Ideas for new businesses, solutions to the world's problems, and artistic breakthroughs are common, but great execution is rare. According to Scott Belsky, the capacity to make ideas happen can be developed by anyone willing to develop their organizational habits and leadership capability. That's why he founded Behance, a company that helps creative people and teams across industries develop these skills. Belsky has spent six years studying the habits of creative people and teams that are especially productive-the ones who make their ideas happen time and time again. After interviewing hundreds of successful creatives, he has compiled their most powerful-and often counterintuitive-practices, such as: •Generate ideas in moderation and kill ideas liberally •Prioritize through nagging •Encourage fighting within your team While many of us obsess about discovering great new ideas, Belsky shows why it's better to develop the capacity to make ideas happen-a capacity that endures over time.

    Through consecutive “hook cycles,” these products reach their ultimate goal of bringing users back again and again without depending on costly advertising or aggressive messaging.Hooked is based on Eyal’s years of research, consulting, and practical experience. He wrote the book he wished had been available to him as a start-up founder—not abstract theory, but a how-to guide for building better products. Hooked is written for product managers, designers, marketers, start-up founders, and anyone who seeks to understand how products influence our behavior.Eyal provides readers with:• Practical insights to create user habits that stick.• Actionable steps for building products people love.• Fascinating examples from the iPhone to Twitter, Pinterest to the Bible App, and many other habit-forming products.

    The consensus is clear: MBA programs are a waste of time and money. Even the elite schools offer outdated assembly-line educations about profit-and-loss statements and PowerPoint presentations. After two years poring over sanitized case studies, students are shuffled off into middle management to find out how business really works.Josh Kaufman has made a business out of distilling the core principles of business and delivering them quickly and concisely to people at all stages of their careers. His blog has introduced hundreds of thousands of readers to the best business books and most powerful business concepts of all time. In The Personal MBA, he shares the essentials of sales, marketing, negotiation, strategy, and much more.True leaders aren't made by business schools-they make themselves, seeking out the knowledge, skills, and experiences they need to succeed. Read this book and in one week you will learn the principles it takes most people a lifetime to master.

    It needs to be based on facts. Stories at Work will teach you how to wrap your stories in context and deliver them in a way that grabs your audience's attention.The special tools, techniques and structures in this book will help you bring the power of stories into your day-to-day business communication. They will enable you to connect, engage and inspire, and ensure that everything you share has a lasting impression on your listeners.

    According to Kaiser, successful arts organizations pursue strong programmatic marketing campaigns that compel people to buy tickets, enroll in classes, and so on—in short, to participate in the organization’s programs. Additionally, they create exciting activities that draw people to the organization as a whole. This institutional marketing creates a sense of enthusiasm that attracts donors, board members, and volunteers. Kaiser calls this group of external supporters the family. When this hidden engine is humming, staff, board, and audience members, artists, and donors feel confidence in the future. Resources are reinvested in more and better art, which is marketed aggressively; as a result, the “family” continues to grow, providing even more resources. This self-reinforcing cycle underlies the activities of all healthy arts organizations, and the theory behind it can be used as a diagnostic tool to reveal—and remedy—the problems of troubled ones. This book addresses each element of the cycle in the hope that more arts organizations around the globe—from orchestras, theaters, museums, opera companies, and classical and modern dance organizations to service organizations and other not-for-profit cultural institutions—will be able to sustain remarkable creativity, pay the bills, and have fun doing so!

    Under Andrew Grove's leadership, Intel has become the world's largest computer chipmaker, the 5th most admired company in America, and the 7th most profitable company among the Fortune 500. Few CEOs can claim this level of success. Grove attributes much of it to the philosophy and strategy he has learned the hard way as he steered Intel through a series of potential major disasters. There are moments in any business when massive change occurs, when all the rules of business shift fast, furiously and forever. Grove calls such moments strategic inflection points (SIPs), and he has lived through several. They can be set off by almost anything - by mega competition, an arcane change in regulations, or by a seemingly modest change in technology. They are not always easy to spot - but you can't hide from them. Intel's first SIP was when the Japanese started producing better-quality, lower-cost memory chips. It took Grove three years and huge losses to recognize that he had to rethink and reposition the company to become, once again, leader in its field.Grove extrapolates the lessons he has learned from this and other SIPs - for instance the drama of the Pentium flaw, and the SIP brought on by the Internet - to reveal a unique insight into the management of change. He recounts strategies from other companies and examines his own record of success and failure. Only the Paranoid Survive is a classic lesson in leadership skills that every manager in every industry will benefit from. Every manager must assume that something will change - very soon.

