What do you think?
Rate this book
Evolve or Die: Lessons for World-Class Innovation & Creativity
"Many books end up on a bookshelf. Evolve or Die should be very near where you work. After reading it, I keep going back to it. I love to randomly open it up to any page and read a few pages, often several times a week. It's a fun experience and very stimulating for anyone with a big curiosity." -- John Sculley, Businessman, Entrepreneur and InvestorExpand your creative and entrepreneurial mind and learn how to give the world everything you've got to offer.Assuming you're someone interested in learning and improving - and making a difference - this book was written with you in mind. Whether you're at the top of the corporate pyramid or somewhere nearer the base, or a stay-at-home parent coordinating the endless duties of the family, or an entrepreneur orchestrating a finite amount of time and resources, you're working to make a difference. And yes, your work and what you do matters. This book contains a culmination of experiences, thoughts, and learning from world-class innovators and creators.
Every single story is true, and every single story is relevant to you. Common themes of these stories are hard work, persistence, and courage. Sometimes luck plays a role, but things are more often learned the hard way. And, as is the case whenever there are innovators and creators involved, thereís also a fair amount of love running rampant through these stories. Evidently, rampant is how love likes to run - especially when itís heading toward a goal and vision. Perhaps most importantly, youíll see that every one of these luminaries was made, not born.
The title Evolve or Die is somewhat blunt. It's an exaggeration, but I believe that it's closer to the truth than many people realize. Itís my genuine hope that this book and the stories within it are of real interest and benefit to you.
It might seem trite to write this, but (in reference to Henry David Thoreau) you werenít meant to settle for a life of quiet desperation. You need to innovate and create. Itís better to learn from the champions, practice like your life depends on it (and to an extent it does), and come out strong and punching above your weight (because you can). Youíve got a lot to offer this world. We all do. Iím in your corner, offering guidance and cheering for you.
Get in the ring, come out swinging, and fight the good fight.Don't wait! Order your copy today.Visit tomtriumph dot com and download the free manifesto The Call to Myths, Best Practices and Achieving Your Rightful Place.
PRAISE FOR EVOLVE OR
- "Evolve or Die can help provide is at once inspiring, entertaining, and thought-provoking. Tom Triumph combines key business insights with his unique narrative style. The result is a must-read for every business executive." ó Kartik Hosanagar, Professor at The Wharton School
- "Tom shares some simple, actionable advice for all of us on cultivating our superpowers... stories to change your approach to personal and professional growth..." ó Dave Blakely, Partner, Mach49
- "Tom Triumph has artfully captured many of the key lessons in the creative process... and provides simple models to make this all actionable. A perfect reminder for anyone looking to push their own limits...
Every single story is true, and every single story is relevant to you. Common themes of these stories are hard work, persistence, and courage. Sometimes luck plays a role, but things are more often learned the hard way. And, as is the case whenever there are innovators and creators involved, thereís also a fair amount of love running rampant through these stories. Evidently, rampant is how love likes to run - especially when itís heading toward a goal and vision. Perhaps most importantly, youíll see that every one of these luminaries was made, not born.
The title Evolve or Die is somewhat blunt. It's an exaggeration, but I believe that it's closer to the truth than many people realize. Itís my genuine hope that this book and the stories within it are of real interest and benefit to you.
It might seem trite to write this, but (in reference to Henry David Thoreau) you werenít meant to settle for a life of quiet desperation. You need to innovate and create. Itís better to learn from the champions, practice like your life depends on it (and to an extent it does), and come out strong and punching above your weight (because you can). Youíve got a lot to offer this world. We all do. Iím in your corner, offering guidance and cheering for you.
Get in the ring, come out swinging, and fight the good fight.Don't wait! Order your copy today.Visit tomtriumph dot com and download the free manifesto The Call to Myths, Best Practices and Achieving Your Rightful Place.
PRAISE FOR EVOLVE OR
- "Evolve or Die can help provide is at once inspiring, entertaining, and thought-provoking. Tom Triumph combines key business insights with his unique narrative style. The result is a must-read for every business executive." ó Kartik Hosanagar, Professor at The Wharton School
- "Tom shares some simple, actionable advice for all of us on cultivating our superpowers... stories to change your approach to personal and professional growth..." ó Dave Blakely, Partner, Mach49
- "Tom Triumph has artfully captured many of the key lessons in the creative process... and provides simple models to make this all actionable. A perfect reminder for anyone looking to push their own limits...
