Dispatches from the New World of Work

Cool Friend: Fred Krupp

Fred Krupp is the president of Environmental Defense Fund, and together with Miriam Horn, he has just released an optimistic book about how we can reduce global warming. Earth: The Sequel—The Race to Reinvent Energy and Stop Global Warming is a field guide to innovation in the alternative energy industry. According to Krupp, the U.S. government can unleash a tidal wave of new innovations into the marketplace by passing a cap and trade law. Not familiar with cap and trade? Get up to speed by reading the Cool Friends interview.

Cool Friends: Gibson and Skarzynski

Our new Cool Friends, Rowan Gibson and Peter Skarzynski, have a combined experience of over 40 years in helping organizations become more innovative, seize new growth opportunities, and invigorate their approach to markets. Rowan is a well-known speaker and the author of the best-selling Rethinking the Future. Peter is co-founder with Gary Hamel of the innovation strategies company Strategos, which helps organizations "build a systemic capability to innovate." Peter and Rowan have combined their expertise to write the new (out last week!) Innovation to the Core: A Blueprint for Transforming the Way Your Company Innovates. It goes beyond the reasons why innovation is imperative to how you make innovation happen, where to get fresh insights for your particular problems, how to measure your innovation program, and how to know if it's being implemented effectively within the organization. Read their Cool Friends interview to learn more.

New Cool Friend: Dan Roam

Cool Friend Dan Roam says that a picture is worth a thousand words, but only the first thousand you'd need to get briefed on the issue at hand. He helps big name clients solve complex problems by using simple pictures like the one above. In his new book (out today!), The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures, he explains that you don’t have to be good at drawing to use visual thinking for communicating ideas. Find out more by reading the interview. You can also visit the website of the consulting company he founded, Digital Roam Inc., or read his blog.

Cool Friend: C. Michael Hiam

When Michael Hiam was growing up, he had a family friend named Sam Adams, who had a fascinating story to tell. Sam never got the story told, but Michael did it for him in his first book, Who the Hell Are We Fighting? The Story of Sam Adams and the Vietnam Intelligence Wars. The subject captured Tom's attention; he grabbed the book and read it. Then he called from New Zealand, on his break, to ask Erik to read it, find the author, and do an interview. That's how Michael Hiam became our newest Cool Friend. Read the interview for quite a history lesson, and, as I said, a fascinating story.

New Cool Friend: Ron Crossland

Our new Cool Friend, Ron Crossland, is a very trusted old friend. In his new book, The Leadership Experience: From Individual Success to Organization Significance, coauthored with Gregg Thompson, Ron shares the fruits of his intense research into leadership through the ages. He argues that since the tenets are timeless, it's time for us to stop trying to define leadership and start developing leaders in a more robust way. Read his interview with Erik Hansen to learn more. Or, visit his website, roncrossland.com.

Cool Friend: Rosabeth Kanter

Rosabeth Moss Kanter has a list of accomplishments and books about as long as Tom's. She's a professor at Harvard Business School and former editor of Harvard Business Review. She's the co-founder of a consulting firm, Goodmeasure Inc. She's the author or coauthor of 17 books, among them the classic prizewinner Men & Women of the Corporation, bestsellers such as Confidence: How Winning Streaks & Losing Streaks Begin & End, and The Change Masters, named one of the most influential business books of the 20th century by Financial Times. Her specialties are strategy, innovation, and leadership for change.

Professor Kanter explains why you should be a change agent for the world in her new book, America the Principled: 6 Opportunities for Becoming a Can-Do Nation Once Again, and in her Cool Friends interview here.

Cool Friend: Dan Hill

Dan Hill knows if you're going to buy that sweater before you do. He's an expert in reading facial codes and he shares the inside scoop on this technique with us in the latest Cool Friends interview. He's taken it past purchasing impulses to how it can affect corporate culture. And you definitely don't want to challenge him to a game of poker.

