Blackstone LaunchPad Entrepreneurship Book Collection: eBooks Only

Whether your dream is escaping the rat race, experiencing high-end world travel, or earning a monthly five-figure income with zero management, The 4-Hour Workweek is the blueprint. This step-by-step guide teaches how Tim went from $40,000 per year and 80 hours per week to $40,000 per month and 4 hours per week. This new expanded edition includes more than 50 practical tips and case studies from readers (including families) who have doubled income, overcome common sticking points, and reinvented themselves using the original book as a starting point.

A guide for individuals and organizations navigating the complex and ambiguous Future of Work Foreword by New York Times columnist and best-selling author Thomas L. Friedman Technology is changing work as we know it. Cultural norms are undergoing tectonic shifts. A global pandemic proves that we are inextricably connected whether we choose to be or not. So much change, so quickly, is disorienting. It's undermining our sense of identity and challenging our ability to adapt. But where so many see these changes as threatening, Heather McGowan and Chris Shipley see the opportunity to open the flood gates of human potential--if we can change the way we think about work and leadership. They have dedicated the last 5 years to understanding how technical, business, and cultural shifts affecting the workplace have brought us to this crossroads, The result is a powerful and practical guide to the future of work for leaders and employees. The future can be better, but only if we let go of our attachment to our traditional (and disappearing) ideas about careers, and what a "good job" looks like. Blending wisdom from interviews with hundreds of executives, The Adaptation Advantage explains the profound changes happening in the world of work and posits the solution: new ways to think about careers that detach our sense of pride and personal identity from our job title, and connect it to our sense of purpose. Activating purpose, the authors suggest, will inherently motivate learning, engagement, empowerment, and lead to new forms of pride and identity throughout the workforce. Only when we let go of our rigid career identities can we embrace and appreciate the joys of learning and adapting to new realities--and help our organizations do the same. Of course, making this transition is hard. It requires leaders who can attract and motivate cognitively diverse teams fueled by a strong sense of purpose in an environment of psychological safety--despite fierce competition and external pressures.   Adapting to the future of work has always called for strong leadership. Now, as a pandemic disrupts so many aspects of work, adapting is a leadership imperative. The Adaptation Advantage is an essential guide to help leaders meet that challenge.

This book will explain how the principles behind agile product development help designers, developers, architects, and product managers create awesome products; and how to look beyond a shiny user interface to build a great product. Most importantly, this book will give you a shared framework for your product development team to collaborate effectively. Product development involves several key activities and yet too many companies and innovators focus on just a few of them much to the detriment of the product's success in the marketplace. As a result we still continue to see high failure rates in new product development, be it inside organizations or startups. In the last fifteen years, advances in agile software development, lean product development, human-centered design, design thinking, lean startups and product delivery have helped improve individual aspects of product development. Product developer extraordinaire Tathagat Varma in Agile Product Development integrates individual knowledge areas into a field manual for product developers. In today's hyper-innovative world, being first to the market, or delivering feature-loaded products, or even offering the latest technology doesn't guarantee success anymore.

Startup money is moving online, and this guide shows you how it works. The Art of Startup Fundraising takes a fresh look at raising money for startups, with a focus on the changing face of startup finance. New regulations are making the old go-to advice less relevant, as startup money is increasingly moving online. These new waters are all but uncharted--and founders need an accessible guide. This book helps you navigate the online world of startup fundraising with easy-to-follow explanations and expert perspective on the new digital world of finance. You'll find tips and tricks on raising money and investing in startups from early stage to growth stage, and develop a clear strategy based on the new realities surrounding today's startup landscape. The finance world is in a massive state of flux. Changes are occurring at an increasing pace in all sectors, but few more intensely than the startup sphere. When the paradigm changes, your processes must change with it. This book shows you how startup funding works, with expert coaching toward the new rules on the field.

Using Business as a Force for Good Join a Growing Movement-Learn how you can join more than 1,000 Certified B Corporations from 80 industries and 35 countries-led by well-known icons like Patagonia and Ben & Jerry's and disruptive upstarts like Warby Parker and Etsy-in a global movement to redefine success in business. Build a Better Business-Drawing on interviews, tips, and best practices from over 100 B Corporations, author and B Corp owner Ryan Honeyman shows that using business as a force for good can help you attract and retain the best talent, distinguish your company in a crowded market, and increase customer trust, loyalty, and evangelism for your brand. More than 1,000 companies from 80 industries and 30 countries are leading a global movement to redefine success in business. They're called B Corporations-B Corps for short-and these businesses create high-quality jobs, help build stronger communities, and restore the environment, all while generating solid financial returns. Author and B Corp owner Ryan Honeyman worked closely with over 100 B Corp CEOs and senior executives to share their tips, advice, and best-practice ideas for how to build a better business and how to meet the rigorous standards for-and enjoy the benefits of-B Corp certification. This book makes the business case for improving your social and environmental performance and offers a step-by-step "quick start guide" on how your company can join an innovative and rapidly expanding community of businesses that want to make money and make a difference.

Silicon Valley, Singapore, Tel Aviv--the global hubs of entrepreneurial activity--all bear the marks of government investment. Yet, for every public intervention that spurs entrepreneurial activity, there are many failed efforts that waste untold billions in taxpayer dollars. When has governmental sponsorship succeeded in boosting growth, and when has it fallen terribly short? Should the government be involved in such undertakings at all? Boulevard of Broken Dreams is the first extensive look at the ways governments have supported entrepreneurs and venture capitalists across decades and continents. Josh Lerner, one of the foremost experts in the field, provides valuable insights into why some public initiatives work while others are hobbled by pitfalls, and he offers suggestions for how public ventures should be implemented in the future. Discussing the complex history of Silicon Valley and other pioneering centers of venture capital, Lerner uncovers the extent of government influence in prompting growth. He examines the public strategies used to advance new ventures, points to the challenges of these endeavors, and reveals the common flaws undermining far too many programs--poor design, a lack of understanding for the entrepreneurial process, and implementation problems. Lerner explains why governments cannot dictate how venture markets evolve, and why they must balance their positions as catalysts with an awareness of their limited ability to stimulate the entrepreneurial sector. As governments worldwide seek to spur economic growth in ever more aggressive ways, Boulevard of Broken Dreams offers an important caution. The book argues for a careful approach to government support of entrepreneurial activities, so that the mistakes of earlier efforts are not repeated.

As adults, we seem to make everything harder. We’re driven to accelerate growth in our local startup communities—but in the process, we overthink, overanalyze, and overload even our simplest activities. Before long, our community goals buckle under the weight of our complex adult concerns. Our motivation dries up. Our best ideas fade away, leaving entrepreneurs no choice but to find another city in which to make their dreams come true. The solution? Channel our inner ten-year-old…and Build the Fort. With this simple, actionable metaphor, Chris Heivly empowers readers to replace the grown-up tendency to overcomplicate with his simple framework for effective community and ecosystem building. Energetic, friendly, and relatable, Build the Fort: The Startup Community Builder’s Field Guide provides a compass to move our ideas forward more successfully and propel our cities into the upper echelon of startup communities.

Business Model Generation is a handbook for visionaries, game changers, and challengers striving to defy outmoded business models and design tomorrow's enterprises. If your organization needs to adapt to harsh new realities, but you don't yet have a strategy that will get you out in front of your competitors, you need Business Model Generation. Co-created by 470 "Business Model Canvas" practitioners from 45 countries, the book features a beautiful, highly visual, 4-color design that takes powerful strategic ideas and tools, and makes them easy to implement in your organization. It explains the most common Business Model patterns, based on concepts from leading business thinkers, and helps you reinterpret them for your own context. You will learn how to systematically understand, design, and implement a game-changing business model--or analyze and renovate an old one. Along the way, you'll understand at a much deeper level your customers, distribution channels, partners, revenue streams, costs, and your core value proposition. Business Model Generation features practical innovation techniques used today by leading consultants and companies worldwide, including 3M, Ericsson, Capgemini, Deloitte, and others. Designed for doers, it is for those ready to abandon outmoded thinking and embrace new models of value creation: for executives, consultants, entrepreneurs, and leaders of all organizations. If you're ready to change the rules, you belong to "the business model generation!"

