It seems so basic. Why is it so hard to actually get right? According to innovation expert Phil McKinney, the real problem is that we're teaching people to ask the wrong questions about their businesses--or none at all. There has to be a better way. In Beyond the Obvious, McKinney will help you use his proven FIRE (Focus, Ideation, Rank, Execution) Method to dig deeper and get back to asking the right questions--the ones all companies must ask to survive. Full of real-world examples, this book will change the way you operate, innovate, and create, and it all begins with battle-tested questions Phil has gathered on note cards throughout his career. Shared for the first time here, these "Killer Questions" include:What are the rules and assumptions my industry operates under? What if the opposite were true?What will be the buying criteria used by my customer in 5 years?What are my unshakable beliefs about what my customers want?Who uses my product in ways I never anticipated? These questions will reframe the way you see your products, your customers, and the way the two interact. Whether you're a company of thousands or a lean startup, Beyond the Obvious will give you the skills and easy-to-follow plan you need to make both the revolutionary changes and nuanced tweaks required for success. Praise for Beyond the Obvious "Human beings are creatures of habit, so getting ourselves and our teams to think beyond the obvious is a challenge we face all the time. Phil McKinney is an innovation expert, and his killer questions and hit-the-spot anecdotes provide a great way to get out in front of opportunities we otherwise won't see." -- Geoffrey Moore, author of Crossing the Chasm and Escape Velocity "I've always believed that asking the right questions is the essence of design. Phil McKinney proves that point with this wonderful set of killer questions that will jumpstart-or greatly enhance- your innovation efforts." -- B. Joseph Pine II, co-author, The Experience Economy & Infinite Possibility. "Product Innovation is a prerequisite to building great brands. Phil's questions are a prerequisite to building innovative products." -- Satjiv S. Chahil, former global marketing chief, Apple"

    Creativity For Sale is the story of how Jason took a crazy idea (IWearYourShirt) and turned it into social media marketing empire that generated over $1M in revenue in just a few short years. Whether you work at a 9-5 desk job, currently own your own business, or are an aspiring creative entrepreneur, this book will serve as a practical guide to helping you make money doing what you love. Jason shares his exact strategies, tips, tricks, and processes that have helped him create profitable businesses that get noticed by the likes of The Today Show, CNBC, Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and many more media outlets. In Creativity For Sale, Jason shares stories of realigning his values and goals in life to become happier, healthier, and more focused. The world of online marketing and social media are noisy and crowded, this book will help you learn how to stand out from the crowd.

    These specialists have begun forming shops of their own - the new modern version of the agency. Increased marketing fragmentation and brand's need for specialists means that the time has never been better for a freelancers or niche service providers to build their own small firms. All they're missing is the guidance they need to find their footing.While specialist agencies and freelancers are highly skilled, most have a lot to learn about the mechanics of starting and running an agency. Many of these specialists come from a different background than those who traditionally started agencies: they come from the internet, not the ad world. In Agency, Rick Webb provides a comprehensive guidebook - giving readers the knowledge, strategies, and understanding they'll need to make the exciting transition into a modern creative services firm. Drawing from his experience running his own digital ad agency and working with countless innovative tech start-ups, Webb focuses not just on how to get started, but how to survive in a competitive marketplace. This is a hands-on master class in everything that the agency manager needs to know. From understanding small business banking, to deciding how to price a job and manage procurement, to winning new business, Agency provides everything from basic business and leadership skills to insider tips and industry information. Webb outlines the shape of the ecosystem in which new agencies will be finding their place. Packed with personal anecdotes from his time starting and running the highly successful Barbarian Group, Webb provides practical techniques for building an agile company.Modern agency upstarts need a different sort of education, and Agency provides a remarkable crash course.

    Steiner, an engineer by training, sees how a simple but constant rise in oil and related prices will restructure our lifestyle. But what may surprise readers is that all of these changes may not be negative.

     THE SIMPLE AND POWERFUL IDEAS IN THIS BOOK CAN CHANGE YOUR LIFE FOREVER. Who’s in Your Room? introduces you to the concept of your life being like a room—a room where anyone who enters affects your life . . . forever. Although this concept may sound frightening, this book gives you the tools and exercises you need to take control of your room and live the life you desire.This book brings in experts to describe how people leave you with memories that cannot be erased but can be managed. You manage them by determining what’s really important to you, and then you can determine how to spend your time and whom you should be spending it with. Stop living according to everyone else’s rules. Shape your life by taking control of your room. Live your life by your design!