Dan's the founder and president of Sensory Logic, Inc., a scientific, research-based consultancy that specializes in psycho-physiological consumer insight testing and sensory-emotional branding. His first book was Body of Truth: Leveraging What Consumers Can't or Won't Say, and he joins us to talk about his second one, Emotionomics: Winning Hearts and Minds. Read the interview; we know you'll like it.

Cool Friend: Bayley No. 2

Stephen Bayley is a recognized authority on design and culture. He has been a consultant to big-name companies such as Coca-Cola, BMW, Absolut, Volkswagen Audi, and Ford. His writing appears in the Times, the Daily Mail, the Observer, the Evening Standard, the Los Angeles Times, GQ, and other publications. He has appeared on broadcasts of Today, Newsnight, and London Tonight, among others. Stephen Bayley returns to our Cool Friends page to talk about his new book, which he coauthored with Terence Conran, Design: Intelligence Made Visible (British cover). When Tom read it, he wrote in this blog entry, "Oh, what a wonder!! I’m hooked on design all over again!!" Read the Cool Friends interview, and possibly start your own journey on the same path.

Cool News

Cool Friend John Maeda, formerly of MIT's Media Lab, was appointed the new president of Rhode Island School of Design, on December 21, 2007. You can get the details at BusinessWeek.com. Not surprisingly, the announcement at the RISD website looks great. John, we'd like to add our congratulations to all those you've doubtless received already!

Cool Friends: Pine & Gilmore

Joe Pine and Jim Gilmore are the guys behind the line that Tom has been using for years, "Experiences are as distinct from services as services are from goods," which is from their bestseller The Experience Economy: Work Is Theatre & Every Business a Stage. Their new book is Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want. Joe Pine and Jim Gilmore were the very first Cool Friends at TomPeters.com in 1999. At that time, they were putting the noun experience into the business lexicon in a big way, and they are currently doing the same for the adjective authentic. How do you know when something is really real? Read their Cool Friends interview to get their take on the subject, or go to their website, StrategicHorizons.com to learn more about their work. As I write, Authenticity is ranked #1 on Amazon.com among business books, in the category of direct marketing.

Cool Friend: Vicki Donlan

New Cool Friend Vicki Donlan asked 1,000 women to name their obstacles to success. Her findings? Number one obstacle: themselves. Number two: the old boys network. Number three: inadequate family leave policies in the U.S. These issues and more are presented in Donlan's book, Her Turn: Why It's Time for Women to Lead in America. Erik discusses it with her for our Cool Friends interview here. Everyone can benefit from reading the interview and from her advice, because, as Donlan states, "The wage gap doesn't affect just women; it affects men. Today, in this country, both the woman and the man in a couple have to be working in order to put food on the table for their families. If women are not being paid fairly, then the men in their lives are not getting a fair shake, either."

Cool Friend: Matthew Kelly

Got dreams? Our new Cool Friend Matthew Kelly says that a lot of people have simply stopped dreaming. "And if they've stopped dreaming in their own life, good luck trying to get them to subscribe to a dream that you have for your organization." Find out more about the kind of impact dreams and ambitions have on an organization in the Cool Friends interview or in Matthew Kelly's book, The Dream Manager. Tom called it magnificent. He saw it in an airport bookstore, and though he was a bit wary of its parable presentation, he skimmed it, got hooked, and Kelly was on his way to becoming a Cool Friend. So, read the interview, pick up the book, and judge for yourself. And, should Kelly's message really resonate with you, he offers the Dream Manager Program at his company, Floyd Consulting, to help others bring dreams to life.

COOL Friends!

Forget the Merry Pranksters and Jack Kerouac. Brett Farmiloe and Zach Hubbell are traveling across the country in an RV—with a mission. They are looking for people who are passionate about their work. They’re hoping that by finding passion-filled professionals (and not-so-professionals), interviewing them, and publicizing their stories, they'll inspire those who haven’t yet found an occupation that vaults them out of bed in the morning. Along with Jay Whiting and Noah Pollock, they are driving the Pursue the Passion RV all over the U.S. If you see it, honk your horn, and maybe they'll interview you. (Only for the next few days—their trip ends in Tuscon next week.)Their website is Pursue the Passion, and we turn the tables by interviewing the interviewers here. Read the Cool Friends interview with Brett Farmiloe and Zach Hubbell.

