Reading :: Startup Visionaries

 Startup Visionaries: Insights from the Frontlines of Innovation

By Niklas Osterberg

I’ve ended up reading many, many books by startup founders that attempt to systematize the startup experience. They tend to be enthusiastic, grounded in the founder’s experiences with their various startups, and focused on similar topics: customer discovery and validation, surprising pivots, business model formulation, product development and testing, and fundraising. Often they tend to hit the same beats and teach the same lessons, and they make me wonder whether the startup experience is basically the same everywhere — or whether startup language is the same everywhere, structuring the experiences of the authors.

Osterberg, a Swedish entrepreneur who has started 17 companies (p.3), takes a bit of a different tack. He begins with the startup ecosystem and the visionary mindset, then goes into risk and failure, team-building, and funding. He covers exit strategies in Ch.9 of this 17-chapter book. And he spends a lot of time covering topics that are rarely discussed in other books by founders: ethics, legacy, rest, and ego. 

I’ll highlight a few striking points below:

• ”A startup is, by nature, temporary. It is not build for comfort or certainty. It is a vessel build for a journey of discovery … . Stability is not the goal; learning is” (pp.6-7).
• ”Startups live in a state of uncertainty that is not a passing phase, but a permanent condition woven into their very nature. This uncertainty is not simply an obstacle to push through, it is the air and weather of their world” (p.10)
• “Incubators, accelerators, universities, and venture firms” are “base camps and guide stations along the route” and “can lend you the credibility to be taken seriously by others on the mountain,” but “stay too long, and you may find yourself following the same trail everyone else is taking, adopting the same strategies, speaking in the same language and measuring success by the same milestones” (pp.11-12)
• ”The myth of the solitary founder who single-handedly builds a successful unicorn company” is “ultimately misleading and oversimplified” because it “fails to acknowledge the vital roles played by teams, mentors, and networks” (p.38)
• ”A successful pitch transcends being just a sales performance — it evolves into a meaningful and thoughtful conversation” (p.52)
• The founder’s “identity, mindset, and emotional resilience” must shift profoundly (p.68)
• ”Purpose is your internal compass” (p.113)
• ”truly thriving companies recognize that achieving lasting success goes beyond mere transactions and financial metrics. They prioritize building vibrant communities — dynamic ecosystems of individuals who are connected by shared values, trust, and mutual support” (p.146). These communities include “users and customers,” “team members and collaborators,” “partners and investors,” and “advocates and critics” (p.147). 

This advice, I think, is well-considered and well-spoken. If you’re an aspiring entrepreneur, or someone who studies entrepreneurship, I recommend this book. 

Reading :: Remote and Roaming

 Remote and Roaming: Practices, Meanings, and Politics of Digital Nomadism

By Mari Toivanen

This 2025 book examines digital nomadism, beginning before the pandemic but examining the deep shift during and after it. Accessibly written, the book examines the phenomenon of digital nomadism. “A digital nomad can broadly be defined as an individual who travels while working, and whose mobile lifestyle is enabled by such remote mode of work” (p.6). The author was first sensitized to this lifestyle when discussing a coworking space in Thailand to which people from other countries traveled for work. Toivanen conducted interviews with them and many others, focusing on “three aspects — work, travel and lifestyle” (p.13). She adds:

In this book, digital nomadism is not defined as an isolated phenomenon or merely a personal endeavour, but rather as a form of lifestyle mobility deeply embedded in broader societal, economic and technological transformations. These include the digitalisation of work and economic restructuring, shifting values related to lifestyle and conceptions of ‘the good life’, and the structural forces that shape global mobility regimes and their hierarchies as well as the global inequalities in economic privilege that enable access to this way of life. (pp.13-14)

She asks questions such as:

“What does the digital nomad lifestyle look like at the level of practices?”

”What meanings are attached to the digital nomad lifestyle?”

