Gates stresses the need for managers to view technology not as overhead but as a strategic asset, and offers detailed examples from Microsoft, GM, Dell, and many other successful companies. Companion Web site.

    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.

    The findings will surprise many readers and, quite frankly, upset others.The ChallengeBuilt to Last, the defining management study of the nineties, showed how great companies triumph over time and how long-term sustained performance can be engineered into the DNA of an enterprise from the very beginning. But what about the company that is not born with great DNA? How can good companies, mediocre companies, even bad companies achieve enduring greatness? The StudyFor years, this question preyed on the mind of Jim Collins. Are there companies that defy gravity and convert long-term mediocrity or worse into long-term superiority? And if so, what are the universal distinguishing characteristics that cause a company to go from good to great?The StandardsUsing tough benchmarks, Collins and his research team identified a set of elite companies that made the leap to great results and sustained those results for at least fifteen years. How great? After the leap, the good-to-great companies generated cumulative stock returns that beat the general stock market by an average of seven times in fifteen years, better than twice the results delivered by a composite index of the world's greatest companies, including Coca-Cola, Intel, General Electric, and Merck. The ComparisonsThe research team contrasted the good-to-great companies with a carefully selected set of comparison companies that failed to make the leap from good to great. What was different? Why did one set of companies become truly great performers while the other set remained only good? The FindingsThe findings of the Good to Great study will surprise many readers and shed light on virtually every area of management strategy and practice. The findings include:Level 5 Leaders: The research team was shocked to discover the type of leadership required to achieve greatness.The Hedgehog Concept (Simplicity within the Three Circles): To go from good to great requires transcending the curse of competence.A Culture of Discipline: When you combine a culture of discipline with an ethic of entrepreneurship, you get the magical alchemy of great results. Technology Accelerators: Good-to-great companies think differently about the role of technology.The Flywheel and the Doom Loop: Those who launch radical change programs and wrenching restructurings will almost certainly fail to make the leap.

    While it has been credited with improving productivity, slashing costs, and improving profit margins, it can cause much angst among employees who need to change the way they currently work and adhere to a new philosophy.  That's where characters Joe and Larry step in to deliver The Power of Six Sigma. This fictionalized tale simplifies a complicated topic through the lives of two typical business professionals. Contrary to other books on the subject, The Power of Six Sigma explains the overall philosophy of Six Sigma effectively in a nonthreatening way, taking no more than two hours to read.

    Based on Donald Miller’s bestselling book Building a StoryBrand, Claire Diaz-Ortiz applies the seven principles of the StoryBrand Framework to help you build an effective, long-lasting social media plan for your brand. Social Media Success for Every Brand teaches readers how to incorporate the StoryBrand 7-Part Framework into their social media channels to increase engagement and see better results. Readers will understand exactly what they need to do with their social media to drive growth to their organization through the practical guidance of the five-point SHARE model:STORYHOWAUDIENCEREACHEXCELLENCESocial Media Success for Every Brand does not require the reader to be familiar with Building a StoryBrand but provides enough foundation to prepare the reader for practical success with their social media content. Together with the StoryBrand Framework, Claire’s SHARE model will help boost customer engagement and grow the organization’s brand awareness and revenues.

    A marketing and business genius, Gary had the foresight to go beyond traditional methods and use social media tools such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube to reach an untapped audience that continues to grow.#AskGaryVee showcases the most useful and interesting questions Gary has addressed on his popular show. Distilling and expanding on the podcast’s most urgent and evergreen themes, Gary presents practical, timely, and timeless advice on marketing, social media, entrepreneurship, and everything else you’ve been afraid to ask but are dying to know. Gary gives you the insights and information you need on everything from effectively using Twitter to launching a small business, hiring superstars to creating a personal brand, launching products effectively to staying healthy—and even buying wine.Whether you’re planning to start your own company, working in digital media, or have landed your first job in a traditional company, #AskGaryVee is your essential guide to making things happen in a big way.

    Reveals how to run an online business profitably in spite of the Internet's inherently free culture, disseminating the principles of a ''priceless economy'' in six categories that pertain to advertising, labor exchange, and advanced-version fees.

