Business & Economics

This book offers a comprehensive analysis of new forces which are changing the way in which we buy products and experience brands. It includes in-depth interviews with some of the most innovative players–from John Lewis in the UK, to Nike and Patagonia in the US–in the hope of drawing out key learning points for the rest of the industry, across the globe. It also provides essential guidelines for governments, as they strive to rebuild society in the wake of recent catastrophes.

The retail industry, with which we have all grown up, has been devastated by the twin effects of the internet and the Coronavirus lockdown. Huge numbers of prestigious brands have gone under, or are a shadow of their former selves. The world economy has gone into deep recession, with reduced employment and incomes across broad swathes of society. Many discretionary products have simply become too expensive for ordinary people to buy on a regular basis. High streets and shopping malls lie half empty, causing a vacuum at the core of our societies.

There is an urgent need to regenerate our local shopping centers, in order to create new hope in depressed areas. So how can retailers and brands respond to this crisis? Fortunately, new shoots of recovery are emerging from the wreckage of the old order–new brands, new technology, new ways of providing value, and new and innovative methods of creating excitement to draw in consumers, all of which have the potential to kick-start the retail economy.

For one hundred years, retail was designed for the car―buildings and malls to travel to. Now it is designed for the mobile smart device―for consumers to travel with. In a world with an overabundance of material goods, consumer values and the drivers of retail success are being radically redefined. The smartphone has created a world of limitless expectation and logistical possibility: What will the retail experience look like in ten, twenty, or even fifty years―and how should all companies be preparing?

Industry experts Michael Dart and Robin Lewis identify the major trends in our economy that will shape the future of retail and determine who wins. Imagine aworld where entertainment, experience, or values matter more than the product. We are approaching the time in which distribution begins and ends with the consumer, mass markets give way to fragmented markets, and the necessity of entirely new business models is paramount. Amazon, Uber, and AirBnB are just the beginning; new technologies will continue to grow and uproot existing business models. And now, with the emergence of the technology-empowered young consumer culture, retailers will be forced to transform their offerings.

For the past thirty-five years EMILY’s List has helped the campaigns of thousands of pro-choice Democratic women, but the hardest part has always been convincing more women to run. Then Donald Trump was elected, and something shifted into place. American women who were furious and frustrated were looking for a way to channel their outrage into action, united in proclaiming, “If that guy can get elected, why not me?”

The day after the 2016 election, dozens of women searched out an old sign-up link buried on the EMILY’s List website. By Thanksgiving, those dozens had grown to a few thousand. And that was only the beginning. By the end of 2018, there were nearly fifty thousand women signed up to run for office, with scores more signing up each day.

Run to Win is for all women who are looking to lead. Organized around the steps that EMILY’s List coaches its candidates through (from deciding to run through celebrating victory), this book is full of essential lessons for any woman trying to succeed in a male-dominated field. Their arena is politics but their message is universal.

And Stephanie Schriock is the most qualified person to share these lessons. Not only is she a powerful figure in politics but she’s also a woman who commands respect for her astounding success as president of EMILY’s List and a longtime Democratic operative. Her message is uplifting and actionable, her voice is that of your best girlfriend walking you through what you need to consider as you make your plan, and her experience coaching the biggest female candidates in recent elections (including all of the female 2020 Democratic presidential candidates) makes her the de facto authority on the strategies women can employ to run, fight, and win, whatever their field or goal.

An explosive exposé of one of the biggest and most secretive companies in the world, Samsung, as the Korean juggernaut battles Apple and Sony to dominate the world of technology.

Seeing the How invites you to reimagine your brand, company, or idea through the lens of consumer experience. It gives today’s disruptors a path to offering consumers a new and better way to do what they do, clearly demonstrating how to see opportunities, and how to seize them to great advantage.

Two years ago, Zoom was unknown to most, six years ago, Netflix was a DVD delivery service. We ride in Ubers and stay with our families in Airbnb homes. We share Spotify playlists, refresh our closets with Bonobos, and pamper our pets with Chewy. We set up meetings with Calendly and pay bills with Venmo. The speed with which these disruptions to how we do things, and the enormous profits that come with changing daily routines, is breakneck and only point the way for other industries to carve out market dominance.

Seeing the How brings together data-driven research on consumer behavior, behavioral psychology, marketing analysis, and storytelling to provide a framework to help identify the methods by which business leaders can make these experience disruptions possible. Allen P. Adamson, an expert in branding, experience creation, and innovation strategy offers businesses a step-by-step guide to breaking into the market based on the tactics of the biggest experience disruptors out there, including Netflix, Apple, Warby Parker, and Stitch Fix.

These businesses speak to market segments and consumers that are diverse and far-flung. What they share is the extent to which they are experience disruptors. Their successes derive from their ability to make the stuff of daily life different, better, and easier.

Successful experience disruption is the de facto new competitive advantage across all categories. With Seeing the How you’ll have the strategy necessary to bring your disruption to life, command market segments, and cultivate consumer loyalty.

When former New York deputy mayor Dan Doctoroff landed in Toronto, promising a revolution in better living through technology, the locals were starstruck. In 2017 a small parcel of land on the city’s woefully underdeveloped lakeshore was available for development, and with Google co-founder Larry Page and his trusted chairman Eric Schmidt leaning into Sidewalk Labs’ pitch for the long-forsaken property—with Doctoroff as the urban-planning company’s CEO—Sidewalk’s bid crushed the competition.

But as soon as the bid was won, cracks appeared in the partnership between Doctoroff’s team and Waterfront Toronto, the government-sponsored organization behind the contest. There were hundreds more acres of undeveloped former port lands nearby that kept creeping into conversation with Sidewalk, and more questions were emerging than answers about how much the public would actually benefit from the Alphabet-owned company’s vision for the high-tech neighbourhood—and the data it could harvest from the people living there. Alarm bells began ringing in the city’s corridors of power and activism.

To Torontonians accustomed to big promises with little follow-through, the fiasco that unfolded seemed at first like just another city-building sideshow. But the pained battle to reel in the power of Sidewalk Labs became a crucible moment in the worldwide battle for privacy rights and against the extension of Big Tech’s digital might into the physical world around us.

With extensive contacts on all sides of the debacle, O’Kane tells a story of global consequence fought over a small, forgotten parcel of mud and pavement, taking readers from California to New York to Toronto to Berlin and back again. In the tradition of extraordinary boardroom dramas like Bad Blood and Super Pumped, Sideways vividly recreates the corporate drama and epic personalities in this David-and-Goliath battle that signalled to the world that all may not be lost in the effort to contain the rapidly growing power of Big Tech.

Used successfully by thousands of business managers, educators, and government leaders around the world, Six Thinking Hats offers a practical and uniquely positive approach to making decisions and exploring new ideas.

Your success in business depends on how you think. “The main difficulty of thinking is confusion,” writes Edward de Bono, long recognized as the foremost international authority on conceptual thinking and on the teaching of thinking as a skill. “We try to do too much at once. Emotions, information, logic, hope, and creativity all crowd in on us. It is like juggling with too many balls.” The solution? De Bono unscrambles the thinking process with his “six thinking hats”:

– WHITE HAT: neutral and objective, concerned with facts and figures
– RED HAT: the emotional view
– BLACK HAT: careful and cautious, the “devil’s advocate” hat
– YELLOW HAT: sunny and positive
– GREEN HAT: associated with fertile growth, creativity, and new ideas
– BLUE HAT: cool, the color of the sky, above everything else-the organizing hat