- GenresBusiness
270 pages, Kindle Edition
Published September 4, 2018
84 people are currently reading
96 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
June 19, 2020
I have just finished reading the book “Evolve or Die” by Thomas Triumph. The book is full of many short stories. Some stories involve the author and some are not. In every story, the author extract several lessons leading improvement in life. Throughout this book, you could see how small changes can improve your full life. I recommend reading this book. It is very interesting.
July 30, 2019
Just the obvious, nothing new.
January 30, 2023
What are your favorite quotes from the book?
"Once I was training for a marathon where I wanted to do well. So, I'd significantly increased my weekly mileage and sustained that high-training mileage for months. Throughout this period, if the training was 3-mile run or a 20-mile run, I habitually ran at the same pace - which was plodding. The result? My marathon time was slower than prior times trained on a fraction of the mileage. Basically, I'd spent hours training to run slowly."
"Steve says he never worked on his weaknesses; but rather he only worked on his strengths and
then, he exaggerated them"
"Steve Vai comes right out and says that the only thing that holds you back is your thoughts."
"Another saying among ultra-runners is "90 percent of the run is mental and the rest is all in your head."
"There's a hunger to survive and thrive that is associated with immigrants. It's what allows them to arrive in a new land often with next to nothing except their work ethic and a drive to create a better future. Pushing aside the fears of the unknown, they leave their native lands with heart-wrenching goodbyes to family and friends and head out into foreign territory. Many immigrants arrive with a minimal amount of currency. Many don't speak English. But they're brimming with optimism, hope for the future, and a profound drive to build. Their future and lives are at stake."
"In my country there's no opportunity for poor people. The rich get richer. The poor will always be poor and poor. Here, do it right and nobody can stop you."
"It's easy to chase the wrong thing. To get transfixed on a shiny object(money, title, whatever) and lose sight of what you really want your life to be about. Not that money isn't important. But relatively speaking, not so much."
"Often times, it's the people outside the industry, those unencumbered from the accepted thinking, who drive the next disruption cycle."
"First the bad news. Chances are your company is probably going to go under. Whether large and successful, or small and nimble, the odds are your company will remain focused on the business at hand. Chugging forward with its current way of doing business, selling those products and services that have served so well. It works. Sometimes for a long while. Until it doesn't."
"Lots of people dream big and talk about big bold ideas but never do anything. I judge people by what they've done. The ratio of something to nothing is infinite. So just do something."
"George Bernard Shaw wrote, "A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing."
"You might think what drives people is money or power, but studies conclusively show that the opportunity to collaborate, contribute, and make a difference are much bigger motivations."
"Professor Ginzel explained that while people tend to default into a competitive position during the negotiation, the most economically desirable situation is to first "enlarge the pie" by creating joint gains."
"Professor Ginzel explained. "Creating value is more of a common practice than popular stories about tough negotiators would have you believe. Remember that the definition of a successful negotiation in real life is repeat business and a good reputation (which helps you get that repeat business). If someone feels he.she has lost a negotiation, both parties have lost because of the reputation effect."
"Success is Uncertain. Of course it is. That's why you're afraid."
"Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself."
What is a specific real world application that you will be able to make from what you learned in this book?
When your looking at email and talking on the phone, you might think you're actively engaged with both tasks, but the reality is that you're only focused and working on one at a time. "you cannot focus on one while doing the other. "People can't multitask very well" Dr. Miller said. And interestingly, his research shows that people who think they're good at multitasking are actually the worst. "The brain is very good at deluding itself." It's certainly easy to fall into the trap of trying to do two (or more) things at once. With a nearly constant stream of emails, ringing phones, meetings, hallway conversations, people dropping by with urgent questions; not to mention social
media and news access. It's no wonder we end up trying to multitask. But the research shows that multitasking always results in the tasks taking longer to complete than if they were completed one at a time. In addition to taking longer, multitasking often results in mistakes, which cause new problems and even greater delays. Said another way, "Multitasking means screwing up several things at once."" Fortunately Tom presents Dr. Miller's solutions to the multitasking disaster. 1. Plan to focus. 2. Remove distractions. 3. Take a break. I will look to follow these ideals to better focus and improve my output.