    Woodworkers of any skill level will benefit from more than 1,300 crisp and detailed drawings that explain classic solutions to age-old problems, such as hanging a drawer, attaching a tabletop, and pegging a mortise. Covering hundreds of pieces of furniture, including kitchen cabinets, dining tables, desks, bookcases, and chests, readers will unlock the mysteries of legs, moldings, separate braces, and dozens of other subassemblies.

    As coal mines closed and house prices exploded to a soundtrack of men in make-up playing synthesizers, Jeremy was already waxing lyrical on topics as useful and diverse as:* The perils of bicycle ownership * Why Australians - not Brits - need bull bars* Why soon only geriatrics will be driving BMWs* The difficultly of deciding on the best car for your wedding * Why Jesus's dad would have owned a Nissan Bluebird * And why it is that bus lanes cause traffic jamsIrreverent, damn funny and offensive to almost everyone, this is writing with its foot to the floor, the brake lines cut and the speed limit smashed to smithereens. Sit back and enjoy the ride. Praise for Jeremy Clarkson:'Brilliant . . . laugh-out-loud' Daily Telegraph'Outrageously funny . . . will have you in stitches' Time Out'Very funny . . . I cracked up laughing on the tube' Evening Standard

    Agreed on many fronts but I found his reinvention of these principles when applied to the service industry to be extremely insightful. The concept of a Minimum Valuable Service is unique, new and sets goals intended to deliver maximum value with measurable results. This is a must read for anyone in the global innovation economy." - Rick Rasmussen, NestGSV. International Business development.This book is a practical guide that explores how startup entrepreneurs and business leaders, who hold no Design degrees, can integrate Service Design into their development cycles in order to create sustainable, desirable and profitable new services. In the first part, Tenny explores the reasons why startups need to move away from the "make and sell" industrial logic we've been exploiting over the last century. To take its place he proposes a new service oriented mindset that carries the idea of "learn, use and remember" users' journeys. He also discusses the challenges our industrial society is facing and how the combination of design with a service oriented mentality can be key to help new and existent businesses make this shift. In the second part, he will take you on a journey through the MVS - Minimum Valuable Service - model. This model can seamlessly integrate Service Design into the Lean Startup or any Agile development cycle. It adds the human values needed to foster service innovations within the Lean's scientific approach. In this part of the book you will learn tools, methods and practices that will help you get your hands dirty with design.At some point every adventure requires a great guide, and this journey into the heart of the new is led impeccably by Tenny Pinheiro. Slyly sidestepping the pitfalls of the Lean Startup approach, he skillfully navigates us through to a deeper understanding of the forces shaping the evolving service economy. By trusting the wisdom of the many to help design the next phase of business, his approach taps into an inexhaustible source of creativity and innovation. The Service Startup is a trusty roadmap that you will long keep by your side. As Tenny might suggest: learn it, use it, and remember it. - Jamer Hunt, Parsons The New School for Design. Director for the graduate Program in Transdisciplinary Design."I'll admit it: I enjoy seeing someone who knows their stuff re-assemble and improve on the work of an adjacent profession. Tenny calls out what's lacking in the Lean Startup approach, in the most thorough and insightful ways. In the spirit of iteration, he's taken an existing approach and improved on it. If only all criticism were this good. I enjoyed his delightfully nuanced views on the world of services - how they're perceived, experienced, and remembered - as well as his historical perspectives on the worlds of design, business and marketing. Opinionated but also well-informed, this is a pragmatic, human-centric take on designing and delivering services that I'd recommend to anyone whose work affects other people. - Chad Thornton, Experience Designer, Airbnb"

    Fully updated, this comprehensive resource now features more than 100 sample letters and manuscript pages, expanded instruction for electronic submissions, updated formatting and submitting guidelines, and new insider tips from top agents and editors.With strong and weak sample query letters, novel synopses, articles, nonfiction book proposals, manuscript pages, scripts, and more, you'll see exactly what works and what doesn't. Plus, each sample page features individual callouts to clearly identify and explain critical elements so that you don't miss a thing.With this all-encompassing guide, you'll discover everything you need to make your work look professional, polished, and publishable.

