Blog / News & Opinion

The Strategist

By Porchlight

Strategy is a common topic in business. From business schools to books to boardrooms, the 'how' of strategy is often discussed. But Cynthia Montgomery's new book, The Strategist: Be the Leader Your Business Needs takes a different approach: Strategy in terms of who does it.

Blog / News & Opinion

The FT/Goldman Sachs Book Award, Now Accepting Submissions

By Porchlight

The search is now on for the 2012 Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year. From the official announcement: This annual Award, promoted by the Financial Times Limited and the Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. aims to identify the book that provides the most compelling and enjoyable insight into modern business issues, including management, finance and economics.

Blog / News & Opinion

The $100 Startup

By Porchlight

Chris Guillebeau was in Milwaukee last night as part of his $100 Startup tour. The full room of people who traveled from as far as Chicago got exactly what they hoped for: Hearing Chris share some of the most interesting stories from the book, a discussion of idea navigation, free copies of his book, and personalized signing by Chris. What they also got was a great space, cupcakes, Milwaukee Beer, and pizza arranged by the great folks at Translator.

Blog / Staff Picks

KnowledgeBlocks

Book Review by Porchlight

We're very pleased to announce the official opening of KnowledgeBlocks, a subscription-based service and online resource that gives readers access to quality content and business resources, a way to save, organize, and customize the information that is important to them, and engages business authors and thought leaders to help solve business problems and build new knowledge. Among the key features of the site, subscribers have access to the following: Explorations: Every month we publish three business book explorations that examine a narrow subject within a broader business topic. Each begins with a featured book and then branches out in unexpected directions, introducing you to author insights via podcast or interview, other related must-reads, curated links, and brief analyses that will help you build your business knowledge.

Blog / News & Opinion

The Finch Effect

By Porchlight

Charles Darwin once noticed that finches adapted their beak structures over a few generations to deal with changes in their environment. These adaptations were essential for the birds to survive. They weren't quick fixes, but necessary ones, which helped them find new food sources while other species slowly died off.

Blog / Jack Covert Selects

Jack Covert Selects - The Good Food Revolution

By Porchlight

The Good Food Revolution: Growing Healthy Food, People, and Communities by Will Allen, Gotham Books, 272 pages, $26. 00, Hardcover, May 2012, ISBN 9781592407101 For an average-sized book, there is a lot within this one. From the title, one might expect sociological research on trends in organic food, or an analysis of a health food business and how they became successful.

Blog / Jack Covert Selects

Jack Covert Selects - The Reinventors

By Porchlight

The Reinventors: How Extraordinary Companies Pursue Radical Continuous Change by Jason Jennings, Portfolio, 256page, $26. 95, May 2012, ISBN 9781591844235 The once vital Main Streets of America are all but out of business, boarded up or filled with antique stores shopping the delights and detritus of another era. Jason Jennings visits the main street of his own abandoned hometown at the beginning of The Reinventors to use it as a metaphor for “what will happen to you, your job, and your business unless you become a reinventor completely committed to constant radical change and growth.

Blog / Jack Covert Selects

Jack Covert Selects - How Will You Measure Your Life?

By Porchlight

How Will You Measure Your Life? by Clayton Christensen, James Allworth & Karen Dillon, Harper Business, 240 pages, $25. 99, Hardcover, May 2012, ISBN 9780062102416 Clayton Christensen is a business theorist who, in 1997, wrote the renowned Innovator’s Dilemma which introduced the idea that most well-established companies are overtaken not by behemoth competitors but by “disruptive” innovations that rise up and cut down giants in part because the giants were oblivious to the threat, and/or unable to invest in new emerging technologies.

Blog / News & Opinion

LeaveSmarter: Stephen Shapiro

By Porchlight

Yesterday, Stephen Shapiro was in town for our private LeaveSmarter event, sponsored by BMO Harris/M&I Bank and Whyte Hirschboek Dudek. His talked focused on ideas from his recent book, and 800-CEO-READ Business Book Award winner for 2011, Best Practices Are Stupid: 40 Ways to Out-Innovate the Competition. According to Shapiro, the main problems we have with being innovative, is how we think about things, the kind of questions we ask, and what we already know about the challenges we face.

Blog / News & Opinion

ChangeThis: Issue 94

By Porchlight

Unleashing the Creative Reservoir: The Rise of the Creative Class, Revisited by Richard Florida “A new social compact—a Creative Compact—can turn our Creative Economy into a just and Creative Society, in which prosperity is widely shared. While driven and shaped by economic logic, the key institutions and initiatives of the future will be shaped, as they always have, by human agency. ” Build This: Your Culturematic Laboratory by Grant McCracken “Ruled by pragmatism and play, your laboratory is fast becoming the place you come to look out into the future.