    By sidestepping "reengineering," "total quality management," and other management philosophies and employing its own brand of business success, Kelleher's airline has turned a profit for twenty-four consecutive years and seen its stock soar 300 percent since 1990.Today, Southwest is the safest airline in the world and ranks number one in the industry for service, on-time performance, and lowest employee turnover rate; and Fortune magazine has twice ranked Southwest one of the ten best companies to work for in America. How do they do it?With unlimited access to the people and inside documents of Southwest Airlines, authors Kevin and Jackie Freiberg share the secrets behind the greatest success story in commercial aviation. Read it and discover how to transfer the Southwest inspiration to your own business and personal life.

    They have fought for competitive advantage, battled over market share, and struggled for differentiation. Yet, as this influential and immensely popular book shows, these hallmarks of competitive strategy are not the way to create profitable growth in the future.In the international bestseller Blue Ocean Strategy, W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne argue that cutthroat competition results in nothing but a bloody red ocean of rivals fighting over a shrinking profit pool. Based on a study of 150 strategic moves (spanning more than 100 years across 30 industries), the authors argue that lasting success comes not from battling competitors, but from creating "blue oceans"—untapped new market spaces ripe for growth. Such strategic moves, which the authors call “value innovation,” create powerful leaps in value that often render rivals obsolete for more than a decade.Blue Ocean Strategy presents a systematic approach to making the competition irrelevant and outlines principles and tools any company can use to create and capture their own blue oceans. A landmark work that upends traditional thinking about strategy, this bestselling business book charts a bold new path to winning the future.

    In most businesses, it costs roughly five-to-ten times more to acquire a new customer than it does to retain an existing one, and yet companies continue to disproportionately spend their budgets into the "wrong" end of the funnel - the mass media or awareness side.What we haven't paid enough attention to is the "right" end of the funnel-the word-of-mouth component that essentially acts as a multiplier for future business. The economic impact of an active, engaged and loyal customer is tremendous.And the same is true of the opposite scenario, namely the impact of angry customers and negative word-of-mouth or referrals. It is this thinking that Jaffe has channeled to challenge marketers to "flip the funnel" once and for all. With a renewed focus and energy on customer experience, it is possible to grow your sales, while decreasing your budget - in other words, getting more from less. Engaging a few customers to spread the word to many.Using this new "flipped funnel" model, together with a set of new rules of customer service and a revolutionary customer referral and activation process, you'll learn how to transform your existing customers into your best salespeople. In addition, Jaffe will explain how to best introduce and combine both digital and social media tools to boost your loyalty arsenal, deploy "influencer marketing" and implement word-of-mouth strategies that inspire your loyal, opinionated, and most vocal customers to become credible, persuasive, and influential endorsers of your products and services.Explains how to cut your marketing budget AND grow sales! Illustrates practical ways to use existing customers to reach out to new prospects Outlines the authentic role of social media Demonstrates key ideas with rich, real life examples including Comcast, Apple, The Obama Campaign, Dell, Panasonic, American Airlines, Delta Airlines, Johnson & Johnson, Coca-Cola and many, many more Written by one of the most sought-after consultants, keynote speakers, and thought-leaders on new marketing change and innovation; renowned blogger and podcaster at Jaffe Juice (www.jaffejuice.com) and host/presenter of web video show, JaffeJuiceTV (www.jaffejuice.tv) Visit www.flipthefunnelnow.com to join the conversation.

