They yearn to come up with a game—changing innovation like Apple's iPod, or create an entirely new category like Facebook. Many make genuine efforts to be innovative—they spend on R&D, bring in creative designers, hire innovation consultants. But they get disappointing results.Why? In The Design of Business, Roger Martin offers a compelling and provocative answer: we rely far too exclusively on analytical thinking, which merely refines current knowledge, producing small improvements to the status quo.To innovate and win, companies need design thinking. This form of thinking is rooted in how knowledge advances from one stage to another—from mystery (something we can't explain) to heuristic (a rule of thumb that guides us toward solution) to algorithm (a predictable formula for producing an answer) to code (when the formula becomes so predictable it can be fully automated). As knowledge advances across the stages, productivity grows and costs drop-creating massive value for companies.Martin shows how leading companies such as Procter & Gamble, Cirque du Soleil, RIM, and others use design thinking to push knowledge through the stages in ways that produce breakthrough innovations and competitive advantage.Filled with deep insights and fresh perspectives, The Design of Business reveals the true foundation of successful, profitable innovation.

    And all of these capabilities are founded in a deep and rich embrace of what it means to be a designer.Design Like Apple uncovers the lessons from Apple's unique approach to product creation, manufacturing, delivery, and customer experience.Offers behind-the-scenes stories from current and recent Apple insiders Draws on case studies from other companies that have mastered the creative application of design to create outrageous business results Delivers how-to lessons across design, marketing, and business strategy Bridging creativity and commerce, this book will show you to how to truly Design Like Apple.

    It provides a high-productivity programming model that promotes cleaner code architecture, test-driven development, and powerful extensibility, combined with all the benefits of ASP.NET.ASP.NET MVC 4 contains a number of significant advances over previous versions. New mobile and desktop templates (employing adaptive rendering) are included together with support for jQuery Mobile for the first time. New display modes allow your application to select views based on the browser that's making the request while Code Generation Recipes for Visual Studio help you auto-generate project-specific code for a wide variety of situtations including NuGet support.In this fourth edition, the core model-view-controller (MVC) architectural concepts are not simply explained or discussed in isolation, but are demonstrated in action. You'll work through an extended tutorial to create a working e-commerce web application that combines ASP.NET MVC with the latest C# language features and unit-testing best practices. By gaining this invaluable, practical experience, you'll discover MVC's strengths and weaknesses for yourself--and put your best-learned theory into practice.The book's authors, Steve Sanderson and Adam Freeman, have both watched the growth of ASP.NET MVC since its first release. Steve is a well-known blogger on the MVC Framework and a member of the Microsoft Web Platform and Tools team. Adam started designing and building web applications 15 years ago and has been responsible for some of the world's largest and most ambitious projects. You can be sure you are in safe hands.

    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.

    The author, Matej Latin, takes complex concepts such as vertical rhythm, modular scale and page composition, and explains them in a simple way. The content of the book is accompanied by live code examples and the readers design and build an example website as they go through it. This is a new typography book for a new medium, the rules haven't changed much, everything else has.

    The Art & Science of CSS brings together a talented collection of designers who will show you how to take the building blocks of your web site's design (such as headings, navigation, forms, and more) and bring them to life with fully standards-compliant CSS.This full color book helps you to design web sites that not only work well across all browsers, are easy to maintain, and are highly accessible, but are also visually stunning.Create truly attention-grabbing headings.Discover multiple ways to present images effectively.Use background images to give your site zest.Build usable and attractive navigation.Design forms that are stylish and functional.Learn how to break away from the square box gclich.Create funky tables.And lots moreFrom the PublisherJonathan Snook, Steve Smith, Jina Bolton, Cameron Adams, and David Johnson, five of the biggest names in CSS design have joined forces to bring you The Art & Science Of CSS.Beautifully presented in full color, this book will teach you how to apply innovative CSS-based techniques to create visually stunning headings, forms, menus, navigation, backgrounds, and much more...Using The Art & Science Of CSS, you'll see just how easy it is to unleash your creative talents and design inspirational web sites with CSS.All designs in this book are visually appealing and inspiring. The CSS code used to create each of the components is included and guaranteed to be simple, efficient and cross-browser compatible.Among its many treasures, this book will show you how to: Format calendars, menus and table of contents using CSSCreate horizontal, vertical and tab-based navigation systems using CSSCreate rounded corners using CSSDesign stylish Website headingsPut together funky & artistic Website backgroundsUse CSS to render blockquotes, dates and lists in a visually appealing mannerAll designs in this book are visually appealing and inspiring. The code CSS code used to create each of the components is provided and is guaranteed to be simple, efficient and cross-browser compatible.Who Should Read This Book?This book is ideal for anyone who wants to gain the practical skills involved in using CSS to make attractive web sites, especially if you're not the type who likes to learn by memorizing a formal specification and then trying to work out which browsers implemented it completely (does anyone enjoy reading specifications?). The only knowledge you'll need to have is some familiarity with HTML. This book will give designers the skills they need to implement their ideas, and provides developers with creative inspiration through practical examples.

    I loved the tutorial-style game-like program development. This book rekindled my earliest joys of programming. Plus, JavaScript!" —Brendan Eich, creator of JavaScriptJavaScript is the language of the Web, and it's at the heart of every modern website from the lowliest personal blog to the mighty Google Apps. Though it's simple for beginners to pick up and play with, JavaScript is not a toy—it's a flexible and complex language, capable of much more than the showy tricks most programmers use it for.Eloquent JavaScript goes beyond the cut-and-paste scripts of the recipe books and teaches you to write code that's elegant and effective. You'll start with the basics of programming, and learn to use variables, control structures, functions, and data structures. Then you'll dive into the real JavaScript artistry: higher-order functions, closures, and object-oriented programming.Along the way you'll learn to:Master basic programming techniques and best practices Harness the power of functional and object-oriented programming Use regular expressions to quickly parse and manipulate strings Gracefully deal with errors and browser incompatibilities Handle browser events and alter the DOM structure Most importantly, Eloquent JavaScript will teach you to express yourself in code with precision and beauty. After all, great programming is an art, not a science—so why settle for a killer app when you can create a masterpiece?

