It's the art of anticipating your opponent's next moves, knowing full well that your rival is trying to do the same thing to you. Though parts of game theory involve simple common sense, much is counterintuitive, and it can only be mastered by developing a new way of seeing the world. Using a diverse array of rich case studies—from pop culture, TV, movies, sports, politics, and history—the authors show how nearly every business and personal interaction has a game-theory component to it. Are the winners of reality-TV contests instinctive game theorists? Do big-time investors see things that most people miss? What do great poker players know that you don't? Mastering game theory will make you more successful in business and life, and this lively book is the key to that mastery.

     Companies everywhere face two major challenges today: getting noticed and getting paid. To confront these obstacles, Bharat Anand examines a range of businesses around the world, from Chinese Internet giant Tencent to Scandinavian digital trailblazer Schibsted, from "The" "New York Times" to "The Economist, " and from talent management to the future of education. Drawing on these stories and on the latest research in economics, strategy, and marketing, this refreshingly engaging book reveals important lessons, smashes celebrated myths, and reorients strategy. Companies that now flourish are finding that the connections they foster are more important than the content they create. Success comes not from making the best content but from recognizing how content enables customers connectivity; it comes not from protecting the value of content at all costs but from unearthing related opportunities close by; and it comes not from mimicking competitors best practices but from seeing choices as part of a connected whole. Digital change means that everyone today can reach and interact with others directly: We are all in the content business. But that comes with risks that Bharat Anand" "teaches us how to recognize and navigate. Filled with conversations with key players and in-depth dispatches from the frontlines of digital change, "The Content Trap" is an essential new playbook for navigating the turbulent waters in which we find ourselves."

    It is one of the fastest growing companies in history, an essential part of the social life not only of teenagers but hundreds of millions of adults worldwide. As Facebook spreads around the globe, it creates surprising effects—even becoming instrumental in political protests from Colombia to Iran. Veteran technology reporter David Kirkpatrick had the full cooperation of Facebook’s key executives in researching this fascinating history of the company and its impact on our lives. Kirkpatrick tells us how Facebook was created, why it has flourished, and where it is going next. He chronicles its successes and missteps, and gives readers the most complete assessment anywhere of founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the central figure in the company’s remarkable ascent. This is the Facebook story that can be found nowhere else. How did a nineteen-year-old Harvard student create a company that has transformed the Internet and how did he grow it to its current enormous size? Kirkpatrick shows how Zuckerberg steadfastly refused to compromise his vision, insistently focusing on growth over profits and preaching that Facebook must dominate (his word) communication on the Internet. In the process, he and a small group of key executives have created a company that has changed social life in the United States and elsewhere, a company that has become a ubiquitous presence in marketing, altering politics, business, and even our sense of our own identity. This is the Facebook Effect.

    “This is Steve Jobs. I saw your picture in a magazine a few years ago and thought we’d work together someday.” After Steve Jobs was unceremoniously dismissed from Apple, he bought a little-known graphics company called Pixar. One day, out of the blue, Jobs called Lawrence Levy, a Harvard-trained lawyer and executive to whom he had never spoken before, to persuade Levy to help him get Pixar off the ground. What Levy found was a company on the verge of failure. To Pixar and Beyond is the story of what happened next: how, working closely with Jobs, Levy produced and implemented a highly improbable plan that transformed Pixar into one of Hollywood’s greatest success stories. Set in the worlds of Silicon Valley and Hollywood, the book takes readers inside Pixar, Disney, law firms, and investment banks. It provides an up-close, firsthand account of Pixar’s ascent, how it made creative choices, Levy’s enduring collaboration and friendship with Jobs, and how Levy came to see in Pixar deeper lessons that can apply to many aspects of our lives.

    While this advice may work for everyday life, it is, as Kim Scott has seen, a disaster when adopted by managers.Scott earned her stripes as a highly successful manager at Google and then decamped to Apple, where she developed a class on optimal management. She has earned growing fame in recent years with her vital new approach to effective management, the “radical candor” method.Radical candor is the sweet spot between managers who are obnoxiously aggressive on one side and ruinously empathetic on the other. It’s about providing guidance, which involves a mix of praise as well as criticism—delivered to produce better results and help employees achieve.Great bosses have strong relationships with their employees, and Scott has identified three simple principles for building better relationships with your employees: make it personal, get (sh)it done, and understand why it matters.Radical Candor offers a guide to those bewildered or exhausted by management, written for bosses and those who manage bosses. Taken from years of the author’s experience, and distilled clearly giving actionable lessons to the reader; it shows managers how to be successful while retaining their humanity, finding meaning in their job, and creating an environment where people both love their work and their colleagues.

