Stopwatch Marketing

by John Rosen, Annamaria Turano

(Portfolio, 256 Pages)

Strategy and the Fat Smoker

by David Maister

(The Spangle Press, 288 Pages)

Description

We often (or even usually) know what we should be doing in both personal and professional life. We also know why we should be doing it and (often) how to do it. Figuring all that out is not too difficult. What is very hard is actually doing what you know to be good for you in the long-run, in spite of short-run temptations.

The same is true for organizations. What is noteworthy is how similar (if not identical) most firms� strategies really are: provide outstanding client service, act like team players, provide a good place to work, invest in your future. No sensible firm (or person) would enunciate a strategy that advocated anything else.

However, just because something is obvious doesn�t make it easy. Real strategy lies not in figuring out what to do, but in devising ways to ensure that, compared to others, we actually do more of what everybody knows they should do.

This simple insight, if accepted, has profound implications for:

1. How organizations should think about strategy

2. How they should think about clients, marketing and selling

3. How they should think about management

In 18 chapters, Maister explores "the fat smoker syndrome" and how individuals, managers and organizations can overcome the temptations of the short-term and actually do what they already know is good for them.

The Engine of America

by Hector Barreto

(Wiley, 240 Pages)

Small business is the engine that drives America’s new economy. In The Engine of America, former administrator of the Small Business Administration (SBA), Hector Barreto and veteran journalist Bob Wagman reveal the winning business strategies of CEOs from 50 companies. For all those starting or growing their own small business, the wisdom, experience, and counsel of these successful leaders provides inspirational and thoughtful advice on making it as an entrepreneur.

In this book, Barreto shares details of business success, and the insights he gained while administering the nation’s largest small business loan, training, and counseling organization. Some of those sharing their stories in The Engine of America have grown their businesses from the most humble of beginnings into corporate giants whose brands are household names and whose operations are integral parts of the national economy. Others may not be instantly recognizable, but what they have in common is success.

Hector Barreto believes if you can teach a small business owner something he or she doesn’t know, but which is critical to the growth of their small business or which allows them to avoid a critical mistake, you have helped put them on the road to success. That’s what The Engine of America will do.

Hector V. Barreto (Los Angeles, CA) is the former five-year administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration where he directed a $60 billion support system for American entrepreneurs. He has lived and worked in all regions of the country, and is currently the Chairman of the Latino Coalition and a frequent speaker on small business topics.

Robert Wagman (Washington, DC) is the former Capitol bureau chief for Scripps Howard’s Newspaper Enterprise Association. He is also a former field producer for 60 Minutes, editor of the World Almanac on Politics, and author of many business and political nonfiction books.

Make the Impossible Possible

by Bill Strickland

(Currency, 288 Pages)

Book Description

"Success is the point where your most authentic talents, passion, values, and experiences intersect with the chance to contribute to some greater good."
--Bill Strickland

According to MacArthur Fellowship “genius” award winner Bill Strickland, a successful life is not something you simply pursue, it is something that you create, moment by moment. It is a realization Strickland first came to when, as a poor kid growing up in a rough neighborhood of Pittsburgh, he encountered a high school ceramics teacher who took him under his wing and went on to transform his life.

Over the past thirty years, Bill Strickland has been transforming the lives of thousands of people through the creation of Manchester Bidwell, a jobs training center and community arts program. Working with corporations, community leaders, and schools, he and his staff strive to give disadvantaged kids and adults the opportunities and tools they need to envision and built a better, brighter future.

Strickland believes that every one of us has the potential for remarkable achievement. Every one of us can accomplish the impossible in our lives if given the right inspiration and motivation to do so. We all make ourselves “poor” in one way or another when we accept that we are not smart enough, experienced enough, or talented enough to accomplish something. Bill Strickland works with the least advantaged among us, and if he can help them achieve the impossible in their lives, think what each of us can do.

Media Rules!

by Dan Solomon, Brian Reich

(John Wiley & Sons Inc, 230 Pages)

Book Description
A revolutionary approach to building business success through modern media.

