APRIL 14, 2026|BOOKS & REVIEWS
The Non-Obvious Book of the Week: How Things Are Made By Tim Minshall
How did the stuff that made it into your life get made? For most of us, the manufacturing process is a mystery, but if we better understood how these things get to us, we might make different choices about what we choose to buy. That's the big idea behind this book from college professor and Head of the Institute for Manufacturing, Tim Minshall. His book is an eye-opening look at every part of the manufacturing process, from the making of things all the way through to the transportation of how they get to us. The book is a great read, and (spoiler alert), you can also catch Tim on an upcoming episode of the Non-Obvious Show podcast too.
About the Non-Obvious Book Selection of the Week:
Every week I share a new “non-obvious” book selection. Titles featured here may be new or classic books, but the date of publication doesn’t really matter. My goal is to elevate great reads that perhaps deserve a second look which you might have otherwise missed.
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How It All Started
A Short Backstory Of This Blog
This is a blog about non-obvious ideas. Originally launched on the Typepad platform in 2005 as the Influential Marketing blog, the stories at first focused mainly on digital marketing while Rohit worked at Ogilvy Advertising. In 2015 Rohit officially rebranded to the Non-Obvious Insights Blog and published his WSJ bestseller Non-Obvious. For the past twenty one years, this blog has coined new terms, introduced future marketing practices and inspired the next generation of non-obvious thinkers and marketers.