”How do the politics of digital nomadism come about?” (pp.20-21)

She investigates these questions with 70 semi-structured interviews as well as observations (p.22). (I really appreciated her appendix on material and methodology.) But she also goes deeply into the antecedent conditions, examining how the digital nomad’s lifestyle is structured by their relationship with the nation-states and markets in which they work. The result is a comprehensive, well-written, and accessible discussion of the conditions that make digital nomadism what it is.

If you’re interested in digital nomadism or related issues, such as coworking or adhocracies, I recommend this book.

Reading :: True Storytelling

 True Storytelling: Seven Principles for an Ethical and Sustainable Change-Management Strategy

By Jens Larsen, David M. Boje and Lena Bruun

I happened on this book because one of our HDO MA students was interested in change management and I thought a narrative approach might be a good fit for his project. One Google Scholar search later, I realized that David Boje — who has pioneered the narrative research approach — had coauthored this book for a popular audience. I skimmed the book, thought it was in the ballpark (but not necessarily on target), and decided to read it.

The other two coauthors have a consultancy in Denmark, and all three claim Danish heritage. As they explain, the process they have put together is especially focused on change management in terms of climate change: “True Storytelling is a relational process ontology (Boje, 2019b) and a way to stand as an ensemble against ‘Fake Storytelling’ and climate change deniers” (p.xi). The book thus really isn’t about narrative research, it’s about how to tell effective stories that can underpin change management efforts. I’ll quote a big chunk from the preface:

We (David Boje, Jens Larsen and Lena Bruun) have developed Seven Principles to enable success with transformational change. You can think of them as tuning forks for when you work with sustainable change.

1 True: You yourself must be true and prepare the energy and effort for a sustainable future

2 Making room: True Storytelling makes spaces that respect the stories already there

3 Plotting: You must create stories with a clear plot, creating direction and helping people prioritize

4 Timing: You must have timing

5 Helping stories along: You must be able to help stories on their way and be open to experiment

6 Staging: You must consider staging, including scenography and artefacts

7 Reflecting: You must reflect on the stories and how they create value.

True Storytelling principles are an ethical approach to self-correcting the Fake to get closer to the True. We have developed True Storytelling as a philosophical and storytelling science scaffolding (p.xii). 

The rest of the book overviews these seven principles, using examples from the authors’ own consulting. Along the way, the authors tell stories about their own individual lives and draw on Latour, Deleuze, Haraway, Kierkegaard, and other theorists as well as the famous Dutch author Hans Christian Andersen. 

How well does it do? On one hand, they clearly describe and demonstrate their principles. On the other hand, I thought the principles were still pretty vague, and it was hard for me to pull the individual principles into a larger plan. The theme of sustainable change management was mentioned frequently, but I don’t think it was integrated that well — that is, the principles underpin good storytelling, but don’t seem specific to change management. Clearly the authors have a lot of expertise, but I don’t think it was well conveyed to readers as a coherent system focused on change management and/or global climate change.

For those who want to apply storytelling in organizations — especially in a Danish context — this book could be really useful. But I don’t think it’s quite what my student is looking for, and I don’t think I’ll use it myself either. 

Reading :: The Party’s AI

 The Party’s AI: How China’s new AI Systems are Reshaping Human Rights

By Fergus Ryan, Bethany Allen, Shelly Shih, Stephan Robin, Nathan Attrill, Jared Alpert, Astrid Young, and Tilla Hoja

This research brief by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) makes for depressing reading. In it, the authors methodically examine how Chinese policies have implemented AI in a number of different ways, mainly internally, but with external implications as well.