When it comes to communicating with their target audience, businesses have more than enough tools to get the job done-blogs, podcasts, social networks, search advertising, and much more. Yet the rapid rate of innovation is increasing the fragmentation of audiences, leaving fewer opportunities to reach them, and requiring more careful planning. Media Rules! will help business leaders and entrepreneurs obtain the core skills needed to better understand this dynamic world. Written in an engaging and accessible style, this book will provide in-depth insights into the realities of marketing using innovative media technologies and strategies. It will also show readers how to create a new game plan that takes these new media opportunities into consideration, and present real ways to implement the ideas outlined within these pages-by including interviews with business innovators who are using new techniques to successfully overcome a variety of modern business challenges.

Brian Reich (Boston, MA) is Director of New Media for Cone, Inc, a brand strategy and communications agency. Dan Solomon (Alexandria, VA) is CEO of Virilion, a full-service interactive agency.

Meatball Sundae

by Seth Godin

(Portfolio, 224 Pages)

Book Description
"Gotta get me some of that New Marketing. Bring me blogs, e-mail, YouTube videos, MySpace pages, Google AdWords . . . I don’t care, as long as it’s shiny and new."

Wait. According to bestselling author Seth Godin, all these tactics are like the toppings at an ice cream parlor. If you start with ice cream, adding cherries and hot fudge and whipped cream will make it taste great. But if you start with a bowl of meatballs...yuck!

As traditional marketing fades away, the new tools seem irresistible. But they don’t work as well for boring brands ("meatballs") that might still be profitable but don't attract word of mouth, such as Cheerios, Ford trucks, Barbie dolls, or Budweiser. When Anheuser-Busch spends $40 million on an online network called BudTV, that's a meatball sundae. It leads to no new Bud drinkers, just a bad case of indigestion.

"Meatball Sundae" is the definitive guide to the fourteen trends no marketer can afford to ignore. It explains what to do about the increasing power of stories, not facts; about shorter and shorter attention spans; and about the new math that says five thousand people who want to hear your message are more valuable than five million who don’t.

The winners aren’t just annoying start-ups run by three teenagers who never had a real job. You’ll also meet older companies that have adapted brilliantly, such as Blendtec, a thirty-year-old blender maker. It now produces "Will it blend?" videos that demolish golf balls, Coke cans, iPhones, and much more. For a few hundred dollars, Blendtec reached more than ten million eager viewers on YouTube.

Godin doesn’t pretend that it’s easy to get your products, marketing messages, and internal systems in sync. But he’ll convince you that it’s worth the effort.

Get Rich, Stay Rich, Pass It on

by Catherine S. Mcbreen, George H. Walper Jr.

(Portfolio, 256 Pages)

Book Description

There’s a new standard of wealth today, and many people don’t realize they’re part of the club. More than thirty-three million American households are now “mass affluent,” with a net worth between $100,000 and $1 million (not including the house they live in). They know they’re doing well, but few realize that they have the potential to achieve much more.

Get Rich, Stay Rich, Pass It On is based on groundbreaking research into America’s richest families. Each year, McBreen and Walper’s firm surveys more than five thousand millionaire and megamillionaire households, and conducts many in-person interviews, online research, and historical analysis. The authors know better than anyone who the megarich are, where they work, how they invest, and how they plan their estates.

The lessons they draw from their research will surprise you. It turns out that there are many ways to get rich, but only two definitive ways to ensure perpetual wealth.

This is a powerful book for small business owners, professionals, and ambitious people of all ages.

About the Authors

Catherine S. McBreen is the managing director of Spectrem Group, a research and consulting company. A lawyer and trust specialist, she’s an expert in financial strategies and a popular lecturer.

George H. Walper, Jr., is the president of Spectrem Group and has more than twenty- five years of experience in all aspects of wealth management, retirement, and trust services.

India Arriving

by Rafiq Dossani

(Amacom Books, 291 Pages)

Book Description
Once the jewel in the crown of the formidable British Empire, India has been surrounded by myth for years. After gaining independence in 1948, this often misunderstood country found itself faced with a new sense of freedom -- and along with it, enormous burdens and challenges. While exotic, mysterious, and seductive, it has also become an economic force to be reckoned with. With the fourth largest economy in the world, the largest youth population on Earth, and a thriving middle class, India is the second-most-preferred destination for foreign investment. But very few Americans truly understand what a rich and powerful country it has become � or its role as a global power, center of outsourcing, and potential partner with the United States.

