Wait: The Art and Science of Delay


Frank Partnoy - 2012
    Even as technology exerts new pressures to speed up our lives, it turns out that the choices we make--unconsciously and consciously, in time frames varying from milliseconds to years--benefit profoundly from delay. As this winning and provocative book reveals, taking control of time and slowing down our responses yields better results in almost every arena of life ... even when time seems to be of the essence.The procrastinator in all of us will delight in Partnoy's accounts of celebrity "delay specialists," from Warren Buffett to Chris Evert to Steve Kroft, underscoring the myriad ways in which delaying our reactions to everyday choices--large and small--can improve the quality of our lives.

Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping


Paco Underhill - 1999
    Why We Buy is based on hard data gleaned from thousands of hours of field research–in shopping malls, department stores, and supermarkets across America. With his team of sleuths tracking our every move, Paco Underhill lays bare the struggle among merchants, marketers, and increasingly knowledgeable consumers for control.

This Won't Scale: 41 Plays From The Drift Marketing Team To Help Your Business Cut Through The Noise, Grow Faster Than The Competition & Thrill Your Customers


Dave Gerhardt - 2019
    While most B2B startups obsess over scalability and tracking, Drift takes a different approach. In This Won't Scale, you'll find insider lessons and plays from the Drift Marketing team that have helped the business grow at a hypergrowth rate. It contains 41 plays organized into easy-to-read and reference chapters. Keep it on your desk, thumb through it when you're looking for inspiration and come back to it over time. You’ll discover not only Drift's abnormal approach, but also hear never-before-told stories and learn how to implement Drift's marketing plays into your own marketing strategy.

Carolyn 101: Business Lessons from The Apprentice's Straight Shooter


Carolyn Kepcher - 2004
    One of Donald Trump's advisers shares her wisdom and business advice for professional women, explaining how to get ahead in business, how to deal with a difficult boss, and how to maintain a healthy professional and personal balance.

Brick by Brick: How LEGO Rewrote the Rules of Innovation and Conquered the Global Toy Industry


David C. Robertson - 2013
    By following the teams that are inventing some of the world's best-loved toys, it spotlights the company's disciplined approach to harnessing creativity and recounts one of the most remarkable business transformations in recent memory. Brick by Brick reveals how LEGO failed to keep pace with the revolutionary changes in kids' lives and began sliding into irrelevance. When the company's leaders implemented some of the business world's most widely espoused prescriptions for boosting innovation, they ironically pushed the iconic toymaker to the brink of bankruptcy. The company's near-collapse shows that what works in theory can fail spectacularly in the brutally competitive global economy. It took a new LEGO management team – faced with the growing rage for electronic toys, few barriers to entry, and ultra-demanding consumers (ten-year old boys) – to reinvent the innovation rule book and transform LEGO into one of the world's most profitable, fastest-growing companies.  Along the way, Brick by Brick reveals how LEGO:- Became truly customer-driven by co-creating with kids as well as its passionate adult fans- Looked beyond products and learned to leverage a full-spectrum approach to innovation- Opened its innovation process by using both the "wisdom of crowds" and the expertise of elite cliques- Discovered uncontested, "blue ocean" markets, even as it thrived in brutally competitive red oceans- Gave its world-class design teams enough space to create and direction to deliver built a culture where profitable innovation flourishes Sometimes radical yet always applicable, Brick by Brick abounds with real-world lessons for unleashing breakthrough innovation in your organization, just like LEGO. Whether you're a senior executive looking to make your company grow, an entrepreneur building a startup from scratch, or a fan who wants to instill some of that LEGO magic in your career, you'll learn how to build your own innovation advantage, brick by brick.

Lean Analytics: Use Data to Build a Better Startup Faster


Alistair Croll - 2013
    Lean Analytics steers you in the right direction.This book shows you how to validate your initial idea, find the right customers, decide what to build, how to monetize your business, and how to spread the word. Packed with more than thirty case studies and insights from over a hundred business experts, Lean Analytics provides you with hard-won, real-world information no entrepreneur can afford to go without.Understand Lean Startup, analytics fundamentals, and the data-driven mindsetLook at six sample business models and how they map to new ventures of all sizesFind the One Metric That Matters to youLearn how to draw a line in the sand, so you’ll know it’s time to move forwardApply Lean Analytics principles to large enterprises and established products

Guerrilla Social Media Marketing: 100+ Weapons to Grow Your Online Influence, Attract Customers, and Drive Profits


Jay Conrad Levinson - 2010
    Discarding overwhelming statistics, buzzwords and acronyms, Levinson and Gibson provide a step-by-step social media attack plan. Following their take-no-prisoners guerilla approach, you’ll learn how to identify unconventional social media opportunities, engage customers, motivate action, and capture profits away from your competitors. Includes: • 19 secrets every guerrilla social media marketer needs to know • The Guerrilla Social Media Toolkit • The Seven-Sentence Social Media Attack Plan • 22-point social site and blog checklist • 20 types of ROI • Free guerrilla intelligence tools • Future social media weapons that are worth knowing about • And more! This is THE social media guerrilla’s go-to guide—learn how to employ a social media plan that earns attention—and profits!

