The Two-Second Advantage

The result of a meeting between a journalist who loves ice hockey and a Silicon Valley entrepreneur owner of the Golden State Warriors basketball team, this book (unsurprisingly) is largely inspired by the world of sports to convey a simple, but deep message: in life, to beat the competition, you don’t necessarily have to be visionary, but just one step ahead. The message obviously applies to companies as well, especially since customer behavior can now be tracked in real time thanks to advances in information technology that simplify the next step to build offerings that anticipate future needs.

In addition to many examples of companies or organizations that have started to explore this path (Xcel Energy, the East Orange County police force, etc.), this book paints a spellbinding picture of the workings of the brain at many different levels, whether “normal,” “brilliant,” or autistic. The brain is an amazing predictive machine; hence, the final recommendation of the book: although we are still far from approaching the brain’s performance, we have everything to gain from emulating its functioning to improve the information processing performance of our organizations and orient them more toward anticipating change than analyzing the past.