Business Research

For the last several years Adm. James Stavridis and his co-author, R. Manning Ancell, have surveyed over 200 active and retired four-star military officers about their reading habits and favorite books, asking each for a list of titles that strongly influenced their leadership skills and provided them with special insights that helped propel them to success in spite of the many demanding challenges they faced. The Leader's Bookshelf synthesizes their responses to identify the top 50 books that can help virtually anyone become a better leader.

“Who else wants to write a book this weekend?” It’s easier than you think! Best-selling author Vic Johnson actually wrote this book in a weekend to prove how easy it is. And he gives you step-by-step detail of everything he did, including the resources he uses to turn out content-rich books in no time at all. How to Write a Book This Weekend is a perfect strategy for first-time book writers who have been discouraged by the thought of pounding out words for months at a time.

If the consumer economy had a sex, it would be female. If the business world had a sex, it would be male. And therein lies the pickle. Women are the engine of the global economy, driving nearly 80 percent of consumer household spending in the United States alone. They hold the purse strings, and when they've got a tight grip on them as they do now, companies must be shrewder than ever to win them over.

Often the decision between a customer choosing you over someone like you is your ability to know exactly what to say, when to say it, and how to make it count. Phil M. Jones has trained more than two million people across five continents and over 50 countries in the lost art of spoken communication. In Exactly What to Say, he delivers the tactics you need to get more of what you want.

The business marketing genius at the forefront of today's entertainment marketing revolution helps corporate America get hip to today's new consumer - the tan generation. When Fortune 500 companies need to reenergize or reinvent a lagging brand, they call Steve Stoute. In addition to marrying cultural icons with blue-chip marketers, Stoute has helped identify and activate a new generation of consumers. He traces how the "tanning" phenomenon raised a generation of black, Hispanic, white, and Asian consumers who have the same "mental complexion".

Psychologists and neuroscientists struggle with how best to interpret human motivation and decision making. The assumption is that below a mental "surface" of conscious awareness lies a deep and complex set of inner beliefs, values, and desires that govern our thoughts, ideas, and actions, and that to know this depth is to know ourselves. In this profoundly original book, behavioral scientist Nick Chater contends just the opposite: Rather than being the plaything of unconscious currents, the brain generates behaviors in the moment based entirely on our past experiences.

The author of the legendary best seller Influence, social psychologist Robert Cialdini, shines a light on effective persuasion and reveals that the secret doesn't lie in the message itself but in the key moment before that message is delivered.

Apply the seven universal elements of powerful stories to dramatically improve how you connect with customers and grow your business through social media channels.

The New Frugality amounts to a paradigm shift in the way we spend and save. The good news is that a frugal lifestyle is one of less waste, lower environmental impact, greater peace of mind, and, over the long run, deeper satisfaction.

Why do some products capture our attention, while others flop? What makes us engage with certain products out of habit? Is there a pattern underlying how technologies hook us? This audiobook introduces listeners to the "Hooked Model", a four-step process companies use to build customer habits. Through consecutive cycles through the hook, successful products reach their ultimate goal of bringing users back repeatedly - without depending on costly advertising or aggressive messaging.

What Retirees Want presents the culmination of 30 years of research by world-famous "Age Wave" expert Ken Dychtwald, PhD, and author and consultant Robert Morison. This entertaining, thought-provoking, and wide-ranging book explains how individuals, businesses, nonprofits, and governments can best prepare for a new era - where the needs and demands of the "Third Age" will set the lifestyle, health, social, marketplace, and political priorities of generations to come.

Today we think statistics are the enemy, numbers used to mislead and confuse us. That’s a mistake, Tim Harford says in The Data Detective. We shouldn’t be suspicious of statistics - we need to understand what they mean and how they can improve our lives: they are, at heart, human behavior seen through the prism of numbers and are often “the only way of grasping much of what is going on around us”.

An introduction for everyone. In this rich, fascinating—surprisingly accessible—introduction, leading expert Eric Siegel reveals how predictive analytics (aka machine learning) works, and how it affects everyone every day. Rather than a "how to" for hands-on techies, the book serves lay listeners and experts alike by covering new case studies and the latest state-of-the-art techniques.

Paco Underhill, the author of the hugely successful Why We Buy and Call of the Mall, reports on the growing importance of women in everybody’s marketplace - what makes a package, product, space, or service “female friendly”. Underhill offers a tour of the world’s marketplace - with shrewd observations and practical applications to help everybody adapt to the new realities.

Behavior change is hard, but O’Mara shows that by adopting strategies that are well-founded in the science of brain and behavior, individuals and organizations can adapt to the demands of the modern world.

Presenting a clear, accessible guide to solving important leadership challenges through human resources-focused and other data analytics, this engaging audiobook tells you how to transform the HR function and overall organizational effectiveness by using data to make decisions grounded in facts vs opinions, identify root causes behind your company's thorniest problems, and move toward a winning, future-focused business strategy.

The ability to write well is a key part of your professional success. From reports and presentations to e-mails and Facebook posts, whether you're a marketer, customer service rep, or manager, being able to write clearly and for the right audience is critical to moving your business forward. The techniques covered in this book will arm you with the skills you need to write better business communications. Inside you'll find: planning each communication; editing and fine-tuning your copy; building your personal brand with communications; writing bids, proposals, and reports; and more.

Richard H. Thaler has spent his career studying the radical notion that the central agents in the economy are humans - predictable, error-prone individuals. Misbehaving is his arresting, frequently hilarious account of the struggle to bring an academic discipline back down to earth - and change the way we think about economics, ourselves, and our world.

Are you making it difficult for your potential customers to buy from you? Today's buyers are overloaded - overwhelmed by too much information and suffering from decision fatigue. Across industries, customers are delaying purchasing decisions or even choosing to stick with the status quo so they can avoid the dreaded "sales process". In response, many sales professionals are overcompensating with behaviors that are either too accommodating or that create high pressure - and alienating potential buyers in the process.

Strategy consultant Robbie Kellman Baxter has been helping companies excel in this business environment for more than a decade. Now, in The Forever Transaction, she reveals all her secrets. Whatever industry you're in, Baxter provides the inspiration, tools, and insight you need to build and execute a business model that will leave your competition in the dust.