From the country�s thriving film industry to its burgeoning high-tech industry as well as its attempts to stabilize its economy, India Arriving offers a fascinating glimpse into the real India, with all of its assets and all of its faults. Author Rafiq Dossani goes beneath the veil surrounding India and explores the many ways it has begun to emerge onto the world stage. He explores its birth as an independent nation and forces like political shifts, social reform, and education that have helped to shape a new India. Honest and revelatory, India Arriving provides a deeper understanding of a country that promises to be the next major player in the world economy.

About the Author
Rafiq Dossani (Santa Barbara, CA) is a senior research scholar and executive director at Stanford University�s Asian Pacific Research Center.

Something Really New

by Denis J. Hauptly

(Amacom Books, 224 Pages)

Book Description
Product innovation is the key to business growth. But many books deal with innovation from the business process view alone, or confuse innovation with creativity. Written by an innovation expert whose products generate more than one billion dollars in annual revenue, Something Really New introduces a straightforward but powerful framework for creating exciting new product and service concepts . . . simply by asking three essential questions.

About the Author
Denis J. Hauptly (Minneapolis, MN) is the Vice President, New Product Development for Westlaw, and has held product innovation positions for Westlaw or its parent company, The Thomson Corporation, for the past 12 years.

Extraordinary Circumstances

by Cynthia Cooper

(John Wiley & Sons, 368 Pages)

Book Description

A courageous narrative of one woman's victory over corporate wrongdoing.

Written in an autobiographic style, Extraordinary Circumstances takes the reader through the journey of Cynthia Cooper–former WorldCom employee and Time magazine’s 2002 Person of the Year–and her compelling story in exposing the largest corporate fraud in history.

Following Cooper from her early upbringing in Mississippi, to her high-level position in WorldCom, to the issues of fraud that she confronted, to the fall of WorldCom, Extraordinary Circumstances is an insider’s guide to the decision-making process that led her to "blow the whistle" and the role her personal faith and ethics played during this challenging time.

Cynthia Cooper (Brandon, MS) was named one of Time magazine’s 2002 Persons of the Year, along with fellow whistleblowers Coleen Rowley and Sherron Watkins. Ms. Cooper was inducted to the 2004 AICPA Hall of Fame, and is the first woman to receive this distinction. Ms. Cooper is also the 2003 recipient of the Accounting Exemplar Award, which is awarded annually to an individual who has made notable contributions to professionalism and ethics in accounting practice or education. Ms. Cooper is the tenth recipient of the Accounting Exemplar Award and the first woman to receive the award. As the former vice president of the internal audit department at WorldCom, she is best known for her detection and reporting of the massive corporate fraud that was taking place at some of the highest levels of the company. After the collapse of WorldCom, Cooper continued to work at WorldCom (now MCI) but in 2004 she resigned her position as the Chief Audit Executive for MCI to form her own company, through which she speaks to both professionals and students across the country to share some of the lessons she has learned and to emphasize the importance of strong ethical leadership.

Authenticity

by James Gilmore, B. Joseph Pine

(Harvard Business School Press, 288 Pages)

***800-CEO-READ offers substantial discounts on bulk orders. Simply call 800-236-7323 for extra savings***

Contrived. Disingenuous. Phony. Inauthentic. Do your customers use any of these words to describe what you sell or how you sell it? If so, welcome to the club. Inundated by fakes and sophisticated counterfeits, people increasingly see the world in terms of real or fake. They would rather buy something real from someone genuine, rather than something fake from some phony. When deciding to buy, consumers judge an offering's (and a company's) authenticity as much as if not more than price, quality, and availability.

In Authenticity, James H. Gilmore and B. Joseph Pine II argue that, to trounce rivals, companies must grasp, manage, and excel at rendering authenticity. Through examples from a wide array of industries as well as government, non-profit, education, and religious sectors, the authors show how to manage customers perception of authenticity by:

• Recognizing how businesses fake it
• Appealing to the five different genres of authenticity
• Charting how to be true to self and what you say you are
• Crafting and implementing business strategies for rendering authenticity

The first to explore what authenticity really means for businesses and how companies can approach it both thoughtfully and thoroughly, this book is a must-read for any organization seeking to fulfill consumers intensifying demand for the real deal.

