This document provides summaries of 12 books from Kevin Duncan's library. It summarizes the key themes and insights from each book in 1-3 sentences. The books cover topics like business, creativity, consumer behavior, and motivation. The document encourages the reader to be inquisitive, make time for reading, understand arguments, take views, inform their work, enjoy debate, and contact Kevin Duncan for speaking or training.

1. TWELVE FROM THE
LAST 12 MONTHS

2. WHAT IS IT?
• A library of 200 books
• A blog
• A series of printed books
• A pair of apps
• One-page summaries
• One-sentence summaries
• Training programmes and
speeches
• A fertile source of new ideas

3. THE BIG THEMES

4. TO SELL IS HUMAN
Dan Pink
Selling is no longer solely the
domain of salespeople,
because we are all trying to
move each other in some way
or another.

5. TO SELL IS HUMAN
Dan Pink
 We are all in sales now - trying to ‘move’ the
other’s point of view
 We spend 40% of our time ‘Non-sales selling’. The
forces behind it are:
Entrepreneurship
Elasticity(flexible skills)
Ed-Med (the two fastest-growing industries)
 The rules now are:
Attunement: being in harmony with people
Buoyancy: a resilient outlook
Clarity: making sense of murky problems and
solving them

6. BAD PHARMA
Ben Goldacre
Drug companies mislead
doctors and harm patients, so
a complete overhaul of the
industry is needed.

7. BAD PHARMA
Ben Goldacre
Informed decisions can only be made with
good evidence, but trials are biased, results
distorted, and data buried.
 Missing data is vital because it adds to
understanding, so it is a scandal that so much is
withheld.
 To generate a ‘positive’ result in a trial, a drug
only has to be better than a worthless placebo.
Systematic reviews find every trial on a topic
and score them neutrally to give a truly accurate
view.
Randomised trials should be used when it is
unclear which treatment is better, but they are
almost never conducted.

8. ANTIFRAGILE
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Antifragile things get stronger
when subjected to stress and
tension, whereas fragile things
break and robust ones simply
stay the same.

9. ANTIFRAGILE
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
 Procrustean bed: retrofitting causes
 Fragilistas: cause fragility by thinking they
understand
 Barbell strategy: safe and speculative extremes
 Ludic fallacy: mistake experiments with real world
 Turkeys and inverse turkeys
 Green lumber fallacy: unnecessary knowledge
 Extremistan: impact of a single observation
 Iatrogenics: harm done by the healer
 Agency problem: manager is not true owner
 Black swan errors: what you know now may not be
all there is

10. BUSINESS STRATEGY

11. BUSINESS IS BEAUTIFUL
Danet et al.
Businesses can be thoroughly
distinctive and commercially
successful if they pursue
principles rather than just
money.

12. BUSINESS IS BEAUTIFUL
Danet et al.
 Business doesn’t have to be cold and unforgiving.
 Businesses are made up of people who come
together to achieve more than individuals can on
their own.
 The five hallmarks of beautiful businesses are:
1. Integrity: a clear sense of purpose
2. Curiosity: they don’t stand still
3. Elegance: they are pleasurably simple
4. Craft: apply consideration to every last detail
5. Prosperity: all this leads to a strong sense of value
creation
 There are 20 sub-facets and case histories to
illustrate this thesis.

13. TELL THE TRUTH
Unerman & Salem Baskin
In an age of information
overload, the most effective
way for a brand to stand out is
to tell the truth.

14. TELL THE TRUTH
Unerman& Salem Baskin
Content:
 Acknowledge reality
 Deliver real change to services and company
structure
 Take consumers on the brand truth journey
 Enlist third-party advocates
Context:
 Be close
 Find a Truth Turning Point
 Use point-of-action media
 Leverage routine

15. CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR

16. CONTAGIOUS
Jonah Berger
Your product or idea is more
likely to catch on if you give it
social currency, make it useful
and emotional, and wrap it in
an engaging narrative.

