They all need to master such ground-breaking concepts as the hassle map (and the secrets of fixing it); the curse of the incomplete product (and how to avoid it); why very good ≠ magnetic; how what you don’t see can make or break a product; the art of transforming fence sitters into customers; why there’s no such thing as an average customer; and why real demand comes from a 45-degree angle of improvement (rather than the five degrees most organizations manage).From the Hardcover edition.

    But they're unsure of how to sort through it and use it to make smart decisions. The result? They're struggling with profit-sapping supply chain problems including stock-outs, overstock, and discounting.It doesn't have to be that way. In The New Science of Retailing, supply chain experts Marshall Fisher and Ananth Raman explain how to use analytics to better manage your inventory for faster turns, fewer discounted offerings, and fatter profit margins.Featuring case studies of retailing exemplars from around the world, this practical new book shows you how to:· Mine your sales data to identify "homerun" products you're missing· Reinvent your forecasting and pricing strategies· Build end-to-end agility into your supply chain· Establish incentives that align your supply chain partners behind shared objectives· Extract maximum value from technologies such as point-of-sale scanners and customer loyalty cardsHighly readable and compelling, The New Science of Retailing is your playbook for turning all that data into a wellspring for new profits and unprecedented efficiency.

    The true disruption will be to your business model. Future customers won’t want to pay you high prices out of big “CapEx” budgets anymore. They will expect lower “cloud” prices paid from “OpEx” budgets only when and if they successfully consume the business value of your products.How your company reacts to this risk shift could either accelerate the commoditization of your products or lead you to a new stage of profitable growth. For the first time, the tools are on the table to truly eliminate barriers of cost and complexity created by the last generation of tech. Consumption Economics is the owner’s manual for tech company executives who want to drive their company successfully into the next one.

    Based on numerous interviews, this book reveals exclusive new information about how Apple innovates, deals with its suppliers, and is handling the transition into the post Jobs era.

    But what is new is the "wise pivot," a replicable strategy for harnessing disruption to survive, grow, and be relevant to the future. It's a strategy for perpetual reinvention across the old, now, and new elements of any business.Rapid recent advances in technology are forcing leaders in every business to rethink long-held beliefs about how to adapt to emerging technologies and new markets. What has become abundantly clear: in the digital age, conventional wisdom about business transformation no longer works, if it ever did.Based on Accenture's own experience of reinventing itself in the face of disruption, the company's real world client work, and a rigorous two-year study of thousands of businesses across 30 industries, Pivot to the Future reveals methodical and bold moves for finding and releasing new sources of trapped value-unlocked by bridging the gap between what is technologically possible and how technologies are being used. The freed value enables companies to simultaneously reinvent their legacy, and current and new businesses.Pivot to the Future is for leaders who seek to turn the existential threats of today and tomorrow into sustainable growth, with the courage to understand that a wise pivot strategy is not a one-time event, but a commitment to a future of perpetual reinvention, where one pivot is followed by the next and the next.

    In it, self-made multimillionaire and bestselling author Masterson shares the knowledge he has gained from creating and expanding numerous businesses and outlines a focused strategy for guiding a small business through the four stages of entrepreneurial growth. Along the way, Masterson teaches you the different skills needed in order to excel in this dynamic environment.

    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.

     For decades, technology encouraged people to squander their time and intellect as passive consumers. Today, tech has finally caught up with human potential. In Cognitive Surplus, Internet guru Clay Shirky forecasts the thrilling changes we will all enjoy as new digital technology puts our untapped resources of talent and goodwill to use at last. Since we Americans were suburbanized and educated by the postwar boom, we've had a surfeit of intellect, energy, and time-what Shirky calls a cognitive surplus. But this abundance had little impact on the common good because television consumed the lion's share of it-and we consume TV passively, in isolation from one another. Now, for the first time, people are embracing new media that allow us to pool our efforts at vanishingly low cost. The results of this aggregated effort range from mind expanding-reference tools like Wikipedia-to lifesaving-such as Ushahidi.com, which has allowed Kenyans to sidestep government censorship and report on acts of violence in real time. Shirky argues persuasively that this cognitive surplus-rather than being some strange new departure from normal behavior-actually returns our society to forms of collaboration that were natural to us up through the early twentieth century. He also charts the vast effects that our cognitive surplus- aided by new technologies-will have on twenty-first-century society, and how we can best exploit those effects. Shirky envisions an era of lower creative quality on average but greater innovation, an increase in transparency in all areas of society, and a dramatic rise in productivity that will transform our civilization. The potential impact of cognitive surplus is enormous. As Shirky points out, Wikipedia was built out of roughly 1 percent of the man-hours that Americans spend watching TV every year. Wikipedia and other current products of cognitive surplus are only the iceberg's tip. Shirky shows how society and our daily lives will be improved dramatically as we learn to exploit our goodwill and free time like never before.