Internally, China is regulating and applying AI in ways that enforce their official policies. For me, the most evocative example was in justice (Ch.2). Surveillance and policing are, of course, boosted with facial recognition, omnipresent cameras, phone trackers, and biometric databases; the government plans to build in capabilities to time and coordinate government responses. But AI is also used in courts and prosecution — AI is meant to play an auxiliary role in a system that is understaffed. But in practice, “AI designed to aid the prosecution might do so in ways that aren’t consistent with due process and the fair treatment of defendants” (p.38). The 206 System used in Shanghai “is able to make sentencing recommendations, review evidence and keep tabs on ‘deviations’ by prosecutors” — if the prosecutor disagrees with the system’s recommended decisions, the prosecutor must explain the deveiation and send a completed approval form to the court leader (p.40). Additionally,  “Shenzen in 2024 announced the country’s first AI-assisted trial oversight system for judges,” and this system “helps to generate judgments for confirmation by the judge” (p.40). 

Similarly, China is now using AI for surveillance targeting ethnic minorities (Ch.4), censoring politically sensitive images (Ch.1), and censoring online disocourse more generally (Ch.3). Censorship involves not just suppressing information, but also being vague — for instance, if you present an LLM with “images related to the Tiananmen Square massacre” (p.19), Chinese LLMs avoid using key terms such as “crackdown,” “reform,” or even “Beijing,” and “tended to frame the event as a necessary measure to maintain social stability”; US-based LLMs ChatGPT and Gemini were less likely to do this (p.19). The authors found similar results when asking LLMs to describe images of Falun Gong and the Dalai Lama. Additionally, results varied depending on the language the human operator used to query the LLM: English, Chinese (simplified), and Chinese (traditional) (p.27). 

Such censorship doesn’t just affect domestic Chinese audiences, it also affects others using these systems. That’s true when interacting with LLMs outside China’s borders. But the report also describes a specific case in which Chinese LLMs deeply affect those outside China’s borders: AI fishing platforms (Ch.5). “Fleets of Chinese fishing trawlers prowl the world’s oceans and costs, pulling in enormous catches at industrial scale,” the report states (p.55) — their distant-water fleet of fishing vessels account for “around 15% of global marine capture” (p.56). Sometimes these fleets poach from other countries’ waters. In this overfishing, they are aided by ‘AI-enabled fishing forecasting platforms” (p.55) that coordinate AI forecasting and satellite data to increase accuracy and fishing hauls.

In conclusion, the report argues that the Chinese government has the goal of “ensuring that global AI standards benefit Chinese companies and China’s authoritarian political system” (p.62). The authors make several policy recommendations, which seem broadly positive (ex: “Promote transparency around AI vendors”) but unlikely to be pursued by the global community.

Overall, I found the report to be both insightful and depressing. A decade ago, I would have considered the report as cataloguing China’s problems and issues, and in some ways positive for the USA, because AI censorship and conformity lead to inflexibility, caution, and conservativism — preserving Western advantages in innovation by lowering the costs of failure and rewarding flexible thinking. Or so I would have told myself. But the West is also growing more authoritarian. The US system is different, but as Elon Musk’s well-publicized tinkering around Grok suggests, it allows similarly problematic use of AI. 

Reading :: Mastering Your Entrepreneurial Journey

 Mastering Your Entrepreneurial Journey: From Vision to Venture

By Andreas Kuckertz, Thomas Leicht, Maximilian Schieu, Indra Da Silva Wagner, and Bernd Ebersberger

This open-access book was written by five members of the Institution of Marketing & Management at the University of Hohenheim in Stuttgart, Germany. It’s pitched to a general audience who is interested in entrepreneurship. In this relatively short book, they cover:

• What entrepreneurship is
• How to begin an entrepreneurial journey
• How to validate the problem
• How to conduct entrepreneurial prototyping and product development
• How to develop a business model
• How to pitch
• How to develop and leverage a network
• How to deal with entrepreneurial failure

Honestly, the things they cover are eerily similar to those I cover in my classes and workshops. They tell us that this book addresses a gap in the entrepreneurial literature: On one hand, successful entrepreneurs have written lots of books based on their personal experiences; on the other hand, academics have written well-sourced articles with evidence about what works. This book is in the middle: Based in evidence from the academic literature (much of which was written by the authors), but accessible to aspiring entrepreneurs (p.2). The book can be read sequentially or not (p.3). 

