Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die
by Chip Heath and Dan Heath

Why do some ideas thrive while others die? And how do we improve the chances of worthy ideas? In Made to Stick, accomplished educators and idea collectors Chip and Dan Heath tackle head-on these vexing questions. Inside, the brothers Heath reveal the anatomy of ideas that “stick” and explain sure-fire methods for making ideas stickier, such as violating schemas, using the Velcro Theory of Memory, and creating “curiosity gaps.”

Made to Stick is a book that will transform the way you communicate ideas. It’s a fast-paced tour of idea success stories (and failures)—the Nobel Prize-winning scientist who drank a glass of bacteria to prove a point about stomach ulcers; the charities who make use of the Mother Teresa Effect; the elementary-school teacher’s simulation that actually prevented prejudice . Provocative, eye-opening, and funny, Made to Stick shows us the principles of successful ideas at work—and how we can apply these rules to making our own messages “stick.”

Do This. Get Rich!
by Jim Britt

Are you ready for success? And yes, I am talking to you. Too many of us think that hard work and long hours are the keys to getting ahead--which is probably what management would like us to think. But Jim Britt has a completely different take on becoming successful. He knows that it's all about waking up the aspiring entrepreneur within you. It's about being your own boss and taking control. And it's about knowing what steps to take and what roadblocks to avoid in order to achieve true financial freedom. Do This, Get Rich! is a straightforward guide that offers twelve simple yet powerful tools for achieving financial success. You will not only gain the skill sets needed to create, build, and succeed in your own business, but you will win a new sense of direction and enduring confidence that will guide you toward reaching your most ambitious goals. You will also have a practical framework from which to handle everyday personal and business challenges, as well as the strategies needed to develop the "mindset" and "mental toughness" necessary for succeeding in today's business world. An American success story, Jim Britt pulled himself out of poverty and went on to make his fortune in the world of business and real estate. But that wasn't enough for Jim. He wanted to share his secrets of success with others. So Jim began to lecture. To date, his popular seminars have attracted over one million attendees and he has acted as consultant or peak performance trainer for such companies as Bank of America, Mary Kay, New York Life, Coldwell Banker, and Century 21. As a motivational speaker, Jim Britt is also the man who gave Tony Robbins his first real job--a job that would inspire Tony to go out on his own and gain the financial freedom Jim promised. Everything that Tony Robbins learned from Jim and everything that Jim teaches is in this powerhouse of a book. The tools you will find within these pages work! The rewards for using them are extraordinary. Do This, Get Rich! is not just a title, but a pledge that the author has made to you--and that you can make to yourself.

The E-Myth Revisited : Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It
by Michael E. Gerber

Michael Gerber's The E-Myth Revisited should be required listening for anyone thinking about starting a business or for those who have already taken that fateful step. The title refers to the author's belief that entrepreneurs--typically brimming with good but distracting ideas--make poor businesspeople. He establishes an incredibly organized and regimented plan, so that daily details are scripted, freeing the entrepreneur's mind to build the long-term success or failure of the business. You don't need an M.B.A. to understand or follow its directives; Gerber takes time to explain buzzwords and complex theories. Read in a clear and well-paced manner, listening to The-E Myth is like receiving advice from an old friend.

The E-Myth Manager: Why Most Managers Don't Work
and What to Do About It
by Michael E. Gerber

More than ten years after his first best-selling book, The E-Myth, changed the lives of hundreds of thousands of small business owners, Michael Gerber fires the next salvo in his highly successful E-Myth Revolution. Drawing on lessons learned from working with more than 20,000 organizations, Michael has discovered the truth behind why management doesn't work—and what to do about it. Regardless of their size or industry, most organizations seem to exist in a primarily dysfunctional state. Even companies that appear to be successful suffer this same fate because management as we have come to know it is inherently flawed. What is required to truly transform both the job of the manager and the plight of the organization is nothing less than a revolution in the idea of management and its very execution. Softcover book. (HarperBusiness, 1998)

The Traveler's Gift : Seven Decisions that Determine Personal Success
by Andy Andrews

