In The Grrl Genius Guide to Life, stand-up comic and Grrl Genius Club founder Cathryn Michon explains why she is a genius and demonstrates how you can become one, too, by following her easy twelve-step program.The first step in the program is the most important: Admit that you are a Grrl Genius. Acknowledge that you are beautiful, intelligent, and talented and that you are the only person in the world who can decide just how great you are. In subsequent steps, you will learn to embrace the domestic arts, love your Grrl Genius good looks, celebrate your sexuality, appreciate your Grrl Genius mother, and pass the Grrl Genius message on to others!Filled with little-known facts about such unacknowledged Grrl Geniuses as Mozart's younger sister Nannerl and Einstein's wife Mileva, as well as hilarious, embarrassing stories from Michon's own life, The Grrl Genius Guide to Life is a must-read for Grrl Geniuses and Enlightened Males everywhere. Michon shares her most humiliating memories -- singing show tunes at her aunt's funeral, crying uncontrollably in an airplane bathroom and holding up the flight -- as well as her moments of triumph, like attending the birth of her niece (a future Grrl Genius) and getting liposuction that not a single human being noticed. This is an uproarious roller-coaster ride through the life of a self-declared Genius -- in which Michon writes about everything from doughnuts to divorce, from physics to push-up bras -- and a comic inspirational guide for those aspiring to Grrl Geniushood.Cathryn Michon is a genius -- just because she says she is. Read her book, and you will become one, too. As with any twelve-step program, becoming a Grrl Genius takes work. All your life you have been telling yourself that your butt is too big, your ideas are too small, and your love for creme-filled doughnuts is inherently evil. With the help of The Grrl Genius Guide to Life, you will learn to recognize your own brilliance, shamelessly proclaim it to the rest of the world, and eat all the Krispy Kreme doughnuts you want. In case you need inspiration, Michon has included numerous Grrl Genius slogans and Little Pink Post-it Notes; in case you get hungry, she has included her recipe for the best chocolate chip cookies in the world. So go on -- take the first step. Read the book that is guaranteed to change your life forever (or at the very least to make you laugh yourself silly) -- and declare your Genius to yourself and the world!

    Yet, few companies really know how brand meaning works, how to manage it, and how to use brand meaning strategically. Written by best-selling author Carol S. Pearson (The Hero Within) and branding guru Margaret Mark, this groundbreaking book provides the illusive and compelling answer. Using studies drawn from the experiences of Nike, Marlboro, Ivory and other powerhouse brands, the authors show that the most successful brands are those that most effectively correspond to fundamental patterns in the unconscious mind known as archetypes. The book provides tools and strategies to: - Implement a proven system for identifying the most appropriate and leverageable archetypes for any company and/or brand - Harness the power of the archetype to align corporate strategy to sustain competitive advantage

    Your colleague's husband's sister can make you fat, even if you don't know her. A happy neighbor has more impact on your happiness than a happy spouse. These startling revelations of how much we truly influence one another are revealed in the studies of Dr. Christakis and Fowler, which have repeatedly made front-page news nationwide. In Connected, the authors explain why emotions are contagious, how health behaviors spread, why the rich get richer, even how we find and choose our partners. Intriguing and entertaining, Connected overturns the notion of the individual and provides a revolutionary paradigm-that social networks influence our ideas, emotions, health, relationships, behavior, politics, and much more. It will change the way we think about every aspect of our lives.

    But such efforts rarely have a positive impact on the bottom line. Pat Fallon and Fred Senn argue that leaders have more creativity within their organizations than they realize—but they inadvertently stifle it or channel it in ineffective ways. Juicing the Orange outlines a disciplined approach to building creativity actively into the organizational culture and leveraging that creativity into campaigns that deliver measurable results. Drawing from 25 years of successful marketing and acclaimed, award-winning work, the authors show that bankable, creative ideas come from zeroing in on the one key business problem that must be solved and then rigorously unearthing insights that will lead to a spectacular solution. Behind-the-scenes stories of successful and failed campaigns for companies in diverse industries reveal the core secrets of training for creativity: develop a proprietary brand emotion, offer big ideas without a big budget, and get customers to seek out your message. Illustrating the link between creativity and profits, Juicing the Orange helps industry players measure their success at the cash register.