    Sutton and Rao have devoted much of the last decade to uncovering what it takes to build and uncover pockets of exemplary performance, to help spread them, and to keep recharging organizations with ever better work practices. Drawing on inside accounts and case studies and academic research from a wealth of industries – including start-ups, pharmaceuticals, airlines, retail, financial services, high-tech, education, non-profits, government, and healthcare -- Sutton and Rao identify the key scaling challenges that confront every organization. They tackle the difficult trade-offs that organizations must make between “Buddhism” versus “Catholicism” -- whether to encourage individualized approaches tailored to local needs or to replicate the same practices and customs as an organization or program expands. They reveal how the best leaders and teams develop, spread, and instill the right mindsets in their people -- rather than ruining or watering down the very things that have fueled successful growth in the past. They unpack the principles that help to cascade excellence throughout an organization, as well as show how to eliminate destructive beliefs and behaviors that will hold them back. Scaling Up Excellence is the first major business book devoted to this universal and vexing challenge. It is destined to become the standard bearer in the field.

    He believes “in the wonder and exuberance of someone who gets paid-by clients to do what he loves.” Howe places immense value on curiosity and passion to help designers develop a point of view, a strong voice. He explores the creative process and conceptualization, and delves into what to do when inspiration is lacking. If there’s a villain in these elegant, incisive, amusing, and inspiring essays, it’s ad agencies and marketing directors, but even villains serve a purpose and illustrate the strength of graphic design “as a system, as a way of thinking, as almost a life style.” Howe believes that advertising and design must merge, but merge with design in the leadership role. He says that designers should create for clients and not in the hope of winning awards. He believes designers should swear “a 10-year commitment to make everything we do for every client a gift.” If this sounds like the designer is the client’s factotum, not so. Howe also argues in favor of offering clients a single solution and being willing to defend a great design. Organized not only by topic, but also by how long it will take the average reader to complete each chapter, Designers Don’t Read is intended to function like a “daily devotional” for designers and busy professionals involved in branded communications at all levels. Begun as a series of weekly essays sent every Monday morning to top graphic designers, Designers Don’t Read quickly developed a passionate and widespread following. With the approximate time each chapter might take to read, Designers Don’t Read’s delight and provocation can be fit into the niches in the life of a time-challenged designer. Or it may be hard to resist reading the entire book in one sitting!

    Written as a fascinating and enjoyable conversation between the authors – Stefan Olander, Vice President of Digital Sport from Nike and Ajaz Ahmed founder and Chairman AKQA – Velocity's up-to-date examples illustrate key lessons, together with insights, ideas and inspiration that individuals and businesses should adopt to thrive in the digital age. Velocity shares the vision and values required to succeed with the untold backstories to influential and iconic innovation. Fast paced, useful, provocative and highly motivating, Velocity is a management book that will arm you with actionable ideas to define your future. Features: - 4 Velocity principles: Speed, Direction, Acceleration, Discipline. - 7 Laws, including 'A Smith & Wesson beats four aces', 'It’s easier done than said', 'Convenient is the enemy of right' and 'No good joke survives a committee of six'.

    Nothing could be further from the truth. In Behind Every Good Decision, authors and analytics experts Piyanka Jain and Puneet Sharma demonstrate how professionals at any level can take the information at their disposal and leverage it to make better decisions. The authors’ streamlined frame work demystifies the process of business analytics and helps anyone move from data to decisions in just five steps…using only Excel as a tool. Readers will learn how to: Clarify the business question • Lay out a hypothesis-driven plan • Pull relevant data • Convert it to insights • Make decisions that make an impact Packed with examples and exercises, this refreshingly accessible book explains the four fundamental analytic techniques that can help solve a surprising 80% of all business problems. Business analytics isn’t rocket science—it’s a simple problem-solving tool that can help companies increase revenue, decrease costs, improve products, and delight customers. And who doesn’t want to do that?

    Destined to become a marketing classic, Kellogg on Branding includes chapters written by respected Kellogg marketing professors and managers of successful companies. It includes: The latest thinking on key branding concepts, including brand positioning and design Strategies for launching new brands, leveraging existing brands, and managing a brand portfolio Techniques for building a brand-centered organization Insights from senior managers who have fought branding battles and won This is the first book on branding from the faculty of the Kellogg School, the respected resource for dynamic marketing information for today's ever-changing and challenging environment. Kellogg is the brand that executives and marketing managers trust for definitive information on proven approaches for solving marketing dilemmas and seizing marketing opportunities.

