I recently left a large corporation to work for a small startup. I was at my previous employer for 17 years, so the switch has been both a significant change and an interesting adventure for me. I now have more responsibilities in my current role, while getting paid much, much less for fulfilling them. Why did I decide to make such a switch? Mostly for the sake of my sanity. Big Corporate Culture finally got to me with its bureaucracy, politics, and pathological practices - all symptoms of deeper disorders. However, startups also have their own share of neurotic behaviors, which may be why most of them fail. Eric Ries provides entrepreneurs with a saner and more methodical approach towards business development and innovation. Like Lean Logic, Ries draws inspiration from Ohno's Lean Manufacturing.

I love dictionaries. And I love to collect them. Earlier this year, my wife and I spent a weekend in Victoria. We had about an hour before we had to board our seaplane, so we took a stroll nearby the terminal. By chance, we came upon a used bookstore, and there I found and purchased a beautiful nineteenth century volume of Barclay's Universal English Dictionary. It was a hefty book, and there was a very strict weight limit for the luggage on the seaplane.  As we prepared to board, I was filled with quite a bit of anxiety (and images of having to choose between keeping my wonderful impulse buy or missing our flight). Fortunately, we did not exceed the limit (whew!).

The moral virtue of frugality seems to take on an unsettling meaning when scaled out to a global level. At least that's what I took away from reading Christien Meindertsma's book. Meindertsma is an artist and designer who decided to research all of the different products made from one pig (#05049). The products range from the expected (hamburger) to the downright surprising (ammunition). I learned about the book from watching her TED talk, which had been sitting in my queue of iTunes podcasts, since last year. I knew I had to get the book when I saw the yellow ear tag attached to it (another reason why I hope books never go completely digital).

Paula Scher is a partner at the prestigious Pentagram. She built her reputation mainly from her early graphic designs, which includes the iconic Boston album cover (for those of you old enough to have experienced that musical era) and the Citigroup logo. The book is an entertaining account of one female designer's rise through what was (and arguably still is) a male-dominated business, and culminating in her current role at Pentagram. There are tons of examples of her work in the book, as well as the insightful - and often humorous - stories behind them. She offers some great thoughts on how to work with clients and through corporate politics. Scher relies heavily on her intuition when designing, but understands that her clients ultimately want articulate rationales for the designs (how else can they judge whether or not the work is any good?). She thinks it's tragic that a lot of talented designers lack the skills to explain their work to others in this manner, to persuade clients of the merits of their designs. So more often than not, this results in their work remaining invisible to the world at large. It reminds me of Rogers's claim that innovation is not a technological phenomenon but a social phenomenon.

This is a magazine published by the people at McSweeney's. The articles and essays feel fresh and quirky (the latest issue covers Bulgaria's street necrologues and the Barkley Marathons); the reviews are concise and insightful; the poetry accessible. Grab an issue and give it a try.

Multiple-Nobel-Prize-winner Linus Pauling once said that the way to get good ideas is to get lots of ideas, and throw the bad ones away. Steven M. Johnson is someone who has a lot of ideas. A lot of them. His inventions take me back to my youth, when I would see those crazy gadgets in issues of Mad Magazine. This book is no longer in print, but you may still be able to pick up a used copy somewhere. Bruce Nussbaum believes Design Thinking is dead and that Creative Intelligence is the next thing. If that's true, then Steven Johnson is a good place to start developing your CI. Allison Arieff wrote about Johnson in The New York Times and has an interview with him in Design Mind. If you're not familiar with Johnson, these articles can give you a taste of what you're missing and may even get your own creative juices flowing.