Think Wrong: How to Conquer the Status Quo and Do Work That Matters


John Bielenberg - 2016
    We are trapped by techniques and assumptions of a prior era.Today challenges emerge at an ever-accelerating rate, and we struggle to find the imaginative answers we crave. When we do, biology and culture conspire to obstruct our progress.Think Wrong: How to Conquer the Status Quo and Do Work That Matters teaches you how to use Future's radical problem-solving system to reliably produce surprising, ingenious, and seemingly magical answers to your most wicked questions. This book provides you with new language, frameworks, and tools to conquer the status quo and drive change.Inside Think Wrong, designers and innovators John Bielenberg, Mike Burn, and Greg Galle show how pioneering teams of people have cultivated ways to challenge both their brains and the culture at large. These people learned to think wrong, and so can you.An introduction offers the fundamental groundwork of Think Wrong. The subsequent chapters present six practices developed by the authors: Be Bold, Get Out, Let Go, Make Stuff, Bet Small, and Move Fast. Using firsthand case studies of success, and offering Think Wrong Drills that you may use, Think Wrong is a field guide for applying this highly effective problem-solving system to challenges big and small. In addition to the drills provided in the book, Think Wrong readers are provided access to free online resources.

Get Over Your Damn Self: The No-BS Blueprint to Building A Life-Changing Business


Romi Neustadt - 2016
    In this book she offers you the same direct, no-BS coaching she’s given to tens of thousands to help you acquire the skills to build this sucker and teach your team to do the same. And, equally important, she’ll work on your mindset so you stop overcomplicating it all and stop letting the negative voices in your head win.You’re going to learn:• The Posture to confidently connect with anyone about your businessand your products.• The Possibilities for a lucrative, efficient and enormously rewarding turn key business.• The Power that’s already within you to build the life you really want…if you dare.

The Minto Pyramid Principle: Logic in Writing, Thinking, & Problem Solving


Barbara Minto - 1987
    Topics covered range from the difference between deductive and inductive reasoning, to a discussion of how to highlight the structure of information.

How to Get Ideas


Jack Foster - 1996
    Written by Jack Foster, a creative director for various advertising agencies with more than 40 years experience, How to Get Ideas (over 90,000 copies sold and translated into 15 languages) is a fun, accessible, and practical guide that takes the mystery and confusion out of developing new ideas.

Will It Fly?: How to Test Your Next Business Idea So You Don't Waste Your Time and Money


Pat Flynn - 2016
    A lack of proper validation kills more businesses than anything else. As Joel Barker says, “Speed is only useful if you’re running in the right direction.” Will It Fly? will help you make sure you are clear for takeoff. It answers questions like: - Does your business idea have merit? - Will it succeed in the market you’re trying to serve, or will it just be a waste of time and resources? - Is it a good idea for you? In other words, will it fly?Chock-full of practical suggestions you can apply to your business idea today, Will It Fly? combines action-based exercises and real-world case studies with anecdotes from the author’s personal experience of making money online, hosting successful podcasts, testing niche sites, and launching several online businesses.Will It Fly? will challenge you to think critically, act deliberately, and dare greatly. You can think of the book as your business flight manual, something you can refer to for honest and straight-forward advice as you begin to test your idea and build a business that takes off and soars.In five parts, Will It Fly? will guide you through the validation of your next business idea:- Part one, Mission Design, helps you make sure your target idea aligns with and supports your goals. - Part two, Development Lab, walks you through uncovering important details about your idea that you haven't even thought about. - Part three, Flight Planning, is all about assessing current market conditions. - Part four, Flight Simulator, focuses on the actual validating and testing of an idea with a small segment of a target market. - Finally, Part five, All Systems Go, is for final analysis to help you make sure your idea is one you are ready to move forward with.

