Bread, cash, dosh, dough, loot, lucre, moolah, readies, the wherewithal: Call it what you like, it matters. To Christians, love of it is the root of all evil. To generals, it’s the sinews of war. To revolutionaries, it’s the chains of labor. But in The Ascent of Money, Niall Ferguson shows that finance is in fact the foundation of human progress. What’s more, he reveals financial history as the essential backstory behind all history. With the clarity and verve for which he is known, Ferguson elucidates key financial institutions and concepts by showing where they came from. What is money? What do banks do? What’s the difference between a stock and a bond? Why buy insurance or real estate? And what exactly does a hedge fund do? This is history for the present. Ferguson travels to post-Katrina New Orleans to ask why the free market can’t provide adequate protection against catastrophe. He delves into the origins of the subprime mortgage crisis.

    And if they do it right, we believe them. A good story is where genuine customer satisfaction comes from. It's the source of profit and it's the future of your organisation. This book shows how to discover and tell authentic stories that set you and your products or service apart from the competition.

    How can we originate new ideas, policies, and practices without risking it all?   Using surprising studies and stories spanning business, politics, sports, and entertainment, Grant explores how to recognize a good idea, speak up without getting silenced, build a coalition of allies, choose the right time to act, and manage fear and doubt; how parents and teachers can nurture originality in children; and how leaders can build cultures that welcome dissent. Learn from an entrepreneur who pitches his start-ups by highlighting the reasons not to invest, a woman at Apple who challenged Steve Jobs from three levels below, an analyst who overturned the rule of secrecy at the CIA, a billionaire financial wizard who fires employees for failing to criticize him, and a TV executive who didn’t even work in comedy but saved Seinfeld from the cutting-room floor. The payoff is a set of groundbreaking insights about rejecting conformity and improving the status quo.

    With boundless erudition and in delightfully clear prose, Surowiecki ranges across fields as diverse as popular culture, psychology, ant biology, behavioral economics, artificial intelligence, military history, and politics to show how this simple idea offers important lessons for how we live our lives, select our leaders, run our companies, and think about our world.

    His understandings about our regressed, “seatbelt society,” oriented toward safety rather than adventure, help explain the sabotage that leaders constantly face today. Suspicious of the “quick fixes” and instant solutions that sweep through our culture only to give way to the next fad, he argued for strength and selfdifferentiationas the marks of true leadership. His formula for success is more maturity, not more data; stamina, not technique; and personal responsibility, not empathy.A Failure of Nerve was unfinished at the time of Friedman’s death and originally publishedin a limited edition. This new edition cleans up some oversights in the original and bringshis life-changing insights and challenges to a new generation of readers.“Reading this book is like discovering an unpublished Beethoven sonata or a missing play of Shakespeare. Ed Friedman was one of our most brilliant, original, and provocative thinkers across the fields of therapy, ministry, and organizational leadership.”—Professor William J. Doherty, Director, Marriage and Family Therapy Program, University of Minnesota

    His job no longer existed. "I think they just want to hire younger people," his boss at Newsweek told him. Fifty years old and with a wife and two young kids, Dan was, in a word, screwed. Then an idea hit. Dan had long reported on Silicon Valley and the tech explosion. Why not join it? HubSpot, a Boston start-up, was flush with $100 million in venture capital. They offered Dan a pile of stock options for the vague role of "marketing fellow." What could go wrong? HubSpotters were true believers: They were making the world a better place ... by selling email spam. The office vibe was frat house meets cult compound: The party began at four thirty on Friday and lasted well into the night; "shower pods" became hook-up dens; a push-up club met at noon in the lobby, while nearby, in the "content factory," Nerf gun fights raged. Groups went on "walking meetings," and Dan's absentee boss sent cryptic emails about employees who had "graduated" (read: been fired). In the middle of all this was Dan, exactly twice the age of the average HubSpot employee, and literally old enough to be the father of most of his co-workers, sitting at his desk on his bouncy-ball "chair."Mixed in with Lyons's uproarious tale of his rise and fall at Hubspot is a trenchant analysis of the start-up world, a de facto conspiracy between those who start companies and those who fund them, a world where bad ideas are rewarded with hefty investments, where companies blow money lavishing perks on their post-collegiate workforces, and where everybody is trying to hang on just long enough to reach an IPO and cash out. With a cast of characters that includes devilish angel investors, fad-chasing venture capitalists, entrepreneurs and "wantrapreneurs," bloggers and brogrammers, social climbers and sociopaths, Disrupted is a gripping and definitive account of life in the (second) tech bubble.

