two years – as well as interviews with more than a hundred family members, friends, adversaries, competitors, and colleagues – Walter Isaacson has written a riveting story of the roller-coaster life and searingly intense personality of a creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing.

At a time when America is seeking ways to sustain its innovative edge, and when societies around the world are trying to build digital-age economies, Jobs stands as the ultimate icon of inventiveness and applied imagination. He knew that the best way to create value in the twenty-first century was to connect creativity with technology. He built a company where leaps of the imagination were combined with remarkable feats of engineering.  

Although Jobs cooperated with this book, he asked for no control over what was written nor even the right to read it before it was published. He put nothing off-limits. He encouraged the people he knew to speak honestly. And Jobs speaks candidly, sometimes brutally so, about the people he worked with and competed against. His friends, foes, and colleagues provide an unvarnished view of the passions, perfectionism, obsessions, artistry, devilry, and compulsion for control that shaped his approach to business and the innovative products that resulted.

Driven by demons, Jobs could drive those around him to fury and despair. But his personality and products were interrelated, just as Apple’s hardware and software tended to be, as if part of an integrated system. His tale is instructive and cautionary, filled with lessons about innovation, character, leadership, and values.

The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail 
Clayton M. Christensen

The bestselling classic on disruptive innovation, renowned author Clayton M. Christensen. His work is cited by the world’s best-known thought leaders, from Steve Jobs to Malcolm Gladwell. In this classic bestseller, innovation expert Clayton Christensen shows how even the most outstanding companies can do everything right – yet still lose market leadership. Read this international bestseller to avoid a similar fate.

Clay Christensen – who authored the award-winning Harvard Business Review article “How Will You Measure Your Life?” – explains why most companies miss out on new waves of innovation. No matter the industry, he says a successful company with established products will get pushed aside unless managers know how and when to abandon traditional business practices. Offering both successes and failures from leading companies as a guide, The Innovator’s Dilemma gives you a set of rules for capitalizing on the phenomenon of disruptive innovation.

Sharp, cogent, provocative, and one of the most influential business books of all time – The Innovator’s Dilemma is the book no manager or entrepreneur should be without.

How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed
Ray Kurzweil

The bold futurist and bestselling author explores the limitless potential of reverse-engineering the human brain. Ray Kurzweil is arguably today’s most influential – and often controversial – futurist. In How to Create a Mind, Kurzweil presents a provocative exploration of the most important project in human-machine civilization – reverse engineering the brain to understand precisely how it works and using that knowledge to create even more intelligent machines.

Kurzweil discusses how the brain functions, how the mind emerges from the brain, and the implications of vastly increasing the powers of our intelligence in addressing the world’s problems. He thoughtfully examines emotional and moral intelligence and the origins of consciousness and envisions the radical possibilities of our merging with the intelligent technology we are creating.

Certain to be one of the most widely discussed and debated science books of the year, How to Create a Mind is sure to take its place alongside Kurzweil’s previous classics which include Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever and The Age of Spiritual Machines.

Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think
Viktor Mayer-Schonberger and Kenneth Cukier

A revelatory exploration of the hottest trend in technology and the dramatic impact it will have on the economy, science, and society at large.

Which paint color is most likely to tell you that a used car is in good shape? How can officials identify the most dangerous New York City manholes before they explode? And how did Google searches predict the spread of the H1N1 flu outbreak?

The key to answering these questions, and many more, is big data. “Big data” refers to our burgeoning ability to crunch vast collections of information, analyze it instantly, and draw sometimes profoundly surprising conclusions from it. This emerging science can translate myriad phenomena—from the price of airline tickets to the text of millions of books—into searchable form, and uses our increasing computing power to unearth epiphanies that we never could have seen before. A revolution on par with the Internet or perhaps even the printing press, big data will change the way we think about business, health, politics, education, and innovation in the years to come. It also poses fresh threats, from the inevitable end of privacy as we know it to the prospect of being penalized for things we haven’t even done yet, based on big data’s ability to predict our future behavior.

In this brilliantly clear, often surprising work, two leading experts explain what big data is, how it will change our lives, and what we can do to protect ourselves from its hazards. Big Data is the first big book about the next big thing.

General Banking

The End of Money and the Future of Civilization  
Thomas H. Greco Jr.

Like the proverbial fish who doesn't know what water is, we swim in an economy built on money that few of us comprehend, and, most definitely, what we don't know is hurting us.

