News & Opinion
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Blog / News & Opinion
Friday Links
By Porchlight
The vast majority of articles about startups and innovation focus on Silicon Valley. Today we look at two innovators far removed from the typical incubators.
Categories: news-opinion, the-company
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Blog / News & Opinion
The FT Press/McKinsey Business Book of the Year Shortlist
By Porchlight
A shortlist for the 2014 Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award was announced yesterday. The books chosen focus very much on the big-picture issues of the day, "the most important trends shaping our world" as the press release puts it, so the switch from Goldman Sachs to McKinsey as a partner to FT has not reduced the scope of the books as I thought it may. (I speculated back in May when the announcement was made that McKinsey would now be backing the award that it may change focus to the more nuts-and-bolts business management issues that McKinsey ostensibly focuses on in its own work.
Categories: news-opinion, publishing-industry
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Blog / News & Opinion
ChangeThis: Issue 121
By Porchlight
Work As We Know It Is Dead by Jacob Morgan “The idea that ‘work sucks’ is engrained in almost every aspect of our professional lives. Employees aren't cogs, work should not be drudgery, and managers can no longer be slave-drivers. This isn’t a manifesto about following your passions or being happy, it’s a call to action to change and evolve our organizations to reflect the world they operate in.
Categories: news-opinion
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Blog / News & Opinion
ChangeThis: Issue 120
By Porchlight
Creating a Coaching Culture: A Playbook to Build Winning Business Teams by Nathan Jamail “In business, most of our employees are not as good as they could be—not because of our love for them or our desire to make their lives better than ours, but . . .
Categories: news-opinion
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Blog / News & Opinion
Authors On the Road, Changing the World - John Hope Bryant
By Porchlight
In the rapidly changing world of technology and the way we utilize that technology, we often forget many of our institutions were built over the phone, forming relationships with the people with whom we wanted to do business. In a group meeting here this week, our retired founder and president Jack Covert made the argument that if we want to maintain our current relationships better than our competitors and add something to their lives that others don't, we need to pick up the phone and have a real conversation with these people we value. We are fortunate that our business is still very much a people-orientated service company that really enjoys those breaks in the email or social media chain, and we’re lucky to have formed relationships with authors and institutions who uphold that same type of “old school” ethos.
Categories: news-opinion
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Blog / News & Opinion
Warren Bennis | 1925-2014
By Porchlight
Aaron updated us last Wednesday with some dispatches we've received from a new generation of Authors On the Road, Changing the World. It is great to hear from the folks we're working with, to watch them spreading their ideas and expertise, and see them slowly and deliberately effect real change as they do. But, we know they're standing on the shoulders of giants, and as this new generation of authors and educators strengthens and broadens the scope of the business book genre, we have been losing some of those giants—the first generation of business book writers, the ones that blazed the trail, that made the study of business, management, and leadership an educational pursuit rather than a purely profit-based one.
Categories: news-opinion
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Blog / News & Opinion
Friday Links
By Porchlight
➻ Let's start with a quote, brought to our attention by a Vox Communications post entitled Read this male CEO's feminist explanation of why he's quitting: Friends and colleagues often ask my wife how she balances her job and motherhood. Somehow, the same people don't ask me. The above pull-quote is from Max Schireson, CEO of database company MongoDB, extracted from a blog post he published revealing why he was stepping down from his CEO position.
Categories: news-opinion
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Blog / News & Opinion
The FT Press/McKinsey Business Book of the Year Longlist
By Porchlight
I speculated back in May when submissions opened for The Financial Times and McKinsey & Company 2014 Business Book of the Year Award that the books they looked at would be more focused on business nuts-and-bolts issues now that a consultancy firm (McKinsey) had taken over for an investment bank (Goldman Sachs) as the Financial Times' partner on the awards. I also thought they would not be announcing a longlist as they had in the past because it was not on their awards schedule. It seems I was wrong on both counts, because The Financial Times and McKinsey announced a longlist this morning, and the books on it are mostly big-picture books, not nut-and-bolts business and management books.
Categories: news-opinion, publishing-industry
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Blog / News & Opinion
Authors On the Road, Changing the World
By Porchlight
Here at 8cr, we are so fortunate to work, and form long-lasting relationships with, really great authors who are sharing important ideas with people around the world. We see them out on the road speaking to hundreds of groups a year, trying to make the world of business a better place. Spending time away from their friends and families, they work hard to make sure that the ideas that they’ve captured on paper are helping people become better leaders, communicators, listeners.
Categories: news-opinion, publishing-industry, the-company
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Blog / News & Opinion
ChangeThis: Issue 119
By Porchlight
The Most Important Company In the World: Intel, Moore’s Law, and the Heartbeat of Civilization by Michael S. Malone “We now live differently, learn differently, communicate differently, an ultimately, think differently. … We have internalized Moore’s Law.
Categories: news-opinion
