Wonderfully applicable to everything in life, and funny as hell.’ Nassim Nicholas TalebTo be brilliant, you have to be irrationalWhy is Red Bull so popular – even though everyone hates the taste? Why do countdown boards on platforms take away the pain of train delays? And why do we prefer stripy toothpaste?We think we are rational creatures. Economics and business rely on the assumption that we make logical decisions based on evidence.But we aren’t, and we don’t.In many crucial areas of our lives, reason plays a vanishingly small part. Instead we are driven by unconscious desires, which is why placebos are so powerful. We are drawn to the beautiful, the extravagant and the absurd – from lavish wedding invitations to tiny bottles of the latest fragrance. So if you want to influence people’s choices you have to bypass reason. The best ideas don’t make rational sense: they make you feel more than they make you think.Rory Sutherland is the Ogilvy advertising legend whose TED Talks have been viewed nearly 7 million times. In his first book he blends cutting-edge behavioural science, jaw-dropping stories and a touch of branding magic, on his mission to turn us all into idea alchemists. The big problems we face every day, whether as an individual or in society, could very well be solved by letting go of logic and embracing the irrational.

    The ability to effectively articulate design decisions is critical to the success of a project, because the most articulate person often wins. This practical book provides principles, tactics, and actionable methods for talking about designs with executives, managers, developers, marketers, and other stakeholders who have influence over the project with the goal of winning them over and creating the best user experience.

     The role of the devil's advocate is nearly universal in business today. It allows individuals to step outside themselves and raise questions and concerns that effectively kill new projects and ideas, while claiming no personal responsibility. Nothing is more potent in stifling innovation. Drawing on nearly 20 years of experience managing IDEO, Kelley identifies ten roles people can play in an organization to foster innovation and new ideas while offering an effective counter to naysayers. Among these approaches are the Anthropologist—the person who goes into the field to see how customers use and respond to products, to come up with new innovations; the Cross-pollinator who mixes and matches ideas, people, and technology to create new ideas that can drive growth; and the Hurdler, who instantly looks for ways to overcome the limits and challenges to any situation. Filled with engaging stories of how companies like Kraft, Procter and Gamble, Cargill and Samsung have incorporated IDEO's thinking to transform the customer experience, THE TEN FACES OF INNOVATION is an extraordinary guide to nurturing and sustaining a culture of continuous innovation and renewal.

    Using real-world case studies - from Apple, Netflix, and Walmart to an African hand pump, a New York City park, and the B-17 bomber - the book clearly explains why including the customer is an essential ingredient of success for any team, company, or organization. Coauthors Mark Hurst and Phil Terry, pioneers in the field of customer experience, provide practical tips for a strategic, customer-inclusive approach that generates results.

    We’re building more products than ever before, but most of them fail—not because we can’t complete what we set out to build, but because we waste time, money, and effort building the wrong product.What we need is a systematic process for quickly vetting product ideas and raising our odds of success. That’s the promise of Running Lean.In this inspiring book, Ash Maurya takes you through an exacting strategy for achieving a "product/market fit" for your fledgling venture, based on his own experience in building a wide array of products from high-tech to no-tech. Throughout, he builds on the ideas and concepts of several innovative methodologies, including the Lean Startup, Customer Development, and bootstrapping.Running Lean is an ideal tool for business managers, CEOs, small business owners, developers and programmers, and anyone who’s interested in starting a business project.Find a problem worth solving, then define a solutionEngage your customers throughout the development cycleContinually test your product with smaller, faster iterationsBuild a feature, measure customer response, and verify/refute the ideaKnow when to "pivot" by changing your plan’s courseMaximize your efforts for speed, learning, and focusLearn the ideal time to raise your "big round" of fundingGet on track with The Lean Series Presented by Eric Ries—bestselling author of The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses—The Lean Series gives you solid footing in a proven methodology that will help your business succeed.

