As someone who writes books, I am continually grateful to the fact that there are people who buy a book, and then actually read that book. It’s equally clear to me that there’s a second, large group who like the idea of books, but would much prefer a project-based approach to learning the book’s content.

As the technology sector applies Large Language Models (LLMs) to everything, one very valid reaction for authors is to be concerned. Those concerns are merited: it is possible that fewer people will be reading book a decade from now than they do today. However, I also think that LLMs are a powerful tool for supporting that second person, the one who wants a project-based approach rather than to read the book from cover to cover.

Section 1

Why this is a neat idea: “It’s hard to know where the future of books is going. One direction it might well be going is a world where we read books once, but use them forever as a supplementary tool. This companion to Crafting Engineering Strategy walks through the second part of that vision, showing how to use an LLM optimized edition of the book to collaborate on creating, editing and improving engineering strategy.”