Bestselling author and motivational speaker Andrews effectively combines self-help with fiction to catch readers' interest, sustaining momentum while simultaneously passing on instructions for positive thinking. With his can-do style, Andrews (Storms of Perfection; Tales from Sawyerton Springs) tells the allegorical tragedy of one David Ponder, whose woes begin when he loses his job, his confidence and essentially his drive for living. After a succession of losses, Ponder is rendered unconscious after a car accident, and is magically transported into seven key points in history. At each stopping point, he is met by historical figures such as Abraham Lincoln, Anne Frank, King Solomon, Harry Truman and Christopher Columbus, each of whom imparts one of the seven key decisions that Andrews asserts are essential for personal success. After his travel through time, Ponder regains consciousness in a hospital and discovers he is holding letters given to him by the various heroes. The letters offer familiar self-help counsel: accept that the buck stops with you, become a wisdom seeker and a person of action, determine to be happy, open the day with a forgiving spirit, and persist despite all odds. Although Andrews writes from a Christian perspective, his overall message will ring true with a broad spectrum of inspirational readers. Some astute thinkers may be put off by the simplistic story line, but Andrews does an exemplary job at providing positive suggestions for overcoming life's obstacles.

Hard Optimism: The High Performance Attitude For Handling Uncertainty, Adversity, Opportunity, & Change
by Price Pritchett

Today, more than any time in the last half century, performance is being negatively affected by attitude. Many companies have become victims of their corporate mood.  Worried about the economy, weary of change, and uneasy about all the uncertainty, they've shifted down emotionally.  They've become less confident.  More tentative. Heavier in spirit. 

At the very time people most need resilience, energy, and can-do thinking, they're sinking into the dreary bog of pessimism. It's like our country is on the bad end of a bipolar disorder--after the manic highs of the late 90s, circumstances have shaken us into depressive lows we haven't experienced for decades.  There's a screaming need for an attitude adjustment.  For "hard optimism."

This isn't a pitch for the old time "power of positive thinking," it's an urgent call for the scientifically proven muscle of "non-negative thinking." Here's a key to understanding the crucial difference:  Researchers have discovered that optimism and pessimism are not two poles on a single scale.  They're two quite separate dimensions.

Performance breakthroughs require more than just repeating positive statements to ourselves.  They come when we change how we deal with our negative thoughts and feelings.

It's what PRITCHETT calls "hard optimism"--a smart, hard-edged way of handling adversity, opportunity, uncertainty, and change.  It's the high performance attitude your people need, and our new program can instill it throughout your organization.

Click here for more information on Hard Optimism.

Good to Great : Why Some Companies Make the Leap...And Others Don't
by Jim Collins

Five years ago, Jim Collins asked the question, "Can a good company become a great company and if so, how?" In Good to Great Collins, the author of Built to Last, concludes that it is possible, but finds there are no silver bullets. Collins and his team of researchers began their quest by sorting through a list of 1,435 companies, looking for those that made substantial improvements in their performance over time. They finally settled on 11--including Fannie Mae, Gillette, Walgreens, and Wells Fargo--and discovered common traits that challenged many of the conventional notions of corporate success. Peppered with dozens of stories and examples from the great and not so great, the book offers a well-reasoned road map to excellence that any organization would do well to consider. Like Built to Last, Good to Great is one of those books that managers and CEOs will be reading and rereading for years to come.
-Harry C. Edwards

The Unpublished David Ogilvy: A Selection of His Writing from the Files of His Partners
by David Ogilvy

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Building Strong Brands
by David A. Aaker

As industries turn increasingly hostile, it is clear that strong brand-building skills are needed to survive and prosper. In David Aaker's pathbreaking book, Managing Brand Equity, managers discovered the value of a brand as a strategic asset and a company's primary source of competitive advantage. Now, in this compelling new work, Aaker uses real brand-building cases from Saturn, General Electric, Kodak, Healthy Choice, McDonald's, and others to demonstrate how strong brands have been created and managed.

A common pitfall of brand strategists is to focus on brand attributes. Aaker shows how to break out of the box by considering emotional and self-expressive benefits and by introducing the brand-as-person, brand-as-organization, and brand-as-symbol perspectives. The twin concepts of brand identity (the brand image that brand strategists aspire to create or maintain) and brand position (that part of the brand identity that is to be actively communicated) play a key role in managing the "out-of-the-box" brand.

A second pitfall is to ignore the fact that individual brands are part of a larger system consisting of many intertwined and overlapping brands and subbrands. Aaker shows how to manage the "brand system" to achieve clarity and synergy, to adapt to a changing environment, and to leverage brand assets into new markets and products.