Cool Friend: Alex Kjerulf

According to our new Cool Friend Alex Kjerulf, the Scandinavian languages have a word, arbejdsglæde, that means "work happiness" whereas the Japanese have the word karoshi, meaning "death by overwork" (We're hoping you feel particularly Scandinavian today). Alex is the author of Happy Hour is 9 to 5: How to Love Your Job, Love Your Life, and Kick Butt at Work and he spoke with Erik Hansen about why happy workers are better for a company's bottom line. He mentioned strategies for leaders who want to create a happier workplace as well as things we can all do to make ourselves happier. Read the Cool Friends interview or visit Alex's blog, PositiveSharing.com.

Cool Friend: Bill Raeder

Today, Bill Raeder joins the ranks of our Cool Friends, not as an author, but as a publisher. Since 1975, he has served as managing director, executive director, and finally president of National Braille Press (NBP). He is about to retire, and he's going out with a bang. This past July, NBP achieved a major milestone by publishing the Braille version of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows at the same time as the printed one, and at the same price. (Imagine all the people who worked on it without giving away the plot?) Perhaps a more noteworthy legacy he will leave behind: The mission of National Braille Press is to promote the literacy of blind children through Braille to empower blind people to engage in work, family, and community affairs. You can read more in Bill's Cool Friends interview here.

We're assisting Bill and the National Braille Press by announcing their Hands-On Gala, on October 26, 2007, in Boston. Jay Leno will be Master of Ceremonies and J.K. Rowling will make an appearance by video. To become a corporate sponsor or simply make a donation, please contact: Tanya Holton, National Braille Press, 6l7-266-6160 x15, tholton@nbp.org; or Jennifer Stewart, 6l7-266-6160 x36, jstewart@nbp.org.

Cool Friend: Barletta

Our old friend Marti Barletta is back for her third appearance among the Cool Friends. She barely needs introduction here, but let's see ...

... she's the author of Marketing to Women.
... she's the coauthor of Trends, one of the Essentials Series, with Tom.
... she's the founder and CEO of The TrendSight Group, "the premier provider of Marketing to Women insights and ideas."
... she's a cofounder of the Women Gurus Network.
... she's a recognized authority on targeting your business to those who spend almost all the money, that is, women, and her recent focus has been on an especially well-heeled group ... PrimeTime Women™. She's even trademarked the term.

Erik talks with her about her newest book of the same name, PrimeTime Women™: How to Win the Hearts, Minds, and Business of Boomer Big Spenders, and you can read her Cool Friends interview here. You might also like to visit her blog, TrendSightings. Welcome back, Marti!

Cool Friend: Penelope Trunk

Penelope Trunk's book is Brazen Careerist: The New Rules for Success, about which, in her Cool Friends interview, she says, "I thought my audience was young people in the workplace. But, in fact, management loves buying my book. They buy it in huge quantities to understand how to recruit and retain Generation Y." Through her column of the same name featured on Yahoo! Finance and her column "The Climb," which runs in the Boston Globe, Penelope has established herself as an authority on Generations X and Y, how they work, and how Baby Boomers, et al., can work with them. She speaks from experience, having gone through two start-ups, an IPO, an acquisition, and a bankruptcy. And before any of that, she was a professional beach volleyball player!

Read her Cool Friends interview here. You can also visit her website, www.penelopetrunk.com, and blog, blog.penelopetrunk.com, to read more.

