Future Business

We all know a visionary leader when we see one. They're bold and prophetic and at the same time pragmatic. They don't just promote change - they drive it, while inspiring and mobilizing others to do the same. Visionaries like Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos possess a host of innate qualities that make them extraordinary, but what truly sets them apart is their ability to turn vision into action. Here, Innosight's Mark W. Johnson and Josh Suskewicz introduce a new way of thinking and managing, called "future-back", that enables any manager to become a practical visionary.

In The Compass and the Coin: The Purpose-Driven Future of Business, George Guibal and Shaun Pearce present a powerful guide for leaders who want to align profitability with purpose. Through compelling case studies, actionable frameworks, and practical tools, this book highlights how purpose-driven organizations outperform competitors, attract top talent, and create lasting positive impact. From crafting a mission to embedding purpose into strategy, overcoming cultural resistance, and measuring success, this is a must-listen for anyone ready to shape the future of business.

For years, consumers have been promised a simple, carefree digital future. We could live, work, learn, and play from the comforts of our homes, and have whatever we desire brought to our door with the flick of a finger. Instant communication would bring us together. Technological convenience would give us more time to focus on what really mattered. When the pandemic hit, that future transformed into the present, almost overnight. And the reviews aren't great.

How did Ford Motors use Lean development to pull off one of the most impressive corporate turnarounds in history? Largely by avoiding the mistakes that so many companies make when in a death spiral. They looked beyond manufacturing efficiency to change the very fundamentals of how they developed vehicles. In Designing the Future, Lean product development expert James Morgan and world-renowned Lean guru Jeffrey K. Liker reveal why so many companies have achieved only moderate success with Lean in operations, with a limited impact on their overall business.

If you’re like most people, thinking about tomorrow makes you anxious. You may have dreams of what you want to do or where you want to be in the next few months, years, or decade, but you’re fearful because you don’t know what may await. Unfortunately, this apprehension affects how you make decisions today - the kind of decisions that will impact your life tomorrow.

We are in the midst of one of the greatest status revolutions ever, and it's a brave new world indeed. Who better to guide us through it than Michael Lewis, whose subversive, trenchant humor is the perfect match to his subject matter. Here is an audiobook as fresh as tomorrow's headlines, and as entertaining as its best selling predecessors.

New edition, expanded and updated. With the release of Theory U almost 10 years ago, Otto Scharmer set in motion a revolution in thought. Scharmer explained that what we pay attention to and how we pay attention is key to what we create. What prevents us from attending to situations more effectively is that we aren't fully aware of and in touch with the inner place from which attention and intention originate.

Steve Case was on the leading edge of the Internet revolution when he cofounded AOL in 1991. He was an entrepreneur in a business that hadn't even been invented, yet he saw how significantly his efforts could change not only America but the world. In The Third Wave, Case uses his insights garnered from nearly four decades of working as an innovator, investor, and businessperson to chart a path for future visionaries.

How do you tell a real trend from the merely trendy? How, for example, will a technology—like artificial intelligence, machine learning, self-driving cars, biohacking, bots, and the Internet of Things—affect us, our businesses, and workplaces? How will it eventually change the way we live, work, play, and think—and how should we prepare for it now? In The Signals Are Talking, noted futurist Amy Webb shows us how to analyze the "true signals" and land on the right side of disruption.

Since the release of Doug Stephens’ first book, The Retail Revival, change in the global retail sector has accelerated beyond even the boldest forecasts. As predicted, online giants like Amazon and Alibaba.com are growing at a dizzying pace. Hundreds of well-known brick-and-mortar retailers have closed their doors, and brands and retailers across categories are struggling to understand the shifting needs and expectations of a new consumer.

In The End of Power, award-winning columnist and former Foreign Policy editor Moisés Naím illuminates the struggle between once-dominant megaplayers and the new micropowers challenging them in every field of human endeavor. Drawing on provocative, original research and a lifetime of experience in global affairs, Naím explains how the end of power is reconfiguring our world.

How would you like to be the center of a massive outpouring of wealth, innovation, success, and prosperity... the force behind a wave of abundance that rolls over your friends, family, and associates? Now you can be! Despite what the pessimists say, we live in an era of exponential growth and abundance. Astonishing new technologies are driving a new world where the unimaginable is being imagined and turned into reality.

A scathing, sardonic exploration of Silicon Valley tech culture, laying bare the greed, hubris, and retrograde politics of an industry that aspires to radically transform society for its own benefit. This enlightening audiobook is a must-listen for anyone interested or involved in the tech industry. At the height of the start-up boom, journalist Corey Pein set out for Silicon Valley with little more than a smartphone and his wits. His goal: to learn how such an overhyped industry could possibly sustain itself as long as it has.

The world is changing faster and faster because of the internet and technology. The rigid models of leadership and long-standing rules of engagement and power we’ve come to count upon for generations are no longer reliable in this new hyper-connected and digitally-charged world we find ourselves in. This world is being fueled by openness, connection, transparency and shared power. The future of leadership mandates new levels of personal courage, self-awareness, and authenticity. To be blunt, navigating this new world can be incredibly confusing and frustrating.

Denise Hamilton has always believed in the power and promise of a word she learned as a schoolgirl: “indivisible.” In her groundbreaking debut, she challenges listeners to move beyond current notions of diversity and inclusion to build communities, workplaces, and relationships that live up to that word. She urges us to reexamine long-held beliefs and habits and to dismantle hierarchies that shape our current society. If we want to repair the fraying stitches that bind us together, if we want to build a truly close-knit collective, we cannot settle for our present approach.

In an era marked by increasing profiteering and inequality, The Ethical Imperative offers a compelling alternative vision-one where companies champion the collective prosperity of employees, shareholders, and communities.

The digital age we live in is as transformative as the Industrial Revolution, and Joshua Cooper Ramo explains how to survive. If you find yourself longing for a disconnected world where information is not always at your fingertips, you may eventually be as useful as the carriage maker post-Henry Ford. It's practically impossible to know where the marriage of imagination and technology will take us (sorry, Betamax and Kodak), and the only certainty is that in the networked world we will only become more intertwined.

Sustainability is rocking the business world as profoundly as any global trend of the past, from electrification to digitalization. But unlike previous revolutions, this one is being driven by consumers, for whom environmentally sound practices matter as much as price, quality, and brand. In The Demand Revolution, Andreas von der Gathen, Nicolai Broby Eckert, and Caroline Kastbjerg offer a strategic framework for winning these consumers—and taking advantage of the vast commercial opportunity presented by sustainability as the first demand-driven, transformative megatrend.

The Apples, Amazons and Googles of the next few decades will be biotech companies. The tech companies of the last few years have changed how we do things but the businesses driving the biotech revolution are about making life better. These companies will solve many of our most intractable problems: cancer, dementia, diabetes, elderly care, mental health challenges, even power generation and agricultural production. The audiobook explains what biotech is, what is coming next, and in a final section, how interested investors can profit from it.

The author of the acclaimed New York Times best seller The Next 100 Years now focuses his geopolitical forecasting acumen on the next decade and the imminent events and challenges that will test America and the world, specifically addressing the skills that will be required by the decade’s leaders. The next 10 years will be a time of massive transition. In The Next Decade, George Friedman offers listeners a pro­vocative and endlessly fascinating prognosis for the immedi­ate future.