The Business of Venture Capital explains the multiple facets of the business of venture capital, from raising venture funds, to structuring investments, to generating consistent returns, to evaluating exit strategies. Author and VC Mahendra Ramsinghani who has invested in startups and venture funds for over a decade, offers best practices from experts on the front lines of this business.

Across the social sciences, scholars are increasingly showing how people 'work' to construct organizational life, including the rules and routines that shape and enable organizational activity, the identities of people who occupy organizations, and the societal norms and assumptions that provide the context for organizational action. The idea of work emphasizes the ways in which people and groups engage in purposeful, reflexive efforts rooted in an awareness of organizational life as constructed in human interaction and changeable through human effort. Studies of these efforts have identified new forms of work including emotion work, identity work, boundary work, strategy work, institutional work, and a host of others. Missing in these conversations, however, is a recognition that these forms of work are all part of a broader phenomenon driven by historical shifts that began with modernity and dramatically accelerated through the twentieth century. This book introduces the social-symbolic work perspective, which addresses this broader phenomenon. The social-symbolic work perspective integrates diverse streams of research to examine how people purposefully and reflexively work to construct organizational life, including the identities, technologies, boundaries, and strategies that constitute their organizations.

Crack the Funding Code demystifies the world of angel investing, venture capital, and corporate funding and lays out a strategic pathway for any entrepreneur to secure funding fast. Lack of funding is one of the biggest reasons small businesses fail. Most business owners believe that their only feasible funding options are (1) savings or personal credit, (2) friends and family or (3) bank loans. They may have heard about venture capitalists or angel investors, but they don't have enough information about what these investors do, what they can provide for a business, and on what terms. What's worse, entrepreneurs often don't know how to access the people who are looking to put their money into young companies with potential. Finally, business owners don't have enough expertise to navigate the treacherous waters of outside funding. Crack the Funding Code will show readers how to find the money, create pitches that attract investors, and then structure fair, ethical deals that will bring them new sources of outside capital and invaluable professional advice. It will give readers the broader perspective--how funding works, how investors think, and what they need to hear to put their money where your mouth is. Every entrepreneur who reads this book will get easy-to-follow deal checklists, a roadmap of where and how to locate the best funding resources and top business mentors for their particular industry and/or geographical location, and a step-by-step process to create pitches that make their idea or business irresistible.

Brené Brown has taught us what it means to dare greatly, rise strong, and brave the wilderness. Now, based on new research conducted with leaders, change makers, and culture shifters, she's showing us how to put those ideas into practice so we can step up and lead.

Facing especially wicked problems, social sector organizations are searching for powerful new methods to understand and address them. Design Thinking for the Greater Good goes in depth on both the how of using new tools and the why. As a way to reframe problems, ideate solutions, and iterate toward better answers, design thinking is already well established in the commercial world. Through ten stories of struggles and successes in fields such as health care, education, agriculture, transportation, social services, and security, the authors show how collaborative creativity can shake up even the most entrenched bureaucracies--and provide a practical roadmap for readers to implement these tools. The design thinkers Jeanne Liedtka, Randy Salzman, and Daisy Azer explore how major agencies like the Department of Health and Human Services and the Transportation and Security Administration in the United States, as well as organizations in Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom, have instituted principles of design thinking. In each case, these groups have used the tools of design thinking to reduce risk, manage change, use resources more effectively, bridge the communication gap between parties, and manage the competing demands of diverse stakeholders. Along the way, they have improved the quality of their products and enhanced the experiences of those they serve. These strategies are accessible to analytical and creative types alike, and their benefits extend throughout an organization. This book will help today's leaders and thinkers implement these practices in their own pursuit of creative solutions that are both innovative and achievable.

An accessible guide showing all people how to create and sustain diversity and inclusivity in the workplace-no matter your identity, industry, or level of experience Offering real-life accounts that illustrate common workplace occurrences around inclusivity and answers to questions like "How do I identify and handle diversity landmines at work?" and "What can I do when I've made a mistake?" this handbook breaks down ways that organizations (and all people) can improve their cultural awareness and become more equitable in their work and personal relationships. We know that diverse teams are stronger, smarter, and more profitable, and many companies are attempting to hire more diverse teams, but most struggle to create a real culture of inclusivity in which people from all backgrounds feel comfortable. As clinical psychologists, as well as individuals with marginalized identities, Dr. Stephanie Pinder-Amaker and Dr. Lauren Wadsworth show the emotional and physical impact of marginalization and how that leads to a decrease in employee engagement and, often, increased job turnover. "Did That Just Happen?!" will be invaluable for employees who come from underrepresented communities and identities (identities discussed include race, age, disability, sexual orientation, citizenship status, and gender expression). But the book is essential for leaders of companies, supervisors, HR departments, and for anyone who wants to understand and support diversity/equity/inclusion practices.

Practical advice from some of today's top early stage investors and entrepreneurs TechStars is a mentorship-driven startup accelerator with operations in three U.S. cities. Once a year in each city, it funds about ten Internet startups with a small amount of capital and surrounds them with around fifty top Internet entrepreneurs and investors. Historically, about seventy-five percent of the companies that go through TechStars raise a meaningful amount of angel or venture capital. Do More Faster: TechStars Lessons to Accelerate Your Startup is a collection of advice that comes from individuals who have passed through, or are part of, this proven program. Each vignette is an exploration of information often heard during the TechStars program and provides practical insights into early stage entrepreneurship. Contains seven sections, each focusing on a major theme within the TechStars program, including idea and vision, fundraising, legal and structure, and work/life balance. Created by two highly regarded experts in the world of early stage investing, essays in each section come from the experienced author team as well as TechStar mentors, entrepreneurs, and founders of companies

A computer beats the reigning human champion of Go, a game harder than chess. Another is composing classical music. Labs are creating life-forms from synthetic DNA. A doctor designs an artificial trachea, uses a 3D printer to produce it, and implants it and saves a child's life. Astonishing technological advances like these are arriving in increasing numbers. Scholar and entrepreneur Vivek Wadhwa uses this book to alert us to dozens of them and raise important questions about what they may mean for us. Breakthroughs such as personalized genomics, self-driving vehicles, drones, and artificial intelligence could make our lives healthier, safer, and easier. But the same technologies raise the specter of a frightening, alienating future- eugenics, a jobless economy, complete loss of privacy, and ever-worsening economic inequality. As Wadhwa puts it, our choices will determine if our future is Star Trek or Mad Max. Wadhwa offers us three questions to ask about every emerging technology- Does it have the potential to benefit everyone equally? What are its risks and rewards? And does it promote autonomy or dependence? Looking at a broad array of advances in this light, he emphasizes that the future is up to us to create-that even if our hands are not on the wheel, we will decide the driverless car's destination.

BOOK IS ON ORDER AND ON THE WAY
In this book, you will learn about the basic concepts of e-commerce and e-business. This introduction to e-commerce and the e-banking industry covers key concepts, brand building, changing dynamics, implementation approaches, and management issues in the e-banking industry.

This book answers the question how sustainability driven entrepreneurs (ecopreneurs) deliver their sustainability goals through their business practices. The research draws on data from 12 case studies set within the food industry. The analysis takes a firm level and a supply chain level perspective and provides insights to the interconnected nature of sustainability goals within and across firms. It provides theoretical propositions that show one approach of how to conduct business in a way that works for the planet and people in addition to shareholders. This book will be of interest to academics in management research and also to people with an academic background that work together with sustainability driven and/ or social entrepreneurs, who could benefit from the insights into how sustainability goals are delivered through business practices and the relevant trade-offs faced by ecopreneurs.