Authenticity

by James Gilmore, B. Joseph Pine

(Harvard Business School Press, 288 Pages)

***800-CEO-READ offers substantial discounts on bulk orders. Simply call 800-236-7323 for extra savings***

Contrived. Disingenuous. Phony. Inauthentic. Do your customers use any of these words to describe what you sell or how you sell it? If so, welcome to the club. Inundated by fakes and sophisticated counterfeits, people increasingly see the world in terms of real or fake. They would rather buy something real from someone genuine, rather than something fake from some phony. When deciding to buy, consumers judge an offering's (and a company's) authenticity as much as if not more than price, quality, and availability.

In Authenticity, James H. Gilmore and B. Joseph Pine II argue that, to trounce rivals, companies must grasp, manage, and excel at rendering authenticity. Through examples from a wide array of industries as well as government, non-profit, education, and religious sectors, the authors show how to manage customers perception of authenticity by:

• Recognizing how businesses fake it
• Appealing to the five different genres of authenticity
• Charting how to be true to self and what you say you are
• Crafting and implementing business strategies for rendering authenticity

The first to explore what authenticity really means for businesses and how companies can approach it both thoughtfully and thoroughly, this book is a must-read for any organization seeking to fulfill consumers intensifying demand for the real deal.

The Art of Woo

by G. Richard Shell, Mario Moussa

(Penguin USA, 304 Pages)

Your projects, programs, and career turn on the difference between “no” and “yes.” Yet selling ideas—especially the kinds of ideas that make organizations work—is a skill shrouded in mystery. Part emotional intelligence, part politics, part rhetoric, and part psychology, selling ideas is not like tricking someone out of his money. It’s about helping others to see things your way— engaging their minds and imaginations.

Charles Lindbergh needed woo to assemble backers for his famous flight; Nelson Mandela used it to lead a revolution in South Africa. In any context, woo is two parts art and one part science.

Richard Shell and Mario Moussa offer a self-assessment to determine which persuasion role fits you best and how to make the most of your natural strengths. They also share vivid stories from their experiences advising thousands of leaders, and stories about famous people like John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Andy Grove, and Bono.

Whether you’re introverted or extroverted, competitive or collaborative, intellectual or practical, The Art of Woo will strengthen your persuasion skills in every aspect of your life.

About the Author G. Richard Shell is director of the Wharton Executive Negotiation Workshop at the Wharton School, where he is professor of legal studies, business ethics and management. His previous book is the award-winning Bargaining for Advantage. Mario Moussa is a faculty member at the Wharton School and a principal of CFAR Inc., a management consulting firm.

The Art of Woo

by G. Richard Shell, Mario Moussa

(Penguin USA, 304 Pages)

Your projects, programs, and career turn on the difference between “no” and “yes.” Yet selling ideas—especially the kinds of ideas that make organizations work—is a skill shrouded in mystery. Part emotional intelligence, part politics, part rhetoric, and part psychology, selling ideas is not like tricking someone out of his money. It’s about helping others to see things your way— engaging their minds and imaginations.

Charles Lindbergh needed woo to assemble backers for his famous flight; Nelson Mandela used it to lead a revolution in South Africa. In any context, woo is two parts art and one part science.

Richard Shell and Mario Moussa offer a self-assessment to determine which persuasion role fits you best and how to make the most of your natural strengths. They also share vivid stories from their experiences advising thousands of leaders, and stories about famous people like John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Andy Grove, and Bono.

Whether you’re introverted or extroverted, competitive or collaborative, intellectual or practical, The Art of Woo will strengthen your persuasion skills in every aspect of your life.

About the Author G. Richard Shell is director of the Wharton Executive Negotiation Workshop at the Wharton School, where he is professor of legal studies, business ethics and management. His previous book is the award-winning Bargaining for Advantage. Mario Moussa is a faculty member at the Wharton School and a principal of CFAR Inc., a management consulting firm.