Cool Friend: Sylvia Ann Hewlett

Someone in the household must take time away from work to care for children or aging parents. That duty requires work flexibility and a non-linear career path, and most often falls to the woman. As the founding president of the Center for Work-Life Policy, Sylvia Ann Hewlett has been researching the transitions into and out of careers, and, as a result, has written Off-Ramps and On-Ramps: Keeping Talented Women on the Road to Success. Erik talked with her about it, and she became our latest Cool Friend. Read the interview (and the book) to find out what some very large companies are doing to make it easier for you to work and live.

Cool Friend: Mark Hurst

Are you weighed down by the email in your inbox or other bit-heavy electronic detritus? New Cool Friend Mark Hurst has these things to say: "Bits are heavy." "Anybody with an email address could change their life if they read this book." "Bit literacy frees you to finish your work so that you can live your life outside work."

With his book, Bit Literacy: Productivity in the Age of Information and E-mail Overload, Hurst explains why it's a good idea to learn more about your computer than how to turn it on and run a few Microsoft Office programs. He's an expert on making people more productive with technology. Get started on your own journey to weightlessness. Visit the website of Creative Good, the user experience consulting firm that he founded, and now runs with Phil Terry. Or check into his other (Wow!) projects, Gootodo.com, the Gel conference, and GoodExperience.com.

We hope you'll enjoy reading Mark Hurst's Cool Friends interview.

Cool Friend: Seth Godin

We consider it much more than charming that Seth Godin has joined us a third time for a Cool Friends interview. His keen eye for "noticing things and giving them a name" keeps us tuned into his blog, his books, and his projects. His latest book, The Dip: The Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick) is the subject of the current interview. Here's an excerpt:

Q: What is "the dip?"

SG: It's the hard spot; the place where most people quit. It's organic chemistry on your way to being a doctor. Lots of people announce that they're pre-med. Their grandmother gets excited and they have fun until they take organic chemistry.

Q: You say that there's a simple way to tell if you should quit.

SG: There are some things that are a dip and other things that are a dead end. Once you understand that quitting is a choice, that quitting in the dip is the worst moment to quit, you'll quit a lot less because you'll fall in love with mastery. You'll fall in love with becoming the best in the world by investing enough resources to get out the other end. Figure out how many resources you have and pick a dip that matches them. It's foolish for a startup to say, "We're going to make a better search engine than Google," because the dip's too big.

The dip is your friend, because if the dip isn't there, you're on a dead end. There is no dip for a longshoreman. There is a dip for making a profit by selling your product at Wal*Mart. Once you get through that dip, on the other end is success.

Q: Val Willis recently posted here about projects that are doomed to failure. People don't have the patience anymore to work on something when they realize it's dead in the water.

SG: Cycles are shorter. People twenty years ago said, "This may be doomed, but it's going to be ten years before they figure it out. I'll be fine." But now people realize that it could happen in sixty days. The opportunity cost of sticking around at the wrong place is too high. If you're working on a dead end, you're wasting your personal brand and your resources.

Cool Friend: Bayley

Stephen Bayley is the coauthor (with Roger Mavity) of Life's a Pitch ... How to Be Businesslike with Your Emotional Life and Emotional with Your Business Life. He introduces the book this way:

What we've written here is almost the ultimate design book, because it's about how to design yourself ... how to create a winning and attractive personality ... how to get to "yes" in an argument or presentation. So, the book is about the self—communication, self-presentation, and how we create impressions. It's a book about design, but design that is applied to people and ideas ...

And, having been the first chief executive of London's Design Museum, Stephen knows his topic. You can read the rest of his Cool Friends interview here. Or visit his website, www.stephenbayley.com, and his book website, lifesapitch.uk.com. Welcome to the Cool Friends, Stephen!

Cool Friend: Dave Freedman

David H. Freedman is the latest addition to our roster of Cool Friends. He's a contributing editor and technology columnist at Inc. magazine, and he's also written for Newsweek, the New York Times, Atlantic Monthly, and Wired, among others. He got together with Eric Abrahamson, a professor of management at Columbia Business School, to write A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder—How Crammed Closets, Cluttered Offices, and On-the-Fly Planning Make the World a Better Place. His interview may come as welcome news, depending on what your office looks like. You can read his Cool Friends interview here, and, if you want to learn more, he has a website, too.