Aaker also addresses practical management issues, introducing a set of brand equity measures, termed the brand equity ten, to help those who measure and track brand equity across products and markets. He presents and analyzes brand-nurturing organizational forms that are responsive to the challenges of coordinated brands across markets, products, roles, and contexts. Potentially destructive organizational pressures to change a brand's identity and position are also discussed.

As executives in a wide range of industries seek to prevent their products and services from becoming commodities, they are recommitting themselves to brands as a foundation of business strategy. This new work will be essential reading for the battle-ready.

Ogilvy on Advertising
by David Ogilvy

A candid and indispensable primer on all aspects of advertising from the man Time has called "the most sought after wizard in the business"

The Journal of Brand Management

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Romancing the Brand: The Power of Advertising and How to Use It
by David N. Martin

Shows how to create effective advertising, provides examples of successful ads, and provides a behind the scenes look at the profession.

Marketing Warfare
by Al Ries, Jack Trout

The book that changed marketing forever is now updated for the new millennium. In 1986, Marketing Warfare propelled the industry into a new, modern sensibility and a world of unprecedented profit. Now, two decades later, this Annotated Edition provides the latest, most powerful tactics that have become synonymous with the names Ries and Trout. New content includes in-depth analyses of some of the biggest marketing successes and blunders of the past two decades—including Volkswagen, Sony, Coca Cola, Budweiser, IBM, and McDonalds—along with annotated reproductions of winning and losing ads. Marketing is war. To triumph over the competition, it's not enough to target customers. Marketers must take aim at their competitors––and be prepared to defend their own turf from would-be attackers at all times. This indispensable guide gives smart fighters the best tactics––defensive, offensive, flanking, and guerrilla. It's the book that wrote the new rules!

Targeting, Measurement, and Analysis of Marketing

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The Discipline of Market Leaders: Choose Your Customers, Narrow Your Focus, Dominate Your Market
by Michael Treacy, Fred Wiersema

A breakthrough approach to strategy that will revolutionize how you think about customers, competition, markets, even the fundamental structure of your business.

Being Direct: Making Advertising Pay
by Lester Wunderman

The visionary marketing techniques Wunderman conceived and perfected over his long and brilliant career transformed the advertising industry and will shape the interactive marketplace of the future. Here is his own story, in his own words, of how he did it – how he learned to make advertising pay. Direct marketing is a strategy for putting manufacturers directly in touch with consumers – the blueprint for the "disintermediation" of the digital world. Twenty-five years before the Internet was invented, in a now famous speech at MIT, Wunderman described the sales relationship of the future as "interactive." In tomorrow's electronic marketplace, the interactive techniques he pioneered will account for the great majority of sales worldwide. In a groundbreaking final chapter, Wunderman looks forward to marketing in the "post-present." Anyone with an interest in the future of advertising and selling would do well to listen to this remarkable, wise and wonderfully entertaining pioneer.

Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind
by Al Ries, Jack Trout

Positioning, a concept developed by the authors, has changed the way people advertise. The reason? It's the first concept to deal with the problems of communicating in an overcommunicated society. With this approach, a company creates a 'position' in the prospect's mind, one that reflects the company's own strengths and weaknesses as well as those of its competitors. Witty and fast-paced, this book spells out how to position a leader so that it gets into the mind and stays there, position a follower in a way that finds a 'hole' not occupied by the leader, and avoid the pitfalls of letting a second product ride on the coattails of an established one. Revised to reflect significant developments in the five years since its original publication, Positioning reveals the fascinating case histories and anecdotes behind the campaigns of many stunning successes and failures in the world of advertising.

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
by Robert B. Cialdini

Influence, the classic book on persuasion, explains the psychology of why people say "yes"—and how to apply these understandings. Dr. Robert Cialdini is the seminal expert in the rapidly expanding field of influence and persuasion. His thirty-five years of rigorous, evidence-based research along with a three-year program of study on what moves people to change behavior has resulted in this highly acclaimed book.

You'll learn the six universal principles, how to use them to become a skilled persuader—and how to defend yourself against them. Perfect for people in all walks of life, the principles of Influence will move you toward profound personal change and act as a driving force for your success.

The Journal of Database Marketing

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My Life in Advertising and Scientific Advertising
by Claude Hopkins

Test marketing. Coupon sampling. Copy research. All are standard practices in today’s world of advertising. All were invented by Claude C. Hopkins. This volume contains his tow landmark books. Scientific Advertising – the classic primer still read by today’s top copywriters – was originally written in 1923. Four years later, he finished his autobiography. My Life in Advertising.