Giving Notice

by Freada Kapor Klein

(Jossey-Bass, 275 Pages)

A groundbreaking book that offers approaches for changing the hidden biases in the workplace

This is an eye-opening examination of the causes and dynamics of bias in the workplace, offering a psychological, political, and societal analysis of the actual cost of bias to the bottom line. The authors make the hurdles that women and minorities face in the workplace as personal to the reader as they are to those who face them. Giving Notice is filled with sensible approaches for solving the current imbalance and challenges us to rethink unconscious ideas about stereotypes and commonly accepted business practices.

Freada Kapor Klein (San Francisco, CA) is an internationally noted consultant and diversity expert. She has been quoted in the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, and on the Today show, Nightline, and NBC Nightly News.

Giving Notice

by Freada Kapor Klein

(Jossey-Bass, 275 Pages)

A groundbreaking book that offers approaches for changing the hidden biases in the workplace

This is an eye-opening examination of the causes and dynamics of bias in the workplace, offering a psychological, political, and societal analysis of the actual cost of bias to the bottom line. The authors make the hurdles that women and minorities face in the workplace as personal to the reader as they are to those who face them. Giving Notice is filled with sensible approaches for solving the current imbalance and challenges us to rethink unconscious ideas about stereotypes and commonly accepted business practices.

Freada Kapor Klein (San Francisco, CA) is an internationally noted consultant and diversity expert. She has been quoted in the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, and on the Today show, Nightline, and NBC Nightly News.

Guinness

by Bill Yenne

(Wiley, 250 Pages)

For millions of beer lovers the world over, a properly poured pint of Guinness Stout is as close to perfection as beer gets. Each year, fans of the legendary black liquidation enjoy two billion pints of the beer known for its distinctive creamy head and rich drinkability. Ireland's most famous export, Guinness Stout--and the people who have brewed it--hold a unique place in the history of beer, business, and Ireland itself.

They say that good things come to those who wait. When you wait on a perfectly poured pint of Guinness Stout, you know you're getting something good. It's more than just a pint of beer; it's a mouthwatering visual presentation of the quality and taste you're about to enjoy. And millions wait patiently for their pint every day. To find out why, famed beer and beverage writer Bill Yenne talks to everyone from Guinness's master brewer to typical pubgoers about the beer they hold dear. Whatever magic makes it so delicious, it's powerful enough to soothe the souls of beer lovers from Dublin to Boston to Buenos Aires to Lagos, and everywhere in between.

But Guinness is more than a delicious beverage, it's also the name of the remarkable family of brewers and entrepreneurs whose story is worthy of legend, and who occupy a prominent place in Irish history. In Guinness, Yenne traces the 250-year tale of the family and its namesake beer. Beginning with Arthur Guinness, the entrepreneur patriarch who first began brewing at St. James's Gate, Dublin, in 1759, the story follows succeeding generations of the Guinness family through the years. Yenne follows not just the fortunes of the family Guinness, but also the development of the brand and the beer--from Arthur's earliest porter to the beer that is enjoyed in 150 countries today.

For Guinness aficionados, this tale offers an inside look at a legendary brewing company and the craftsmanship and pride that go into every keg. For anyone who hopes to keep their business vibrant and dynamic for the next few centuries, the book offers important lessons on continuity, quality, and innovation. For everyone who loves a good beer story, Guinness offers a perfect pint more than two centuries in the pouring.

Guinness

by Bill Yenne

(Wiley, 250 Pages)

For millions of beer lovers the world over, a properly poured pint of Guinness Stout is as close to perfection as beer gets. Each year, fans of the legendary black liquidation enjoy two billion pints of the beer known for its distinctive creamy head and rich drinkability. Ireland's most famous export, Guinness Stout--and the people who have brewed it--hold a unique place in the history of beer, business, and Ireland itself.

They say that good things come to those who wait. When you wait on a perfectly poured pint of Guinness Stout, you know you're getting something good. It's more than just a pint of beer; it's a mouthwatering visual presentation of the quality and taste you're about to enjoy. And millions wait patiently for their pint every day. To find out why, famed beer and beverage writer Bill Yenne talks to everyone from Guinness's master brewer to typical pubgoers about the beer they hold dear. Whatever magic makes it so delicious, it's powerful enough to soothe the souls of beer lovers from Dublin to Boston to Buenos Aires to Lagos, and everywhere in between.