Cool Friends: Women Gurus Network

Once upon a time, in December 2004, there was a gathering of about 100 of Tom Peters' closest friends and associates, in Manchester, Vermont. At this gathering were Sally, Marti, Robyn, and Susan, four very accomplished women. And they talked. To the group, to each other, at lunch, and after meetings. They realized that they all had valuable expertise. And that each in her own right had an impact on the world. "What if we banded together?" they said. "How much more impact could we have if we formed a women's network?" Thus, the Women Gurus Network was born. We talk to three of the founders, Sally Helgesen, Marti Barletta, and Susan Willett Bird, in our new Cool Friends interview.

Cool Friend: Robyn Waters

It's a treat to all of us at tompeters.com when an old friend becomes a Cool Friend. As Robyn Waters says in her interview, we met her at a Manchester Summit. She also says that the summit was a turning point in her life, leading up to her leaving her position as VP of Trend, Design, and Product Development at Target and starting the consulting firm RW Trend. Her book is The Hummer and the Mini: Navigating the Contradictions of the New Trend Landscape. You can read her Cool Friends interview here. Robyn, we're glad to welcome you into that group!

Cool Friend: Don Tapscott

We welcome Don Tapscott to the ranks of the Cool Friends. His recent book, Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, might possibly be essential reading for anybody doing business today. Choose wiki methods or not, but you must be aware of this trend. Here's what Tom said about the book:

On the way to Manchester [England] I re-read the profoundly important book by Don Tapscott & Anthony Williams, Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything. If possible, it had greater impact the second time 'round. Hence, I created a little presentation that I used in Manchester—which we've attached. With typical understatement I told our participants, "You must not 'read' this book, you must 'ingest' it."

You can read the rest of Tom's blog post here, or Tapscott's Cool Friends interview here.

Cool Friend: Dan Heath

New Cool Friend Dan Heath is the coauthor, with his brother, Chip, of Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die. Together, they also write an ideas column for Fast Company magazine. But one of Dan's favorite accomplishments is that he once won a New Yorker cartoon caption contest. How cool is that? Begin to find out what makes ideas live on in the minds of your audience by reading his Cool Friends interview here, or learn more at www.madetostick.com. Or, buy the book. I'd say this one would appeal to Tom just because of the duct tape in the cover design.

Cool Friend: Rod Beckström

How is the power distributed in your org chart? Top-down or spread around evenly? Are you a Spider or a Starfish? Read Rod Beckström's Cool Friends interview to find out. We talk with him about his book, written with Ori Brafman, The Starfish and The Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations. I think this is one you'll want to read and a book you'll want to own. You can also read more at his website, www.beckstrom.com, or the book's website, www.starfishandspider.com.

Cool Friend: Brown

Mary Brown and Carol Orsborn are the coauthors of BOOM: Marketing to the Ultimate Power Consumer–the Baby Boomer Woman. At tompeters.com, we are glad to add Mary Brown to our list of Cool Friends. She spoke with us about the book, and about her work with J. Walter Thompson's BOOM: The 40+ Authority and Imago Creative, a marketing firm that she founded, the only one in the U.S. specializing in marketing to Boomer women. You can read her Cool Friends interview here.

Though she did not take part in the interview, we'd like to also introduce Carol Orsborn. She is known for her work addressing the concerns of the Baby Boom generation, and she is Senior Vice President and co-chair of Fleishman-Hillard's FH Boom. Carol also operates an online life mastery resource center for women: www.TheSilverPearl.com.

Cool Friend: Andrea Learned

Andrea Learned, coauthor of Don't Think Pink, has recently released an e-book through 800-CEO-READ titled 9 Minds on Marketing. Through interviews with the authors of nine books, Andrea provides a re-examination of the basic elements of marketing. She is also the founder of Learned on Women, and she writes a popular blog by the same name, both about marketing to women. We have often featured her blog on tpwireservice. Read the Cool Friends interview, her blog, or watch for her when you’re snowboarding in Vermont.