    Given the intricacies of the industry, it's also going to be the most resistant to change. Alan Wolk, an industry veteran and longtime analyst and observer, lays out how the television industry is adapting to the digital era, explaining what's really happening in a tone that will appeal to laypeople and insiders alike. In the first section, Wolk takes us through how the industry works today, focusing on how the various players actually make money and who pays who for what. The next section deals with the changes that are taking place in the industry today–everything from time shifting to binge viewing to cord cutting–and how those changes are starting to create some seismic shifts. In the final section, Wolk reveals his predictions for the future and what the industry will look like in ten years time. Andrew Wallenstein, co-editor-in-chief of Variety says "Alan Wolk is one of the most insightful observers writing about the media business today. There's no better expert to help you navigate the confusing, complicated nexus of TV and the Internet." David Zaslav, President and CEO of Discovery Communications says "Alan Wolk has a deep understanding of the complex nature of television today… this is a fantastic primer of the business and one of the most educated perspectives on the future of our rapidly evolving industry."

    And best of all, these crystal-clear, bite-sized lessons can be put to work in your business immediately! Discover how to: Generate hundreds of promising new leads Increase your conversion rate of leads to sales Maximize the value of your average sale Measure your results and fine-tune your best strategies Get real results right now when you discover all that Instant Success has to offer! Instant Advertising * Instant Leads * Instant Profit * Instant Promotions * Instant Referrals * Instant Repeat Business * Instant Sales * Instant Systems * Instant Team Building * The Business Coach * The Real Estate Coach * Successful Franchising * Billionaire in TrainingDDC: 658.8

    Reprint. 25,000 first printing.

    Individuals and companies can no longer rely on the stocks of knowledge that they've carefully built up and stored away. Information now flows like water, and we must learn how to tap into the stream. But many of us remain stuck in old practices--practices that could undermine us as we search for success and meaning. In this revolutionary book, three doyens of the Internet age, whose path-breaking work has made headlines around the world, reveal the adjustments we must make if we take these changes seriously. In a world of increasing risk and opportunity, we must understand the importance of pull. Understood and used properly, the power of pull can draw out the best in people and institutions by connecting them in ways that increase understanding and effectiveness. Pull can turn uncertainty into opportunity, and enable small moves to achieve outsized impact. Drawing on pioneering research, The Power of Pull shows how to apply its principles to unlock the hidden potential of individuals and organizations, and how to use it as a force for social change and the development of creative talent. The authors explore how to use the power of pull to:Access new sources of informationAttract likeminded individuals from around the worldShape serendipity to increase the likelihood of positive chance encountersForm creation spaces to drive you and your colleagues to new heightsTransform your organization to adapt to the flow of knowledgeThe Power of Pull is essential reading for entrepreneurs, managers, and anybody interested in understanding and harnessing the shifting forces of our networked world.

    It’s an ingenuity engine.Once wound up and released, the Culturematic acts as a probe into the often-alien world of contemporary culture, to test the atmosphere, to see what life it can sustain, to see who responds and how. Culturematics start small but can scale up ferociously, bootstrapping themselves as they go.Because they are so inexpensive, we can afford to fire off a multitude of Culturematics simultaneously. This is evolutionary strategy, iterative innovation, and rapid prototyping all at once. Culturematics are fast, cheap, and out of control. Perhaps as important, they fail early and often. They are the perfect antidote to a world where we cannot guess what’s coming next.In Culturematic, anthropologist Grant McCracken describes these little machines and helps the reader master them. Examples are drawn from NFL Films, Twitter, the Apple Genius Bar, Starbucks, Ford, SNL Digital Shorts, Restoration Hardware, UNICEF, J. Crew, Pie Lab, USA Network, and the GEICO gecko.For the traditional producers of culture—the creators of movies, design, advertising, publishing, magazines, newspapers, and corporate R&D—this book will inspire new innovation and creativity.For the emerging producers of culture—the digital players—this book will serve as a practical handbook. Culturematic: our app for creating the world anew.

