News & Opinion
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Blog / News & Opinion
Search Inside Yourself
By Sally Haldorson
You know this book is about Google the minute you lay your eyes on its cover. The title Search Inside Yourself showcased in the familiar font and primary colors of that online monolith. And yet there is no mention of Google anywhere in the title.
Categories: news-opinion
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Blog / News & Opinion
An Interview with Peter Kiernan, Author of Becoming China's Bitch
By Porchlight
It's an election year, a year in which everything will invariably be colored by politics. This is especially true when discussing small business, entrepreneurship, and the economy as the candidates are certain to do—ad nauseam. I recently reached out to Peter Kiernan, a successful businessman, philanthropist, entrepreneur, corporate and government advisor, and the author of the recently released and provocatively titled Becoming China's Bitch, to get a view of the challenges we face and how we can refocus the debate from what he calls "The Radical Center.
Categories: news-opinion
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Blog / News & Opinion
Rippling
By Porchlight
My last few posts have dealt with books that look around the world for case studies and examples, and this post shares that perspective. Beverly Schwartz's new book, Rippling: How Social Entrepreneurs Spread Innovation Throughout the World reveals how a wide variety of countries, the U. S.
Categories: news-opinion
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Blog / News & Opinion
ChangeThis: Issue 93
By Porchlight
Nine Things I Learned from Alan Mulally by Bryce G. Hoffman “I spent many hours sitting across the table from Mulally in his corner office on the twelfth floor of Ford’s world headquarters. I learned a lot about how to change cultures and streamline organizations, and I believe these principles will prove as valuable to your organization as they have to Ford.
Categories: news-opinion
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Blog / News & Opinion
Reverse Innovation
By Porchlight
Following up my recent post on Jugaad Innovation, which detailed Western companies that looked at non-Western innovation as inspiration, today I'm reading Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble's Reverse Innovation: Create Far From Home, Win Everywhere. What's interesting about this book, is the authors are calling companies to actually innovate from within non-rich countries, and then tweak that innovation to adapt to richer nations. If this sounds over-ambitious, consider Gatorade, and example from the book, whose fundamental recipe began in Bangladesh to treat victims of cholera.
Categories: news-opinion
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Blog / News & Opinion
When You Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'
By Sally Haldorson
As I was writing this blog post, the Michael Jackson song, Wanna Be Startin' Somethin' (click on the link to be transported to 1987), popped into my head. Let me explain: Being a business that sells business books can be kinda meta. By meta, I mean that the very product we sell informs how we promote and sell it, and our company.
Categories: news-opinion
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Blog / News & Opinion
Jugaad Innovation
By Porchlight
Innovation continues to be a concern for Western business, as manufacturing struggles and local movements continue to push toward supporting regional companies and products. The issue lies in how either of those efforts can gain more leverage by innovating processes and products. Navi Radjou, Jaideep Parabhu and Simone Ahuja encourage companies to discover new innovation practices by looking East, in their book Jugaad Innovation: Think Frugal, Be Flexible, Generate Breakthrough Growth.
Categories: news-opinion
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Blog / News & Opinion
World Changers and Fortune
By Porchlight
John A. Byrne, former executive editor of BusinessWeek, editor in chief of Fast Company, and associate editor at Forbes, put out a great book in December with Portfolio called Game Changers: 25 Entrepreneurs Who Changed Business as We Knew It. It's a really intriguing read, especially great for those who love biographies and personalities.
Categories: news-opinion, narrative-biography
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Blog / News & Opinion
The Art of Marketing: Chicago
By Porchlight
Attention locals! The folks at The Art Of are putting on a big event in Chicago that you won't want to miss. Six of the most highly influential social media and marketing speakers today--Seth Godin, Gary Vaynerchuk, Mitch Joel, Randi Zuckerberg, Keith Ferrazzi, and Avinash Kaushik--, are on deck for this year's The Art of Marketing conference at The Chicago Theater on Tuesday, April 24th.
Categories: news-opinion
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Blog / News & Opinion
The Welcomer Edge
By Porchlight
When we have a bad experience with a company, we get upset, we're apt to tell someone else about it, and we never return to that business. Most of the time, though, we interact with people, give them our money, get something in return, and move on our way without really thinking about it. But once in awhile, we have a great experience, a genuinely positive interaction, one that we not only want to tell others about, but one that we we're attracted to have again and again.
Categories: news-opinion