Laura Huang shows that success is about gaining an edge: that elusive quality that gives you an upper hand and attracts attention and support. Some people seem to naturally have it. Now, Huang teaches the rest of us how to create our own from the challenges and biases we think hold us back, and turning them to work in our favor. How do you find a competitive edge when the obstacles feel insurmountable? How do you get people to take you seriously when they're predisposed not to, and perhaps have already written you off? Laura Huang has come up against that problem many times--and so has anyone who's ever felt out of place or underestimated. Many of us sit back quietly, hoping that our hard work and effort will speak for itself. Or we try to force ourselves into the mold of who we think is "successful," stifling the creativity and charm that makes us unique and memorable. In Edge, Huang offers a different approach. She argues that success is rarely just about the quality of our ideas, credentials, and skills, or our effort. Instead, achieving success hinges on how well we shape others' perceptions--of our strengths, certainly, but also our flaws. It's about creating our own edge by confronting the factors that seem like shortcomings and turning them into assets that make others take notice. Huang draws from her groundbreaking research on entrepreneurial intuition, persuasion, and implicit decision-making, to impart her profound findings and share stories of previously-overlooked Olympians, assistants-turned-executives, and flailing companies that made momentous turnarounds. Through her deeply-researched framework, Huang shows how we can turn weaknesses into strengths and create an edge in any situation. She explains how an entrepreneur scored a massive investment despite initially being disparaged for his foreign accent, and how a first-time political candidate overcame voters' doubts about his physical disabilities. Edge shows that success is about knowing who you are and using that knowledge unapologetically and strategically. This book will teach you how to find your unique edge and keep it sharp.

Everyone knows that high IQ is no guarantee of success, happiness, or virtue, but until Emotional Intelligence, we could only guess why. Daniel Goleman's brilliant report from the frontiers of psychology and neuroscience offers startling new insight into our "two minds"--the rational and the emotional--and how they together shape our destiny. Drawing on groundbreaking brain and behavioral research, Goleman shows the factors at work when people of high IQ flounder and those of modest IQ do surprisingly well. These factors, which include self-awareness, self-discipline, and empathy, add up to a different way of being smart--and they aren't fixed at birth. Although shaped by childhood experiences, emotional intelligence can be nurtured and strengthened throughout our adulthood--with immediate benefits to our health, our relationships, and our work.   

An engaged workforce is critical to the high performance and success of any organization. Employee Engagement offers a complete, practical resource for understanding and creating an effective engagement strategy that is aligned to wider business objectives. Supported by a variety of practical tools, features and templates, as well as numerous real-life examples and case studies from organizations such as AXA PPP Healthcare, Capital One, Charles Stanley, EDF Energy and Marks & Spencer, this handbook provides comprehensive coverage of all stages of the engagement process, from planning initiatives to building and measuring their success. This updated second edition of Employee Engagement considers the increasing use of technology in engagement, the role and importance of purpose and trust and the relationship between employee experience and engagement.

Recent surveys show that more than half of American entrepreneurs share ownership in their business startups rather than going it alone. Yet the media and many scholars continue to perpetuate the myth of the lone visionary who single-handedly revolutionizes the marketplace. In The Entrepreneurial Group, Martin Ruef shatters this myth, demonstrating that teams, not individuals, are the leading force behind entrepreneurial startups. This is the first book to provide an in-depth sociological analysis of entrepreneurial groups, and to put forward a theoretical framework for understanding activities and outcomes within them.

How to make customers feel good about doing what you want Learn how companies make us feel good about doing what theywant. Approaching persuasive design from the dark side, this bookmelds psychology, marketing, and design concepts to show why we're susceptible to certain persuasive techniques. Packed with examples from every nook and cranny of the web, it provides easily digestible and applicable patterns for putting these design techniques to work.

In Expand Beyond Your Current Culture, Leslie Short examines the continually evolving D&I challenges that organizations face and shows leaders how to ensure that all employees have opportunities to express who they are and are comfortable doing so. In an engaging, conversational style she offers tips on how to think differently about diversity and inclusion to achieve a sustainable, diverse and inclusive workplace.

For much of the twentieth century, American corporations led the world in terms of technological progress. Why did certain industries have such great success? Experimental Capitalism examines six key industries--automobiles, pneumatic tires, television receivers, semiconductors, lasers, and penicillin--and tracks the highs and lows of American high-tech capitalism and the resulting innovation landscape. Employing "nanoeconomics"--a deep dive into the formation and functioning of companies--Steven Klepper determines how specific companies emerged to become the undisputed leaders that altered the course of their industry's evolution. Klepper delves into why a small number of firms came to dominate their industries for many years after an initial period of tumult, including General Motors, Firestone, and Intel. Even though capitalism is built on the idea of competition among many, he shows how the innovation process naturally led to such dominance. Klepper explores how this domination influenced the search for further innovations. He also considers why industries cluster in specific geographical areas, such as semiconductors in northern California, cars in Detroit, and tires in Akron. He finds that early leading firms serve as involuntary training grounds for the next generation of entrepreneurs who spin off new firms into the surrounding region. A culmination of a lifetime of research and thought, Experimental Capitalism takes a dynamic look at how new ideas and innovations led to America's economic primacy.

Explaining Creativity is an accessible introduction to the latest scientific research on creativity. In the last 50 yearss, psychologists, anthropologists, and sociologists have increasingly studied creativity, and we now know more about creativity that at any point in history. ExplainingCreativity considers not only arts like painting and writing, but also science, stage performance, and business innovation. Until about a decade ago, creativity researchers tended to focus on highly valued activities like fine art painting and Nobel prize winning science. Sawyer brings thisresearch up to date by including movies, music videos, cartoons, videogames, hypertext fiction, and computer technology. For example, this is the first book on creativity to include studies of performance and improvisation. Sawyer draws on the latest research findings to show the importance ofcollaboration and context in all of these creative activities.Today's science of creativity is interdisciplinary; in addition to psychological studies of creativity, Explaining Creativity includes research by anthropologists on creativity in non-Western cultures, and research by sociologists about the situations, contexts, and networks of creative activity.Explaining Creativity brings these approaches together within the sociocultural approach to creativity pioneered by Howard Becker, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Howard Gardner. The sociocultural approach moves beyond the individual to consider the social and cultural contexts of creativity,emphasizing the role of collaboration and context in the creative process.

Everything you and your partners need to go into business together! Form a Partnership thoroughly explains the legal and practical issues involved in forming a business partnership, creating a partnership agreement and protecting each person's interests. In plain English, the book covers: . partnerships compared to other business structures . the financial and tax liability of partners . contributions of cash, property and services . what happens if a partner wants out . how to value partnership assets . admitting new partners . buying out a partner's interest . limited partnerships . and much more This edition of Form a Partnership is totally revised and updated to reflect the law and realities of today's business world. Plus, all the forms you need to create a partnership agreement are provided. - Download forms for book on nolo.com

What challenges does the future hold? In an increasingly interconnected - and increasingly uncertain - world, companies, institutions and governments across the world recognise the vital need to pose this question in order to protect the interests of humanity. Founded in 2009, the Future Agenda explores key issues facing society over the next decade through 120 workshops held in 45 locations around the world, making it the largest open forum of its kind. The Future Agenda: Six Challenges for the Next Decade contains findings from the second Future Agenda initiative, featuring experts from a vast spectrum of industries. With essays falling under the themes of People, Place, Power, Belief, Behaviour and Business, this book is essential reading for all concerned by our collective well-being.

It's the ultimate paradox for leaders- you can't predict the future, but you must make sense of it in order to thrive. To be successful, leaders need to sort out what's important, devise strategies based on their own point of view, and get there ahead of the crowd. But most leaders today are just concerned about getting there in time. Many are even willing to settle for getting there fashionably late. They focus on quick-fix problems, avoiding the kinds long-term of dilemmas that will characterize the future. But as Institute for the Future's ten-year forecast-which is included in the book-makes clear, today's leaders face more and more dilemmas- recurring, complex, messy, and puzzling. Bob Johansen shares techniques refined over nearly forty years by the Institute of the Future to help you navigate your own organization's road to the future. Through fascinating and illustrative examples-including the Toyota Prius, the iPod, Crest Toothpaste, and many more-he shows that getting there early means finding new markets, new customers, and new products ahead of your competitors. It means anticipating the needs of your stakeholders. It means you'll be able to establish a position before your late-arriving competitors even have a chance to organize. It helps you think through what might happen and what should happen. It gives you time to consider alternative strategies. Ultimately, getting there early helps you see beyond the problems of the present and recognize possible futures before others do. Get There Early lays out the Institute's three-step Foresight to Insight to Action Cycle that allows you to sense, make sense of, and win when faced with dilemmas. Johansen offers hope for leaders facing the constant tension-a dilemma in itself-between judging too soon and deciding too late.

