Uncategorized Posts
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Blog / Jack Covert Selects
Jack Covert Selects - The Coming Prosperity
By Porchlight
The Coming Prosperity: How Entrepreneurs Are Transforming the Global Economy by Philip Auerswald, Oxford University Press, 272 pages, $29. 95, Hardcover, April 2012, ISBN 9780199795178 With so much of the conversation in America today about the decline, decay, and descent of our power, the rise of others’, and the coming competition that that dynamic will create, Philip Auerswald’s new book, The Coming Prosperity, reminds us that life on Earth is not a zero-sum game. The first part of the book tackles the larger picture, the “macro-story line of the coming prosperity.
Categories: jack-covert-selects
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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 / ChangeThis
The Unasked Question: How Do You Run a Company?
By Porchlight
"Just ask someone today this simple question: 'How do you run a company?' Invariably, you'll be met with a blank stare. Because nobody ever asks that question. Because no one expects that there's an answer. Yet it may be the most important question we need to answer if we want to grow our businesses and fix our economy."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
We Say We Want a Revolution: How to Activate the Activist and Surf the Tidal Wave of Radical Change
By Gina Amaro Rudan
"Think about it: in one short year, the power of collective hearts and minds has toppled dictators, turned out corrupt and dysfunctional governments, brought moral accountability to media and corporate abuses, and given the financial institutions a worldwide wedgie in the form of Occupy Wall Street. There's no denying it—we're knee-deep in an era of radical change that may well transform the way our world works. I, for one, am thrilled to see the "public interest" back in the conversation. Yes, it's back in a messy, kind of unwieldy, shape-shifting way, but it is back."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Five Rules for Pricing Excellence: Getting the Most for Your Services
By Porchlight
"Pricing is critical, and short-changing your pricing strategy is the fastest way to leave cash on the table—money that will be lost forever and never recovered. So after that initial spark of innovation and the completion of the design, development and marketing phases that follow, don't screw up the process by treating price as an afterthought. Have you spent as much time and resources on price as you have on your latest social media campaign? (Probably not.) The most successful organizations know that pricing is strategic and that it can affect top-line growth and bottom-line profitability faster and more directly than anything else."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Stop Selling and Start Storytelling
By Jason L. Baptiste
"After a lot of thought, it's pretty apparent to me what the most valuable overall skill is for future CEOs and world changers—the ability to tell a story. We live in a world where we are sold to hundreds of times a day and have become ridiculously blind to those trying to sell us something. But we're always up for a good story. Storytelling is what made us love the advertisements in magazines that, as children, we would rip out and put on our walls and asleep under with inspired awe. Stories are the most powerful form of inspiration and persuasion in the world."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Nine Things I Learned from Alan Mulally
By Bryce G. Hoffman
"Alan Mulally arrived in Dearborn like a Kansas cyclone, ripping through Ford's dark-paneled corridors like a twister through a trailer park. He would take a sledgehammer to the automaker's ossified silos, force long-time adversaries to kiss and make-up and challenge Ford's most cherished delusions. Over the next three years, he would also make Ford the most profitable automaker in the world. Mulally would do it as the rest of the American automobile industry fell apart in the face of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. And he would do it without taking a government bailout."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
How to Avoid Becoming China's Bitch: A Radical Centrist Manifesto for Fixing What's Broken
By Porchlight
"Let's start by gazing in the mirror. The looking glass never lies, and it reflects two things about our beloved country: We have allowed ourselves to become paralyzed. And, worse, we are so used to being poorly led that we refuse to lead ourselves. How did we let this state of affairs happen to us? Well, to begin with, we haven't chosen the right leaders for the right times—and that used to be our talent. Could these times be any more uncertain? Imagine piloting the ship of state through all the global and domestic cross currents we face today. Leadership in uncertain times must be different than when the path is clear."
Categories: changethis
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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