Business Genius

Versace. The very name conjures up images of outrageous glamour and bold sexuality, opulence and daring. All of course true, but only half the story. Versace is also the legacy of a great creative genius from a poor, backward part of southern Italy who transformed the fashion world through his intuitive understanding of both women and how a changing culture influenced the way they wanted to dress. House of Versace shows how Gianni Versace, with his flamboyant sister Donatella at his side, combined his virtuosic talent and extraordinary ambition to help create celebrity culture.

In Flip Thinking, Berthold Gunster, the founder of the Dutch omdenken—or flip thinking—philosophy, presents fifteen strategies to transform your thinking away from limitations and negativities and towards possibilities and opportunities. From disrupting (turn all the rules upside down) to flaunting (play up what you want to hide) and from importing (get the enemy on board) to amplifying (do more of what works), Gunster's strategies and stories will have you approaching even the most challenging problems—from an annoying neighbor to an angry colleague to an unhappy partner—in a whole new way.

Greatness lies within us all, but so few of us ever reach a fraction of our potential, much less achieving the whole deal. It’s time to break the mold and reach your greatness with one small step a day. One tiny change can cause ripples that will improve your life forever. Improve your life by taking control of your habits, do things differently than before, and see the power of every small daily commitment you make to be one percent better than before. Make your first small commitment to yourself and choose 1% Better....

An entertaining, fact-filled defense of the nearly universal tendency to procrastinate, drawing on the stories of history's greatest delayers, and on the work of psychologists, philosophers, and behavioral economists to explain why we put off what we're supposed to be doing and why we shouldn't feel so bad about it.

In the tradition of A Whole New Mind and The War of Art, graffiti artist and corporate thought leader Erik Wahl explores the power of creativity to achieve superior performance. Somehow we've come to believe that creativity is reserved for the chosen few: the poets, the painters, the writers. The truth is creativity is in all of us and re-discovering it is the key to unlocking your fullest potential.

I had a feeling we would meet like this. I am going to take a wild guess that you are a wise human being trying to decide whether or not this book is for real.

With a spectacular array of true stories and case studies of the hidden benefits of mess, A Perfect Mess overturns the accepted wisdom that tight schedules, organization, neatness, and consistency are the keys to success.

There is a Principle of Power in every person. By the intelligent use and direction of this principle, man can develop his own mental faculties. Man has an inherent power by which he may grow in whatsoever direction he pleases, and there does not appear to be any limit to the possibilities of his growth.

If you exchange goods for dollar bills, you have inventory. Salons that sell shampoo have inventory. Interior design stores that sell lamps and rugs have inventory. Subscription box businesses that send out notepads each month have inventory. Coffee shops that sell bags of coffee beans have inventory. If you are an inventory-based business, it is quite possibly your biggest asset. It is time for you to become an inventory genius. In this book by Ciara Stockeland, you will discover the simple way to use your inventory to create more profit and keep more cash....

Greatness comes from acting on purpose, and there is a generation of South Africans solving problems for the future. Learn how Pratley beat Armstrong to the moon, how a former Eskom quantity surveyor capitalised on Britain’s obsession with meerkats to create the UK’s most visible price comparison website, how to take a Mediterranean-style food concept to the Mediterranean, and how a device designed to beat diamond smuggling made it from the set of a popular US hospital drama into emergency rooms and pathology labs across the US.

Learn to release gifts and talents you never knew you had and how to use them to become hugely successful, happy, and even wealthy. Discover how it is your daily standards and authenticity that determine your success or failure with your goals.

The everyday moments of creative work can be rife with fear and fraught with risk. Bringing ideas into reality takes courage! In Drawing on Courage, designer, entrepreneur, and d.school teaching fellow Ashish Goel examines what it takes to be courageous. Speaking on real-world situations with humor and insight, Goel explains the four stages of every courage journey: fear, values, action, and change. And he helps you develop the skills you need to master each stage (even if it scares you).

The creative mode in your brain is like a butterfly. It's beautiful and erratic, hard to catch, and highly valued as a result. If you want to capture it, you need a net. Enter the executive mode, the task-oriented network in your brain that helps you tie your shoes, run a meeting, or pitch a client. To succeed, you need both modes to work together - your inner butterfly to be active and free, but your inner net to be ready to spring at the right time and create that "aha!" moment. But is there any way to trigger these insights, beyond dumb luck?

In a book that Doris Kearns Goodwin has called "brilliantly crafted to draw leadership lessons from history", Philip Barlag uses dramatic and colorful incidents from Caesar's career to illustrate what modern leaders can learn from him. Central to Barlag's argument is the distinction between power and force. When leading his own organization, Caesar never used brute force to motivate his followers.

Who are the greatest innovators in the world? You're probably thinking Steve Jobs, Thomas Edison, and Henry Ford - the usual suspects.

This book isn't about them. It's about people who are just as innovative, entrepreneurial, and visionary as the Jobses, Edisons, and Fords of the world, except they're not in Silicon Valley. They're in the street markets of Sao Paulo and Guangzhou, and the rubbish dumps of Lagos. They are pirates, slum dwellers, computer hackers, dissidents, and inner city gang members.

When you’re building something that’s never been done before, there’s no roadmap. You’re responsible for meeting the needs of your team, clients, and partners…and of course, your investors and board members. You’re juggling growth targets, internal misalignment, and raising capital—often all at once. And the whole time, you’re deeply aware of the pressure from all sides. Your drive to push forward—to build, solve, and create—is unstoppable, but it can often feel like everything is on your shoulders, and you’re hiking up a steep mountain buried in a fog.

How do people come up with truly original ideas? The answer is to think outside the box - way outside. For the past decade, Cyril Bouquet, Jean-Louis Barsoux, and Michael Wade, professors of innovation and strategy at IMD Business School, have studied inventors, scientists, doctors, entrepreneurs, and artists. These people, or “aliens,” as the authors call them, are able to make leaps of creativity, and use five patterns of thinking that distinguish them from the rest of us.

Leadership begins from within. It is defined by a mindset, rather than a title or role. Leadership that stems from deep self-knowledge is magnetic, dynamic, and authentic. The challenge is knowing how to access the genius within each of us and find peace through self-knowledge, so that we can embody true leadership. When we accomplish this, leading feels easy and natural. Others follow and engage because the genuine connection that humans crave happens when we achieve alignment within ourselves.

What really distinguishes the people who literally change the world - those creative geniuses who give us one breakthrough after another? What differentiates Marie Curie or Elon Musk from the merely creative, the many one-hit wonders among us? Melissa Schilling, one of the world's leading experts on innovation, invites us into the lives of eight people - Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, Elon Musk, Dean Kamen, Nikola Tesla, Marie Curie, Thomas Edison, and Steve Jobs - to identify the traits and experiences that drove them to make spectacular breakthroughs, over and over again.

Amidst the deluge of advice for businesspeople, there lies an overlooked tool, a key to thriving in today's fast-paced, unpredictable environment: improvisation. In Getting to "Yes And" veteran improv performer, university professor, CEO, and consultant Bob Kulhan unpacks a form of mental agility with powers far beyond the entertainment value of comedy troupes.