Claude C. Hopkins (1866 – 1932) worked for various advertisers including Bissel Carpet Sweeper Company, Swift & Company and Dr. Shoop’s patent medicine company until, at the age of 41, he was hired by Albert Lasker to write copy for Lord & Thomas advertising agency (forerunner to today’s Foote, Cone & Belding). He stayed for 18 years.

The House That Ivory Built

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Do It Yourself Marketing Research
by George Breen

Cartoons, photographs, and sample questionaires are incorporated in a guide to procedures that nonprofessionals can implement to check the expected profitability of marketing, sales, and product decisions

Managing for the Future: Organizational Behavior and Processes
by Deborah G. Ancona, Thomas A. Kochan, Maureen Scully, John Van Maanen, D. Eleanor Westney

Managing for the Future is an innovative approach to teaching organizational behavior based on the course at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The text first presents the new organization, examining it through strategic, political, and cultural lenses. Then the role and impact of teams and central issues facing the organization itself are explored. The last section of the text focuses on skills--the goal being not only to present the new organization but also illustrate how students can become better actors within it. Each of the 14 modules provides many instructional options through cases, readings, exercises and projects. Managing for the Future's modular format allows for even greater flexibility, allowing instructors to select only the topics they need to suit their course needs. Managing for the Future's flexible design and its' experiential-based approach make the text and appealing choice for experienced learners.

Full Steam Ahead!: Unleash the Power of Vision in Your Work and Your Life
by Ken Blanchard, Jesse Stoner

According to Ken Blanchard and Jesse Stoner, vision does not have to be magical or intangible, bestowed only by great leaders. Everyone is capable of creating a vision and bringing it to reality. Full Steam Ahead! shows how. This practical and inspiring guide uses an entertaining story about two people who are each struggling with the need for vision. Readers journey with them as they discover the three elements of a compelling vision and the guidelines to create a shared vision that unleashes energy and potential. An appealing, easy-to-read book, Full Steam Ahead! clarifies the differences between an enduring vision and a time-bound goal; shows how to create a sustaining vision that will provide focus, energy, and direction over time; and presents a foolproof plan for engaging people in organizations to become involved in shaping a vision that resonates with their own hopes and dreams.

The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
by Malcolm Gladwell

This celebrated New York Times bestsellernow poised to reach an even wider audience in paperbackis a book that is changing the way North Americans think about selling products and disseminating ideas. Gladwells new afterword to this edition describes how readers can constructively apply the tipping point principle in their own lives and work. Widely hailed as an important work that offers not only a road map to business success but also a profoundly encouraging approach to solving social problems.

Open-Book Management: The Coming Business Revolution
by John Case

Open-book management is not so much a technique as a way of thinking, a process that actively involves employees in the financial life of the company. Numerous companies have already found that employees who are informed and aware of the company's financial situation are motivated to seek solutions to problems and assume a greater degree of responsibility for its performance. John Case begins by examining the current competitive climate and the history of established management techniques. He shows how the traditional treatment of workers as "hired hands" with little involvement or responsibility beyond their own area is no longer effective in today's ever more competitive global environment.

Case clearly and carefully explains the principles of open-book management: timely sharing of crucial financial information with employees; educating the employees to understand and apply the information; empowering employees to apply the information to their own work; and offering employees a stake in the successful implementation of their ideas. Open-book management will take different forms at every company, Case notes, but he offers a wide range of suggestions and guidelines for implementing these principles. He concludes with a series of in-depth case studies, featuring companies of various sizes and financial situations that have successfully implemented open-book management. Open-Book Management is the indispensable guide to teaching employees how to think and act like owners.

Beyond the Hype: Rediscovering the Essence of Management
by Robert G. Eccles, Nitin Nohria, James D. Berkley

Addressed to the thoughtful manager. Puts action back at the center of managerial practice by proposing a way of thinking about management that runs directly counter to most of the frameworks, models, and buzzwords advocated today. DLC: Management. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

The Marketing Power of Emotion
by John O'Shaughnessy, Nicholas Jackson O'Shaughnessy