    On that first day we sold twenty-four bottles, and now we sell over 2 million a week, so we've grown since then. This book is about the stuff we've learned since selling those first few smoothies. About having ideas and making drinks, about running a business and getting started, about nature and fruit, about company life and working with friends, about the stuff we've got right and the stuff we got wrong, and about squirrels . . . and camping . . . and doing the right thing. We thought we'd write it all down in a book so we don't forget any of it, and to maybe help other people too. We started innocent from scratch, so we've learnt a lot of things by getting stuff wrong. Some other lessons have come from listening carefully to people clever than us. And some stuff we just got lucky on. But all of it, the good the bad and the useful, is in here. Plus, perhaps our mums will finally believe us when we tell them we haven't rung home for a while because we've been a bit busy these past few years.

    Traditionally, creating a marketing plan has been a difficult and time-consuming process, which is why it often doesn't get done. In The 1-Page Marketing Plan, serial entrepreneur and rebellious marketer Allan Dib reveals a marketing implementation breakthrough that makes creating a marketing plan simple and fast. It's literally a single page, divided up into nine squares. With it you'll be able to map out your own sophisticated marketing plan and go from zero to marketing hero. Whether you're just starting out or are an experienced entrepreneur, The 1-Page Marketing Plan is the easiest and fastest way to create a marketing plan that will propel your business growth. In this groundbreaking new book you'll discover: • How to get new customers, clients, or patients and how make more profit from existing ones. • Why “big business” style marketing could kill your business and strategies that actually work for small and medium-sized businesses. • How to close sales without being pushy, needy, or obnoxious while turning the tables and having prospects begging you to take their money. • A simple step-by-step process for creating your own personalized marketing plan that is literally one page. Simply follow along and fill in each of the nine squares that make up your own 1-Page Marketing Plan. • How to annihilate competitors and make yourself the only logical choice. • How to get amazing results on a small budget using the secrets of direct response marketing. • How to charge high prices for your products and services and have customers actually thank you for it.

    And now there’s a sure-fire way to solve their problems and test solutions: the sprint.While working at Google, designer Jake Knapp created a unique problem-solving method that he coined a “design sprint”—a five-day process to help companies answer crucial questions. His ‘sprints’ were used on everything from Google Search to Chrome to Google X. When he moved to Google Ventures, he joined Braden Kowitz and John Zeratsky, both designers and partners there who worked on products like YouTube and Gmail. Together Knapp, Zeratsky, and Kowitz have run over 100 sprints with their portfolio companies. They’ve seen firsthand how sprints can overcome challenges in all kinds of companies: healthcare, fitness, finance, retailers, and more.A practical guide to answering business questions, Sprint is a book for groups of any size, from small startups to Fortune 100s, from teachers to non-profits. It’s for anyone with a big opportunity, problem, or idea who needs to get answers today.

    In fact, almost every entrepreneur & business owner at some point or another has fallen into the trap of investing themselves into a complete WOMBAT (Waste Of Money, Brains, And Time). The majority of the time when a well-intentioned entrepreneur falls into a WOMBAT, it happens when they lose sight of the Profit Hacking Formula. The 3 parts of the formula are the only things you can focus on improving that will increase your profits. There are sections in Profit Hacking dedicated to showing you exactly how to ‘hack’ and subsequently scale each of those 3 Pillars. You will also discover the leverage points “hidden” in your business (the places where just a little bit of effort and improvement yield massive gains) & the fastest way to double your monthly profits. Whether you’re a seasoned business owner, a brand new entrepreneur, or work in digital marketing, Profit Hacking will help you grow the bottom line. In this no-fluff, highly-actionable book, Steve Daar shows how you can turn your business into a machine that attracts prospects & leads like a magnet, effectively converts them into buyers, and convinces them to become lifelong customers + advocates for your company. Pulling from years as an entrepreneur, investing thousands of hours & tens of thousands of dollars into self-directed marketing education, and managing over $1,300,000 in online advertising spend for Fortune 500-level businesses, he reveals to the reader how to reach the full profit potential of their business. Through this book, you will learn: • The ‘Secret’ To Significant Traffic Increases…and it almost certainly isn’t what you’re thinking • Tips for Massive Scale & Growth in your business • The Undeniable Formula for hacking your profits Profit Hacking shows you PRECISELY how to maximize every marketing activity you do from this day forward. How to maximize the value of each visitor, prospect, lead, customer, and client your business attracts (and how to get more of them). Banish the WOMBATs. Stop wasting your time, money, and effort on ineffective tactics & strategies. Learn how to grow your business faster & more effectively than ever before through the Profit Hacking principles.