    This book recognizes that we’ve come to a place where people can represent their real identity—both personal and professional—and use the social filters on the Web to connect with the world around them.” —Sheryl Sandberg, Chief Operating Officer, Facebook “...A must-read for CEOs and other executives who want to understand Facebook and more importantly take the right actions to stay relevant and stay competitive.” —David Mather, President, Hoovers, Inc. The ‘90s were about the World Wide Web of information and the power of linking web pages. Today it’s about the World Wide Web of people and the power of the social graph. Online social networks are fundamentally changing the way we live, work, and interact. They offer businesses immense opportunities to transform customer relationships for profit: opportunities that touch virtually every business function, from sales and marketing to recruiting, collaboration to executive decision-making, product development to innovation. In The Facebook Era, Clara Shih systematically outlines the business promise of social networking and shows how to transform that promise into reality. Shih is singularly qualified to write this book: One of the world’s top business social networking thought leaders and practitioners, she created the first business application on Facebook and leads salesforce.com’s partnershipwith Facebook. Through case studies, examples, and a practical how-to guide, Shih helps individuals, companies, and organizations understand and take advantage of social networks to transform customer relationships for sales and marketing. Shih systematically identifies your best opportunities to use social networks to source new business opportunities, target marketing messages, find the best employees, and engage customers as true partners throughout the innovation cycle. Finally, she presents a detailed action plan for positioning your company to win in today’s radically new era: The Facebook Era. Join the conversation—www.thefacebookera.com. Fan the book—www.facebook.com/thefacebookera. Right this minute, more than 1.5 million people are on Facebook. They’re interacting with friends—and talking about your brands. They’re learning about your business—and providing valuable information you can use to market and sell. In the Facebook Era, you’re closer to your customers than ever before. Read this book, and then go get them! Clara Shih offers best practices for overcoming obstacles to success, ranging from privacy and security issues to brand misrepresentation, and previews social networking trends that are just beginning to emerge—helping you get ahead of the curve and ahead of the competition, too.  Includes a practical 60-day action plan for positioning your company to win in the Facebook Era For companies of all sizes, in all industries—and business functions ranging from marketing to operations By Clara Shih, creator of Faceconnector, the first business application on Facebook Learn how to… Understand how social networking transforms our personal and professional relationshipsWhy social networking will have business impact comparable to the Internet Use online social networks to hypertarget your customersHone in on precise audience segments and then tailor custom campaigns with powerful personal and social relevance Define and implement your optimal social networking brand strategyAsk the right questions, set the right goals and priorities, and execute on it Implement effective governance and complianceUnderstand and mitigate the risks of social networking/Web 2.0 initiatives

    Like the meteor that likely precipitated the end of the dinosaurs, Social is the catalyst in an extinction event--and business as we know it has changed forever. A World Gone Social offers an eye-opening look at fundamental and powerful changes the social collaboration era has set in motion: ● Customers now have the power--just watch what happens as more realize it! ● With increased transparency, businesses must be more ethical--no more pretending ● Command-and-control leadership is now so inefficient, it is a liability ● Nimble and small is the new competitive advantage--few corporations are capable of the agility required by evolving marketplaces ● Recruiting is now a two-way proposition, with job seekers able to peer behind the corporate curtain ● Relationship and community-building is how customers and brand ambassadors are won--and retained ● Engagement--with partners, employees, and customers--is not a luxury; it is a requirement. Each chapter provides compelling stories and concrete examples of companies demonstrating enlightened business practices and doing Social right--and some that are not--and the lessons to be learned from their experiences. Finally, readers will discover how to objectively assess the fit ness of their own company's culture and social presence...so they may successfully transition from a 20th- to a 21st-century "social" organization.

    It was also a weapon.Simplicity isn’t just a design principle at Apple—it’s a value that permeates every level of the organization. The obsession with Simplicity is what separates Apple from other technology companies. It’s what helped Apple recover from near death in 1997 to become the most valuable company on Earth in 2011.Thanks to Steve Jobs’s uncompromising ways, you can see Simplicity in everything Apple does: the way it’s structured, the way it innovates, and the way it speaks to its customers.It’s by crushing the forces of Complexity that the company remains on its stellar trajectory.As ad agency creative director, Ken Segall played a key role in Apple’s resurrection, helping to create such critical marketing campaigns as Think different. By naming the iMac, he also laid the foundation for naming waves of i-products to come.Segall has a unique perspective, given his years of experience creating campaigns for other iconic tech companies, including IBM, Intel, and Dell. It was the stark contrast of Apple’s ways that made Segall appreciate the power of Simplicity—and inspired him to help others benefit from it.In Insanely Simple, you’ll be a fly on the wall inside a conference room with Steve Jobs, and on the receiving end of his midnight phone calls. You’ll understand how his obsession with Simplicity helped Apple perform better and faster, sometimes saving millions in the process. You’ll also learn, for example, how to:• Think Minimal: Distilling choices to a minimum brings clarity to a company and its customers—as Jobs proved when he replaced over twenty product models with a lineup of four.• Think Small: Swearing allegiance to the concept of “small groups of smart people” raises both morale and productivity.• Think Motion: Keeping project teams in constant motion focuses creative thinking on well-defined goals and minimizes distractions.• Think Iconic: Using a simple, powerful image to symbolize the benefit of a product or idea creates a deeper impression in the minds of customers.• Think War: Giving yourself an unfair advantage—using every weapon at your disposal—is the best way to ensure that your ideas survive unscathed.Segall brings Apple’s quest for Simplicity to life using fascinating (and previously untold) stories from behind the scenes. Through his insight and wit, you’ll discover how companies that leverage this power can stand out from competitors—and individuals who master it can become critical assets to their organizations.

