Small Economics

Start-Up Nation addresses the trillion dollar question: How is it that Israel - a country of 7.1 million, only 60 years old, surrounded by enemies, in a constant state of war since its founding, with no natural resources - produces more start-up companies than large, peaceful, and stable nations like Japan, China, India, Korea, Canada, and the UK?

Seeing What's Next is a framework for predicting industry winners and losers. Every day, individuals take action based on how they believe innovation will change industries. Yet these beliefs are largely based on guesswork and incomplete data, and can lead to costly errors in judgment. Internationally renowned innovation expert Clayton M. Christensen and his research partners, Scott D. Anthony and Erik A. Roth, present this guide for predicting outcomes in the evolution of any industry.

The law of market failure: Most new products will fail in the market, even if competently executed.

There is an entrenched relationship between the consulting industry and the way business and government are managed today that must change. Mariana Mazzucato and Rosie Collington show that our economies’ reliance on companies such as McKinsey & Company, Boston Consulting Group, Bain & Company, PwC, Deloitte, KPMG, and EY stunts innovation, obfuscates corporate and political accountability, and impedes our collective mission of halting climate breakdown. Mazzucato and Collington argue for building a new system in which public and private sectors work innovatively for the common good.

The leisure class has been replaced by a new elite. Highly educated and defined by cultural capital rather than income bracket, these individuals earnestly buy organic, carry NPR tote bags, and breast-feed their babies. They care about discreet, inconspicuous consumption. In The Sum of Small Things, Elizabeth Currid-Halkett dubs this segment of society "the aspirational class" and discusses how, through deft decisions about education, health, parenting, and retirement, the aspirational class deepens the ever-wider class divide.

In this sharp and controversial international best seller, an award-winning economist debunks the pervasive myth that the government is sluggish and inept, and at odds with a dynamic private sector. She reveals in detailed case studies that the opposite is true: The state is, and has been, our boldest and most valuable innovator. Denying this history is leading us down the wrong path. A select few get credit for what is an intensely collective effort, and the US government has started disinvesting from innovation.

An innovative trend combining technology with economics is unraveling behemoth industries - including corporations, banks, farms, media conglomerates, energy systems, governments, and schools - that have long dominated business and society. Size and scale have become a liability. A new generation of upstarts is using artificial intelligence to automate tasks that once required expensive investment, and "renting" technology platforms to build businesses for hyper-focused markets, enabling them to grow big without the bloat of giant organizations.

Everyone knew it was crazy to try to extract oil and natural gas buried in shale rock deep below the ground. Everyone, that is, except a few reckless wildcatters - who risked their careers to prove the world wrong. Things looked grim for American energy in 2006. Oil production was in steep decline and natural gas was hard to find. The Iraq War threatened the nation’s already tenuous relations with the Middle East. China was rapidly industrializing and competing for resources.

For 80 years, Dale Carnegie & Associates, Inc., has been training people to get the most out of what they put into their careers. The Leader in You builds on the fundamentals of human relationships to help you develop your own innate leadership skills. Learn basic techniques and find the leader in you to succeed.

In his previous book, The Elusive Quest for Growth, William Easterly criticized the utter ineffectiveness of Western organizations to mitigate global poverty, and he was promptly fired by his then-employer, the World Bank. The White Man's Burden is his widely anticipated counterpunch - a brilliant and blistering indictment of the West's economic policies for the world's poor.

Having lived nearly her entire life below the poverty line before going on to attain wealth and success as an entrepreneur and investor, Arlan Hamilton knows that money is power—but not for the reasons most people believe. Money is power, she says, because it provides us with options: to pursue our passions, take risks, and change our situation in life.

David Cohen and Brad Feld, leading advocates for entrepreneurs and startups, team up to provide first-time entrepreneurs with the tools, insights, and experiences to help them do more faster. The authors share their decades of experience working with thousands of startup founders and have enlisted the advice of dozens of Techstars startup founders and mentors. Contributors include Tim Ferriss, Eric Ries, Matt Mullenweg (WordPress), Isaac Saldana (SendGrid), and other successful entrepreneurs.

Many of the most dynamic public companies, from Alibaba to Facebook to Visa, and the most valuable start-ups, such as Airbnb and Uber, are matchmakers that connect one group of customers with another group of customers. Economists call matchmakers multisided platforms because they provide physical or virtual platforms for multiple groups to get together. Dating sites connect people with potential matches, for example, and ride-sharing apps do the same for drivers and riders.

Today, there are three Americas. At one extreme are the brain hubs with workers who are among the most productive, creative, and best-paid on the planet. At the other extreme are former manufacturing capitals that are rapidly losing jobs and residents. The rest of America could go either way. For the past 30 years, the three Americas have been growing apart at an accelerating rate. This divergence is one the most important developments in the history of the US and is reshaping the very fabric of our society. But the winners and losers aren't necessarily who you'd expect.

There can be no doubt about the credentials of Bill George, former Chairman and CEO of Medtronic, who has been named one of Business Week's "Top 25 Managers". In Authentic Leadership, George lays out his plan for improving corporate America's flaws through responsible leadership.

We are in the midst of a startup revolution. The growth and proliferation of innovation-driven startup activity is profound, unprecedented, and global in scope. Today, it is understood that communities of support and knowledge-sharing go along with other resources. The importance of collaboration and a long-term commitment has gained wider acceptance. The Startup Community Way explores what makes startup communities thrive and how to improve collaboration in these rapidly evolving, complex environments.

The second edition of Making Money is Killing Your Business is built on profoundly simple ideas that have been around forever and ignored as being too simple to work. Chuck Blakeman has learned the hard way that profound things are always simple. Practical tools such as the Four Building Blocks, Seven Stages of Business Ownership, Business Owner's Game, Freedom Mapping, 2-Page Strategic Plan, Lifetime Goals and many others will revolutionize any business complexity for effectiveness.

7 Secrets of Persuasion is the first book to take the latest scientific insights about the mind and apply them to the art of persuasion. It directly translates the revolution in neuroscience that has occurred over the last 40 years into practical new techniques for effective persuasion.

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.

From Uber to the presidential debates, the gig economy has been dominating the headlines, and for good reason. Today, more than a third of Americans are working in the gig economy - mixing together short-term jobs, contract work, and freelance assignments. For those who've figured out the formula, life has never been better! The Gig Economy is your guide to this uncertain but ultimately rewarding world. Succeeding in it starts with shifting gears to recognize that only you control your future.