Dataviz--the new language of business A good visualization can communicate the nature and potential impact of information and ideas more powerfully than any other form of communication. For a long time "dataviz" was left to specialists--data scientists and professional designers. No longer. A new generation of tools and massive amounts of available data make it easy for anyone to create visualizations that communicate ideas far more effectively than generic spreadsheet charts ever could. What's more, building good charts is quickly becoming a need-to-have skill for managers. If you're not doing it, other managers are, and they're getting noticed for it and getting credit for contributing to your company's success. In Good Charts, dataviz maven Scott Berinato provides an essential guide to how visualization works and how to use this new language to impress and persuade. Dataviz today is where spreadsheets and word processors were in the early 1980s--on the cusp of changing how we work. Berinato lays out a system for thinking visually and building better charts through a process of talking, sketching, and prototyping. This book is much more than a set of static rules for making visualizations. It taps into both well-established and cutting-edge research in visual perception and neuroscience, as well as the emerging field of visualization science, to explore why good charts (and bad ones) create "feelings behind our eyes." Along the way, Berinato also includes many engaging vignettes of dataviz pros, illustrating the ideas in practice. Good Charts will help you turn plain, uninspiring charts that merely present information into smart, effective visualizations that powerfully convey ideas.

Creativity has long been thought to be an individual gift, best pursued alone; schools, organizations, and whole industries are built on this idea. But what if the most common beliefs about how creativity works are wrong? In this authoritative and fascinating new book, Keith Sawyer, a psychologist at Washington University, tears down some of the most popular myths about creativity and erects new principles in their place. He reveals that creativity is always collaborative-even when you're alone. (That "eureka" moment in the bathtub couldn't have come to Archimedes if he hadn't spent so many hours arguing and comparing notes with his fellow mathematicians and philosophers.) Sawyer draws on compelling stories of inventions and innovations: the inventors of the ATM, the mountain bike, and open source operating systems, among others, to demonstrate the freewheeling ways of true innovation. He shares the results of his own acclaimed research on jazz groups,theater ensembles, and conversation analysis, to show us how to be more creative in collaborative group settings, how to change organizational dynamics for the better, and how to tap into our own reserves of creativity.

In less than a decade, the Internet went from being a series of loosely connected networks used by universities and the military to the powerful commercial engine it is today. This book describes how many of the key innovations that made this possible came from entrepreneurs and iconoclasts who were outside the mainstream--and how the commercialization of the Internet was by no means a foregone conclusion at its outset. Shane Greenstein traces the evolution of the Internet from government ownership to privatization to the commercial Internet we know today. This is a story of innovation from the edges. Greenstein shows how mainstream service providers that had traditionally been leaders in the old-market economy became threatened by innovations from industry outsiders who saw economic opportunities where others didn't--and how these mainstream firms had no choice but to innovate themselves. New models were tried: some succeeded, some failed. Commercial markets turned innovations into valuable products and services as the Internet evolved in those markets. New business processes had to be created from scratch as a network originally intended for research and military defense had to deal with network interconnectivity, the needs of commercial users, and a host of challenges with implementing innovative new services. How the Internet Became Commercial demonstrates how, without any central authority, a unique and vibrant interplay between government and private industry transformed the Internet.

Innovating is for doers: you don't need to wait for an earth-shattering idea, but can build one with a hunch and scale it up to impact. Innovation is the subject of countless books and courses, but there's very little out there about how you actually innovate. Innovation and entrepreneurship are not one and the same, although aspiring innovators often think of them that way. They are told to get an idea and a team and to build a show-and-tell for potential investors. In Innovating, Luis Perez-Breva describes another approach--a doer's approach developed over a decade at MIT and internationally in workshops, classes, and companies. He shows that to start innovating it doesn't require an earth-shattering idea; all it takes is a hunch. Anyone can do it. By prototyping a problem and learning by being wrong, innovating can be scaled up to make an impact. As Perez-Breva demonstrates, "no thing is new" at the outset of what we only later celebrate as innovation. In Innovating, the process--illustrated by unique and dynamic artwork--is shown to be empirical, experimental, nonlinear, and incremental. You give your hunch the structure of a problem. Anything can be a part. Your innovating accrues other people's knowledge and skills. Perez-Breva describes how to create a kit for innovating, and outlines questions that will help you think in new ways. Finally, he shows how to systematize what you've learned: to advocate, communicate, scale up, manage innovating continuously, and document--"you need a notebook to converse with yourself," he advises. Everyone interested in innovating also needs to read this book.

Innovation and Scaling for Impact forces us to reassess how social sector organizations create value. Drawing on a decade of research, Christian Seelos and Johanna Mair transcend widely held misconceptions, getting to the core of what a sound impact strategy entails in the nonprofit world. They reveal an overlooked nexus between investments that might not pan out (innovation) and expansion based on existing strengths (scaling). In the process, it becomes clear that managing this tension is a difficult balancing act that fundamentally defines an organization and its impact. The authors examine innovation pathologies that can derail organizations by thwarting their efforts to juggle these imperatives. Then, through four rich case studies, they detail innovation archetypes that effectively sidestep these pathologies and blend innovation with scaling. Readers will come away with conceptual models to drive progress in the social sector and tools for defining the future of their organizations.

The Innovation Code The Creative Power of Constructive Conflict Harmony is sublime in music but deadly to innovation. The only way to create new, hybrid solutions is to clash. Innovation happens when we bring people with contrasting perspectives and complementary areas of expertise together in one room. We innovate best with people who challenge us, not people who agree with us. It sounds like a recipe for chaos and confusion. But in The Innovation Code, Jeff DeGraff, dubbed the "Dean of Innovation," and Staney DeGraff introduce a simple framework to explain the ways different kinds of thinkers and leaders can create constructive conflict in any organization. This positive tension produces ingenious solutions that go far beyond "the best of both worlds." Drawing on their work with nearly half of the Fortune 500 companies, the DeGraffs help you harness the creative energy that arises from opposing viewpoints. They identify four contrasting styles of innovator-the Artist, the Engineer, the Athlete, and the Sage-and include exercises and assessments for building, managing, and embracing the dynamic discord of a team that contains all four. You can also figure out where you fit on the continuum of innovator archetypes. Using vivid examples, The Innovation Code offers four steps to normalize conflict and channel it to develop something completely new. By following these simple steps, you will get breakthrough innovations that are both good for you and your customers. This is a rigorous but highly accessible guide for achieving breakthrough solutions by utilizing the full-and seemingly contradictory-spectrum of innovative thinking.

A modern framework for practical innovation--from individual ideas to an innovative organisational culture Everyone says that innovation is important. The problem is that no one tells you how to be innovative. Innovation is a State of Mind sets out a step-by-step guide to creating innovative ideas and putting them into action. You'll learn how to generate more ideas with greater potential, how to grow and evaluate them, test their effectiveness and then implement the ones that are going to improve your business. Author James O'Loghlin has worked with over a thousand of Australia's best inventors and innovators in the eight years he hosted ABC-TV's The New Inventors. He studied what they do differently and how they are able to identify and take advantage of opportunities that the rest of us miss. Packed with engaging stories and a good dose of humour, this insightful guide helps you to make innovation a part of what you do every day. Change your thinking and identify overlooked opportunities Step around common roadblocks to innovation Generate better ideas, and find the ones that will improve your business Create a culture where innovation is part of everyone's job Harvest innovative ideas from the entire staff and find the ones that will make a difference Innovators see things differently. They solve problems that the rest of us can't, and create solutions to problems that we never noticed we had. Getting stuck in routine and procedure is the death knell for modern business. Most companies undervalue and underuse the creative potential of their people, because they underestimate the impact of continuous innovation. Innovation is a State of Mind shows you how to think like an innovator and create a culture of innovation, so you can stay out in front of the future of business.

The greatest investment advisor of the twentieth century, Benjamin Graham taught and inspired people worldwide. Graham's philosophy of "value investing"--which shields investors from substantial error and teaches them to develop long-term strategies--has made The Intelligent Investor the stock market bible ever since its original publication in 1949. Over the years, market developments have proven the wisdom of Graham's strategies. While preserving the integrity of Graham's original text, this revised edition includes updated commentary by noted financial journalist Jason Zweig, whose perspective incorporates the realities of today's market, draws parallels between Graham's examples and today's financial headlines, and gives readers a more thorough understanding of how to apply Graham's principles. Vital and indispensable, The Intelligent Investor is the most important book you will ever read on how to reach your financial goals.

Whether hailed as heroes or cast as threats to social order, entrepreneurs--and their innovations--have had an enormous influence on the growth and prosperity of nations. The Invention of Enterprise gathers together, for the first time, leading economic historians to explore the entrepreneur's role in society from antiquity to the present. Addressing social and institutional influences from a historical context, each chapter examines entrepreneurship during a particular period and in an important geographic location. The book chronicles the sweeping history of enterprise in Mesopotamia and Neo-Babylon; carries the reader through the Islamic Middle East; offers insights into the entrepreneurial history of China, Japan, and Colonial India; and describes the crucial role of the entrepreneur in innovative activity in Europe and the United States, from the medieval period to today. In considering the critical contributions of entrepreneurship, the authors discuss why entrepreneurial activities are not always productive and may even sabotage prosperity. They examine the institutions and restrictions that have enabled or impeded innovation, and the incentives for the adoption and dissemination of inventions. They also describe the wide variations in global entrepreneurial activity during different historical periods and the similarities in development, as well as entrepreneurship's role in economic growth. The book is filled with past examples and events that provide lessons for promoting and successfully pursuing contemporary entrepreneurship as a means of contributing to the welfare of society. The Invention of Enterprise lays out a definitive picture for all who seek an understanding of innovation's central place in our world.

Why is it that most of the principles and ideas we are inspired with when we read leadership books rarely end up leaving the page? Because we've learned what successful leaders are doing, as well as why we should be implementing it ourselves, but we have no idea how we can specifically do all this in our unique circumstances. Leadership Step by Step walks readers through what to do and how to do it by taking them through an integrated and comprehensive progression of exercises designed to cultivate key abilities, behaviors, and beliefs through experience. Each chapter opens with a story demonstrating a vital leadership skill, but it doesn't stop there. Because next it guides you through the process of developing that skill for yourself! Be that leader you've read so much about!

The missing manual on how to apply Lean Startup to build products that customers love The Lean Product Playbook is a practical guide to building products that customers love. Whether you work at a startup or a large, established company, we all know that building great products is hard. Most new products fail. This book helps improve your chances of building successful products through clear, step-by-step guidance and advice. The Lean Startup movement has contributed new and valuable ideas about product development and has generated lots of excitement. However, many companies have yet to successfully adopt Lean thinking. Despite their enthusiasm and familiarity with the high-level concepts, many teams run into challenges trying to adopt Lean because they feel like they lack specific guidance on what exactly they should be doing. If you are interested in Lean Startup principles and want to apply them to develop winning products, this book is for you. This book describes the Lean Product Process: a repeatable, easy-to-follow methodology for iterating your way to product-market fit. It walks you through how to: Determine your target customers Identify underserved customer needs, Create a winning product strategy Decide on your Minimum Viable Product (MVP), Design your MVP prototype Test your MVP with customers, Iterate rapidly to achieve product-market fit. This book was written by entrepreneur and Lean product expert Dan Olsen whose experience spans product management, UX design, coding, analytics, and marketing across a variety of products. As a hands-on consultant, he refined and applied the advice in this book as he helped many companies improve their product process and build great products.

Most startups fail. But many of those failures are preventable. The Lean Startup is a new approach being adopted across the globe, changing the way companies are built and new products are launched. Eric Ries defines a startup as an organization dedicated to creating something new under conditions of extreme uncertainty. This is just as true for one person in a garage or a group of seasoned professionals in a Fortune 500 boardroom. What they have in common is a mission to penetrate that fog of uncertainty to discover a successful path to a sustainable business. The Lean Startup approach fosters companies that are both more capital efficient and that leverage human creativity more effectively. Inspired by lessons from lean manufacturing, it relies on "validated learning," rapid scientific experimentation, as well as a number of counter-intuitive practices that shorten product development cycles, measure actual progress without resorting to vanity metrics, and learn what customers really want. It enables a company to shift directions with agility, altering plans inch by inch, minute by minute. Rather than wasting time creating elaborate business plans, The Lean Startup offers entrepreneurs--in companies of all sizes--a way to test their vision continuously, to adapt and adjust before it's too late. Ries provides a scientific approach to creating and managing successful startups in a age when companies need to innovate more than ever.

The all-in-one business law book Whether you're just starting a small business, or your business is already up and running, legal questions crop up on an almost daily basis. Ignoring them can threaten your enterprise. The Legal Guide for Starting & Running a Small Business has helped more than a quarter million entrepreneurs and business owners master the basics, including how to: raise start-up money decide between an LLC or other business structure save on business taxes get licenses and permits choose the right insurance negotiate contracts and leases avoid problems if you're buying a franchise hire and manage employees and independent contractors attract and keep customers (and get paid on time), and limit your liability and protect your personal assets. This new edition explains how to do all of these things, taking into account coronavirus implications. Whether you're a sole proprietor or an LLC or corporation, a one-person business operating out of your home, or a company with a large staff leasing space, this book will help you start and run a successful business. The 17th edition is completely updated with the latest business tax rules and best practices for running a home-based business.

'Lightning in a Bottle' is a simple seven-step system for creating ideas that work, a system that improves new product success rates from standard one in ten, to one in two or better.

An introduction to meritocracy that shows how lack of social mobility is a feature of the UK and the US, with rags to riches stories few and far between. Written by James Bloodworth, a columnist for the International Business Times who has also written for The Times, The Guardian, the Wall Street Journal, and the Daily Beast.

In recent years, China 's leaders have taken decisive action to transform information, communications, and technology (ICT) into the nation's next pillar industry. In Networking China , Yu Hong offers an overdue examination of that burgeoning sector's political economy. Hong focuses on how the state, in conjunction with market forces and class interests, is constructing and realigning its digitalized sector. State planners intend to build a more competitive ICT sector by modernizing the network infrastructure, corporatizing media-and-entertainment institutions, and by using ICT as a crosscutting catalyst for innovation, industrial modernization, and export upgrades. The goal: to end China's industrial and technological dependence upon foreign corporations while transforming itself into a global ICT leader. The project, though bright with possibilities, unleashes implications rife with contradiction and surprise. Hong analyzes the central role of information, communications, and culture in Chinese-style capitalism. She also argues that the state and elites have failed to challenge entrenched interests or redistribute power and resources, as promised. Instead, they prioritize information, communications, and culture as technological fixes to make pragmatic tradeoffs between economic growth and social justice.

Despite popular belief to the contrary, entrepreneurship in the United States is dying. It has been since before the Great Recession of 2008, and the negative trend in American entrepreneurship has been accelerated by the Covid pandemic. New firms are being started at a slower rate, are employing fewer workers, and are being formed disproportionately in just a few major cities in the U.S. At the same time, large chains are opening more locations. Companies such as Amazon with their "deliver everything and anything" are rapidly displacing Main Street businesses. In The New Builders, we tell the stories of the next generation of entrepreneurs -- and argue for the future of American entrepreneurship. That future lies in surprising places -- and will in particular rely on the success of women, Black and brown entrepreneurs. Our country hasn''t yet even recognized the identities of the New Builders, let alone developed strategies to support them. Our misunderstanding is driven by a core misperception. Consider a "typical" American entrepreneur. Think about the entrepreneur who appears on TV, the business leader making headlines during the pandemic. Think of the type of businesses she or he is building, the college or business school they attended, the place they grew up. The image you probably conjured is that of a young, white male starting a technology business. He''s likely in Silicon Valley. Possibly New York or Boston. He''s self-confident, versed in the ins and outs of business funding and has an extensive (Ivy League?) network of peers and mentors eager to help his business thrive, grow and make millions, if not billions. You''d think entrepreneurship is thriving, and helping the United States maintain its economic power. You''d be almost completely wrong. The dominant image of an entrepreneur as a young white man starting a tech business on the coasts isn''t correct at all. Today''s American entrepreneurs, the people who drive critical parts of our economy, are more likely to be female and non-white. In fact, the number of women-owned businesses has increased 31 times between 1972 and 2018 according to the Kauffman Foundation (in 1972, women-owned businesses accounted for just 4.6% of all firms; in 2018 that figure was 40%). The fastest-growing group of female entrepreneurs are women of color, who are responsible for 64% of new women-owned businesses being created. In a few years, we believe women will make up more than half of the entrepreneurs in America. The age of the average American entrepreneur also belies conventional wisdom: It''s 42. The average age of the most successful entrepreneurs -- those in the top .01% in terms of their company''s growth in the first five years -- is 45. These are the New Builders. Women, people of color, immigrants and people over 40. We''re failing them. And by doing so, we are failing ourselves. In this book, you''ll learn: How the definition of business success in America today has grown corporate and around the concepts of growth, size, and consumption. Why and how our collective understanding of "entrepreneurship" has dangerously narrowed. Once a broad term including people starting businesses of all types, entrepreneurship has come to describe only the brash technology founders on the way to becoming big. Who are the fastest growing groups of entrepreneurs? What are they working on? What drives them? The real engine that drove Silicon Valley''s entrepreneurs. The government had a much bigger role than is widely known The extent to which entrepreneurs and small businesses are woven through our history, and the ways we have forgotten women and people of color who owned small businesses in the past. How we''re increasingly afraid to fail The role small businesses are playing saving the wilderness, small towns and redlined communities What we can do to turn the decline in entrepreneurship around, especially be supporting the people who are courageously starting small companies today.

Drawing from interviews with dozens of mavericks such as contemporary artist Jeff Koons and biotech visionary Henri Termeer, the authors explore the exhilarating process of generating new ideas and bringing them successfully to fruition.

Why are a small number of salespeople in any field hugely successful, while the rest get mediocre results at best? The answer is simple: it’s not about the market, the product, or the competition—it’s all about the seller. And consequently, any salesperson can sell more and better, all the time.
Over twenty-five years, Iannarino has boiled down everything he's learned and tested into one convenient book that explains what all successful sellers, regardless of industry or organization, share: a mind-set of powerful beliefs and a skill-set of key actions, including...
Self-discipline: How to keep your commitments to yourself and others.
Accountability: How to own the outcomes you sell.
Competitiveness: How to embrace competition rather than let it intimidate you.
Resourcefulness: How to blend your imagination, experience, and knowledge into unique solutions.
Storytelling: How to create deeper relationships by presenting a story in which the client is the hero and you're their guide.
Diagnosing: How to look below the surface to figure out someone else's real challenges and needs.

With Give and Take, Adam Grant not only introduced a landmark new paradigm for success but also established himself as one of his generation's most compelling and provocative thought leaders. In Originals he again addresses the challenge of improving the world, but now from the perspective of becoming original: choosing to champion novel ideas and values that go against the grain, battle conformity, and buck outdated traditions. How can we originate new ideas, policies, and practices without risking it all?   Using surprising studies and stories spanning business, politics, sports, and entertainment, Grant explores how to recognize a good idea, speak up without getting silenced, build a coalition of allies, choose the right time to act, and manage fear and doubt; how parents and teachers can nurture originality in children; and how leaders can build cultures that welcome dissent. Learn from an entrepreneur who pitches his start-ups by highlighting the reasons not to invest, a woman at Apple who challenged Steve Jobs from three levels below, an analyst who overturned the rule of secrecy at the CIA, a billionaire financial wizard who fires employees for failing to criticize him, and a TV executive who didn't even work in comedy but saved Seinfeld from the cutting-room floor. The payoff is a set of groundbreaking insights about rejecting conformity and improving the status quo.

In the last decades diversity and its management has become a feature of modern and postmodern organizations. Different practices have spread around the globe focusing on the organizing and management of inclusion and exclusion of persons and identities based on different genders, sexualorientations, racial and ethnic backgrounds, ages, and (dis)abilities as well as religious beliefs. However, although increasingly recognized as important, the discourses of diversity are multifaceted and not without controversy. Furthermore, diversity management practices have the potential toreproduce both inclusion and exclusion.The book presents the foundations of organizing and managing diversities, offers multidisciplinary, intersectional and critical analyses on key issues, and opens up fresh perspectives in order to advance the diversity debate. It also inspires new debates on diversity by encouraging scholars tobroaden their research agendas and assists students and scholars to increase their understanding of the field and its current discussions. The contributors are a team of leading diversity scholars from all over the world.

The Oxford Handbook of Meaningful Work examines the concept, practices and effects of meaningful work in organizations and beyond. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, this volume reflects diverse scholarly contributions to understanding meaningful work from philosophy, political theory,psychology, sociology, organizational studies, and economics.In philosophy and political theory, treatments of meaningful work have been influenced by debates concerning the tensions between work as unavoidable and necessary, and work as a source of self-realization and human flourishing. This tension has come into renewed focus as work is reshaped bytechnology, globalization, and new forms of organization. In management studies, much empirical work has focused on meaningful work from the perspective of positive psychology, but more recent research has considered meaningful work as a complex phenomenon, socially constructed from interactiveprocesses between individuals, and between individuals, organizations, and society. This Handbook examines meaningful work in the context of moral and pragmatic concerns such as human flourishing, dignity, alienation, freedom, and organizational ethics.The collection illuminates the relationship of meaningful work to organizational constructs of identity, belonging, callings, self-transcendence, culture, and occupations. Representing some of the most up to date academic research, the editors aim to inspire and equip researchers by identifying newdirections and methods with which to deepen scholarly inquiry into a topic of growing importance.

When it comes to delivering a pitch, Oren Klaff has unparalleled credentials. Over the past 13 years, he has used his one-of-a- kind method to raise more than $400 million--and now, for the first time, he describes his formula to help you deliver a winning pitch in any business situation. Whether you're selling ideas to investors, pitching a client for new business, or even negotiating for a higher salary, Pitch Anything will transform the way you position your ideas. According to Klaff, creating and presenting a great pitch isn't an art--it's a simple science. Applying the latest findings in the field of neuroeconomics, while sharing eye-opening stories of his method in action, Klaff describes how the brain makes decisions and responds to pitches. With this information, you'll remain in complete control of every stage of the pitch process. Pitch Anything introduces the exclusive STRONG method of pitching, which can be put to use immediately: Setting the Frame Telling the Story Revealing the Intrigue Offering the Prize Nailing the Hookpoint Getting a Decision One truly great pitch can improve your career, make you a lot of money--and even change your life. Success is dependent on the method you use, not how hard you try. "Better method, more money," Klaff says.

Pitching & Closing gives you concrete action steps for mastering the specific skill set today's business-development professionals need to define their roles and meet revenue expectations. Written in practical terms, this A-to-Z guide walks you through forging relationships, pitching a company's product, building a network, sourcing deals, making rejection positive, and staying cool while closing large deals. Firsthand accounts from business development executives across many industries, from tech to television to finance, bring to life such topics as: How to consistently identify and land the best strategic alliances for your business Why people say "yes" and why they say "no" Etiquette for making introductions and reaching out to people in ways that elicit responses Monitoring core metrics to know where to invest your time In addition to implementable advice and techniques from the top minds in the industry, this complete resource features an entire section of best practices for every step of the partnering process.