    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.

    McCord helped create the unique and high-performing culture at Netflix, where she was chief talent officer. In her new book, Powerful: Building a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility, she shares what she learned there and elsewhere in Silicon Valley.McCord advocates practicing radical honesty in the workplace, saying good-bye to employees who don’t fit the company’s emerging needs, and motivating with challenging work, not promises, perks, and bonus plans. McCord argues that the old standbys of corporate HR―annual performance reviews, retention plans, employee empowerment and engagement programs―often end up being a colossal waste of time and resources. Her road-tested advice, offered with humor and irreverence, provides readers a different path for creating a culture of high performance and profitability.Powerful will change how you think about work and the way a business should be run.

    And it was an astronomer who finally explained what happened to the dinosaurs.Frans Johansson's The Medici Effect shows how breakthrough ideas most often occur when we bring concepts from one field into a new, unfamiliar territory, and offers examples how we can turn the ideas we discover into path-breaking innovations.

    With step-by-step guidance, Validating Product Ideas shows you how to tackle the research to build the best possible product.

    Presented in 23 compact lessons, "The Art of Profitability" features an ongoing tutorial between two fictitious individuals.

    Whether you've already got a business or you're itching to start one, this is a recipe for getting more traction.Think about it: what if you could launch like Apple or the big Hollywood studios? What if your prospects eagerly counted down the days until they could buy your product? What if you could create such powerful positioning in your market that you all but eliminated your competition? And you could do all that no matter how humble your business or budget?Since 1996 Jeff Walker has been creating hugely successful online launches. After bootstrapping his first Internet business from his basement, he quickly developed an underground process for launching new products and businesses with unprecedented success.But the success-train was just getting started; once he started teaching his formula to other entrepreneurs, the results were simply breathtaking. Tiny, home-based businesses started doing launches that sold tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, and even millions of dollars in sales with their launches.Launch is the treasure map into that world; an almost secret world of digital entrepreneurs who create cash-on-demand paydays with their product launches and business launches.Whether you have an existing business, or you have a service-based business and want to develop your own products so you can leverage your time and your impact, or you're still in the planning phase, this is how you start fast. This formula is how you engineer massive success.Now the question is this : are you going to start slow, and fade away from there? Or are you ready for a launch that will change the future of your business and your life?

    She stared at a long list of logistics--from hiring to firing, from meeting to messaging, from planning to pitching--and faced a thousand questions and uncertainties. How was she supposed to spin teamwork into value? How could she be a good steward of her reports' careers? What was the secret to leading with confidence in new and unexpected situations?Now, having managed dozens of teams spanning tens to hundreds of people, Julie knows the most important lesson of all: great managers are made, not born. If you care enough to be reading this, then you care enough to be a great manager.The Making of a Manager is a modern field guide packed everyday examples and transformative insights, including:* How to tell a great manager from an average manager (illustrations included) * When you should look past an awkward interview and hire someone anyway * How to build trust with your reports through not being a boss * Where to look when you lose faith and lack the answersWhether you're new to the job, a veteran leader, or looking to be promoted, this is the handbook you need to be the kind of manager you wish you had.