What is the one thing that you think you will do differently or think differently about since you read the book?
Jn the Lessons to Teach Your Children chapter there were 25 point that all of which are important but to struck home with me as thing that I do but had not consciously thought about teaching others. "12. Don't compare yourself to others. There's over seven billion people in the world, but there's only one you." and "16. Don't be afraid to be embarrassed. Peer pressure can be hard to disregard. Everyone wants to be cool. Nobody wants to look bad. The best way to never be embarrassed is to never try anything that has a chance of failing. But that's an express train to the little town of mediocrity (kids, I know when you're rolling your eyes). If you study the greats,
you'll see they all were focused on their dreams and had a healthy disregard for always wanting to look cool." To me this means it is more fun to have fun and be successful then mediocre and cool. I will teach this to my girls and maybe even lead by example.** I will think about internal weakness differently. There was a good example presented of two evenly matched tennis players both having week backhands. One player is constantly hitting to the others weakness of a backhand. That one then gets more practice playing the backhand and gets better and improves faster than their opponent. Now they are unevenly matched as they no longer both have a week backhand but one is an all around player. "The old SWOT rule of leveraging your core competence is now a way to mild your firm's current assets. Instead, firms should be preparing for the future by turning weaknesses into new competitive advantages that shift the rules of the game."
What is one point you disagreed with, or at least questioned, in this book?
There really wasn't one point I disagreed with in this book. At first I was a little put off by the format of the book as each chapter was only a couple of pages and they didn't flow together. This felt disjointed and awkward at first, but as you can see by my number of quotes it got to where I couldn't put the book down. Each chapter was very direct and did include a lot of fluff. It made point and let you decided if it was valid.
"Once I was training for a marathon where I wanted to do well. So, I'd significantly increased my weekly mileage and sustained that high-training mileage for months. Throughout this period, if the training was 3-mile run or a 20-mile run, I habitually ran at the same pace - which was plodding. The result? My marathon time was slower than prior times trained on a fraction of the mileage. Basically, I'd spent hours training to run slowly."
"Steve says he never worked on his weaknesses; but rather he only worked on his strengths and
then, he exaggerated them"
"Steve Vai comes right out and says that the only thing that holds you back is your thoughts."
"Another saying among ultra-runners is "90 percent of the run is mental and the rest is all in your head."
"There's a hunger to survive and thrive that is associated with immigrants. It's what allows them to arrive in a new land often with next to nothing except their work ethic and a drive to create a better future. Pushing aside the fears of the unknown, they leave their native lands with heart-wrenching goodbyes to family and friends and head out into foreign territory. Many immigrants arrive with a minimal amount of currency. Many don't speak English. But they're brimming with optimism, hope for the future, and a profound drive to build. Their future and lives are at stake."
"In my country there's no opportunity for poor people. The rich get richer. The poor will always be poor and poor. Here, do it right and nobody can stop you."
"It's easy to chase the wrong thing. To get transfixed on a shiny object(money, title, whatever) and lose sight of what you really want your life to be about. Not that money isn't important. But relatively speaking, not so much."
"Often times, it's the people outside the industry, those unencumbered from the accepted thinking, who drive the next disruption cycle."
"First the bad news. Chances are your company is probably going to go under. Whether large and successful, or small and nimble, the odds are your company will remain focused on the business at hand. Chugging forward with its current way of doing business, selling those products and services that have served so well. It works. Sometimes for a long while. Until it doesn't."
"Lots of people dream big and talk about big bold ideas but never do anything. I judge people by what they've done. The ratio of something to nothing is infinite. So just do something."
"George Bernard Shaw wrote, "A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing."
"You might think what drives people is money or power, but studies conclusively show that the opportunity to collaborate, contribute, and make a difference are much bigger motivations."
"Professor Ginzel explained that while people tend to default into a competitive position during the negotiation, the most economically desirable situation is to first "enlarge the pie" by creating joint gains."
"Professor Ginzel explained. "Creating value is more of a common practice than popular stories about tough negotiators would have you believe. Remember that the definition of a successful negotiation in real life is repeat business and a good reputation (which helps you get that repeat business). If someone feels he.she has lost a negotiation, both parties have lost because of the reputation effect."
