Book Review: Shoe Dog

Just finished reading Shoe Dog, a memoir of Phil Knight, the man behind Nike. It's quite a fascinating read, and Phil has opened his heart and his life to the readers and shared in complete honesty all his mistakes, his fears, his vulnerabilities. This makes you be a part of Phil’s journey rather than reading from a distance about an accomplished person. 

Some interesting facts that you will read in this book are: 

• Phil Knight’s travel to Japan as well as his climb to Mount Fuji.
• How Phil had a shoe selling business for many years before the #Nike brand came into existence. 
• How the name Nike got formed and who was the person behind this name. 
• How the Nike Swoosh logo got made and why Phil decided to go forward with it, despite not liking it much. 
• The way Nike worked on #innovation and how it overtook Adidas and Puma who were giants when Nike was starting out. 
• Phil’s personal life, how he met his wife, his relationship with his parents and his own love for sports. I must say that the last 40 pages of the book are just brilliant and come as the perfect icing on the cake.

Elon Musk - The Game Changer

One of my previous line managers gifted a book on Elon Musk to me a few years back. The book was called 'Elon Musk - How the Billionaire CEO of SPACEX and TESLA is shaping our Future' by Ashlee Vance.

Although the title and the topic seemed very interesting, but yet for some reason, I was not able to come around and read this book until now. I am so glad that I was finally able to get the time to finish reading this book. It is a great #biography on a man who is on a mission. A mission to change the world, to do what has not been done till now, to challenge the status quo and to ultimately make lives better for humans – directly and indirectly.

This book is a great insight into the person and the personality that Elon Musk is. Not everything is good and wonderful about him. It is clear that he is not an easy person to work with or work for. However, what you tend to appreciate is his genius mind, his thinking ability, his challenging mindset and his clarity of goals. The way he sees interconnections between the work on rockets, cars and solar energy and how he and his team apply learnings from one industry to another is quite fascinating!

I have always enjoyed watching some of the #TED talks and TED interviews of Elon Musk as well as his key team members. In fact, for the past many years, I have been in awe of the kind of work that #Musk and his companies are doing, but when you go deeper into their journey, their obstacles and their plans, you tend to understand and appreciate it much better. I would hope to see these companies churn out more path breaking initiatives in the years ahead and change the world for the better.

Finally, a big thumbs up from my side to this book as Ashlee Vance has written it quite well, getting interviews, opinions and anecdotes from people who have interacted with Elon Musk and been in some part of his life, either in a good way or bad way.