    It’s not about to-do lists and accountability charts. It’s about creating a framework for regular check-ins, key results, and most of all, the beauty of a good fail – and how to take a temporary disaster and turn it into a future success. In this book, Wodtke takes you through the fictional case study of Hanna and Jack, who are struggling to survive in their own startup. They fight shiny object syndrome, losing focus, and dealing with communication issues. After hard lessons, they learn the practical steps they need to do what must be done. The second half of the book demonstrates how to use Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) to help teams realize big goals in a methodical way, leaving nothing to chance. Laid out in a practical but compelling way, she makes the lessons of Hanna and Jack’s story clear and actionable. Ready to move your team in the right direction? Read this, and learn the system of creating your focus – and finding success. "Busy grinding without purpose is the secret death of too many startups. In this memorable story, Christina gives us a glimpse of a more satisfying kind of startup--still hard and chaotic but full of purpose and the chance to build something great." James Cham, Founder, Bloomberg Beta "This book is useful, actionable, and actually fun to read! If you want to get your team aligned around real, measurable goals, Radical Focus will teach you how to do it quickly and clearly." -Laura Klein, Principal, Users Know "Someone once told me that 'problems are just opportunities that haven’t presented themselves'. Since I was introduced to OKRs, they've been an invaluable tool for me, and our company. Christina's ideas have been instrumental, allowing me to better navigate the often ambiguous approach to goal setting and along the way creating a more open and accountable team and a clearer path for myself professionally. I personally can't thank her enough for the guidance." Scott Baldwin, Director of Services, Yellow Pencil "Radical Focus illustrates how to implement OKRs in an engaging, compact, realistic story. Best of all, Wodtke proves OKRs can be fun!" Ben Lamorte, OKRs.com

    The book has three parts: Principles: Part one covers the leadership principles that PMs use to lead their team to overcome adversity. When your product fails to gain traction, when your team falls apart, or when your manager gives you tough feedback—these are all opportunities to learn principles that will help you succeed. Product development: Part two covers how PMs at Facebook, Amazon, and other top companies build products. We'll walk through the end-to-end product development process— from understanding the customer problem to identifying the right product to build to executing with your team to bring the product to market. Getting the job: Part three covers how you can land a PM job and reach the interview stage at the right company. We'll prep you for the three most common types of PM interviews— product sense, execution, and behavioral—with detailed frameworks and examples for each. Hear directly from product leaders at Airbnb, Amazon, Google, and more on: How to overcome challenging situations from a VP of Product at Amazon. How to build a great product roadmap from product leaders at LinkedIn and Airbnb. How Google, Airbnb, and other top companies evaluate PM candidates from leaders at those companies. How PMs can grow their career from a Director at Instagram and Twitter. Table of Contents1. PrinciplesTake OwnershipPrioritize and ExecuteStart with WhyFind the TruthBe Radically TransparentBe Honest with Yourself2. Product DevelopmentProduct Development LoopUnderstanding the Customer ProblemSelecting a Goal MetricMission, Vision, and StrategyBuilding a Product RoadmapDefining Product RequirementsGreat Project ManagementEffective CommunicationMaking Good Decisions3. Getting the JobPreparing for the TransitionMaking the TransitionFinding the Right CompanyAcing your PM InterviewsProduct Sense InterviewExecution InterviewBehavioral InterviewYour First 30 Days4. Product Leader Interviews

    Step-by-step strategy of how to successfully organize sales, marketing and business development for a new product or company. The book offers insight into what makes some startups successful and leaves others selling off their furniture. Packed with concrete examples, the book will leave you with new skills to organize sales, marketing and your business for success.

    Three dots to represent Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio. Three arrows to show direct flights. Problem solved, and the picture made it easy to sell Southwest Airlines to investors and customers. Used properly, a simple drawing on a humble napkin is more powerful than Excel or PowerPoint. It can help crystallize ideas, think outside the box, and communicate in a way that people simply “get”. In this book Dan Roam argues that everyone is born with a talent for visual thinking, even those who swear they can’t draw. Drawing on twenty years of visual problem solving combined with the recent discoveries of vision science, this book shows anyone how to clarify a problem or sell an idea by visually breaking it down using a simple set of visual thinking tools – tools that take advantage of everyone’s innate ability to look, see, imagine, and show. THE BACK OF THE NAPKIN proves that thinking with pictures can help anyone discover and develop new ideas, solve problems in unexpected ways, and dramatically improve their ability to share their insights. This book will help readers literally see the world in a new way.

    And it will take years off your learning curve. Written by Jeanne Bliss, worldwide authority on customer experience, and preeminent thought leader on the role of the Customer Leadership Executive (such as Chief Customer Officer, Vice President of Customer Experience, etc.) this book follows the five-competency model she uses to coach the C-Suite and Chief Customer Officers.  1. Manage and Honor Customers as Assets 2. Align Around Experience 3. Build a Customer Listening Path 4. Proactive Experience Reliability and Innovation 5. One Company Accountability, Leadership & Decision Making Chief Customer Officer 2.0 will get you into action quickly with a united leadership team, and will shift your business intent to earning the right to growth by improving customers’ lives. Jeanne Bliss fearlessly shares her tools and leadership ‘recipe cards’ for leading and enabling your business transformation. And she provides practical guidance on how embed the five competencies into how your company develops products, goes to market, enables and rewards people, and conducts annual planning. Including over forty accounts of actions by Customer Leadership Executives around the world, this is the book you have been waiting for that tells it like it is and gives you the framework to build your customer-driven growth engine. Jeanne Bliss pioneered the Customer Leadership Executive position, holding the role for twenty years at Lands’ End, Allstate, Coldwell Banker, Mazda and Microsoft Corporations. Since 2002 she has led CustomerBliss, a preeminent customer experience transformation company where she helps companies achieve customer-driven growth. She is a worldwide keynote speaker, and sought frequently by major media for her point of view.  Jeanne is the co-founder of the Customer Experience Professionals Association, established to advance the worldwide discipline of customer experience and customer experience practitioners.  She is also the best-selling author of Chief Customer Officer: Getting Past Lip Service to Passionate Action (2006), and I Love You More than My Dog: Five Decisions to Drive Extreme Customer Loyalty in Good Times and Bad (2011).