Cool Friends: Huba and McConnell

[We posted Ben and Jackie's Cool Friends interview a week ago, but this announcement got lost in a flurry of blog entries, so we re-dated it to pull it ahead and give it more time on top of our front page.—CM]

People are taking brand loyalty to a whole new level when they use the Internet to broadcast their affection for your product. If all this hype about YouTube videos and consumer-generated content has you curious, the new book from Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba, Citizen Marketers: When People Are the Message, will lay it all out for you. The Wall Street Journal's take on Citizen Marketers: "A solid ... insightful explanation of how the Internet has armed the consumer—which is to say, everyone—against the mindless blather of corporate messaging attempts. Drop everything and read this book."

Jackie and Ben are word-of-mouth marketing experts whose first book was Creating Customer Evangelists. They're our new Cool Friends. You can read the interview here and be sure to check out their Church of the Customer blog. Their 40 Talks in 40 Days book tour starts in February. See if they're coming to your city.

Cool Friend: John Maeda

When Tom got a copy of John Maeda's book, this is what he wrote:

I planned to skim-sample John Maeda's book, then decide to endorse it—or not. I quickly found myself mesmerized—and thence the only issue was deciding what were the strongest words I could muster in support of The Laws of Simplicity. The book is important; and Maeda has made an absurdly complex subject—simplicity—approachable and usable.

Bravo! I hope the people who design the products I'll acquire in the next 10 years take this book to heart.

Maeda is an artist as well as an author, and the founder of the Simplicity Consortium at the MIT Media Lab. You can read his Cool Friends interview here, or visit his websites, www.maedastudio.com and lawsofsimplicity.com.

Cool Friend: Maxine Clark

If you've ever looked into Tom's slides, you've heard of our new Cool Friend, Maxine Clark. She calls herself "Chief Executive Bear" of her company, Build-A-Bear Workshop®, Where Best Friends Are Made®. If you know any children under the age of twelve, you've probably seen one of the bears. Maxine has written a book to tell her story: The Bear Necessities of Business: Building a Company with Heart, which we talk about with her. Here's a sample of what she has to say:

I do believe in the power of possibility. If you want to do something badly enough, you can find a way in today's world. You can change your life by finding the right company to work for, the right company to do business with. I feel very fortunate to have grown up in a time when there was so much going on in the world. How could I not be an optimist? There's been so much wonderful change and so many possibilities unfolding right before my eyes.

Read the rest of the Cool Friends interview, or go to her website, www.buildabear.com, and make yourself a bear.

Cool Friend: Pipher

A clinical psychologist with a background in anthropology, Mary Pipher has written seven books, including three New York Times bestsellers: Reviving Ophelia, The Shelter of Each Other, and Another Country. In her Cool Friends interview, we discuss her latest, Writing to Change the World. Upon reading the book, Tom had this to say:

Call me hopelessly naive, but I believe there is no excuse for any variety of "business writing" that should be crafted any less carefully or aim any less high than a great novel or great inaugural address. After all, we do aim—day in and day out—to change the world via our human collectivities called enterprises. Right?

You can read Mary Pipher's Cool Friends interview here.

Cool Friends: Taylor and LaBarre

Bill Taylor and Polly LaBarre are our new Cool Friends. Both of them had long careers at Fast Company (Bill was co-founder), and both have lots of experience writing and speaking on strategies, innovation, and personal success. Together they've written Mavericks at Work: Why the Most Original Minds in Business Win. Early readers, they tell us, called the book In Search of (a New Kind of) Excellence. I think this book is one you'll want to get for yourselves. There are more references to Tom in the interview—take a look to see what they are.

Here's the Cool Friends interview, and, of course, there's a website devoted to mavericks at work, and a blog. Taylor and LaBarre also have their Manifesto for Mavericks at ChangeThis.

