The vast majority of articles about startups and innovation focus on Silicon Valley. Today we look at two innovators far removed from the typical incubators.

A shortlist for the 2014 Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award was announced yesterday. The books chosen focus very much on the big-picture issues of the day, "the most important trends shaping our world" as the press release puts it, so the switch from Goldman Sachs to McKinsey as a partner to FT has not reduced the scope of the books as I thought it may. (I speculated back in May when the announcement was made that McKinsey would now be backing the award that it may change focus to the more nuts-and-bolts business management issues that McKinsey ostensibly focuses on in its own work.

In the rapidly changing world of technology and the way we utilize that technology, we often forget many of our institutions were built over the phone, forming relationships with the people with whom we wanted to do business. In a group meeting here this week, our retired founder and president Jack Covert made the argument that if we want to maintain our current relationships better than our competitors and add something to their lives that others don't, we need to pick up the phone and have a real conversation with these people we value. We are fortunate that our business is still very much a people-orientated service company that really enjoys those breaks in the email or social media chain, and we’re lucky to have formed relationships with authors and institutions who uphold that same type of “old school” ethos.