But Guinness is more than a delicious beverage, it's also the name of the remarkable family of brewers and entrepreneurs whose story is worthy of legend, and who occupy a prominent place in Irish history. In Guinness, Yenne traces the 250-year tale of the family and its namesake beer. Beginning with Arthur Guinness, the entrepreneur patriarch who first began brewing at St. James's Gate, Dublin, in 1759, the story follows succeeding generations of the Guinness family through the years. Yenne follows not just the fortunes of the family Guinness, but also the development of the brand and the beer--from Arthur's earliest porter to the beer that is enjoyed in 150 countries today.

For Guinness aficionados, this tale offers an inside look at a legendary brewing company and the craftsmanship and pride that go into every keg. For anyone who hopes to keep their business vibrant and dynamic for the next few centuries, the book offers important lessons on continuity, quality, and innovation. For everyone who loves a good beer story, Guinness offers a perfect pint more than two centuries in the pouring.

The Hiring Secrets of The NFL

by Isaac Cheifetz

(Davies-Black Publishing, 120 Pages)

Sports metaphors speak the language of business--whether describing the unbridled arrogance of eccentrics, the overpriced payouts for underperforming stars, or the need for fierce competition, team work, and strategic alignment. For every manager and human resource professional searching for today's best and brightest, Hiring Secrets of the NFL sets out an entertaining new rule book for improving the efficiency, speed, and results of corporate hiring to recruit and retain talent like a Super Bowl winner.

The Hiring Secrets of The NFL

by Isaac Cheifetz

(Davies-Black Publishing, 120 Pages)

Sports metaphors speak the language of business--whether describing the unbridled arrogance of eccentrics, the overpriced payouts for underperforming stars, or the need for fierce competition, team work, and strategic alignment. For every manager and human resource professional searching for today's best and brightest, Hiring Secrets of the NFL sets out an entertaining new rule book for improving the efficiency, speed, and results of corporate hiring to recruit and retain talent like a Super Bowl winner.

No Man's Land

by Doug Tatum

(Portfolio, 256 Pages)

If starting a company is difficult, leading a company once the business has caught fire is infinitely more so. Thousands each year approach the dangerous transition that Doug Tatum calls No Man’s Land—when they are too big to be considered small but still too small to be considered big.

Rapid growth is every entrepreneur’s dream, but it never comes easily and is usually rife with dilemmas. During No Man’s Land, as in human adolescence, such growth should spark self- discovery, acquired discipline, and positive but difficult transition. Unfortunately, it often becomes an agonizing battle between the natural tendencies of a lonely entrepreneur and certain immutable laws of growth. The result is confusion, frustration, stagnation, loss of employee morale, and, at worst, financial failure.

Sounds pretty bleak. The good news is that Doug Tatum knows exactly what it takes to get through No Man’s Land: a map, a high place from which to orient yourself, and navigational rules to help you track your progress. And these tools are here in this book.

Through case studies and stories of successes and failures, No Man’s Land will help you learn how to:
* Align your growing company with its market.
* Execute the necessary changes in your management.
* Confirm that your financial model is scalable.
* Attract money and make smart decisions about financing your business.

If you’re an entrepreneur, this book will help you make your company all it can be and all you want it to be. It will prepare you for a ride that just might be wilder than you ever imagined.

The Cult of the Amateur

by Andrew Keen

(Bantam Dell Pub Group, 240 Pages)

Amateur hour has arrived, and the audience is running the show.

In a hard-hitting and provocative polemic, Silicon Valley insider and pundit Andrew Keen exposes the grave consequences of today’s new participatory Web 2.0 and reveals how it threatens our values, economy, and ultimately the very innovation and creativity that forms the fabric of American achievement.

Our most valued cultural institutions, Keen warns—our professional newspapers, magazines, music, and movies—are being overtaken by an avalanche of amateur, user-generated free content. Advertising revenue is being siphoned off by free classified ads on sites like Craigslist; television networks are under attack from free user-generated programming on YouTube and the like; file-sharing and digital piracy have devastated the multibillion-dollar music business and threaten to undermine our movie industry. Worse, Keen claims, our “cut-and-paste” online culture—in which intellectual property is freely swapped, downloaded, remashed, and aggregated—threatens over 200 years of copyright protection and intellectual property rights, robbing artists, authors, journalists, musicians, editors, and producers of the fruits of their creative labors.