Cool Friend: John Wood

Our new Cool Friend is John Wood. He's been featured here before when Shelley wrote about Room to Read, John's WOW! Project. Now he's written a book to let others get an inkling of how it can be done or how to become part of their own world-changing effort: Leaving Microsoft to Change the World: An Entrepreneur's Odyssey to Educate the World's Children. You can read his Cool Friends interview here. And, if then you'd like to read more, you can visit his website linked above, or go to fastcompany.com. His office sent us a bunch of pictures of John in action, as you can see. Be sure to scroll to the bottom of the interview where we've posted more of them.

Cool Friend: Bob Tomasko

Consultant, speaker, and author Bob Tomasko is our new Cool Friend. His book is Bigger Isn't Always Better: The New Mindset for Real Business Growth. He explains that he's "not really a 'small is always the most beautiful' advocate," but that we should "think differently about growth. It's useful to de-couple the idea of growth from the idea of getting bigger." You can read more in his Cool Friends interview here, or visit his website, www.roberttomasko.com. Check out his blog on the topic, too.

Cool Friend: John Moore

John Moore's résumé includes eight years as Retail Marketing Manager at Starbucks Coffee and a few more as Director of National Marketing at Whole Foods Market. Now, he runs the Brand Autopsy marketing consultancy and writes the popular blog of the same name. He's also written a book, Tribal Knowledge: Business Wisdom Brewed from the Grounds of Starbucks Corporate Culture, which we discuss with him in his Cool Friend interview. Here's a sample of what he has to say:

We talk so much about building a brand, creating this company that exudes so much personality. But in reality, all the most endearing brands that we know are really good businesses at heart.

We're glad to add John Moore to our list of Cool Friends.

Cool Friend: Seth Godin

Seth Godin is one of the charter members of our Cool Friends cabal. He's been prolific in the six years since we last interviewed him, publishing at least as many books in as many years. He's also become the "original squid" at Squidoo. Our second Cool Friends interview with Seth covers what he's up to with Squidoo, Kewpie Dolls, neologisms, and, especially, his new book Small Is the New Big. Read the Cool Friends interview with Seth here.

If that doesn't sate you, you can speak to Seth yourself. He's setting up a call-in Q&A session for September 8th. Check out the details here. Go ahead, ask him anything.

Something New from Raj Setty

Cool Friend Raj Setty has a new WOW! Project. You can see the button linking to his new website, suggestica.com, in the right-hand column. It features suggestions by well-known business thinkers, Tom among them, for books to read, culled from the pages of each one's most recent books. Go there and get some suggestions!

Cool Friend: Wolaner

Most recently an executive committee member at CNET, Robin Wolaner has had an eclectic career in publishing, with experience at Penthouse, Runner's World, and Mother Jones, and as the founder of Parenting magazine. She left CNET to write Naked In the Boardroom: A CEO Bares Her Secrets So You Can Transform Your Career, which recently came out in paperback. Tom blogged about it, and he said:

I unflinchingly anoint it a "Top 5" biz book for the last couple of years. Namely: Naked in the Boardroom, by entrepreneur and wildly successful BigCo exec Robin Wolaner. It is by far ... the best book on strategy and tactics for women aiming to make it big in business—big biz or entrepreneurial biz. Moreover, I think any male ... can learn an enormous amount from this book.

Read Robin's interview here. You may also like to visit her book website, nakedintheboardroom.com.

Cool Friend: Finder

Something new! Joseph Finder (short i) writes best-selling novels—thrillers set in the business world (hence his relevance to tompeters.com). He started his career with the non-fiction Red Carpet, turned to fiction in 1991, and never looked back. He now has 7 fiction books out, the last two of which, Paranoia and Company Man, were New York Times bestsellers. His latest is Killer Instinct, and you can read what he has to say about it in his Cool Friend interview. To learn more about Finder and his other books, see his website: www.josephfinder.com.