    Whether you're a freelancer, an aspiring entrepreneur or a seasoned small-business owner, you'll learn everything you need to know about how to market and price your services.This book shows you how to:learn which marketing tools are most effective and how to use themcreate a smart marketing plan that reflects your financial goalsplan small actionable steps to take in reaching those financial goalsdetermine who your ideal clients are and establish contact with themturn that initial contact into a profitable relationship for both of youtalk to clients about money and the design process - without fearfigure out a fair hourly rate and give an accurate estimate for a projectYou'll learn the ins and outs of creating and running a creative services business - the things they never taught you in school. Plus, there are useful worksheets throughout the book, so you can apply the principles and formulas to your own circumstances and create a workable business plan right away.

    Air Force, and USAA. He teaches his clients that innovation isn't just about generating occasional new ideas; it's about staying consistently one step ahead of the competition.Hire people you don't like. Bring in the right mix of people to unleash your team's full potential. Asking for ideas is a bad idea. Define challenges more clearly. If you ask better questions, you will get better answers. Don't think outside the box; find a better box. Instead of giving your employees a blank slate, provide them with well-defined parameters that will increase their creative output. Failure is always an option. Looking at innovation as a series of experiments allows you to redefine failure and learn from your results.Shapiro shows that nonstop innovation is attainable and vital to building a high-performing team, improving the bottom line, and staying ahead of the pack.

    Google's AdWords platform enables you to create pay-per-click advertisements that appear as 'sponsored links' when someone searches for content related to your product or service. You bid for the position to place your ad, and you only pay when someone clicks. It's that simple. If used correctly, AdWords can garner higher targeted traffic, which in turn will increase your conversion rates and profits. So, AdWords will definitely help your business, but you have no idea how to utilize them. What should you do? Take a couple of hours to read this book. Google AdWords for Beginners is designed to teach you the fundamentals of AdWords, how it works, why it works, and the proven techniques that you can use to make it work for you and your business. Additionally, this book details an eight-step blueprint that has consistently delivered positive results for companies. Upon completion, you'll be armed with the knowledge to launch profitable campaigns or drastically improve an existing one.

    Using exercises and case presentations, you can apply your own ideas and develop useful analytical skills. Cases found throughout the text present the venture creations or managerial ideas confronted by real-world companies.

    This book claimed that through a piece of software called a "browser," which accesses "web sites," the world economy and our daily lives would change forever. Would you have believed even 10 percent of that book? Did you take advantage of the first Internet wave and get ahead of the curve? "Pull" is the blueprint to the next disruptive wave. Some call it Web 3.0; others call it the semantic web. It's a fundamental transition from pushing information to pulling, using a new way of thinking and collaborating online. Using the principles of this book, you will slash 5-20 percent off your bottom line, make your customers happier, accelerate your industry, and prepare your company for the twenty-first century. It isn't going to be easy, and you don't have any choice. By 2015, your company will be more agile and your processes more flexible than you ever thought possible. The semantic web leads to possibilities straight from science fiction, such as buildings that can order their own supplies, eliminating the IRS, and lawyers finally making sense. But it also leads to major changes in every field, from shipping and retail distribution to health care and financial reporting. Through clear examples, case studies, principles, and scenarios, business strategist David Siegel takes you on a tour of this new world. You'll learn: -Which industries are already ahead. -Which industries are already dead. -How to make the power shift from pushing to pulling information. -How software, hardware, media, and marketing will all change. -How to plan your own strategy for embracing the semantic web. We are at the beginning of a new technology curve that will affect all areas of business. Right now, you have a choice. You can decide to start preparing for the exciting opportunities that lay ahead or you can leave this book on the shelf and get left in the dust like last time.

    For the many amateur photographers afraid to venture past natural lighting, here is the book that will finally help them master artificial light. In his trademark easy-to-understand style, Bryan Peterson explains not only how flash works, but how to go beyond TTL automatic flash exposure to master manual flash, allowing readers to control the quality, shape and direction of light for a perfect exposure, every time.