MBR: The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking

I was hard pressed to find anything novel in the business section and I’d never read anything by Hawking so I figured why not.

How it connects to the Public Sector

Again, there was not explicit connection to the public sector. It is, after all, a physics book about the genesis of the universe and the laws of physics that govern it.

What I got out of reading it

This book was a difficult read despite being only 200 pages long. While written in a fairly straightforward manner, I definitely felt the fact that I had not dabbled in physics since high school.

Reading the book was also a humbling experience. Once you know a bit more about the science of the universe and the timescale upon which it has existed you can’t help but feel at least somewhat (if not fully) inconsequential.

While there wasn’t a whole lot of learning to be applied to the public sector (with the possible exception of its modelling techniques and measurements) what it did allow me to do was close a bit of the conversation gap between me and a friend of mine who is currently doing his PhD in bio-chemistry. The biggest lesson I pulled out of reading The Grand Design is perhaps that reading things that aren’t normally in your wheelhouse may be difficult, but it may help you bridge the gap between your world and the worlds of those around you. This is most likely important in business, friendship, and of course, public service.