"Success is Uncertain. Of course it is. That's why you're afraid."
"Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself."
What is a specific real world application that you will be able to make from what you learned in this book?
When your looking at email and talking on the phone, you might think you're actively engaged with both tasks, but the reality is that you're only focused and working on one at a time. "you cannot focus on one while doing the other. "People can't multitask very well" Dr. Miller said. And interestingly, his research shows that people who think they're good at multitasking are actually the worst. "The brain is very good at deluding itself." It's certainly easy to fall into the trap of trying to do two (or more) things at once. With a nearly constant stream of emails, ringing phones, meetings, hallway conversations, people dropping by with urgent questions; not to mention social
media and news access. It's no wonder we end up trying to multitask. But the research shows that multitasking always results in the tasks taking longer to complete than if they were completed one at a time. In addition to taking longer, multitasking often results in mistakes, which cause new problems and even greater delays. Said another way, "Multitasking means screwing up several things at once."" Fortunately Tom presents Dr. Miller's solutions to the multitasking disaster. 1. Plan to focus. 2. Remove distractions. 3. Take a break. I will look to follow these ideals to better focus and improve my output.
What is the one thing that you think you will do differently or think differently about since you read the book?
Jn the Lessons to Teach Your Children chapter there were 25 point that all of which are important but to struck home with me as thing that I do but had not consciously thought about teaching others. "12. Don't compare yourself to others. There's over seven billion people in the world, but there's only one you." and "16. Don't be afraid to be embarrassed. Peer pressure can be hard to disregard. Everyone wants to be cool. Nobody wants to look bad. The best way to never be embarrassed is to never try anything that has a chance of failing. But that's an express train to the little town of mediocrity (kids, I know when you're rolling your eyes). If you study the greats,
you'll see they all were focused on their dreams and had a healthy disregard for always wanting to look cool." To me this means it is more fun to have fun and be successful then mediocre and cool. I will teach this to my girls and maybe even lead by example.** I will think about internal weakness differently. There was a good example presented of two evenly matched tennis players both having week backhands. One player is constantly hitting to the others weakness of a backhand. That one then gets more practice playing the backhand and gets better and improves faster than their opponent. Now they are unevenly matched as they no longer both have a week backhand but one is an all around player. "The old SWOT rule of leveraging your core competence is now a way to mild your firm's current assets. Instead, firms should be preparing for the future by turning weaknesses into new competitive advantages that shift the rules of the game."
What is one point you disagreed with, or at least questioned, in this book?
There really wasn't one point I disagreed with in this book. At first I was a little put off by the format of the book as each chapter was only a couple of pages and they didn't flow together. This felt disjointed and awkward at first, but as you can see by my number of quotes it got to where I couldn't put the book down. Each chapter was very direct and did include a lot of fluff. It made point and let you decided if it was valid.
July 15, 2021
Honestly, pretty terrible. Half of the chapters are complete filler, and have nothing to do with innovation or leadership in the slightest. And half of the chapters are just lists. After 5 chapters in a row, where the author just vomits lists at you, the reader starts to get a bit of list fatigue, and they start to become completely meaningless.
It gets a few bonus points for being super easy to read though. It's really easy to just fly through the chapters, even if you don't get much out of them.
It gets a few bonus points for being super easy to read though. It's really easy to just fly through the chapters, even if you don't get much out of them.
Read
December 12, 2018Some great nuggets in here! I listened to the audiobook and — having not seen it in print — I suspect it’s easier to mentally file the information had I processed visually, since it includes some lists and rankings. Not necessarily rocket science (although there are a few sections of rocket-talk relevant to average reader) but a solid collection of stories to inspire and encourage goal-setting and continued progress.
Read
May 19, 2025Had to read for my entrepreneur rotation lol
September 12, 2025
3.9⭐️
For a book I read from my works library, it wasn’t bad. Gave a 3.9 just because it was a work book🤷🏻♀️
For a book I read from my works library, it wasn’t bad. Gave a 3.9 just because it was a work book🤷🏻♀️
December 2, 2022
The best part of this book was being done with it. Basically just clickbait-styled lists
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews