In Essential Advantage, Booz & Company's Cesare Mainardi and Paul Leinwand maintain that success in any market accrues to firms with coherence: a tight match between their strategic direction and the capabilities that make them unique.Achieving this clarity takes a sharpness of focus that only exceptional companies have mastered. This book helps you identify your firm's blend of strategic direction and distinctive capabilities that give it the "right to win" in its chosen markets. Based on extensive research and filled with company examples—including Amazon.com, Johnson & Johnson, Tata Sons, and Procter & Gamble—Essential Advantage helps you construct a coherent company in which the pieces reinforce each other instead of working at cross-purposes.The authors reveal:· Why you should focus on a system of a few aligned capabilities· How to identify the "way to play" in your market· How to design a strategy for well-modulated growth· How to align a portfolio of businesses behind your capability system· How your strategy clarifies growth, costs, and people decisionsFew companies achieve a capability-driven "right to win" in their market. This book helps you position your firm to be among them.

    But what makes people say yes to our requests? Persuasion is not only an art, it is also a science, and researchers who study it have uncovered a series of hidden rules for moving people in your direction. Based on more than sixty years of research into the psychology of persuasion, Yes! reveals fifty simple but remarkably effective strategies that will make you much more persuasive at work and in your personal life, too.Cowritten by the world's most quoted expert on influence, Professor Robert Cialdini, Yes! presents dozens of surprising discoveries from the science of persuasion in short, enjoyable, and insightful chapters that you can apply immediately to become a more effective persuader. Why did a sign pointing out the problem of vandalism in the Petrified Forest National Park actually increase the theft of pieces of petrified wood? Why did sales of jam multiply tenfold when consumers were offered many fewer flavors? Why did people prefer a Mercedes immediately after giving reasons why they prefer a BMW? What simple message on cards left in hotel rooms greatly increased the number of people who behaved in environmentally friendly ways?Often counterintuitive, the findings presented in Yes! will steer you away from common pitfalls while empowering you with little-known but proven wisdom.Whether you are in advertising, marketing, management, or sales, or just curious about how to be more influential in everyday life, Yes! shows how making small, scientifically proven changes to your approach can have a dramatic effect on your persuasive powers.

    A challenging customer, in his view, goes from being someone who poses an obstacle to quality work to someone with eye-opening ideas and concepts. Approached as an exercise in listening and learning, these conversations can become long-term lessons. Ambi has worked with some of the most respected brands and names in the Indian corporate world, and each of those assignments were for him masterclasses in leadership development. In this book, Ambi recounts conversations with some of the most iconic business leaders, such as Ratan Tata, Azim Premji, S. Ramadorai, Karsanbhai Patel, M. Damodaran, Dr V. Kurien and many others. He soaked up these conversations, in his own words, 'like a sponge’. This book is an attempt to walk us through some of those dialogues – both the illuminating and the difficult aspects of them – to help us understand how they were learning sessions. For anyone looking at turbocharging their business and career, the ‘Sponge Process’ that emphasises listening is a radical new way of engaging with clients and customers.

    Disingenuous. Phony. Inauthentic. Do your customers use any of these words to describe what you sell—or how you sell it? If so, welcome to the club. Inundated by fakes and sophisticated counterfeits, people increasingly see the world in terms of real or fake. They would rather buy something real from someone genuine rather than something fake from some phony. When deciding to buy, consumers judge an offering's (and a company's) authenticity as much as—if not more than—price, quality, and availability. In Authenticity, James H. Gilmore and B. Joseph Pine II argue that to trounce rivals companies must grasp, manage, and excel at rendering authenticity. Through examples from a wide array of industries as well as government, nonprofit, education, and religious sectors, the authors show how to manage customers' perception of authenticity by: recognizing how businesses "fake it;" appealing to the five different genres of authenticity; charting how to be "true to self" and what you say you are; and crafting and implementing business strategies for rendering authenticity. The first to explore what authenticity really means for businesses and how companies can approach it both thoughtfully and thoroughly, this book is a must-read for any organization seeking to fulfill consumers' intensifying demand for the real deal.

    For the first time ever, Jordan Belfort opens his playbook and gives readers access to his exclusive step-by-step system the same system he used to create massive wealth for himself, his clients, and his sales teams. Until now this revolutionary program was only available through Jordan s $1,997 online training. Now in The Way of the Wolf, Belfort is ready to unleash the power of persuasion to a whole new generation of readers, revealing how anyone can bounce back from devastating setbacks, master the art of persuasion, and build wealth. Every technique, every strategy, and every tip has been tested and proven to work in real-life situations. Written in his own inimitable voice, The Way of the Wolf cracks the code on how to persuade anyone to do anything, and coaches readers, regardless of age, education, or skill level, to be a master sales person, negotiator, closer, entrepreneur, or speaker."

    From the inception of game-changing products like the Apple II and the Macintosh, to his stunning fall from grace, and on to his rebirth at the helm of Apple, his involvement with Pixar, and the development of the iPod, iPhone, iPad, and much more, The Steve Jobs Way presents real-life examples of Jobs’s leadership challenges and triumphs, showing readers how to apply these principles to their own lives and careers.Packed with exclusive interviews from key figures in Apple Computer’s history, this revealing account provides a rarely seen, intimate glimpse into the Steve Jobs you won’t see on stage, thoroughly exploring his management and leadership principles. From product development meetings to design labs, through executive boardroom showdowns to the world outside of Silicon Valley, you will see the real Steve Jobs, the “Boy Genius” who forever transformed technology and the way we work, play, consume, and communicate — all through the eyes of someone who worked side by side with Jobs.“Fascinating work that both validates the Jobs/Apple mystique while demystifying it at the same time! Great [book] for all of us working to keep our visions married to the details.”—David Allen, author of the international bestseller Getting Things Done

    

    Creativity, Inc. is a book for managers who want to lead their employees to new heights, a manual for anyone who strives for originality, and the first-ever, all-access trip into the nerve center of Pixar Animation—into the meetings, postmortems, and “Braintrust” sessions where some of the most successful films in history are made. It is, at heart, a book about how to build a creative culture—but it is also, as Pixar co-founder and president Ed Catmull writes, “an expression of the ideas that I believe make the best in us possible.” For nearly twenty years, Pixar has dominated the world of animation, producing such beloved films as the Toy Story trilogy, Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Up, and WALL-E, which have gone on to set box-office records and garner thirty Academy Awards. The joyousness of the storytelling, the inventive plots, the emotional authenticity: In some ways, Pixar movies are an object lesson in what creativity really is. Here, in this book, Catmull reveals the ideals and techniques that have made Pixar so widely admired—and so profitable.   As a young man, Ed Catmull had a dream: to make the first computer-animated movie. He nurtured that dream as a Ph.D. student at the University of Utah, where many computer science pioneers got their start, and then forged a partnership with George Lucas that led, indirectly, to his founding Pixar with Steve Jobs and John Lasseter in 1986. Nine years later, Toy Story was released, changing animation forever. The essential ingredient in that movie’s success—and in the thirteen movies that followed—was the unique environment that Catmull and his colleagues built at Pixar, based on philosophies that protect the creative process and defy convention, such as:   • Give a good idea to a mediocre team, and they will screw it up. But give a mediocre idea to a great team, and they will either fix it or come up with something better. • If you don’t strive to uncover what is unseen and understand its nature, you will be ill prepared to lead. • It’s not the manager’s job to prevent risks. It’s the manager’s job to make it safe for others to take them. • The cost of preventing errors is often far greater than the cost of fixing them. • A company’s communication structure should not mirror its organizational structure. Everybody should be able to talk to anybody. • Do not assume that general agreement will lead to change—it takes substantial energy to move a group, even when all are on board.

    These assets, which comprise brand equity, are a primary source of competitive advantage and future earnings, contends David Aaker, a national authority on branding. Yet, research shows that managers cannot identify with confidence their brand associations, levels of consumer awareness, or degree of customer loyalty. Moreover in the last decade, managers desperate for short-term financial results have often unwittingly damaged their brands through price promotions and unwise brand extensions, causing irreversible deterioration of the value of the brand name. Although several companies, such as Canada Dry and Colgate-Palmolive, have recently created an equity management position to be guardian of the value of brand names, far too few managers, Aaker concludes, really understand the concept of brand equity and how it must be implemented. The author opens each chapter with a historical analysis of either the success or failure of a particular company's attempt at building brand equity: the fascinating Ivory soap story; the transformation of Datsun to Nissan; the decline of Schlitz beer; the making of the Ford Taurus; and others. Finally, citing examples from many other companies, Aaker shows how to avoid the temptation to place short-term performance before the health of the brand and, instead, to manage brands strategically by creating, developing, and exploiting each of the five assets in turn

    Not as a freelancer who only gets paid on a per piece basis, and not as an entrepreneurial start-up that wants to scale as soon as possible, but as a small business that is deliberately committed to staying that way. By staying small, one can have freedom to pursue more meaningful pleasures in life, and avoid the headaches that result from dealing with employees, long meetings, or worrying about expansion. Company of One introduces this unique business strategy and explains how to make it work for you, including how to generate cash flow on an ongoing basis. Paul Jarvis left the corporate world when he realized that working in a high-pressure, high profile world was not his idea of success. Instead, he now works for himself out of his home on a small, lush island off of Vancouver, and lives a much more rewarding and productive life. He no longer has to contend with an environment that constantly demands more productivity, more output, and more growth.   In Company of One, Jarvis explains how you can find the right pathway to do the same, including planning how to set up your shop, determining your desired revenues, dealing with unexpected crises, keeping your key clients happy, and of course, doing all of this on your own.

    Questioning—deeply, imaginatively, "beautifully"—can help us identify and solve problems, come up with game-changing ideas, and pursue fresh opportunities. So why are we often reluctant to ask "Why?"Berger's surprising findings reveal that even though children start out asking hundreds of questions a day, questioning "falls off a cliff" as kids enter school. In an education and business culture devised to reward rote answers over challenging inquiry, questioning isn't encouraged—and, in fact, is sometimes barely tolerated.And yet, as Berger shows, the most creative, successful people tend to be expert questioners. They've mastered the art of inquiry, raising questions no one else is asking—and finding powerful answers. The author takes us inside red-hot businesses like Google, Netflix, IDEO, and Airbnb to show how questioning is baked into their organizational DNA. He also shares inspiring stories of artists, teachers, entrepreneurs, basement tinkerers, and social activists who changed their lives and the world around them—by starting with a "beautiful question."Berger explores important questions, such as:- Why aren't we nurturing kids' natural ability to question—and what can parents and schools do about that?- Since questioning is a starting point for innovation, how might companies and business leaders begin to encourage and exploit it?- And most important, how can each of us re-ignite that questioning spark—and use inquiry as a powerful means to rethink and reinvent our lives?A More Beautiful Question outlines a practical Why / What If / How system of inquiry that can guide you through the process of innovative questioning—helping you find imaginative, powerful answers to your own "beautiful questions."

    In this handy guidebook, the authors contend that you manage your boss for a very good reason: to do your best on the job—and thereby benefit not only yourself but also your supervisor and your entire company. Your boss depends on you for cooperation, reliability, and honesty. And you depend on him or her for links to the rest of the organization, for setting priorities, and for obtaining critical resources. By managing your boss—clarifying your own and your supervisor's strengths, weaknesses, goals, work styles, and needs—you cultivate a relationship based on mutual respect and understanding. The result? A healthy, productive bond that enables you both to excel. Gabarro and Kotter provide valuable guidelines for building this essential relationship—including strategies for determining how your boss prefers to process information and make decisions, tips for communicating mutual expectations, and tactics for negotiating priorities. Thought provoking and practical, Managing Your Boss enables you to lay the groundwork for one of the most crucial working relationships you'll have in your career.

    If you want to succeed in life or business, this book is a must.

    Crossing the Chasm has become the bible for bringing cutting-edge products to progressively larger markets. This edition provides new insights into the realities of high-tech marketing, with special emphasis on the Internet. It's essential reading for anyone with a stake in the world's most exciting marketplace.

    These organizations reap the benefits of greater customer loyalty, exponentially expanded referral networks, lower employee turnover, and stronger bottom-line results. By quantifying and examining each phase of the ""Customer Experience Cycle,"" Secret Service reveals clever, practical ideas that can be transformed into repeatable best practices in any organization and at every level. Packed with examples applicable to a wide range of industries, this book provides practical, realistic ways to: * Turn customer complaints into positive experiences * Use marketing to go deeper with existing customers * Increase customer and employee retention, and turn bland customer service into truly memorable customer experiences"