Cool Friend: Reichheld

Fred Reichheld is our new Cool Friend. He has made loyalty—and its effect on growth, good profits, and lasting value—the focus of his work. His current book is The Ultimate Question. You can see more at his book website, join the discussion at his blog, or read his Cool Friend interview here.

Cool Friend: Pfeffer

Jeffrey Pfeffer joins the Cool Friends today. His book is Hard Facts, Dangerous Half Truths & Total Nonsense: Profiting from Evidence-Based Management, and his coauthor is Robert Sutton, who was the subject of one of our interviews in 2002. You may remember that they had a previous book together, The Knowing-Doing Gap. Mr. Pfeffer is a professor of organizational behavior at Stanford and a well-known speaker. You can read his Cool Friend interview here.

Cool Friend Sighting

Our Cool Friend Bob Sutton has a freshly published book called Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths and Total Nonsense: Profiting From Evidence-Based Management. We've recently interviewed his coauthor, Dr. Jeffrey Pfeffer, about the book, and that Cool Friend interview will be posted in the next few weeks. Can't wait that long to hear about the book? Guy Kawasaki interviewed Bob this week. It's an entertaining read. Check it out here. If it makes you nostalgic for Bob's Weird Ideas That Work days, you can re-visit his Cool Friend interview about that book here.

New Cool Friend

Catherine Kaputa is a twenty-year veteran of branding and advertising. The president of SelfBrand, a New York City-based brand strategy and business coaching company, she brings her experience to bear in the book U R a Brand! How Smart People Brand Themselves for Business Success. Tom called it "an excellent and welcome addition to the all too small library on the subject." You can learn more at URaBrand.com, or by reading her Cool Friend interview here.

Cool Friend Announcement

Cool Friend Bo Burlingham is to "appear" in the online Microsoft Leadership Forum. He'll be discussing ideas from his book Small Giants this Thursday, May 11, Noon-1:00 p.m. Eastern time, 9:00-10:00 a.m. Pacific time. If you'd like to sign up for this free online seminar, you can learn more and find a link to registration at smallgiantsbook.com.

Jeff Angus at Inbubblewrap

Our friends at inbubblewrap are featuring our cool friend Jeff Angus' book today. Head on over, and if you're lucky you might score a free copy.

Cool Friend: Jeff Angus

Our latest addition to the Cool Friends is Jeff Angus. A management consultant and baseball writer, his two passions unite in his book Management by Baseball: The Official Rules for Winning Management in Any Field, which will be in bookstores next week. His tactic of using baseball examples to illustrate solutions to business problems works—whether you're a baseball fan or not.

What Tom said: "Management by Baseball is a great baseball book and an insightful general management primer. Jeff Angus has written the book I wish I'd had in me.—Tom Peters, Lifelong Orioles fan ... occasional management guru"

Read the Cool Friend interview here.

Steve's New Book

Cool Friend Steve Farber has followed up his best-seller with a new book, The Radical Edge: Stoke Your Business, Amp Your Life, and Change the World. It promises to "awaken your spirit, give you that much needed boost of inspiration and excitement for life, and it will do all of this (and more) in the most refreshing and creative way." You can read a sample from the book here (PDF).

Today only! Steve et al. are doing a special promotion. Steve has chosen some partners to give you more value, including Tom and other authors such as Jason Jennings and Apprentice alum Wes Moss. You can see what's on offer by going to stevefarber.com.

This is a one-day offer, good only on April 19, so check it out now.

Cool Friend: Nissanoff

Our new Cool Friend Daniel Nissanoff has written a book called FutureShop: How the New Auction Culture Will Revolutionize the Way We Buy, Sell, and Get the Things We Really Want. The subtitle gives a good idea of the focus of the interview. Nissanoff's argument is that when online auctions get truly seamless, then purchasing behavior will shift. If a purchase can be considered temporary, will you buy the item whose features or use you may not be able to master, knowing that you can pass it on to someone else with ease, recouping much of the cost? See the full discussion in our Cool Friend interview here. Or visit the FutureShop website or blog.