In 2014 Aaron Hurst, Ashoka fellow and founder of Imperative and Taproot Foundation, published The Purpose Economy, the book that catalyzed the purpose revolution. With his prediction that purpose was the next major economic era, many are now racing to find answers and direction toward discovering their personal, professional, and organizational purpose. Leaders from around the world have embraced Hurst's work and have asked for more. In this expanded and updated edition Hurst unpacks critical new research and tools for individuals and organizations to find purpose and thrive in this new era. Based on interviews with hundreds of entrepreneurs, a new survey of over 100,000 people and refined societal trends, Hurst shows that this new era is fueling demand for purpose-centered professionals who not only create more satisfying careers, but also contribute more productively to teams and organizations. A new view of success based on relationships, impact, and growth is spreading across the globe, and individuals and organizations that embrace that view have emerged as the leaders of the new economy.

Socio-tech innovation refers to novel solutions that involve development or adoption of technological innovations to address social and/or environmental problems with a view towards creating benefit for the larger whole rather than just for the owners or investors. Unlike conventional technological innovation, socio-tech innovation either develops a product specifically for underserved markets and adopts a model in which the market is not an afterthought but the rai-son d’etre. Social ventures have not been as successful in scaling up, though technology innovation-led ventures have; therefore, meaningful actionable insights that can help social ventures scale up successfully can be gleaned by this process. This book offers researchers in innovation and entrepreneurship programs a unique and interdisciplinary approach to studying social innovation that is grounded in technology innovation. This book features a series of socio-tech venture cases that illustrate these dynamics.

Why law is critical to innovation and economic growth Sustained growth depends on innovation, whether it's cutting-edge software from Silicon Valley, an improved assembly line in Sichuan, or a new export market for Swaziland's leather. Developing a new idea requires money, which poses a problem of trust. The innovator must trust the investor with his idea and the investor must trust the innovator with her money. Robert Cooter and Hans-Bernd Schäfer call this the "double trust dilemma of development." Nowhere is this problem more acute than in poorer nations, where the failure to solve it results in stagnant economies. In Solomon's Knot, Cooter and Schäfer propose a legal theory of economic growth that details how effective property, contract, and business laws help to unite capital and ideas. They also demonstrate why ineffective private and business laws are the root cause of the poverty of nations in today's world. Without the legal institutions that allow innovation and entrepreneurship to thrive, other attempts to spur economic growth are destined to fail.

Author Matt Blumberg, a technology and marketing entrepreneur, knows this all too well. Back in 1999, he started a company called Return Path,which later became the driving force behind the creation of his blog, Only Once because "you're only a first time CEO once." Now, more than a decade later, he's written Startup CEO. This reliable resource is based on Blumberg's experience as a startup CEO and covers a number of issues he's faced over the dozen years he's been a CEO. Offers valuable insights into how the CEO sets the overall vision and strategy of the company and communicates it to all stakeholders. Engaging and informative, this book is essential reading for any, and every, CEO.

The Startup Community Way: Evolving an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem explores what makes startup communities thrive and how to improve collaboration in these rapidly evolving, complex environments. The Startup Community Way is an explanatory guide for startup communities. Rooted in the theory of complex systems, this book establishes the systemic properties of entrepreneurial ecosystems and explains why their complex nature leads people to make predictable mistakes. As complex systems, value creation occurs in startup communities primarily through the interaction of the "parts" - the people, organizations, resources, and conditions involved - not the parts themselves. This continual process of bottom-up interactions unfolds naturally, producing value in novel and unexpected ways. Through these complex, emergent processes, the whole becomes greater and substantially different than what the parts alone could produce. Because of this, participants must take a fundamentally different approach than is common in much of our civic and professional lives. Participants must take a whole-system view, rather than simply trying to optimize their individual part. They must prioritize experimentation and learning over planning and execution. Complex systems are uncertain and unpredictable. They cannot be controlled, only guided and influenced. Each startup community is unique. Replication is enticing but impossible. The race to become "The Next Silicon Valley" is futile - even Silicon Valley couldn't recreate itself. This book offers practical advice for entrepreneurs, community builders, government officials, and other stakeholders who want to harness the power of entrepreneurship in their city.

Visualize Your Successful New Business You have a great idea for a new business. Now what? How do you turn that great idea into a viable business? Leveraging visual tools, The Startup Equation leads you step by step through the decisions you need to make to find your perfect startup model. You'll learn things such as identifying your unique entrepreneurial type, creating a great product, building a great team, finding funding and scaling in addition to other elements essential to crafting a roadmap that fits you and your business. Drawing from their extensive experience working with startups, entrepreneurs Steve Fisher and Ja-Naé Duane offer expert advice on dealing with the challenges and opportunities that accompany every type of new business. Using visual storytelling, they provide a much-needed blueprint to understanding the startup economy. The authors include illustrative business examples from companies such as TechStars and 500Startups, as well as interviews with over 40 entrepreneurs from across the globe. Filled with insightful case studies, The Startup Equation is a vibrant, practical guide to creating a winning business model for any startup. By following the accessible visual roadmap within, you'll discover how to build your own successful business plan for your unique dream. Steve Fisher is product designer, filmmaker, entrepreneur, and startup advisor.Ja-Naé Duane is an entrepreneur, researcher, startup advisor, and professor of entrepreneurship & innovation.

Clickable CEO David Kidder shares the hard-hitting experiences of some of the world's most influential entrepreneurs and CEOs, revealing their most closely held advice. Face-to-face interviews with 40 founders give readers key insights into what it took to build PayPal, LinkedIn, AOL, TED, Flickr, and many others into household names. Special sections include topics ranging from how to select the right idea to pursue to finding funding and overcoming inevitable obstacles.

How to use powerful tools to engage customers with your brand Marketers, technologists, and corporate leaders are looking for ways to more effectively connect consumers with their brand. Storyscapes introduces "storyscaping" as a way to create immersive experiences that solve the challenge of connecting brands and consumers. This book describes a powerful new approach to advertising and marketing for the digital age that involves using stories to design emotional and transactional experiences for customers, both online and offline. Each connection inspires engagement with another, so the brand becomes part of the customer's story. Authors Gaston Legorburu and Darren McColl explain how marketers can identify and define the core target audience segment, define your brand's purpose, understand the emotional desires of your consumers, and more. Shows how to map how the consumer engages with the category and product/service Explains how to develop an organizing idea and creative plan for an immersive storyscape experience Defines the role of marketing channels around the organizing idea Establishes how technology can be applied to the experience Learn how to measure, optimize, and evolve the customer experience through the use of strong narratives that compel consumers to buy into your brand.

A compelling book that explains why the rich underestimate the importance of luck in their success, why that hurts everyone, and what we can do about it How important is luck in economic success? No question more reliably divides conservatives from liberals. As conservatives correctly observe, people who amass great fortunes are almost always talented and hardworking. But liberals are also correct to note that countless others have those same qualities yet never earn much. In recent years, social scientists have discovered that chance plays a much larger role in important life outcomes than most people imagine. Robert Frank explores the surprising implications of those findings to show why the rich underestimate the importance of luck in success--and why that hurts everyone, even the wealthy. Frank describes how, in a world increasingly dominated by winner-take-all markets, chance opportunities and trivial initial advantages often translate into much larger ones--and enormous income differences--over time; how false beliefs about luck persist, despite compelling evidence against them; and how myths about personal success and luck shape individual and political choices in harmful ways. But, Frank argues, we could decrease the inequality driven by sheer luck by adopting simple, unintrusive policies that would free up trillions of dollars each year--more than enough to fix our crumbling infrastructure, expand healthcare coverage, fight global warming, and reduce poverty, all without requiring painful sacrifices from anyone.

Innovation principles to bring about meaningful and sustainable growth in your organization Using a list of more than 2,000 successful innovations,including Cirque du Soleil, early IBM mainframes, the Ford Model-T,and many more, the authors applied a proprietary algorithm and determined ten meaningful groupings the Ten Types of Innovation that provided insight into innovation. The Ten Types of Innovation explores these insights to diagnose patterns of innovation within industries, to identify innovation opportunities, and to evaluate how firms are performing against competitors. The framework has proven to be one of the mosten during and useful ways to start thinking about transformation. Details how you can use these innovation principles to bring about meaningful and sustainable growth within your organization. The Ten Types of Innovation concept has influenced thousands of executives and companies around the world since its discovery in 1998. The Ten Types of Innovation is the first book explaining how to implement it.

