Books we're reading this month

Got Game: How the Gamer Generation is Reshaping Business Forever, by John C Beck and Mitchell Wade (Harvard Business School Press, 2004)

You're probably as surprised as I was to find out that a book has been written on the subject of videogame playing and its impact on 21st-century business practices. In their introduction, business consultants Beck and Wade admit that they were quite astonished to find themselves writing such a book. And yet the book makes a clear and compelling argument that videogames are an important component of modern culture and that everybody - especially, according to the authors, managers and executives - should study up.

After finding themselves puzzled by the lunchroom conversations of their younger employees, which revolved around mysterious objects called PlayStations and Nintendos, the authors began to wonder how videogames have affected those who grew up with them. With a possible book in mind, they began to survey members of what they called the gamer generation. Expecting to find predominantly negative characteristics, such as poor social skills and selfishness, they were surprised to learn that the gamer generation shows incredible leadership potential, excellent teamwork skills, amazing problem-solving abilities, and a strong drive to be successful.

There are problems as well - Beck and Wade theorize that the cockiness that powered the dot-com boom and bust may have come from the illusion of invincibility common to most videogames. With sales outpacing all other cultural media, the study of videogames is just underway. Got Game is an original, unexpected and informative addition to the growing number of books to read when you need a break from mashing buttons.

- Chris LaVigne <clavigne@republic-news.org>

The Bubble and Bear: How Nortel Burst the Canadian Dream, by Douglas Hunter (Doubleday Canada, 2002)

And speaking of the dot-com boom and bust, the company that most exemplified that disastrous trajectory is the subject of Hunter's closely researched examination of what went into investment decisions in that crazed time.

Hunter allows the executives of Nortel and investors who backed their extraordinary gamble lots of leeway as befits entrepreneurs at the cutting edge of technology. But ultimately, for people whose job it is to safeguard investors' money, which in the case of Nortel - at one time the largest and most widely held public company in Canadian history whose investors included just about everybody in the country - too many blind gambles were taken with too much at stake for those who ran Nortel to escape serious blame. There was too much a culture of invincibility, and Canadian pensions paid for that recklessness.

The unstated lesson in this book, but one that rings loud and clear nonetheless, is that the core of the economy is too important and too fragile to trust to capitalists. Hunter doesn't say it, but his book screams it: capitalists need protection from themselves to be of any value to us doing what they do best: looking for promising enterprises to invest money in.

- Kevin Potvin <kpotvin@republic-news.org>