I was torn on whether or not to even review this book. On one hand, it could be useful as a book to help inspire and bolster someone's confidence to take more risks and to be more willing to work around problems in a business. On the other hand, it doesn't deal with concrete examples and also doesn't really make it clear how to do more fundamental changes to the infrastructure, seeming to assume that the hacks would make people so amazingly productive ti would just happen.

I can't help but wonder though if businesses behave as badly as they're often portrayed why we should keep bolstering and supporting these businesses. if one is truly the vaguely defined "hacker" the authors postulate, might it not be better to break away from the companies entirely?

One of the biggest problems for me is the book just feels off. It's mostly because of the writing style of the authors, which to me scream business consultants. Touchy feely, full of promise, but at the same time somehow missing that people have been doing this for a long, long time. It also falls in the the trap of being far too generalized and full of random anecdotes and hard to believe statistics.

I think this could be a great book for some folks, but part of me wishes I had not picked it back up after the first time I started reading it. ( )