Reading List

Why:

• JPods is building a culture that applies a technology. That technology will solve problems, but the technology itself is just a tool, the company culture is the objective.
• Three Circles of our Hedgehog Concept:
  • Passion for: Our culture is founded on a passion for liberty. Personal on-demand mobility is the physical manifestation of liberty. We empower individuals, regardless of age, ability, or wealth to exercise the physical manifestation of liberty.
  • Best in the World: On-demand mobility of payloads less than 500kg (1200 lbs) in commuter-range travel.
  • Metric: Profit per customer trip.
    • Profit is the difference between the value customers willingly pay minus the cost to compete.
    • Value includes:
      • Employee turnover as a metric of interal spirit dedicated to increasing customer value.
      • Customer delight/dissatisfaction with each trip.
      • Money
    • Cost are all costs for all resources consumed. A primary reason solar collection is integrated into the networks is pollution and oil depletion are currently grave costs being socialized instead of capitalized into the cost of other transportation networks.
  • Life requires energy. Oil is finite. Nations and life powered by oil are terminal.
  • We can empower each urban individual with on-demand mobility within a solar budget.

Concept:

“It’s not where you take things from — it’s where you take them to.”  Jean-Luc Godard

Short clips:

• Why Leaders Eat Last . The biochemistry of human cultures. Here is a shorter TED talk
• Good to Great, Stockdale Paradox.
• Great by Choice, Productive Paranoia.

Mandatory reading to work for JPods. We must have a common language to drive a paradigm shift:

• Great by Choice by Jim Collins and Morton Hanson, how to build great organizations in uncertanty.
• Why Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek the bio-chemistry of culture.
• Good to Great by Jim Collins, how to change an organization from being good to greatness. The Stockdale paradox of unwavering faith we will prevail while facing the most brutal facts of the current reality. The flywheel principle of incremental, yet relentless improvement.
• Start with Why by Simon Sinek the bio-chemistry of culture.
• Nothing Like It in the World by Stephen Ambrose, how the Transcontinental Railroads were built. Private construction capital (risk on the innovators) reinforced by government backed bonds once networks were in operation and achieving public policy objectives. This is the business model for JPods and rapid deployment of infrastructure. Transcontinental Railroad, 12 min.  CNBC current railroads.
• The Black Swan by Nassim Taleb, how to make decisions without being the turkey, dealing with uncertainty. The turkey wakes everyday to kind feeding by humans. Everyday its experience reinforces that life is stable and good; just like oil. “Empty suits” the experts who aren’t.
• The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell, how change happens.
• Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, who makes the changes and the decade of preparation required. JPods has our decade of preparation.
• The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki, Why free markets and democracies work. The transportation section underscores why customers are better than experts at designing what customers are willing to pay for.
• Positively Outrageous Service by T. Scott Gross, on why companies that listen to their customers succeed.
• The Crash Course, Google “Chris Martenson”. The course is free on the Internet.
• PB-244854, (skim) Congressional Office of Technology Assessment study that is a blueprint of oil independent cities, 1975. It also warned “Finally, institutional failures may have hindered implementation.”
• Presidential vetoes of “internal improvements.
• Fighting Traffic, by Peter Norton, history of Federal redefining America to depend on selling cars.
• Vince Graman, SC Infrastructure Bank on Federal end of infrastructure innovation.

Nice to read:

• Innovate Like Edison by Michael Gelb and Sarah Miller Caldicott, little contrived but great quotes and background on tinkering process of Edison and his team.
• Einstein and His Universe, institutional resistance to changes from the current “know-how” to a different “know-what”. Despite a massive mail campaign seeking a teaching job, took 4+ years after publishing the Special Theory of Relativity and Proof of Quantum Mechanics and proof the atoms and molecules for Einstein to get a teaching job; it is easier to change physics than to change minds.