    Breaking down the message from his bestselling Re-Imagine!, these pocket-sized books deliver crucial business truths to those who are looking for inspiration on leadership, innovation, design, or trends.

    But what if everyone is wrong?In their acclaimed bestseller The Challenger Sale, Matthew Dixon and his colleagues at CEB busted longstanding myths about sales. Now they've turned to a new vital business subject - customer loyalty - with a book that turns conventional wisdom on its head.Companies devote untold time and resources trying to dazzle customers. Yet CEB's careful research proves that is wildly overrated: loyalty has a lot more to do with how well companies deliver on their basic promises than on how dazzling the service experience might be. Forget bells and whistles and just solve your customer's problems. The Effortless Experience lays out the four pillars of a low-effort customer experience, with robust data, in­sights and profiles. Here are tools and templates you can start applying right away to improve service, reduce costs, and ultimately generate the elusive loyalty that the 'dazzle factor' fails to deliver.The rewards are there for the taking, and the pathway to achieving them is now clearly marked.'A business detective story, in which cherished truths are systematically investigated-and frequently debunked' -Dan Heath, coauthor of Decisive, Switch, and Made to StickMatt Dixon is Executive Director of the Sales & Service Practice at CEB. He is a frequent contributor to the Harvard Business Review, and his previous book, The Challenger Sale, was a Wall Street Journal bestsellerNick Toman is Senior Director of Research for CEB's Sales & Services Practice and is a frequent contributor to the Harvard Business Review.Rick DeLisi is Senior Director of Advisory Services for CEB's Sales & Service Practice and a noted public speaker and facilitator.

    This anthology is organized into three sections that focus on the use of design for innovation and brand-building, the emerging role of service design, and the design of meaningful customer experiences. This book provides readers with the strategies necessary to encourage the creative thought process in their companies, which will ultimately help to cultivate innovation, and therefore boost business. Experienced design leaders share their personal stories and give specific examples of their companies’ forward-thinking creations. This unique approach helps the reader learn how to build a solid brand foundation, solve problems with simplified thinking, anticipate and capitalize on trends, figure out what consumers want before they do, and align mission, vision, and strategy with a corporate brand. A sense of the content within Design Thinking can be gained from the titles of some of the key essays: “Building Leadership Brands,” “The Designful Company,” “Brand Building by Service Design,” “Service Design Via the Global Web,” “Customer Loyalty,” and “Driving Brand Loyalty on the Web”.

    Using AWS, you can develop applications quickly and then deploy them to a cloud environment that scales on demand. And with several AWS deployment services to choose from, you can create a deployment solution that gives you the right mix of automation and control. This documentation is offered for free here as a Kindle book, or you can read it online or in PDF format at http://docs.aws.amazon.com/gettingsta....

    

    The RESTful approach to web services design is rapidly become the approach of choice. Unfortunately, too few people have truly solid REST API design skills, and discussions of REST can become bogged down in dry theory.The REST API Design Handbook is a simple, practical guide to aid software engineers and software architects create lasting, scalable APIs based on REST architectural principles. The book provides a sound foundation in discussing the constraints that define a REST API. It quickly goes beyond that into the practical aspects of implementing such an API in the real world.Written by cloud computing expert George Reese, The REST API Design Handbook reflects hands on work in consuming many different third party APIs as well the development of REST-based web services APIs. It addresses all of the debates the commonly arise while creating these APIs. Subjects covered include:* REST architectural constraints* Using HTTP methods and response codes in an API* Authenticating RESTful API calls* Versioning* Asynchronous Operations* Pagination and Streaming* Polling and Push Notifications* Rate Limiting

    It can be used as a course book for students who are first encountering systems analysis and design at any level. This second edition contains many updates, including the latest version of the UML standard, and reflects the most up to date approaches to the information systems development process. It provides a clear and comprehensive treatment of UML 1.4 in the context of the systems development life cycle, without assuming previous knowledge of analysis and design. It also discusses implementation issues in detail and gives code fragments to show possible mappings to implementation technology. Extensive use of examples and exercises from two case studies provides the reader with many opportunities to practise the application of UML.

    Creative Selection recounts the life of one of the few who worked behind the scenes, a highly-respected software engineer who worked in the final years the Steve Jobs era--the Golden Age of Apple.Ken Kocienda offers an inside look at Apple's creative process. For fifteen years, he was on the ground floor of the company as a specialist, directly responsible for experimenting with novel user interface concepts and writing powerful, easy-to-use software for products including the iPhone, the iPad, and the Safari web browser. His stories explain the symbiotic relationship between software and product development for those who have never dreamed of programming a computer, and reveal what it was like to work on the cutting edge of technology at one of the world's most admired companies.Kocienda shares moments of struggle and success, crisis and collaboration, illuminating each with lessons learned over his Apple career. He introduces the essential elements of innovation--inspiration, collaboration, craft, diligence, decisiveness, taste, and empathy--and uses these as a lens through which to understand productive work culture.An insider's tale of creativity and innovation at Apple, Creative Selection shows readers how a small group of people developed an evolutionary design model, and how they used this methodology to make groundbreaking and intuitive software which countless millions use every day.