Six Thinking Hats


Edward de Bono - 1981
    Meetings are a crucial part of all our lives, but too often they go nowhere and waste valuable time. In Six Thinking Hats, Edward de Bono shows how meetings can be transformed to produce quick, decisive results every time. The Six Hats method is a devastatingly simple technique based on the brain's different modes of thinking. The intelligence, experience and information of everyone is harnessed to reach the right conclusions quickly. These principles fundamentally change the way you work and interact. They have been adopted by businesses and governments around the world to end conflict and confusion in favour of harmony and productivity. 'An inspiring man with brilliant ideas. De Bono never ceases to amaze with his clarity of thought' Richard Branson.Edward de Bono invented the concept of lateral thinking. A world-renowned writer and philosopher, he is the leading authority in the field of creative thinking and the direct teaching of thinking as a skill. Dr de Bono has written more than 60 books, in 40 languages, with people now teaching his methods worldwide. He has chaired a special summit of Nobel Prize laureates, and been hailed as one of the 250 people who have contributed most to mankind

The Brain Audit: Why Customers Buy (and Why They Don't)


Sean D'Souza - 2009
    Your customers don't want to walk away. They want to buy from you. So how does the brain make decisions? And what causes it to get confused? The Brain Audit shows you how the customer takes decisions. And what you need to put in place, so that the customer feels happy to buy products or services from you. The Brain Audit isn't about persuasion or any mind tricks. Instead it shows you the information that your customers need in order to make a decision. It shows you how to present that information, and thereby enable the customer to intelligently go through a purchase sequence. The Brain Audit is designed to do the following: brain_audit_benefits 1) Enable you to spot every one of the 'seven bags' that are required to make a decision 2) Present those bags to the customer in the right sequence. 3) Enable you to get the customer to buy without needing to use pressure tactics.

Sticky Branding: 12.5 Ways to Stand Out, Attract Customers, and Grow an Incredible Brand


Jeremy Miller - 2014
    Companies like Apple, Nike, and Starbucks have made themselves as recognizable as they are successful. But large companies are not the only ones who can stand out. It’s achievable for any business willing to break away from the industry norms and find innovative ways to serve its customers.Based on a decade of research into what makes companies successful, Sticky Branding’s 12.5 guiding principles are drawn from hundreds of interviews with CEOs and business owners who have excelled within their industries. By following their examples your company will:- Attract more customers- Sell more, faster- Inspire employee engagement- Become immune to the competition- Earn higher profitsSticky Branding is your branding playbook. It provides ideas, stories and exercises to make your company stand out, attract customers, and grow into an incredible brand.

Radical Focus: Achieving Your Most Important Goals with Objectives and Key Results


Christina Wodtke - 2016
    It’s not about to-do lists and accountability charts. It’s about creating a framework for regular check-ins, key results, and most of all, the beauty of a good fail – and how to take a temporary disaster and turn it into a future success. In this book, Wodtke takes you through the fictional case study of Hanna and Jack, who are struggling to survive in their own startup. They fight shiny object syndrome, losing focus, and dealing with communication issues. After hard lessons, they learn the practical steps they need to do what must be done. The second half of the book demonstrates how to use Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) to help teams realize big goals in a methodical way, leaving nothing to chance. Laid out in a practical but compelling way, she makes the lessons of Hanna and Jack’s story clear and actionable. Ready to move your team in the right direction? Read this, and learn the system of creating your focus – and finding success. "Busy grinding without purpose is the secret death of too many startups. In this memorable story, Christina gives us a glimpse of a more satisfying kind of startup--still hard and chaotic but full of purpose and the chance to build something great." James Cham, Founder, Bloomberg Beta "This book is useful, actionable, and actually fun to read! If you want to get your team aligned around real, measurable goals, Radical Focus will teach you how to do it quickly and clearly." -Laura Klein, Principal, Users Know "Someone once told me that 'problems are just opportunities that haven’t presented themselves'. Since I was introduced to OKRs, they've been an invaluable tool for me, and our company. Christina's ideas have been instrumental, allowing me to better navigate the often ambiguous approach to goal setting and along the way creating a more open and accountable team and a clearer path for myself professionally. I personally can't thank her enough for the guidance." Scott Baldwin, Director of Services, Yellow Pencil "Radical Focus illustrates how to implement OKRs in an engaging, compact, realistic story. Best of all, Wodtke proves OKRs can be fun!" Ben Lamorte, OKRs.com

