Uncategorized Posts
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Blog / News & Opinion
ChangeThis: Issue 79
By Porchlight
Six Reasons Why the Sharing Society (aka the Mesh) Will Trump the Ownership Society by Lisa Gansky “Get out of your chairs and into the streets, kids—the Internet has come to town. Literally. The IT revolution started by moving data around.
Categories: news-opinion
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Blog / ChangeThis
Six Reasons Why the Sharing Society (aka the Mesh) Will Trump the Ownership Society
By Lisa Gansky
"Get out of your chairs and into the streets, kids—the Internet has come to town. Literally. The IT revolution started by moving data around. Now mobile devices have spread the revolution to physical things—to the street. Making a reservation for a car, bike, a home or a meal from your phone connects you to the company's data, which may include information on your preferences, how they compare to other people's preferences like you (to make juicier, more personalized offers), and data collected from sensors in the car, bike, home or at the cafe. Your social networks allow you to make better informed choices of goods and services, as well as recommend the things you like. Mobile plus GPS changes everything. It means you can get more of what you want exactly when you want it. It means convenient access to fresh goods and services. Convenient access means you don't have to own something in order to have a pulse on its exact location and availability; you can use it—share it—save money while sparing hassles.
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Activating the Entrepreneur Within
By Jeffrey Weber
"Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, an economist who is known as the 'banker to the poor' by making small loans in impoverished countries stated, 'I did something that challenged the banking world. Conventional banks look for the rich; we look for the absolutely poor. All people are entrepreneurs, but many don't have the opportunity to find that out. ' An entrepreneur in his own right as founder of the Grameen Bank, Yunus developed the concept of microcredit as a method to help fund entrepreneurs who would not qualify for any other type of loan. He believed in creating economic development from the lowest tier of society and saw that the entrepreneurial dream was defined to no man; it was a gift to all. So you, dear reader, want to know if you are an entrepreneur. It would be so easy to draw your blood and see the entrepreneurial DNA floating about and qualitatively state, "Yes, he is an entrepreneur. " But what good would this do. There still would be so much lacking outside the control of simple DNA to activate the entrepreneur within you.
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Disciplined Dreaming: How to Build Your Organization's Creativity Mojo
By Josh Linkner
"I developed the Disciplined Dreaming system to give creativity its own place and practice, to provide everyone in the organization a structure for developing their own creative ideas, and to bring creativity back to the heart of business—where it belongs. Disciplined Dreaming isn't a stifling, rigid "innovation process", but an open system. It provides a strong and flexible framework that frees individuals and organizations to improvise and explore—and, in the process, develop their creative chops. The ideas, processes, and practices of Disciplined Dreaming will help you build your chops by expanding your creative capacity and targeting your creative energy."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
How to Turn around Problem Performance in Five Questions or Less
By Porchlight
"Underperformers suck. They suck the productivity out of a team or organization. They suck the morale out of your high performers. [. . . ] That begs a question that is central to this manifesto: What are underperformers costing you. How much time do you spend reacting to problems related to underperformance. Think of the things you could do with that time if you could only get it back. There's the bait, now here's the switch. It's easy to condemn underperformers for stealing your time and contributing to the ills listed above, and they do own their share of the blame. But here's the hard truth: you do too. As a manager your job is to enable your people to achieve their performance goals. If they're not then you're underperforming in this critical area of your job. It's not really your fault that you're in this situation; managers aren't often taught how to address performance problems in people. But that's no excuse to let the status quo ride. You're doing a disservice to yourself, your team, and even the underperformer by not taking action.
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
As One: A Manifesto for Individual Action and Collective Power
By Mehrdad Baghai
"As One. Five letters that make all the difference between a group of individuals and a unified team. Two words that transform individual action into collective power. One idea that can help you realize the full power of your people. [...] Adding the phrase "as one" to another word changes its entire meaning. Imagine the possibilities: Working versus Working As One. Competing versus Competing As One. Winning versus Winning As One. The sources of inspiration are endless. Believing As One. Stronger As One. Succeeding As One."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
The Seven Myths of Hyper-Social Organizations: Why Human 1.0 is Key
By Porchlight
"With the rise of social media, which provides a massive platform of participation and a social infrastructure that is finally catching up with the conference infrastructure, the social element is reentering commerce and business with a vengeance. People can now claim a share of voices that is equal or larger than that of companies, employees can now develop support networks that cross the traditional hierarchical organization charts, and people can once again behave the way they were hardwired to behave in business and commerce–tribally, humanly, and socially. To understand the changes that are afoot in the world of business you are better off understanding Human 1.0, which took tens of thousands of years to develop, rather than Web 2.0, which took merely a decade."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / Excerpts
How the West Was Lost - An Excerpt
By Porchlight
Farrar, Straus and Giroux has some really great books on economics out right now, with more in the works and on the way. I will talk about Shraga F. Biran's Opportunism on this blog soon, but I'd like to turn now to a book that's being released today—New York Times bestselling author Dambisa Moyo's How the West Was Lost.
Categories: excerpts
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Blog / Jack Covert Selects
Jack Covert Selects – Enchantment
By Porchlight
Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions by Guy Kawasaki, Portfolio, 224 Pages, $26. 95, Hardcover, March 2011, ISBN 9781591843795 Full disclosure: I have known Guy Kawasaki for over twenty years and have enjoyed each and every one of his books—my favorite being The Art of the Start. But, however biased I may be from past experience, it is safe to say that his new book, Enchantment, continues his mission of spreading fresh, new ideas that are relevant and accessible to all business people.
Categories: jack-covert-selects
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Blog / Jack Covert Selects
Jack Covert Selects - The New Capitalist Manifesto
By Porchlight
The New Capitalist Manifesto: Building a Disruptively Better Business by Umair Haque, Harvard Business Review Press, 221 pages, $26. 95, Hardcover, January 2011, ISBN 9781422158586 There have been many books released over the last two years about the financial crisis that shook the foundations of our economic system a short time ago, but none have addressed how weak those foundations really are—that maybe, after over 200 years, the very cornerstones of industrial-age capitalism as unstable and badly in need of repair. In The New Capitalist Manifesto, Umair Haque lays out how they can be, and are already beginning to be, rebuilt.
Categories: jack-covert-selects