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ChangeThis
ChangeThis is our weekly series of essays from today's thought leaders that are meant to evoke conversation by bringing forth new and unique ideas.
ChangeThis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Reinventing Ethics
By Porchlight
"What if thou shalt not became can do? What if we developed moral competence rather than bemoaned a lack of moral courage? What if we looked at ethics as a wellspring of passion and creativity rather than of required restraint? What if our values became a source of satisfaction, rather than a threat of guilt? What if we asked what if?"
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Blog / ChangeThis
Let's Get Naked: Why Individual Investors Should Shed the Emperors Clothes of Wall Street Investment Experts
By Robert Fischer
"In this manifesto, I'm going to introduce you to rules-based mechanical investing (also known as naked investing strategies), which has been available for years. In fact, Warren Buffett wrote about this in the forward of the 1973 edition of The Intelligent Investor. But these techniques have languished for decades, as mutual fund companies—with big dollars to spend on advertising—have purchased the souls and minds of the financial press. And employing systematic naked strategies is simply a more effective way to make investing decisions than relying on the judgment of Wall Street investment experts."
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Blog / ChangeThis
Being Clutch, Or How Not To Choke Under Pressure
By Paul Sullivan
"Being great under pressure is hard work. This is part of the reason why we are so impressed by people who seem immune to choking. These people come through in the clutch when others don't. If they're business leaders, they become gurus other executives want to emulate. In politics, the person who runs the gauntlet wins the election, but if he can do so in a particularly cunning way, he becomes an example of strategic excellence. In combat, it is the leaders who come under fire and get their men to safety who are recognized as war heroes. If the people are sporting figures, their triumphs become legendary. We are so fascinated by these feats that we have created a nearly mythical aura around clutch performers."
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Blog / ChangeThis
The Six Invaluable Factors
By Dave Crenshaw
"Every day the market you work in—regardless of the industry—asks 'Are you invaluable?' Did you answer the question satisfactorily today? Well done. Get ready to answer it again tomorrow. As the speed of innovation and information ever quickens, so does the need for you to have clear answers for this 'invaluable question.' It is no longer enough to simply have a job. It is no longer enough to simply advertise and attract customers to work with you. Loyalty to employees, to brands, to personalities and to media disappears the instant one's attention is switched to new, shinier options."
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Blog / ChangeThis
The Female Vision: Defining Women's Strategic Strengths
By Sally Helgesen, Julie Johnson
"We believe that what women see—what they notice and value and how they perceive the world in operation—is a greatly under-exploited resource in organizations. In this manifesto, we explore what the female vision is, what it has to offer, and why it matters—to women, to organizations and to the world. In this manifesto, we explore what the female vision is, what it has to offer, and why it matters—to women, to organizations and to the world."
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Blog / ChangeThis
How Time Pressures Shape Behavior (And Provide Clues to Solve Thorny Issues in Business, Health, and Society)
By Porchlight
"Determining the factors that drive decision-making, and applying such mindsets to complex problems enables innovators, program developers, and marketers to apply a new lens to understand how time shapes human behavior. This approach goes well beyond defining new product or service attributes. It offers a fresh mindset that demonstrates that human behavior is not just shaped by psychological wants and needs, but is also shaped by the situation. No matter whether you are a business, government entity, or non-profit organization, understanding the Time-onomic forces that shape behavior and define a situation provides clues to solve some of our most challenging issues in business, health, and society."
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Blog / ChangeThis
The Fallacy of the Great Idea
By Porchlight
"Many entrepreneurs feel that they cannot start a business without a great idea. They believe it will be impossible to succeed without a completely new concept, as the market will already be cornered by established businesses. Only by venturing into uncharted territory can they achieve their dreams. This is the fallacy of the great idea. [...] The simple truth is that it is quite possible to create a thriving business without a big idea. In fact, starting up with a tried and tested concept is very sensible. The real key to success is focus and brilliant execution. Yes, the world needs people with grand ideas who are willing to take big risks to further progress, but the world also needs small businesses creating jobs, and entrepreneurs should not be embarrassed about not having a claim on originality."
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Blog / ChangeThis
The Internet as Social Movement
By Porchlight
"All of this was difficult, amazing, perplexing, astonishing—but so was the laying of the railroads and the sending of telegraph signals across the ocean. And historians of technology like to point out that great fanfare and promises have greeted all sorts of new devices, from the radio to the fax machine. But even before former Grateful Dead lyricist John Perry Barlow penned his 'Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace' ('Governments of the industrial world,' it began, 'you weary giants of flesh and steel'), the internet was no mere fax machine. From the first, and in no small part because of its fervent supporters, it has felt less like a technology and more like a social movement—like communism, like feminism, like rock and roll. An ideology we could call webism. While the rest of us look up movie times, buy sweaters, and post jihadi videos, the webists proclaim the new age."
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Blog / ChangeThis
The Road to Pandora
By Porchlight
"For those who work in advertising, simply being fascinated with the future isn't enough. We have to glean insight from it and process it and wrap it up in a bright shiny message that sells this incrementally better future to the rest of the human race (or, at the very least, our target market), brought to you on behalf of Brand X. [. . . ] Of course this has never been an easy task. But today, for a number of reasons, advertising the future, and the future of advertising are more difficult and complicated propositions than ever. Because today, not only do advertising people have to fully understand and market the past, present and future of their brands, more than ever they must have a thorough grasp of the seemingly infinite changes that are shaping the future of their industry. This includes everything from the rapidly evolving media landscape to the constant emergence of new messaging delivery vehicles to the very ways in which creative and strategic ideas are developed, shared and created anew.
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Blog / ChangeThis
When Chaos Moves In, and How to Conquer It: The True Story of Entrepreneurship
By Scott Martineau
"Proponents of entrepreneurship love to celebrate the freedom and adventure of owning and running a company. Established business owners put on a smile, perfect their elevator speech about "being their own boss," and proceed to sell you their product or service. The media tells us story after story about the multi-million dollar opportunities grown out of a garage or dorm room. But few people tell the true story of entrepreneurship—the story of long hours, sleepless nights, endless worry, mental and physical stress, strained family relationships and non-existent social life. Instead, would-be entrepreneurs buy into a dream that few will ever achieve. Believing in a promise of more money, more time, and freedom from the corporate world, entrepreneurs ignore the less-than-encouraging small business statistics and take the plunge into ownership. That's when chaos moves in."
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The original idea behind ChangeThis came from Seth Godin, and was built in the summer of 2004 by Amit Gupta, Catherine Hickey, Noah Weiss, Phoebe Espiritu, and Michelle Sriwongtong. In the summer of 2005, ChangeThis was turned over to 800-CEO-READ. In addition to selling and writing about books, they kept ChangeThis up and running as a standalone website for 14 years. In 2019, 800-CEO-READ became Porchlight, and we pulled ChangeThis together with the rest of our editorial content under the website you see now. We remain committed to the high-design quality and independent spirit of the original team that brought ChangeThis into the world.