Business Politics

Weaving together cutting-edge social science with riveting stories that take us from the front lines of the Volkswagen scandal to backstage at the Oscars, and from deep beneath the Gulf of Mexico to the top of Mount Everest, Chris Clearfield and András Tilcsik explain how the increasing complexity of our systems creates conditions ripe for failure and why our brains and teams can't keep up. They highlight the paradox of progress: Though modern systems have given us new capabilities, they've become vulnerable to surprising meltdowns - and even to corruption and misconduct.

We have entered an age of disruption. Financial collapse, climate change, resource depletion, and a growing gap between rich and poor are but a few of the signs. Otto Scharmer and Katrin Kaufer ask, why do we collectively create results nobody wants? Meeting the challenges of this century requires updating our economic logic and operating system from an obsolete “ego-system” focused entirely on the well-being of oneself to an eco-system awareness that emphasizes the well-being of the whole.

Francesca Gino has been studying rebels in life and in the workplace for more than 15 years. She has discovered that rebels - those who practice "positive deviance" at work - are harder to manage, but they are good for the bottom line: their passion, drive, curiosity, and creativity raise the entire organization to a new level. And she has found that at home, rebels are more engaged partners, parents, and friends. Packed with strategies for embracing rebellion at work and in life, Rebel Talent encourages all of us to rebel against what’s comfortable, so that we can thrive.

China will soon eclipse the United States as the world's largest economy and companies will lose out if they do not know how to invest in China properly. No company has been able to get into China for 3 years. Shaun Rein hasn't left. He's therefore uniquely positioned to advise now that China is opening up again. The Split presents a unique and informed case for why the time is definitely now to capitalize on policy changes and trends in China that will support long-term opportunities for your business.

In this program Denis Waitley combines timeless, winning strategies with fresh insights into the real world of emerging women. Filled with life stories of women who are peak performers and the core principles they share, it is a compass for self-discovery and achievement. These women display a combination of ideas, enthusiasm, and energy for taking initial success to new heights by turning "stress" into "stretch".

When we’re moving at 115 MPH, we rarely see the wall coming. But it comes for all of us and when it does, we grasp for lessons, for meaning, for purpose. Each moment (good or bad) and each win or loss, provides us an opportunity to learn, and if we choose to take it, that opportunity can change our lives - and the world - for the better. The human spirit craves connection. Authenticity. Belonging. Touch. Gratitude. Purpose. We need to make our interactions count.

Like the Rockefellers and the Kennedys, the Kochs are one of the most influential dynasties of the modern age, but they have never been the subject of a major biography... until now. Not long after the death of his father, Charles Koch, then in his early 30s, discovered a letter the family patriarch had written to his sons. "You will receive what now seems to be a large sum of money," Fred Koch cautioned. "It may either be a blessing or a curse."

At age ninety-one, Soros still looms large on the global stage, and yet the man himself is surprisingly little understood. Biographers have attempted to tell the story of George Soros, but no single account of his life can capture his extraordinary, multifaceted character. Now, in this ambitious and revealing new book, Soros's longtime publisher, Peter L. W. Osnos, has assembled an intriguing set of contributors from a variety of different perspectives—public intellectuals, journalists, scholars, and nonprofit leaders—to paint a full picture of the man beyond the media portrayals.

Rajiv J. Shah is no stranger to pulling off the impossible, from helping vaccinate 900 million children at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to a high-pressure race against the clock to stop the spread of Ebola. His secret? A big bets philosophy—the idea that seeking to solve problems rather than make incremental improvements can attract the unlikely partners with the power and know-how to achieve transformational change. Part career sweeping memoir, part inspirational playbook, Big Bets offers a master class in decision-making, leadership, and changing the world one bet at a time.

$uperhubs is a rare, behind-the-scenes look at how the world's most powerful titans, the superhubs, pull the levers of our global financial system. Combining insider's knowledge with principles of network science, Sandra Navidi offers a startling new perspective on how superhubs build their powerful networks and how their decisions impact all our lives. $uperhubs reveals what happens at the exclusive, invitation-only platforms - the World Economic Forum in Davos, the meetings of the International Monetary Fund, think tanks....

Propaganda, an influential book written by Edward L. Bernays in 1928, incorporated the literature from social science and psychological manipulation into an examination of the techniques of public communication. Propaganda explored the psychology behind manipulating masses and the ability to use symbolic action and propaganda to influence politics, effect social change, and lobby for gender and racial equality.

For the last 10 years, psychologist Sam Gosling has been studying how people project (and protect) their inner selves. By exploring our private worlds (desks, bedrooms, even our clothes and our cars), he shows not only how we showcase our personalities in unexpected - and unplanned - ways, but also how we create personality in the first place, communicate it to others, and interpret the world around us.

Overwhelmed. Do you wake up in the morning already feeling behind? Does the pressure of keeping it all together make you feel anxious and irritable? Tanya Dalton, CEO and productivity expert, offers you a liberating shift in perspective: Feeling overwhelmed isn't the result of having too much to do - it's from not knowing where to start. Doing less might seem counterintuitive, but doing less is more productive, because you’re concentrating on the work you actually want to be doing.

Compiled more than 2,000 years ago by a mysterious warrior-philosopher, The Art of War is still perhaps the most prestigious and influential book of strategy in the world. As a study of the anatomy of organizations in conflict, The Art of War applies to competition and conflict in general, on every level from the interpersonal to the international.

What do Google, Snapchat, Tinder, Amazon, and Uber have in common, besides soaring market share? They're platforms - a new business model that has quietly become the only game in town. A platform, by definition, creates value by facilitating an exchange between two or more interdependent groups. So, rather than making things, they simply connect people. The advent of mobile computing and its ubiquitous connectivity have forever altered how we interact with each other. Yet, few people truly grasp the radical structural shifts of the last 10 years.

Few people have made decisions as momentous as Eisenhower, nor has one person had to make such a varied range of them. From D-Day to Little Rock, from the Korean War to Cold War crises, from the Red Scare to the Missile Gap controversies, he was able to give our country eight years of peace and prosperity by relying on a core set of principles. These were informed by his heritage and upbringing, his strong character and his personal discipline, but he also avoided making himself the center of things. He tried to be the calmest man in the room, not the loudest.

Best selling author Po Bronson began work on What Should I Do with My Life? at a time when he was asking himself that very question. For answers, he crossed the landscape of America to find people who have struggled to unearth their true calling - people of all ages, classes, and professions who have found fulfillment: those who fought with the seduction of money, intensity, and novelty and overcame their allure; those who broke away from the chorus to learn the sound of their own voice.

Financial collapses - whether of the junk bond market, the Internet bubble, or the highly leveraged housing market-are often explained as the inevitable result of market cycles: What goes up must come down. In Liquidated, Karen Ho punctures the aura of the abstract, all-powerful market to show how financial markets, and particularly booms and busts, are constructed.

Welcome to the age of behavioral addiction - an age in which half of the American population is addicted to at least one behavior. We obsess over our emails, Instagram likes, and Facebook feeds; we binge on TV episodes and YouTube videos; we work longer hours each year; and we spend an average of three hours each day using our smartphones. Half of us would rather suffer a broken bone than a broken phone, and Millennial kids spend so much time in front of screens that they struggle to interact with real, live humans.

Internationally revered cultural anthropologist and marketing expert Clotaire Rapaille reveals for the first time the techniques he has used to improve profitability and practices for dozens of Fortune 100 companies. His groundbreaking revelations shed light not just on business but on the way every human being acts and lives around the world.