    People don't listen to advertisements, they listen to their peers. But why do people talk about certain products and ideas more than others? Why are some stories and rumors more infectious? And what makes online content go viral? Wharton marketing professor Jonah Berger has spent the last decade answering these questions. He's studied why New York Times articles make the paper's own Most E-mailed List, why products get word of mouth, and how social influence shapes everything from the cars we buy to the clothes we wear to the names we give our children. In this book, Berger reveals the secret science behind word-of-mouth and social transmission. Discover how six basic principles drive all sorts of things to become contagious, from consumer products and policy initiatives to workplace rumors and YouTube videos.Contagious combines groundbreaking research with powerful stories. Learn how a luxury steakhouse found popularity through the lowly cheese-steak, why anti-drug commercials might have actually increased drug use, and why more than 200 million consumers shared a video about one of the seemingly most boring products there is: a blender. If you've wondered why certain stories get shared, e-mails get forwarded, or videos go viral, Contagious explains why, and shows how to leverage these concepts to craft contagious content. This book provides a set of specific, actionable techniques for helping information spread - for designing messages, advertisements, and information that people will share. Whether you're a manager at a big company, a small business owner trying to boost awareness, a politician running for office, or a health official trying to get the word out, Contagious will show you how to make your product or idea catch on.

    The world is more complex and volatile today than at any other time in our history. The tools of our modern existence are getting faster, cheaper, and smaller at an exponential rate, transforming every aspect of society, from business to culture and from the public sphere to our most private moments. The people who succeed will be the ones who learn to think differently. In Whiplash, Joi Ito and Jeff Howe distill that logic into nine organizing principles for navigating and surviving this tumultuous period: Emergence over AuthorityPull over PushCompasses over MapsRisk over SafetyDisobedience over CompliancePractice over TheoryDiversity over AbilityResilience over StrengthSystems over Objects Filled with incredible case studies and cutting-edge research and philosophies from the MIT Media Lab and beyond, Whiplash will help you adapt and succeed in this unpredictable world.

    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.

    

    Today we're all digital explorers, seeking out online ratings, peer reviews, videos, and in-depth product details as we move down the path to purchase. At Google, we call this online decision-making moment the Zero Moment of Truth-or simply ZMOT. Download "Winning the Zero Moment of Truth", a free, powerful new video-enhanced eBook by Jim Lecinski, Managing Director of US Sales & Service and Chief ZMOT Evangelist at Google. Jim shares how to get ahead at this critical new marketing moment, supported by exclusive market research, personal stories, and insights from C-level executives at global leaders like General Electric, Johnson & Johnson, and VivaKi. If you're a marketer, a CEO, a sales rep, or an aspiring entrepreneur, this video-enhanced eBook will help you understand this shift in the marketing landscape and show you the strategies it takes to win.

    But how can you be the person who comes up with those ideas? In this revised and expanded edition of his groundbreaking Thinkertoys, creativity expert Michael Michalko reveals life-changing tools that will help you think like a genius. From the linear to the intuitive, this comprehensive handbook details ingenious creative-thinking techniques for approaching problems in unconventional ways. Through fun and thought-provoking exercises, you’ll learn how to create original ideas that will improve your personal life and your business life. Michalko’s techniques show you how to look at the same information as everyone else and see something different.  With hundreds of hints, tricks, tips, tales, and puzzles, Thinkertoys will open your mind to a world of innovative solutions to everyday and not-so-everyday problems.

    The most successful companies, from Amazon to Best Buy, understand their best customers are their most valuable asset, and they tailor their acquisition, development, and retention efforts to those customers.In The Customer Centricity Playbook , Wharton School professor Peter Fader and Wharton Interactive’s executive director Sarah Toms help you see your customers as individuals rather than a monolith, so you can stop wasting resources by chasing down product sales to each and every consumer. Fader and Toms offer a 360-degree analysis of all the elements that support customer centricity within an organization. In this book, you will learn how to: Develop a customer-centric strategy for your organization Understand the right way to think about customer lifetime value (CLV) Finetune investments in customer acquisition, retention, and development tactics based on customer heterogeneity Foster a culture that sustains customer centricity, and also understand the link between CLV and market valuation Understand customer relationship management (CRM) systems, as they are a vital underpinning for all these areas through the valuable insights they provide Fader’s first book, Customer Centricity, quickly became a go-to for readers interested in focusing on the right customers for strategic advantage. In this new book, Fader and Toms offer a true playbook for companies of all sizes that want to create and implement a winning strategy to acquire, develop, and retain customers for the greatest value.ALSO AVAILABLE: Peter Fader’s Customer Centricity offers an introduction to the subject. The Customer Centricity Playbook shows customer centricity converts where to get started. “A fantastic 360-degree analysis of how companies become truly customer-centric…. Required reading.”—Neil Hoyne, Head of Customer Analytics and Chief Analytics Evangelist, Google“A must-read.” —Aimee Johnson, Senior Vice President, Digital Customer Experience, Starbucks“Fundamental insights to point organizations of any size in the right direction.” —Rob Markey, Partner, Bain & Company, Inc., and coauthor, The Ultimate Question 2.0“Required reading for leadership teams, as well as marketing and sales executives.” —Matthew Derella, Global Vice President, Revenue and Content Partnerships, Twitter“If you struggle with customer engagement or are ready to better acquaint yourself with your customers, Peter Fader and Sarah Toms’ new book The Customer Centricity Playbook is a must-read.” —Jacqueline Parkes, Chief Marketing Officer and EVP, Digital Studios, MTV, VH1 & Logo“Peter Fader and Sarah Toms offer transformative insights that light the path for business leaders.” —Susan Johnson, Chief Marketing Officer, SunTrust Banks“Essential reading for those who aspire to market leadership, regardless of industry.