    . . And here's what you can do about it on Monday morning with the definitive how-to book from the world's leading authority on innovationWhen it comes to innovation, Curt Carlson and Bill Wilmot of SRI International know what they are talking about--literally. SRI has pioneered innovations that day in and day out are part of the fabric of your life, such as:-The computer mouse and the personal computer interface you use at home and work-The high-definition television in your living room-The unusual numbers at the bottom of your checks that enable your bank to maintain your account balance correctly-The speech-recognition system used by your financial services firm when you call for your account balance or to make a transaction.Each of these innovations--and literally hundreds of others--created new value for customers. And that's the central message of this book. Innovation is not about inventing clever gadgets or just "creativity." It is the successful creation and delivery of a new or improved product or service that provides value for your customer and sustained profit for your organization. The first black-and-white television, for example, was just an interesting, cool invention until David Sarnoff created an innovation--a network--that delivered programming to an audience.The genius of this book is that it provides the "how" of innovation. It makes innovation practical by getting two groups who are often disconnected--the managers who make decisions and the people on the front lines who create the innovations--onto the same page. Instead of smart people grousing about the executive suite not recognizing a good idea if they tripped over it and the folks on the top floor wondering whether the people doing the complaining have an understanding of market realities, Carlson and Wilmot's five disciplines of innovation focus attention where it should be: on the creation of valuable new products and services that meet customer needs.Innovation is not just for the "lone genius in the garage" but for you and everyone in your enterprise. Carlson and Wilmot provide a systematic way to make innovation practical, one intimately tied to the way things get done in your business.Teamwork isn't enough; Creativity isn't enough; A new product idea isn't enoughTrue innovation is about delivering value to customers. Innovation reveals the value-creating processes used by SRI International, the organization behind the computer mouse, robotic surgery, and the domain names .com, .org, and .gov. Curt Carlson and Bill Wilmot show you how to use these practical, tested processes to create great customer value for your organization.

    And when that power is harnessed to create new communities, technologies, businesses or charities, the results can be absolutely stunning. In this book, Alexis will share his ideas, tips and even his own doodles about harnessing the power of the web for good, and along the way, he will share his philosophy with young entrepreneurs all over the globe. At 29, Ohanian has come to personify the dorm-room tech entrepreneur, changing the world without asking permission. Within a couple of years of graduating from the University of Virginia, Ohanian did just that, selling reddit for millions of dollars. He's gone on to start many other companies, like hipmunk and breadpig, all while representing Y Combinator and investing in over sixty other tech startups. Without Their Permission is his personal guidebook as to how other aspiring entrepreneurs can follow in his footsteps.

    The applicable tactics and techniques can be studied in advance, helping you avoid the most common pitfalls.This is what this book is about. It's a handbook for anyone building an online marketplace. The same methods will apply whether your organization is a startup, a cooperative, a non-profit, or a big brand. Not every marketplace will be as big as Airbnb and Uber, but we believe there are thousands of marketplace ideas out there that can make for great, sustainable businesses. With the help of this book, you're one step closer to building the next one. Critical acclaim "Juho and Cristóbal have written a practical in-the-weeds guide on marketplace execution that will prove invaluable for all entrepreneurs looking to start a marketplace. No fluff, just actionable ideas." – Sangeet Paul Choudary, best-selling author of Platform Revolution and Platform Scale "Building marketplaces can be hard. The Lean Marketplace is a very useful step-by-step guide to help entrepreneurs think through the challenges and solutions to create the next Uber or Airbnb." – Boris Wertz, Founder and General Partner, Version One Ventures "Must read for every marketplace entrepreneur. I'm going to ask everyone in our team to read this book." – Bram de Zwart, Co-founder and CEO, 3D Hubs "As I'm friends with both authors, I know first hand that the information in their book is hard won from long experience helping dozens of marketplaces succeed and consulting the top experts from around the world. However, the quality and comprehensiveness of the content speaks for itself. It covers all the essentials of growing an online marketplace, and in the most straightforward way possible. It is an impressively practical, must read resource for any current or aspiring marketplace entrepreneur. I can't recommend it highly enough, but please see for yourself." – Neal Gorenflo, Co-founder of Shareable "The essential guide to building an essential marketplace." – Tristan Pollock, Co-founder, Storefront, Partner, 500 Startups "Reading Juho's and Cristobal's advice online before launching our platform helped us save so much time and avoid the most common mistakes. If you're considering building a marketplace business, read this book first. Seriously." – Agne Milukaite, Co-founder and CEO, Cycle.land "Envisioning, validating, building and growing a marketplace is no small challenge: the most important aspect to nailing this challenge down is all about avoiding losing time and energy in the myriad of wrong directions that can come up your way. This book is an essential guide, the lifeboat for the marketplace founder that faces the ocean of bootstrapping.