The chapters are fairly short, they offer heuristics to help readers conceptualize the advice, and all end with “Three Things to Do Right Now” — specific advice for the readers to take. I liked this structure, although the “Three Things” tended to be a bit vague — I would have preferred them to be more systematically tied to the heuristics or principles on one hand, and a specific example of a venture on the other. In some cases, the advice is vague enough that I think new entrepreneurs may find it hard to follow. For instance, the chapter on business models (the authors do not number their chapters) ends by suggesting readers identify market segments, resources, etc. Although they mention Osterwalder and Pigneur in the chapter, they don’t show the Business Model Canvas or discuss how the different segments dynamically relate, so it’s hard for readers to visualize how these different parts relate. Similarly, the chapter on pitching goes over Sequoia Capital’s outline for a pitch, but they don’t note that the pitch genre looks different for pre-seed vs. seed rounds or angel investors vs. VCs (for instance). 

And that’s okay. New entrepreneurs should be reading a variety of books. This one is a succinct, accessible introduction to the basics of startups and Lewan Startup. I would recommend it as a good 50,000-foot overview, and I could see using it in an early-stage accelerator — with more specific texts to cover the details. For that application, I highly recommend it.

Reading :: Postprocess Postmortem

Postprocess Postmortem

By Kristopher M. Lotier

This book, based on Lotier’s dissertation, really took me back. Lotier examines “postprocess,” the “movement/theory/attitude” (p.3) that took hold of composition studies in the 1990s, then seemingly disappeared. Lotier argues that it — or at least some form of it — has stuck around in contemporary composition theory, but under different names, often under the heading of new materialism.

The book is grounded in two strands of thought that have often been considered together and more or less combined. One is grounded in the pioneering works of Thomas Kent, who characterized this strand of theory as “paralogic rhetoric” or “externalism”; Lotier characterizes this strand as “postprocess” without a hyphen (p.26). Paralogic rhetoric characterizes discourse production and reception as uncodifiable dialogic activities, and thus centers on hermeneutic guessing (pp.27-28). In contrast, he uses “post-process” with a hyphen to characterize a second strand, one that relies on critiques of subjectivity and focuses on discursive conditions (p.22); this strand is based in Trimbur and others.

I mentioned that this review takes me back, and that’s because Kent was at Iowa State University, and he and others on the faculty discussed paralogic rhetoric quite a bit in my PhD classes in 1994-1999. So Lotier’s discussion of those years at Iowa State (in Ch.5), which covered contributions by Kent, Blyler, Ewald, and my dissertation director David R. Russell, brought me back to those days. As Lotier points out, ISU’s program in professional communication adopted postprocess ideas early and brought them into PC scholarship. In contrast, post-process (with the hyphen) was, he says, grounded in Saint Thomas University in New Brunswick (Chapter 4) in the works of Anthony Pare and colleagues Hunt, Reither, and Vipond. (I certainly read a lot of Pare in grad school!) 

So what happened to postprocess/post-process? Lotier argues that many of its key tenets have been taken up by new materialist scholarship. Here, he demonstrates that many postprocess ideas have become mainstream: writing is grounded in specific moments, no generalized theory can completely capture what happens in these moments, readers and writers coconstruct meaning, materal conditions affect what is written (p.191). 

Overall, I thought this was an interesting and enjoyable read — although I suspect a lot of the enjoyment comes from rethinking the articles that I saw my professors writing in the 1990s from a new perspective. I really appreciated the methodical recontextualization that Lotier offers here, as well as his exploration of how these ideas have been taken up in different strands of thought. If you’re interested in comp theory, or if you remember comp in the 1990s, or if you want to see how historiography can explore the evolving thought in a specific field, definitely pick it up.