Iyengar provides essential tools to spark creative thinking and help us make our most meaningful choices. She draws from recent advances in neuro- and cognitive sciences to give readers a set of practical steps for coming up with powerful new ideas. Think Bigger offers an innovative evidence-backed method for generating big ideas that Iyengar and her team of researchers developed and refined over the last decade.

Thoughts on Interaction Design, Second Edition, contemplates and contributes to the theory of Interaction Design by exploring the semantic connections that live between technology and form that are brought to life when someone uses a product. It defines Interaction Design in a way that emphasizes the intellectual and cultural facets of the discipline. This edition explores how changes in the economic climate, increased connectivity, and international adoption of technology affect designing for behavior and the nature of design itself. Ultimately, the text exists to provide a definition that encompasses the intellectual facets of the field, the conceptual underpinnings of interaction design as a legitimate human-centered field, and the particular methods used by practitioners in their day-to-day experiences. This text is recommended for practicing designers: interaction designers, industrial designers, UX practitioners, graphic designers, interface designers, and managers.

The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy has been lauded by the New York Times, Financial Times, and reviewers worldwide. Translated into fourteen languages, Travels has received numerous awards for its frank and nuanced discussion of global economic realities.  Now updated and revised--including a discussion of environmental issues--this fascinating book illustrates crucial lessons in economics, politics, and globalization. The major themes and conclusions from the first edition are intact, but in  response to questions from readers and students around the world, the second edition now includes: Updates on the people, businesses, and politics involved in the production of the T-shirt. Discussions of environmental issues related to both international trade and the T-shirt's life story.

Whether a marketing campaign or a museum exhibit, a video game or a complex control system, the design we see is the culmination of many concepts and practices brought together from a variety of disciplines. Because no one can be an expert on everything, designers have always had to scramble to find the information and know-how required to make a design work - until now. Universal Principles of Design is the first cross-disciplinary reference of design. Richly illustrated and easy to navigate, this book pairs clear explanations of the design concepts featured with visual examples of those concepts applied in practice. From the 80/20 rule to chunking, from baby-face bias to Ockham's razor, and from self-similarity to storytelling, 100 design concepts are defined and illustrated for readers to expand their knowledge. This landmark reference will become the standard for designers, engineers, architects, and students who seek to broaden and improve their design expertise.

Become more culturally competent in an increasingly diverse world Recent years have seen dramatic changes to several institutions worldwide. Our increasingly interconnected, digitized, and globalized world presents immense opportunities and unique challenges. Modern businesses and schools interact with individuals and organizations from a diverse range of cultural and national backgrounds--increasing the likelihood for miscommunication, errors in strategy, and unintended consequences in the process. This has also spilled into our daily lives and the way we consume information today. Understanding how to navigate these and other pitfalls requires adaptability, nuanced cross-cultural communication, and effective conflict resolution. Use Your Difference to Make a Difference provides readers with a skills-based, actionable plan that transforms differences into agents of inclusiveness, connection, and mutual understanding. This innovative and timely guide illustrates how to leverage differences to move beyond unconscious biases, manage a culturally-diverse workplace, create an environment for more tolerant schooling environments, more trusted media, communicate across borders, find and retain diverse talent, and bridge the gap between working locally and expanding globally. Expert guidance on a comprehensive range of topics--teamwork, leadership styles, information sharing, delegation, supervision, giving and receiving feedback, coaching and motivation, recruiting, managing suppliers and customers, and more--helps you manage the essential aspects of international relationships and cultural awareness. This valuable resource contains the indispensable knowledge required to: Develop self-awareness needed to be a cross-cultural communicator Develop content, messaging techniques, marketing plans, and business strategies that translate across cultural borders Help your employees to better understand and collaborate with clients and colleagues from different backgrounds Help teachers build safe environments for students to be themselves Strengthen cross-cultural competencies in yourself, your team, and your entire organization Understand the cultural, economic, and political factors surrounding our world Use Your Difference to Make a Difference is a must-have resource for any educator, parent, leader, manager, or team member of an organization that interacts with co-workers and customers from diverse cultural backgrounds.

Entrepreneurs generally lack the marketing capabilities necessary to bring their new product to market. To engage the resources required to do this, they must somehow place a value on the enterprise. However, all of the methods of valuation currently available are based on the use of historical or current revenues, and therefore are not applicable to an entrepreneurial enterprise with a first-time product. In Valuing an Entrepreneurial Enterprise, Audretsch and Link present a valuation method uniquely tailored to emerging technology-based ventures that have no revenue history to lean on. Unlike many traditional methods, theirs does not take into account the track record of companies and products similar to that being valuated. Instead, it draws on economic theory to formulate a solution to the problem.The book develops conceptual ground, including trends in entrepreneurship, models of innovation, and the economics of standards and entrepreneurship policy. The authors review the traditional valuation methods and illustrate them numerically with case studies to show how the traditional approach produces an incorrect valuation. The core of the book presents the new methodology and demonstrates how it avoids the pitfalls of past approaches. The authors also show how public policy on technology and infrastructure changes valuations of start-up firms in areas such as stem-cell products and renewable fuels projects.Valuing an Entrepreneurial Enterprise will serve as a valuable resource for advanced students, economists, financial planners, and valuators interested in new valuation methods and the theory behind them, as well as those interested in entrepreneurship.

How do venture capital deals come together? This is one of the most frequent questions asked by each generation of new entrepreneurs. Surprisingly, there is little reliable information on the subject. The founders and driving force behind the Foundry Group, Brad and Jason have been involved in hundreds of venture capital financings. Their investments range from small startups to large Series A venture financing rounds. The new edition of Venture Deals continues to show fledgling entrepreneurs the inner-workings of the VC process, from the venture capital term sheet and effective negotiating strategies to the initial seed and the later stages of development.

When you connect with the right angel investor, it's like finding a new best friend--you just have to know what makes him or her happy. Smart funding is waiting for smart founders. Raising funds is all about connecting with the investor who's right for you--and What Every Angel Investor Wants You to Know shows you exactly how to succeed. Veteran early-stage investor Brian Cohen knows how to spot a great company destined for success, and in this groundbreaking book he offers soup-to-nuts guidance for anyentrepreneur seeking to launch an invention, a product, or a great new idea into a receptive marketplace. As chairman of the board of directors of the New York Angels, Cohen is one of the most engaged angel investors out there today. The first investor in Pinterest, he describes exactly what angels want to see, hear, and feel before they take out their checkbooks: A clear exit strategy before the startup even launches Facts that turn "due" diligence into "do" diligence Authenticity--"save your spinning for the fitness center" Proof that you "live inside the customer's head" Cohen gives invaluable insight into how the most successful angels view due diligence, friends and family money, crowdfunding, team building, scalability, iteration, exit strategies--and much more.

Make a mindset shift that will open the door to incredible growth and limitless possibility in your business and your life - just by asking the right question. What if everything you did was your choice, including how you spend your time, how much money you make, with whom you have relationships and only doing work that aligns with your purpose? Sound hard? It's as simple as changing the core question you ask yourself. When you want to accomplish something, stop asking, 'How can I do this?' Legendary entrepreneur coach Dan Sullivan teaches you to ask instead, 'Who can do this for me?' This question at the heart of the Who Not How philosophy may seem simple, but don't let the lack of complexity fool you. By mastering Who Not How, you will quickly learn how billionaires and successful entrepreneurs like Dan build incredible businesses and personal freedom, along with massive success. Making this shift involves retraining your brain to stop limiting your potential based on what you can do on your own and instead focus on the infinite and endless connections between yourself and other people as well as the limitless transformation possible through those connections. Whether you want to build a successful business, free up thousands of hours of your time to focus on the areas of your life that matter most to you, build teams to support your vision, or expand your capacity for wealth, innovation, relationships and joy, Dan Sullivan's Who Not How framework is the solution.