    This might seem uncontroversial, but it flies in the face of a tech sector long obsessed with rapid growth and sometimes on disruption as an end in itself. Now, though, we have reached an inflection point: Silicon Valley has moved fast and it has broken things. A new understanding has emerged that companies that create technology must accept greater responsibility for the future. And governments will need to regulate technology by moving faster and catching up with the pace of innovation that is impacting our communities and changing the world.In Tools and Weapons, Brad Smith takes us into the cockpit of one of the world's largest and most powerful tech companies as it finds itself in the middle of some of the thorniest emerging issues of our time. These are challenges that come with no preexisting playbook, including privacy, cybercrime and cyberwar, social media, the moral conundrums of AI, big tech's relationship to inequality and the challenges for democracy, far and near. While in no way a self-glorifying "Microsoft memoir," the book opens up the curtain remarkably wide onto some of the company's most crucial recent decision points, as it strives to protect the hopes technology offers against the very real threats it also presents. Every tool can be a weapon in the wrong person's hands, and companies are being challenged in entirely new ways to embrace the totality of their responsibilities. We have moved from a world in which Silicon Valley could take no prisoners to one in which tech companies and governments must work together to address the challenges and adapt to the changes technology has unleashed. There are huge ramifications to be thought through, and Brad Smith provides a marvelous and urgently necessary contribution to that effort.

    But he was the first to show how one person, armed with creativity, some friends, $150, and the Internet, could turn an entire industry upside down.United Airlines had broken Dave’s guitar in checked luggage. After eight months of pestering the company for compensation, he turned to his best tool—songwriting—and vowed to create a YouTube video about the incident that he hoped would garner a million views in one year. Four days after its launching, the first million people had watched “United Breaks Guitars.” United stock went down 10 percent, shedding $180 million in value; Dave appeared on outlets as diverse as CNN and The View. United relented. And throughout the business world, people began to realize that “efficient” but inhuman customer-service policies had an unseen cost—brand destruction by frustrated, creative, and socially connected customers.“United Breaks Guitars” has become a textbook example of the new relationship between companies and their customers, and has demonstrated the power of one voice in the age of social media. It has become a benchmark in the customer-service and music industries, as well as branding and social-media circles. Today, more than 150 million people are familiar with this story.In this book, you’ll hear about how Dave developed the “just do it” philosophy that made him the ideal man to take on a big corporation, what it felt like to be in the center of the media frenzy, and how he’s taken his talents and become a sought-after songwriter and public speaker. And businesspeople will learn how companies should change their policies and address social-media uprisings.Since “United Breaks Guitars” emerged, nothing is the same—for consumers, for musicians, or for business. Whether you are a guitarist, a baggage handler, or a boardroom executive, this book will entertain you and remind you that we are all connected, that each of us matters, and that we all have a voice worth hearing.

    It is moving away from its current structure of documents and pages linked together, and towards a new structure that is built around people. This is a profound change that will affect how we create business strategy, design, marketing, and advertising. The reason for this shift is simple. For tens of thousands of years we've been social animals. The web, which is only 20 years old, is simply catching up with offline life.From travel to news to commerce, smart businesses are reorienting their efforts around people-around the social behavior of their customers and potential customers. In order to be successful, businesses will need to understand how people are connected, how their social network influences them, how the people closest to them influence them the most, and how it's more important for marketers to focus on small, connected groups of friends rather than looking for overly influential individuals.This book pulls together the latest research from leading universities and technology companies to describe how people are connected, and how ideas and brand messages spread through social networks. It shows readers how to rebuild their business around social behavior, and create products that people tell their friends about.