Very few people realize that the nature of money has changed profoundly over the past three centuries, or – as has been clear with the latest global financial crisis – the extent to which it has become a political instrument used to centralize power, concentrate wealth, and subvert popular government. On top of that, the economic growth imperative inherent in the present global monetary system is a main driver of global warming and other environmental crises.

The End of Money and the Future of Civilization demystifies the subjects of money, banking, and finance by tracing historical landmarks and important evolutionary shifts that have changed the essential nature of money. Greco's masterful work lays out the problems and then looks to the future for a next stage in money's evolution that can liberate us as individuals and communities from the current grip of centralized and politicized money power.

Greco provides specific design proposals and exchange-system architectures for local, regional, national, and global financial systems. He offers strategies for their implementation and outlines actions grassroots organizations, businesses, and governments will need to take to achieve success.

Ultimately, The End of Money and the Future of Civilization provides the necessary understanding – for entrepreneurs, activists, and civic leaders – to implement approaches toward monetary liberation. These approaches would empower communities, preserve democratic institutions, and begin to build economies that are sustainable, democratic, and insulated from the financial crises that plague the dominant monetary system.

Bank 3.0: Why Banking Is No Longer Somewhere You Go But Something You Do
Brett King

The first edition of Bank 2.0 – #1 on Amazon's bestseller list for banking and finance in the US, UK, Germany, France, and Japan for over 18 months – took the financial world by storm and became synonymous with disruptive customer behavior, technology shift, and new banking models.

In Bank 3.0, Brett King brings the story up to date with the latest trends redefining financial services and payments – from the global scramble for dominance of the mobile wallet and the expectations created by tablet computing to the operationalising of the cloud, the explosion of social media, and the rise of the de-banked consumer, who doesn't need a bank at all.

Bank 3.0 shows that the gap between customers and financial services players is rapidly widening, leaving massive opportunities for new, non-bank competitors to totally disrupt the industry.

FDIC Director Suits - Lessons Learned: American Association of Bank Directors 
David Baris and Jared Kelly

What bank directors can learn from FDIC suits against directors of failed banks.

Bank Director Regulatory Burden Report: American Association of Bank Directors
David Baris and Robert Hopkins

This report is the result of an extensive review of federal legislation, federal bank regulations, and federal banking agency guidance by the American Association of Bank Directors (AABD) to identify new and existing provisions that can and do overwhelm bank directors. The AABD has identified over 800 legislative and regulatory provisions that have accumulated over many decades that impact the responsibilities of bank directors! It is evident that no one - not Congress and not the federal banking agencies – is evaluating the aggregate effect government actions are having on the duties and responsibilities of bank directors.

Softcover: $24.95
E-Book: $9.99

The Ultimate Guide for Bank Directors
Catherine Ghiglieri and Jewell D. Hoover

Written by two former bank regulators and co-founders of The Bank Directors’ College, The Ultimate Guide for Bank Directors provides a roadmap for navigating the challenges facing the financial services industry today.  Containing practical examples, along with insights to the “rules of thumb” used by bank regulators, this indispensible guide offers bank directors the information and knowledge necessary to meet their fiduciary responsibilities.

Catherine Ghiglieri is the former Texas Banking Commissioner.  She spent 18 years at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (“OCC”) and is President of Ghiglieri & Company, a bank consulting firm in Austin, Texas.

Jewell D. Hoover is President of Hoover and Associates, LLC, a bank consulting firm in Charlotte, North Carolina.  She is the former Deputy Comptroller for the OCC’s Western District and is on the board of a Fortune 500 company, which is a publicly traded financial institution.

James K. Hopkins

To remain in a healthy physical body, medical practitioners recommend an annual physical where you are thoroughly looked over, poked and prodded and run through a series of diagnostic tests to catch anything that might be ailing you before it gets the better of you. This annual event is known the world over as a physical, and anyone that has ever gone through one can testify that it is not necessarily a fun experience, but it does often provide good news, or at the very least news that can be treated and often cured. In corporate America, industries and companies put themselves through audits each year, most often dealing with financial results. Many times the company will include functional audits on the productivity and results of individual departments. One such department that often employs the self-audit function is Human Resources. Self-audits are much like handing over the chicken house to the wolf and asking for a report on security issues. It does not reveal anything of consequence and thus is a waste of time, energy and money. Ultimately every organization should be reviewing the condition of every department that participates in the workings of their business. The Training Physical is all about evaluating the condition of the training department (Diagnose), recommending action plans (Treatment) and making training responsive (Cure) to the needs of the company. This annual review does provide the same therapeutic results if done correctly as our human annual physical. However, just like your own Medical Doctor, very few will say that self-diagnosis is as effective as getting another professional involved. In the world of auditing this also holds true, and getting an external consultant to conduct or help you with your Training Physical is just as important.