    Consumers have a greater selection of higher quality goods to choose from and can obtain these items from a growing number of sources. Computers, cars, and even big-box retail sites promise to solve our every need. So why aren't consumers any happier? Because everything surrounding the process of obtaining and using all these products causes us frustration and disappointment. Why is it that, when our computers or our cell phones fail to satisfy our needs, virtually every interaction with help lines, support centers, or any organization providing service is marked with wasted time and extra hassle? And who among us hasn't spent countless hours in the waiting room at the doctor's office, or driven away from the mechanic only to have the "fix engine" light go on? In their bestselling business classic Lean Thinking, James Womack and Daniel Jones introduced the world to the principles of lean production -- principles for eliminating waste during production. Now, in Lean Solutions, the authors establish the groundbreaking principles of lean consumption, showing companies how to eliminate inefficiency during consumption. The problem is neither that companies don't care nor that the people trying to fix our broken products are inept. Rather, it's that few companies today see consumption as a process -- a series of linked goods and services, all of which must occur seamlessly for the consumer to be satisfied. Buying a home computer, for example, involves researching, purchasing, integrating, maintaining, upgrading, and, ultimately, replacing it. Across all industries, companies that apply the principles of lean consumption will learn how to provide the full value consumers desire from products without wasting time or effort -- theirs or the consumers' -- and as a result these companies will be more profitable and competitive. Lean Solutions is full of surprising success stories: Fujitsu, a leading service company for technology, has transformed the way call centers solve problems -- learning how to eliminate the underlying cause of current problems rather than fixing them again and again. An extremely successful car dealership has adopted lean principles to streamline its business, making for dramatically reduced wait time, fewer return trips, and greater satisfaction for customers -- and a far more lucrative enterprise. Lean Solutions will inspire managers to take the first steps toward perfecting their company's process of giving consumers what they really want.

    And here, they show companies how to create a pipeline of talent that will continuously fill their leadership needs-needs they may not even yet realize. The Leadership Pipeline delivers a proven framework for priming future leaders by planning for their development, coaching them, and measuring the results of those efforts. Moreover, the book presents a combination leadership-development/succession-planning program that ensures a steady line-up of leaders for every critical position within the company. It's an approach that bolsters the retention of intellectual capital as it eliminates the need to go outside for expensive "stars," who will probably jump ship before they reach their full potential anyway.

    It's not about privileges, luck, or working harder. There's a template that the world's fastest growing companies follow to achieve and sustain much, much faster growth.From Impossible to Inevitable details the hypergrowth playbook of companies like the record-breaking Zenefits (which skyrocketed from $1 million to $100 million in two years), Salesforce.com (the fastest growing multibillion dollar software company), and EchoSign--aka Adobe Document Services--(which catapulted from $0 to $144 million in seven years). Whether you have a $1 billion or a $100,000 business, you can use the same insights as these notable companies to learn what it really takes to break your own revenue records. For instance, one of the authors shows how he grew his income from $67,000 to $720,000 in four years while maintaining a 20-30 hour work week and welcoming a new child--nine times.This book shows you how to surpass plateaus and get off of the up-and-down revenue rollercoaster by answering three questions about growing revenue to tens times its size:Why aren't you growing faster? What does it take to get to hypergrowth? How do you sustain growth? This powerful, effective book provides a template for you to kick off your biggest growth spurt yet. This template includes The 7 Ingredients Of Hypergrowth: You're not ready to grow until you Nail a Niche.Overnight success is a fairy tale. You're not going to be magically discovered. You need sustainable systems that Create Predictable Pipeline.Growth exposes your weaknesses and it will cause more problems than it solves--until you Make Sales Scalable.It's hard to build a big business out of small deals. Figure out how to Double Your Dealsize.It'll take years longer than you want, but don't quit too soon. Make sure you can Do the Time.Your people are renting, not owning their jobs. Develop a culture of initiative, not adequacy by Embracing Employee Ownership.Employees, you are too accepting of "reality" and too eager to quit. You can Define Your Destiny to make a difference, for yourself and your company, no matter what you do or where you work. The authors take each ingredient and break it down into specific steps to guide you through implementation. From Impossible to Inevitable helps you take impossible goals and turn them into inevitable successes for your business and team. You will achieve success even bigger than you can imagine from where you're sitting today.

    The book reveals the secrets, deals, schemes and dreams of these, the world's fiercest business competitors.

    Get a grip and gain control with the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS). Inside Traction, you’ll discover simple yet powerful ways to run your company with more focus, growth and enjoyment. Based on years of real-world implementation, the EOS is a practical method for achieving the business success you have always envisioned.