Emotion is one of the defining forces in our lives. It lies at the very heart of many of our most important experiences and memories. Not surprisingly, the worlds of business and marketing have long drawn on the power of emotion to influence consumer impulses and brand loyalty. Yet beyond the obvious emotions evoked by an inspirational Nike ad or an affecting Hallmark commercial lies an emotional universe that is less conspicuous, even transparent, yet no less influential. In this definitive work, two marketing experts provide a highly original, entertaining and anecdote-rich account of the marketing power of emotion. The primordial force behind motivation and persuasion, emotions enter into all decisions involving tradeoffs and are thus especially relevant to consumer decision-making. The Marketing Power of Emotion traces the manner in which companies rely on emotion to connect with consumers, develop new products, improve their strategic position, and increase brand recognition. Synthesizing key research in a variety of scientific fields, the authors cover the role of mood in persuasion; affect-driven consumer behavior; choice processes; associationism (how consumers develop positive and negative associations with a product); the importance of consistency; response prediction; and emotional response manipulation, among a host of other topics. Importantly, the centrality of emotion in developing brand loyalty is explored in depth. Essential reading for executives and middle management alike, as well as all students and scholars of consumer behavior, The Marketing Power of Emotion is the most authoritative statement yet on this critically important aspect of business strategy.

The Leadership Practices Inventory (LPI): Self, 3rd Edition
by Jim Kouzes, Barry Posner

This book approaches leadership as a measurable, learnable, and teachable set of behaviors. This 360° leadership assessment tool helps individuals and organizations measure their leadership competencies, while guiding them through the process of applying Kouzes and Posner's acclaimed Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership® Model to real-life organizational challenges.

The Leadership Practices Inventory (LPI): Observer, 3rd Edition
by Jim Kouzes, Barry Posner

This book approaches leadership as a measurable, learnable, and teachable set of behaviors. This 360° leadership assessment tool helps individuals and organizations measure their leadership competencies, while guiding them through the process of applying Kouzes and Posner's acclaimed Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership® Model to real-life organizational challenges.

The LPI Observer is a 30-item questionnaire used to rate Leaders on The Five Practices® behaviors. The completed forms provide feedback from a variety of people- managers, direct reports, coworkers, and other colleagues who have had the opportunity to view the participant in leadership situations. We recommend that you order 8 LPI Observers for each participant.

Differentiate or Die: Survival in Our Era of Killer Competition
by Jack Trout, Steve Rivkin

There are no two ways about it with Jack Trout. Either you've got a product or service that you can say is different, or you don't have much at all. In today's global marketplace and at its lightning-fast rate of change, there's no point in inventing and presenting a product only to sit back and hope that consumers everywhere will discover its greatness. It's not simply about what you or your product can do, it's about what you do differently from everyone else. Coauthors Trout and Steve Rivkin say it all in their no-holds-barred title, Differentiate or Die.

A disciple of the marketing guru Rosser Reeves, who introduced the concept of the "unique selling proposition," Trout relays his vision of what can help you differentiate in blunt, tell-it-like-it-is prose. First he breaks the bad news that product quality, advertising creativity, price advantage, and breadth of product line are rarely successful ways to differentiate your business. Consumers expect the best quality, he says; they don't think it's a bonus. In the same vein, your competitor can slash prices just as quickly as you. After dismissing these common marketing techniques as futile, Trout concentrates on which differentiating ideas will set you apart from the pack: Being first (and staying there), owning a discernible attribute, having a heritage, becoming the preference of a particular consumer group, or even being the most recent arrival in a product arena are just some of these useful differentiates.

The Great Game of Business
by Jack Stack, Bo Burlingham

In the early 1980s, Springfield Remanufacturing Corporation (SRC) in Springfield, Missouri, was a near bankrupt division of International Harvester. That's when a green young manager, Jack Stack, took over and turned it around. He didn't know how to "manage" a company, but he did know about the principal, of athletic competition and democracy: keeping score, having fun, playing fair, providing choice, and having a voice. With these principals he created his own style of management -- open-book management. The key is to let everyone in on financial decisions. At SRC, everyone learns how to read a P&L -- even those without a high school education know how much the toilet paper they use cuts into profits. SRC people have a piece of the action and a vote in company matters. Imagine having a vote on your bonus and on what businesses the company should be in. SRC restored the dignity of economic freedom to its people. Stack's "open-book management" is the key -- a system which, as he describes it here, is literally a game, and one so simple anyone can use it. As part of the Currency paperback line, the book includes a "User's Guide" -- an introduction and discussion guide created for the paperback by the author -- to help readers make practical use of the book's ideas. Jack Stack is the president and CEO of the Springfield Remanufacturing Corporation, in Springfield, Missouri. The recipient of the 1993 Business Enterprise Trust Award, Jack speaks throughout the country on The Great Game Of Business and Open Book Management.