Human Resources Guide to Social Media Risks
Jesse Torres

This Guide is about social media risks and the employment lifecycle. While plenty of guidance exists relative to social media marketing, strategic planning, business development and other related topics, very little has been done to address social media-related risks and human resources. As this Guide will demonstrate, social media risks relative to human resources activities are growing. This Guide will assist human resources professionals in identifying and mitigating social media-related risks before they manifest into damaging events that can take a toll on an organization’s reputation and profitability. A common historical response to social media has been to deny its existence within the organizational walls. As this Guide will show, it is no longer possible for organizations to bury their heads in the sand and ignore social media’s presence. Social media is not only here, it’s there, and there, and everywhere. Organizations no longer have the luxury of escaping social media’s influence in the workplace. In fact, the risks posed by social media are greatest within organizations that fail to acknowledge its existence. The goal of this Guide is to make the case that all organizations, regardless of their involvement in social media activities, are subject to social media risks in the workplace. As such, a desired outcome of this Guide is to assist organizations in implementing social media guidance related to human resources management. This guidance, in the form of policies and procedures, will protect organizations against the risks posed by social media, and in some cases, will provide organizations with the confidence to accept social media as a strategic objective.

Jesse Torres is a banker and social media enthusiast. Jesse has spent nearly 20 years in leadership and executive management positions in risk management, internal audit, regulatory compliance, operations, information technology and marketing. Jesse began his career as a bank examiner with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency ("OCC") and then as a Senior Consultant for KPMG Peat Marwick’s financial services practice. Recently, Jesse has held executive management positions in several financial institutions ranging from $250 million in asset size to over $6 billion. Jesse has authored several e-books, including the Community Bankers Guide to Social Network Marketing, the Community Bankers Guide to Hispanic Marketing and Creating an Ironclad Social Media Policy.

It Is What It Is
Charles Thayer

2008: AmericanWest Bancorporation and its subsidiary bank, AmericanWest Bank, were in trouble, serious trouble, but the AmericanWest Board of Directors and management were committed to saving the Bank and avoiding its seizure by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. The book describes how the Board of Directors, Rusnak, the management team and the employees of AmericanWest managed to navigate their way through the financial hurricane of 2008 and save their Bank.

Leading for Growth: How Umpqua Bank Got Cool and Created a Culture of Greatness
Raymond P. Davis and Alan Shrader

How any business leader can create an atmosphere of competitiveness for exceptional growth

When Ray Davis took over the local 40-person South Umpqua Bank in 1994, many people in the industry poked fun at his insistence that employees answer the phone with a cheery "World's Greatest Bank." Eleven years, $7 billion in assets, and 128 branches (or " bank stores" in Umpqua lingo) later, the moniker seems quite apt. Other banks scratched their heads when Davis sent his tellers to Ritz-Carlton to learn customer service and were intrigued when he hired a cutting-edge design firm to completely re-think retail layout. Now, with a top design award under their belt, a name change (there never was a North Umpqua bank), and a completely new definition of the banking business, Umpqua has become the darling of the entrepreneurial press and a growth powerhouse. The New York Times calls Umpqua "Starbucks with tellers."

Ray Davis (Portland, OR), named by U.S. Banker as one of the 25 most influential people in the financial industry in 2005, is President and CEO of Umpqua Holdings Corporation. Alan Shrader (Moraga, CA) is an experienced writer and editor of business books.

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable
Patrick Lencioni

Building Better Boards: A Blueprint for Effective Governance
David A. Nadler, Beverly Behan, Mark Nadler and Jay W. Lorsch

Building Better Boards is a practical and provocative blueprint for helping CEOs and boards create real value by striking the right balance between contention and collaboration. It's an approach to corporate governance that goes far beyond minimum compliance with legal requirements; this is about enabling the board, for the first time, to perform as a team in a way that significantly improves the quality of management's decisions without interfering with management's prerogatives.

In an engaging style, Building Better Boards provides a unique glimpse at the complex interplay of egos, interests, and interpersonal dynamics that dictates how boards and CEOs operate. Based on Mercer Delta Consulting's unparalleled experience in working with top corporate leaders, supplemented by rigorous research conducted with the University of Southern California's Marshall School of Business and with the National Association of Corporate Directors, the book is a unique and invaluable resource for all those involved with and concerned about the future of corporate governance.