    

    But by knowing what they are and how to spot them, we can avoid them and make better choices-whether dealing with a personal problem or a business negotiation; trying to save money or make money; working out what we do or don't want in life: and how best to get it.Simple, clear and always surprising, this indispensable book will change the way you think and transform your decision-making-work, at home, every day. It reveals, in 99 short chapters, the most common errors of judgment, and how to avoid them.

    There was atime when this revered organization ranked among the lowest in the country in this area. Within ten years, however, it had climbed to among the highest and has emerged as the thought leader in the space.How did Cleveland Clinic turn itself around so effectively and so quickly?More important, how can you do the same with your organization?In gripping, visceral, on-the ground fashion, Service Fanatics reveals the strategies and tactics the Clinic applied to become one of today's leading patient-experience healthcare organizations--methods that seamlessly translate to any business seeking to improveits customer experience. This strategic guide covers:How the Clinic's leaders redefined the concept of patient experience and developed a strategy to improve itCritical lessons learned regarding organization, recruitment, training, and measuring service excellenceWays in which the Clinic aligned its entire workforce around its Patients First strategyHow leaders improved the critical element of physician communicationRather than view patients simply as sick people who need treatment, Cleveland Clinic sees them also as important stakeholders in the organization's success. Patients are customers--who desire, pay for, and deserve the best possible care and experience during what is often a challenging time in their lives.Featuring customer service case studies, as well as invaluable insight from C-level executives at top corporations in various industries, Service Fanatics provides actionable lessons for any manager and business leader beyond healthcare.Whether you run a healthcare institution, nonprofit, or for-profit business, Service Fanatics will help you create the kind of customer experience that promises to transform your organization into an industry powerhouse.

    Reveals how to run an online business profitably in spite of the Internet's inherently free culture, disseminating the principles of a ''priceless economy'' in six categories that pertain to advertising, labor exchange, and advanced-version fees.

    Explaining why the whole is sometimes smarter than the sum of its parts, Johnson presents surprising examples of feedback, self-organization, and adaptive learning. How does a lively neighborhood evolve out of a disconnected group of shopkeepers, bartenders, and real estate developers? How does a media event take on a life of its own? How will new software programs create an intelligent World Wide Web? In the coming years, the power of self-organization -- coupled with the connective technology of the Internet -- will usher in a revolution every bit as significant as the introduction of electricity. Provocative and engaging, Emergence puts you on the front lines of this exciting upheaval in science and thought.

    Along the way, we encounter black holes, turtles, snakes, dragons, axe-sharpening, and yak-shaving—and take a guided tour through the theories and methods, both brilliant and misguided, that litter the history of software development, from the famous ‘mythical man-month’ to Extreme Programming. Not just for technophiles but for anyone captivated by the drama of invention, Dreaming in Code offers a window into both the information age and the workings of the human mind.

    With his inimitable ability to translate complex foreign policy and economic issues, Friedman explains how the flattening of the world happened at the dawn of the 21st century; what it means to countries, companies, communities and individuals; and how governments and societies can, and must, adapt.

    A Whole New Mind takes readers to a daring new place, and a provocative and necessary new way of thinking about a future that's already here.

    With all the emphasis on the rich and famous in America, we would think we know everything about them. In reality, very few of us truly understand those who make up the very wealthiest Americans--those with liquid assets of $5 million or more. What is this new class of people and how did they get that way?In The New Elite, the authors reveal what motivates our country's most powerful and influential class, what they want, where they shop, and how they really spend their money. With candor and unique insight, they reveal that the people who drive our economy are not Ivy league-educated, luxury-seeking socialites. While they include luminaries like Bill Gates, David Geffen, Ralph Lauren, and Donald Trump, they also include the small business owner next door. Based on unprecedented research with hundreds of interviews with members of this unique group, The New Elite uncovers the five classes of America's newly wealthy--including those who struggle with its implications, those who refuse to let it change them, and those who give it away, and how each of them is changing our culture and economy. This is an entertaining and enlightening look at America's ruling class, the profound ways they have redefined what it means to be rich, and how we court them.