Winning with Data: Transform Your Culture, Empower Your People, and Shape the Future


Tomasz Tunguz - 2016
    Authors Tomasz Tunguz and Frank Bien draw on extensive background in big data, business intelligence, and business strategy to provide a blueprint for companies looking to move head-on into the data wave. Instrumentation is discussed in detail, but the core of the change is in the culture—this book provides sound guidance on building the type of organizational culture that creates and leverages data daily, in every aspect of the business. Real-world examples illustrate these important concepts at work: you'll learn how data helped Warby-Parker disrupt a $13 billion monopolized market, how ThredUp uses data to process more than 20 thousand items of clothing every day, how Venmo leverages data to build better products, how HubSpot empowers their salespeople to be more productive, and more. From decision making and strategy to shipping and sales, this book shows you how data makes better business. Big data has taken on buzzword status, but there is little real guidance for companies seeking everyday business data solutions. This book takes a deeper look at big data in business, and shows you how to shift internal culture ahead of the curve. Understand the changes a data culture brings to companies Instrument your company for maximum benefit Utilize data to optimize every aspect of your business Improve decision making and transform business strategy Big data is becoming the number-one topic in business, yet no one is asking the right questions. Leveraging the full power of data requires more than good IT—organization-wide buy-in is essential for long-term success. Winning with Data is the expert guide to making data work for your business, and your needs.

Innovation and Entrepreneurship: Practice and Principles


Peter F. Drucker - 1985
    A superbly practical book that explains what established businesses, public survey institutions, and new yentures have to know, have to learn, and have to do in today' s economy and marketplace.

The Creative Curve: How to Develop the Right Idea at the Right Time


Allen Gannett - 2018
      We have been spoon-fed the notion that creativity is the province of genius -- of those favored, brilliant few whose moments of insight arrive in unpredictable flashes of divine inspiration.  And if we are not a genius, we might as well pack it in and give up. Either we have that gift, or we don’t.  But Allen shows that simply isn’t true.  Recent research has shown that there is a predictable science behind achieving commercial success in any creative endeavor, from writing a popular novel to starting up a successful company to creating an effective marketing campaign.    As the world’s most creative people have discovered, we are enticed by the novel and the familiar. By understanding the mechanics of what Gannett calls “the creative curve” – the point of optimal tension between the novel and the familiar – everyone can better engineer mainstream success.    In a thoroughly entertaining book that describes the stories and insights of everyone from the Broadway team behind Dear Evan Hansen, to the founder of Reddit, from the Chief Content Officer of Netflix to Michelin star chefs, Gannett reveals the four laws of creative success and identifies the common patterns behind their achievement.

Upstream: The Quest to Solve Problems Before They Happen


Dan Heath - 2020
    We put out fires. We deal with emergencies. We stay downstream, handling one problem after another, but we never make our way upstream to fix the systems that caused the problems ... [This book] probes the psychological forces that push us downstream--including 'problem blindness,' which can leave us oblivious to serious problems in our midst. And Heath introduces us to the thinkers who have overcome these obstacles and scored ... victories by switching to an upstream mindset.

The Win Without Pitching Manifesto


Blair Enns - 2010
    The twelve proclamations were written to inspire owners of independent creative businesses (e.g.: design firms & advertising agencies) to rethink how their services are bought and sold. Anyone who sells ideas or advice will find relevance in their teachings.

Be Our Guest: Perfecting the Art of Customer Service


Walt Disney Company - 2001
    Reprint. 25,000 first printing.