Don't Call It That: A Naming Workbook


Eli Altman - 2013
    This is it. Don't Call It That is a step-by-step workbook that will guide you through the naming process. A Hundred Monkeys Creative Director, Eli Altman, will help you develop attention grabbing names that speak to your audience and establish the seed of your brand. The book is like that friend who isn't afraid to tell you what you need to hear. It'll help you understand what's at stake and how to approach naming creatively without neglecting practical realities like positioning, trademarks and URLs. How do you find a name that's available? How do you find a name that grabs people's attention? How do you tell the difference between a good name and a bad name? How do you test names in the real world? How do you find a name that elevates you above the competition Don't Call It That will set you straight.

Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness


Richard H. Thaler - 2008
    Thaler, and Cass R. Sunstein: a revelatory look at how we make decisionsNew York Times bestsellerNamed a Best Book of the Year by The Economist and the Financial Times Every day we make choices—about what to buy or eat, about financial investments or our children’s health and education, even about the causes we champion or the planet itself. Unfortunately, we often choose poorly. Nudge is about how we make these choices and how we can make better ones. Using dozens of eye-opening examples and drawing on decades of behavioral science research, Nobel Prize winner Richard H. Thaler and Harvard Law School professor Cass R. Sunstein show that no choice is ever presented to us in a neutral way, and that we are all susceptible to biases that can lead us to make bad decisions. But by knowing how people think, we can use sensible “choice architecture” to nudge people toward the best decisions for ourselves, our families, and our society, without restricting our freedom of choice.

Creative, Inc.: The Ultimate Guide to Running a Successful Freelance Business


Meg Mateo Ilasco - 2010
    did for crafters, this book will teach all types of creatives illustrators, photographers, graphic designers, animators, and more how to build a successful business doing what they love. Freelancing pros Meg Mateo Ilasco and Joy Deangdeelert Cho explain everything from creating a standout portfolio to navigating the legal issues of starting a business. Accessible, spunky, and packed with practical advice, Creative, Inc. is an essential for anyone ready to strike out on their own.

The Product Marketing Manager: Responsibilities and Best Practices in a Technology Company


Lucas Weber - 2017
    This involves taking detailed and technical product information and distilling it into key marketing and sales messages as well as working among several teams in an organization to plan and execute product releases and launches. This book is a must-have for anyone who works as, or with, a Product Marketing Manager. It not only explains the role but focuses on practical applications of the information presented and ties everything together with entertaining life lessons and anecdotes collected through years of experience by the author as well as interviews with his colleagues and other industry experts. If you are considering a career as a Product Marketing Manager, are new to the profession and looking for guidance and clarification, already have many years of experience in the role and are looking for new inspiration and ideas, or are interested in learning what a Product Marketing Manager colleague of yours is responsible for within your organization, this book is for you.

Click: What Millions of People are Doing Online and Why It Matters


Bill Tancer - 2008
    As online directories replace the yellow pages, search engines replace traditional research, and news sites replace newsprint, we are in an age in which we've come to rely tremendously on the Internet--leaving behind a trail of information about ourselves as a culture and the direction in which we are headed. With surprising and practical insight, Tancer demonstrates how the Internet is changing the way we absorb information and how understanding that change can be used to our advantage in business and in life.Click analyzes the new generation of consumerism in a way no other book has before, showing how we use the Internet, and how those trends provide a wealth of market research nearly as vast as the Internet itself. Understanding how we change is integral to our success. After all, we are what we click.

Designers Don't Read


Austin Howe - 2009
    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!

The Thank You Economy


Gary Vaynerchuk - 2010
    In this groundbreaking follow-up to the bestselling Crush It!, Vaynerchuk—one of Bloomberg Businessweek’s “20 People Every Entrepreneur Should Follow”—looks beyond a numbers-based analysis to explore the value of social interactions in building our economy.

Reengineering Retail: The Future of Selling in a Post-Digital World


Doug Stephens - 2017
    As predicted, online giants like Amazon and Alibaba.com are growing at a dizzying pace. Hundreds of well-known brick and mortar retailers have closed their doors, and brands and retailers across categories are struggling to understand the shifting needs and expectations of a new consumer.Picking up where The Retail Revival left off, Reengineering Retail explores the coming revolution in the global retail and consumer goods market, offering sales and marketing executives a roadmap to the future.Author and internationally renowned consumer futurist, Doug Stephens, paints a bold vision of the future where every aspect of the retail experience as we know it, will be radically transformed. From online to bricks and mortar, the very concept of what stores are, how consumers shop them, and even the core economic model for revenue, will be will be profoundly reinvented; changes sure to affect not only retailers large and small but any business with a stake in the global retail industry.Infused with real world examples and interviews with industry disruptors, Reengineering Retail illustrates the vast opportunities at play for bold brands and business leaders. Stephens’ strategies will provide businesses with the foresight required to move quickly and effectively into the future.