Noted Author Ken Thurber Recognized With 2012 Small Business Influencer Community Choice Award

EDEN PRAIRIE, Minn., Aug. 20, 2012 — The people have spoken. Ken Thurber, the author of two Amazon best-sellers – Big Wave Surfing: Extreme Technology Development, Management, Marketing and Investing and Do NOT Invent Buggy Whips – was voted a 2012 Small Business Community Choice Honoree in the Experts Category. The Small Business Influencers initiative is jointly produced by Small Business Trends and Small Biz Technology. The Small Business Influencer 2012 Awards honor companies, organizations, apps and people who have made a significant impact on the North American small business market.

Small Business Trends is a highly popular small business online magazine serving over 4,000,000 people annually. Small Biz Technology is a media company which educates growing businesses on how to use technology to grow their businesses.

Ken Thurber, business entrepreneur, author and speaker, finished fourth in the voting in the Experts category (with over 300 entrants) and seventh overall for all categories, competing with nearly 1,000 entrants. The top five in each category were honored. Categories included Journalists, News Outlets, Corporations, Leaders, Experts and Apps.

Judges included such notables as Tim Berry, founder of Palo Alto Software and a co-founder of Borland International. The voting was sponsored by BlackBerry. An awards gala will be held on October 17th in New York at the New York XPO Small Business Conference.

See the final results: http://influencers.smallbiztrends.com/2012-community-choice-honorees

Dr. Thurber currently has two highly recognized business books on the market. His latest book – Do Not Invent Buggy Whips: Create, Reinvent, Position and Disrupt – has won 15 awards and also became an Amazon best-seller the week of its official launch on May 22.

This February his first commercial book (released in 2011) – Big Wave Surfing: Extreme Technology Development, Management, Marketing and Investing – was voted overall winner for best book in the 4th annual Small Business Book Awards.

Big Wave Surfing is considered one of the top business books of 2011-2012 with ten awards in 2011, and 19 so far in 2012.

According to the author, Dr. Thurber, "I wrote Big Wave Surfing as an analogy to show how disruption causes big waves to form and that these disruptions will have far-reaching economic, political and social effects. As the book points out, it's critical to be able to spot these big waves forming. We talk about them from a technological perspective, but it's clear that technology is rapidly altering the landscape and that the landscape is rapidly altering technology."

Thurber continues, "We live in interesting times. Our true measure will be how well we adapt not only to the speed of change, but the results of these changes. I believe my books will help people begin to understand and deal with these changes. I have spent a lifetime in the computer business, a business that can change radically every 12-18 months, sometimes sooner. We are talking about disruption, and often extreme techniques are needed to deal with this disruption. In fact disruption and innovation are some of the keys to my latest book – Do NOT Invent Buggy Whips – where I talk about how people innovate and how do you define innovation."

Thurber says these new concepts won't "always be pretty and in fact it may be downright dangerous. There will be winners. And like big wave surfers there will be wipeouts and losers. But if we don't boldly embrace the next wave, the innovation economy, then profound structural changes will occur in American society."

About the Author:

Kenneth J. Thurber, Ph.D. is a renowned computer architect and has developed technology and systems worth billions of dollars. He developed the concept of "technology big wave surfing" to empower readers to understand and harness the opportunity of an ever-changing technological marketplace.

See and read more at: http://www.bigwavesurfingbook.com