In today’s self-broadcasting culture, where amateurism is celebrated and anyone with an opinion, however ill-informed, can publish a blog, post a video on YouTube, or change an entry on Wikipedia, the distinction between trained expert and uninformed amateur becomes dangerously blurred. When anonymous bloggers and videographers, unconstrained by professional standards or editorial filters, can alter the public debate and manipulate public opinion, truth becomes a commodity to be bought, sold, packaged, and reinvented.

The very anonymity that the Web 2.0 offers calls into question the reliability of the information we receive and creates an environment in which sexual predators and identity thieves can roam free. While no Luddite—Keen pioneered several Internet startups himself—he urges us to consider the consequences of blindly supporting a culture that endorses plagiarism and piracy and that fundamentally weakens traditional media and creative institutions.

Offering concrete solutions on how we can reign in the free-wheeling, narcissistic atmosphere that pervades the Web, THE CULT OF THE AMATEUR is a wake-up call to each and every one of us.

Smart World

by Richard Ogle

(Harvard Business School Press, 352 Pages)

Since ancient times, people have believed that breakthrough ideas come from the brains of geniuses with awesome rational powers. In recent years, however, the paradigm has begun to shift toward the notion that the source of creativity lies “out there,� in the network of connections between people and ideas.

In this provocative book, Richard Ogle crystallizes the nature of this shift, and boldly outlines “a new science of ideas.� The key resides in what he calls “idea-spaces,� a set of nodes in a network of people (and their ideas) that cohere and take on a distinctive set of characteristics leading to the generation of breakthrough ideas. These spaces are governed by nine laws--illuminated in individual chapters with fascinating stories of dramatic breakthroughs in science, business, and art.

Smart World will change forever the way we think about creativity and innovation

Karma Queens, Geek Gods, and Innerpreneurs

by Ron Rentel

(McGraw-Hill, 256 Pages)

What really makes consumers tick?

It's a question every marketer, innovator, entrepreneur, or trend-watcher strives to answer-especially in an age when certain types of consumers are increasingly instrumental in shaping national and even global buying habits.

Karma Queens, Geek Gods and Innerpreneurs is your hands-on guide to getting inside the minds of the people who are setting the trends in art, music, technology, fashion, health, and every kind of consumer product and service. Based on thousands of hours of consumer research conducted by Consumer Eyes, a prominent New York-based marketing firm, this book uncovers nine influential consumer types and reveals how to connect with them, market to them, and create the products that will not only win them over, but their entire social networks as well!

Consumer Eyes founder Ron Rentel takes an entertaining yet serious look at today's most emblematic consumers, analyzing everything from the products they buy, to the activities they enjoy, to the behaviors and attitudes they exhibit. You'll meet such real-life characters as:

• Karma Queens-women of a certain age who combine a desire to be in harmony with the universe with an appreciation of material pleasures
• Parentocrats-who act out of love to assure their kids security and happiness, yet often deny them the classical joys of childhood
• Denim Dads-for whom family involvement means more than climbing the corporate ladder
• Innerpreneurs-chief managers of their own “brand,” they find their inspiration within themselves

  By using C-Types-rich, three-dimensional consumer portraits combining quantifiable data with expressions of personality-Rentel identifies and illuminates the consumers who set the trends. He not only helps you understand Karma Queens, Geek Gods and other consumer types on a deeper level in order to reach them more effectively in your marketing and advertising, he also offers fresh insight into managing your brand and your business.

  

Voice Of Authority

by Dianna Booher

(McGraw-Hill, 208 Pages)

One of the world's leading communication experts helps readers find their leadership voice

Dianna Booher has helped thousands of people to develop communication skills. Now she distills years of experience and research into 10 key strategies that will help you elevate your communication to the next level. By examining specific styles that work and don't work, you'll learn how to speak like a leader in every situation. Ten rules including “be clear, be consistent, be thorough, and demonstrate confidence”-give you the language to communicate at your best with colleagues, bosses, and clients.