Primal Leadership: Learning to Lead with Emotional Intelligence
by Daniel Goleman, Richard E. Boyatzis, Annie McKee

Drawing from decades of research within world-class organizations, the authors show that great leaders-whether CEOs or managers, coaches or politicians-excel not just through skill and smarts, but by connecting with others using Emotional Intelligence competencies like empathy and self-awareness. The best leaders, they show, have "resonance"-a powerful ability to drive emotions in a positive direction to get results-and can fluidly interchange among a variety of leadership styles as the situation demands. Groundbreaking and timely, this book reveals the new requirements of successful leadership.

Focusing on the four domains of emotional intelligence-self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management-they explore what contributes to and detracts from resonant leadership, and how the development of these four EI competencies spawns different leadership styles.

The Dance of Change: The Challenges to Sustaining Momentum in Learning Organizations
by Peter M. Senge, Art Kleiner, Charlotte Roberts, George Roth, Rick Ross, Bryan Smith

Companies and organizations cannot thrive today without learning to adapt their attitudes and practices. But companies that establish change initiatives discover, after initial success, that even the most promising efforts to transform or revitalize organizations—despite interest, resources, and compelling business results—can fail to sustain themselves over time. That's because organizations have complex, well-developed immune systems, aimed at preserving the status quo.

The Dance of Change, written for managers and executives at every level of an organization, reveals how business leaders can work together to anticipate the challenges that profound change will ultimately force the organization to face. Then, in a down-to-earth and compellingly clear format, readers will learn how to build the personal and organizational capabilities needed to meet those challenges.

These challenges are not imposed from the outside; they are the product of assumptions and practices that people take for granted—an inherent, natural part of the processes of change. And they can stop innovation cold, unless managers at all levels learn to anticipate them and recognize the hidden rewards in each challenge, and the potential to spur further growth. Within the frequently encountered challenge of "Not Enough Time," for example—the lack of control over time available for innovation and learning initiatives—lies a valuable opportunity to reframe the way people organize their workplaces.

Strength Deployment Inventory ;: Manual of administration and interpretation
by Elias Hull Porter

It is not a psychometric test designed to measure a persons abilities, cognitive or otherwise, or an assessment of current skills from which to plan your future development, or even a tool to pigeonhole a persons behavior. It is however, an excellent way of understanding, firstly what motivates us and then what motivates others. Unlike other "personality trait" tools the SDI® goes beyond behavior into our core values.

High Velocity Culture Change: A Handbook for Managers
by Price Pritchett, Ron Pound

Delivers 22 specific guidelines on how to manage your part of the organization for high-velocity culture change. You'll also learn how you can avoid the management traps that cause most efforts to fail. This handbook will prepare you and your management staff for the rigors of the agonizing process that is culture change. It will also prove how and why the pain is well worth the cost. If your management staff is going to achieve a dramatic culture shift in record time, High-Velocity Culture Change is a must-read for every player on your team.

If it Ain't Broke...Break It!: And Other Unconventional Wisdom for a Changing Business World
by Robert J. Kriegel, Louis Patler

Preordained goals, conventional behavior and consensus decisions are sensibly challenged in this call for innovative rule-breaking in '90s business. As big business in the United States has replaced small business, the entrepreneurial spirit has also disappeared. Kriegel, a well-known speaker and expert on human resources, believes that this is the major problem in American business and that it can be remedied by changing the underlying ideas. He uses a vehicle that he calls "unconventional wisdom" to help break old thought patterns and substitute new, more productive ones. In each chapter he takes one old truism such as "don't mess with success" or "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" and shows how and why this way of thinking is unproductive in today's fast-paced business world.

Seeing What's Next: Using Theories of Innovation to Predict Industry Change
by Clayton M. Christensen, Erik A. Roth, Scott D. Anthony

This book argues that it is possible to predict which companies will win and which will lose in a specific situation—and provides a practical framework for doing so. Most books on innovation—including Christensen’s previous two books—approached innovation from the inside-out, showing firms how they can create innovations inside their own companies. This book is written from an “outside-in” perspective, showing how executives, investors, and analysts can assess the impact of a new innovation on the firms they have a vested interest in.