17. CONTAGIOUS
Jonah Berger
You can increase the chances of your idea catching
on by following six steps:
Social currency: we share things that make us look good
Triggers: top of mind leads to tip of tongue
Emotion: when we care, we share
Public: if it’s built to show, it’s built to grow
Practical value: it has to be news you can use
Stories: things built into narratives are more engaging

18. CONSUMER.OLOGY
Philip Graves
Your research findings could
well be misleading you, so it
pays to examine every aspect
of the techniques used to
gather it before relying on it.

19. CONSUMER.OLOGY
Philip Graves
 Artificially deconstructing the consumer
experience is misleading.
 Most research questions should be avoided
because they:
1. Inadvertently tell people what to think
2. Change what people think
3. Lead the witness
4. Can accidentally sell
5. Can persuade people to like something (when
they don’t really)
 The way to avoid this is to look at what they
actually do, not what they say they will.
 Failing that, they should not know the focus of the
study, and should be quizzed as close to the
purchase moment as possible.

20. CREATIVITY

21. CREATIVE MISCHIEF
Dave Trott
If you want to be creative, you
have to be curious and
contrary.

22. CREATIVE MISCHIEF
Dave Trott
 Here’s the world’s simplest binary brief:
WHO should buy it? Trialists or current
users? You can’t have both. If it’s current
users, explain why they should buy more.
WHY should they buy it? Product or
brand? Rational or emotional?
WHAT should they buy it instead of?
Brand share or market growth? All
product use is good if you are brand
leader.

23. IMAGINE
Jonah Lehrer
Ideas come from sheer
persistence, but only when we
relax, so if you work hard
enough on something, and
focus on not being focused,
there will eventually be an
unconcealing.

24. IMAGINE
Jonah Lehrer
 Muses, higher powers and creative ‘types’ are
myths
 Creativity is not a ‘gift’ that only some possess – it’s
a catch-all for distinct thought processes that we
can all learn to use more effectively.
 It’s only after we’ve stopped searching for an
answer that it arrives.
 Breakthroughs follow a ‘stumped phase’.
 Trying to force insights can often prevent them–
ideas arrive when the mind is distracted or relaxed.
 Focus on not being focused.
 Ideas occur best in ‘third places’ – neither the
home nor the office.

25. INSANELY SIMPLE
Ken Segall
Work as hard as you can to
make everything as simple as
it can possibly be.

26. INSANELY SIMPLE
Ken Segall
 Think brutal
 Think small: small groups get more done
 Think minimal: just communicate one thing
 Think motion: momentum is crucial to projects
 Think iconic: essence in a conceptual image
 Think phrasal: use short simple words
 Think casual: no big company thinking and process
 Think human: be true to your feelings
 Think sceptic: expect negative first reactions of
 Think war: extreme times call for extreme measures

27. MOTIVATION

28. MASTERY
Robert Greene
Everyone has the potential to
master something if they
identify their true calling, serve
their apprenticeship patiently,
and put in enough effort.

29. MASTERY
Robert Greene
Mastery of a subject or skill is achieved through
three stages:
Apprenticeship: deep observation, skills
acquisition, experimentation
Creative active: moving from passive to active,
advancing through trial and error
Mastery, which includes a mentor dynamic with a
back-and-forth exchange of ideas and experience
After 20,000 hours of practice, an instinctive
‘Fingertip Feel’ level is reached.

30. THE ICARUS DECEPTION
Seth Godin
It’s better to be sorry than safe,
so ditch the old rules. Move
out of your comfort zone, and
start treating your work as art.

31. THE ICARUS DECEPTION
Seth Godin
 Icarus was also told not to fly too low, and
most of us aim too low in life.
 The economy now rewards art over
conservatism.
 The assets that matter now are trust,
remarkability, permission, leadership, stories
that spread, and humanity.
 Reverse Descartes: You are. So think.
 Learn something new with no apparent
benefit, then ‘ship’ it to get a reaction. Learn
and carry on.
 It’s better to be sorry than safe.

32. HOW TO USE
• Be inquisitive
• Make the time
• Understand the lines of argument
• Take a view
• Inform your work
• Enjoy the debate
• Ask Kevin to speak or train

33. KEVIN DUNCAN
More detail at:
www.greatesthitsblog.com
Ask Kevin to speak or train:
07979 808770
kevinduncan@expertadvice.co.uk
Twitter: @kevinduncan