    At the core of Apple's success and intense customer loyalty, however, aren't just "Insanely Great" products, but great people who are informed, empowered, and motivated to deliver an unbeatable customer experience. In The Apple Experience, internationally bestselling author Carmine Gallo details the principles and practices behind this total commitment to the customer and explains how your brand can achieve outstanding results by delivering this same high standard of service.Carmine Gallo interviewed professionals at all levels who have studied Apple, and he spent hundreds of hours observing the selling floor in Apple's retail space and learning about Apple's vision and philosophy. Using insights and data from these sources, he breaks down Apple's customer centric model to provide an action plan with three distinct areas of focus:* Inspire Your Internal Customer with training, support, and communications that create a "feedback loop" for improving performance at every level* Serve Your External Customer with irresistible brand stories and dedicated salespeople who embody the APPLE five steps of service -- Approach, Probe, Present, Listen, End with a fond farewell* Set the Stage by ensuring that no element is overlooked in creating an immersive retail environment where customers can see, touch, and learn about your productsWith The Apple Experience, you can improve the return on your investment in retail by adding real value to every customer interaction. Better still, any business that deals with people -- employees or customers -- can adopt the techniques to achieve Apple-like market dominance by enriching lives, building loyalty, and reimagining the customer experience.

    The book contains a series of short chapters filled with examples, data, and insights that challenge questionable assumptions and much conventional management wisdom. Each chapter also provides guidelines about how to think more deeply and intelligently about critical management issues. Covering topics ranging from managing people to leadership to measurement and strategy, it’s good organizational advice, delivered by Dr. Pfeffer himself.

    If you're looking for a book like that, put this one back on the shelf.Rework shows you a better, faster, easier way to succeed in business. Read it and you'll know why plans are actually harmful, why you don't need outside investors, and why you're better off ignoring the competition. The truth is, you need less than you think. You don't need to be a workaholic. You don't need to staff up. You don't need to waste time on paperwork or meetings. You don't even need an office. Those are all just excuses.  What you really need to do is stop talking and start working. This book shows you the way. You'll learn how to be more productive, how to get exposure without breaking the bank, and tons more counterintuitive ideas that will inspire and provoke you.With its straightforward language and easy-is-better approach, Rework is the perfect playbook for anyone who’s ever dreamed of doing it on their own. Hardcore entrepreneurs, small-business owners, people stuck in day jobs they hate, victims of "downsizing," and artists who don’t want to starve anymore will all find valuable guidance in these pages.

    Start standing out. Whether in school, factories, or corporate offices, people are in a mad rush to the middle, going about their business and fitting in. The problem is, while you may feel as if you’re doing your own thing, you’re not—you’re doing what’s expected of you. To stand out, take whatever you think is normal, and do the exact opposite. In Find Your Yellow Tux, Jesse Cole, in-demand speaker and baseball ringleader, shares how you can achieve amazing things by doing the unexpected. Using examples from his life and the lives of his heroes—P. T. Barnum, Walt Disney, and MLB owner Bill Veeck—Cole shows how to reinvigorate your goals, reignite your passions, and excel in business and beyond. The time to break the mold is now—with Find Your Yellow Tux, you'll discover how to find joy and success in everything you do.

    We are on the threshold, say authors Pine and Gilmore, of the Experience Economy, a new economic era in which all businesses must orchestrate memorable events for their customers. The Experience Economy offers a creative, highly original, and yet eminently practical strategy for companies to script and stage the experiences that will transform the value of what they produce. From America Online to Walt Disney, the authors draw from a rich and varied mix of examples that showcase businesses in the midst of creating personal experiences for both consumers and businesses. The authors urge managers to look beyond traditional pricing factors like time and cost, and consider charging for the value of the transformation that an experience offers. Goods and services, say Pine and Gilmore, are no longer enough. Experiences and transformations are the basis for future economic growth, and The Experience Economy is the script from which managers can begin to direct their own transformations.