Guides on entrepreneurship, teaching, and making the 50s fabulous (IANS Books This Weekend)

Enter a world of technology breakthroughs, with the real story of starting up and unadulterated entrepreneurship; get an enormous amount of practical advice, tips and ideas to make a student brilliant; flick through a moving personal story and the ultimate guide to making the 50s the most fabulous decade of your life yet.

Finally, let go of outdated and traditional ways of closing the skills gap, and embrace the urgency of "re-skilling" and "upskilling" the workforce as seniors in business organisations.

The IANS bookshelf, for another weekend, offers guides on diverse issues.

1. Book: Why I Stopped Wearing My Socks; Author: Alok Kejriwal; Publisher: Westland; Price: Rs 299; Pages: 192

By the time he was 20, Alok Kejriwal had his life pre-planned for him. He would inherit the family business of manufacturing socks and be the hard-working, money minting, quintessential Marwari businessman, forever.

Except that it didn't turn out that way. A few years after surviving the family set-up, something turned up that sent Alok on a completely different career path: The Internet!

A crazy business idea Alok had turned out to be a winner and contests2win.com was born. Soon, Alok was fighting and thriving in a world completely different from the one he had grown up in. A world where technology breakthroughs, VCs and out-of-the-box thinking decided the real winners.

"Why I Stopped Wearing My Socks" is Alok's story of starting up and unadulterated entrepreneurship. It traces his roller-coaster ride as an aspiring entrepreneur; traversing through a variety of business ideas in the family business up to his big breakthrough as one of India's first entrepreneurs to tap the power of the internet.

It details the amazing success of contests2win.com and Mobile2win, a venture eventually acquired by The Walt Disney Company. The chapters in the book are actual stories, throbbing with memorable anecdotes, that conclude with crisp learning for the readers.

2. Book: The Art of Being a Brilliant Teacher; Authors: Gary Toward, Chris Henley and Andy Cope; Publisher: Scholastic; Price: Rs 250; Pages: 206

Teaching is an art. With the right techniques, guidance, skills and practice, teachers can masterfully face any situation the classroom could throw at them. With their fresh perspectives, sage advice and humour, Andy, Chris and Gary show teachers how to unleash their brilliance. For any teacher who has had a classroom full of angels who suddenly turn into devils for some unknown reason, or who realise too late that their best-laid lesson plans will go nowhere, or who is that teacher who has had their energy sapped by a negative colleague, this book will help rescue them. These problems and many others can be helped by reading this book which contains an enormous amount of practical advice, tips and ideas to make anyone brilliant.

3. Book: Feisty at Fifty; Author: Sudha Menon; Publisher: Pan Macmillan; Price: Rs 350; Pages: 234

If you ever thought that women in their 50s must lead dull, boring lives, Sudha Menon is here to bust your myths and show you that life indeed begins at 50.

Join this wise and witty 50-something in pursuing middle-aged sexiness, nailing the work-life balance, taking on the FOMO (fear of missing out), celebrating mid-life discoveries and generally feeling great about ourselves.

Hilarious yet poignant, "Feisty at Fifty" is both a moving personal story and the ultimate guide to making the 50s the most fabulous decade of your life yet.

4. Book: The Expertise Economy; Author: Kelly Palmer and David Blake; Publisher: Hachette; Price: Rs 499; Pages: 213

Keeping people's skills in sync with fast-changing markets is the biggest challenge of our time. For companies and their employees to succeed, they need to focus on building skills for the future. "The Expertise Economy" shows how the most forward-thinking companies big and small are transforming their employees into experts and ultimately, creating their biggest competitive advantage.

The authors provide the latest scientific research on how people really learn and concrete examples from companies in both Silicon Valley and worldwide who are driving the conversation about how to create experts and align learning innovation with business strategy. It includes interviews with people from top companies like Google, LinkedIn, Airbnb, Unilever, NASA, and MasterCard; thought leaders in learning and education like Sal Khan and Todd Rose; as well as Thinkers50 list-makers Clayton Christensen, Daniel Pink, and Whitney Johnson.

"The Expertise Economy" dares you to let go of outdated and traditional ways of closing the skills gap, and challenges CEOs and business leaders to embrace the urgency of "re-skilling" and "upskilling" the workforce.

--IANS

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