Love Is My Favorite Flavor: A Midwestern Dining Critic Tells All
July 12, 2024
The Air They Breathe: A Pediatrician on the Frontlines of Climate Change
June 27, 2024
An Excerpt from When We Are Seen
June 05, 2024
'Getting Things Done with Others': An Interview with David Allen and Edward Lamont
May 28, 2024
Upcoming Author Interview: Tessa West — July 24, 2024
March 27, 2024
The 2023 Porchlight Business Book Awards
November 30, 2023
Promo Video: Our Author Interview Series
July 31, 2023
Blog
-
Blog / Jack Covert Selects
Jack Covert Selects - Uncommon Service
By Porchlight
Uncommon Service: How to Win by Putting Customers at the Core of Your Business by Frances Frei & Anne Morriss, Harvard Business Review Press, 272 pages, $29. 95, Hardcover, February 2012, ISBN 9781422133316 As a service company, when we receive feedback about a negative situation, we immediately act to resolve the conflict and then try to put a process in place to avoid such a thing happening in the future. Most books on service describe ways to do this: how to react to or plan for customer service breakdowns.
Categories: jack-covert-selects
-
Blog / Jack Covert Selects
Jack Covert Selects - Inside Apple
By Porchlight
Inside Apple: How America’s Most Admired—and Secretive—Company Really Works by Adam Lashinsky, Business Plus, 223 Pages, $26. 99, Hardcover, January 2012, ISBN 9781455512157 Apple, one of the most iconic companies of this century, has created many life-changing products (products we mostly didn’t know we needed until they made them, and now can’t live without), yet we know little about the inner workings of this organization… other than what Apple wants us to know. One thing I found particularly illuminating is Apple’s ability to say no.
Categories: jack-covert-selects
-
Blog / Jack Covert Selects
Jack Covert Selects - The Wide Lens
By Porchlight
The Wide Lens: A New Strategy for Innovation by Ron Adner, Portfolio, 231 pages, $29. 95, Hardcover, March, 2012, ISBN 9781591844600 Of all that’s been written and espoused on innovation over the past several years, it seems a key consideration has often been overlooked, one that Dartmouth College professor Ron Adner has gleaned from years of studying the subject. Adner has now detailed his findings as well as his prescription for greater success at innovation in The Wide Lens, in which cites many examples of companies that failed to check the “innovation blind spot” of their innovation ecosystem and consequently failed with innovations that should have been wild successes.
Categories: jack-covert-selects
-
Blog / News & Opinion
Sharpen Your Heels
By Sally Haldorson
Mrs. Moneypenny, long-time Financial Times columnist, concludes her book, Sharpen Your Heels: Mrs. Moneypenny's Career Advice for Women, with this: One more piece of careers advice.
Categories: news-opinion
-
Blog / Staff Picks
Paper Promises
Book Review by Porchlight
Our economic lives could literally stop on a dime. All it would take is an agreement redefining what a dime is, or is worth, backed by or tied to. It's happened before, and The Economist's "Buttonwood" columnist Philip Coggan believes it will inevitably happen again as the great international play of creditors and debtors enters its next act.
Categories: staff-picks
-
Blog / News & Opinion
Business Book Awards Lab
By Porchlight
“Reading leads to more reading. It leaves you hungry and leads you to the ideas, information and inspiration to try something new. As the book of the year, Great By Choice begins: “We cannot predict the future.
Categories: news-opinion
-
Blog / News & Opinion
The Start-Up of You
By Porchlight
It used to be that there were entrepreneurs, and then the rest of us who were happy to help others achieve their goals and somehow find our own in the process. That's changed. Many people are pursuing their own business ideas, and catching up on ideas and knowledge to help them run that business.
Categories: news-opinion
-
Blog / News & Opinion
Have a Nice Conflict
By Sally Haldorson
In a serendipitous turn of events, a copy of Have a Nice Conflict landed on my desk the same day that I happened to watch a current episode of Sesame Street with my son that features Mother Goose and her struggle to write a new rhyme because she had run out of conflicts to inspire her. As with all Sesame Street skits, there is a lesson to be learned. Conflict happens, and while the drama of a good conflict can be sensational (or rhyme-spirational), it's important to learn how to work through them to maintain good relationships between friends.
Categories: news-opinion
-
Blog / News & Opinion
Abundance
By Porchlight
In a time when unemployment is high, energy prices are on the rise, and quality food grows scarce, it's very nice to read a book like Abundance: Why the Future Will Be Much Better Than You Think. In some ways, this new book by Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler seems too good to be true.
Categories: news-opinion
-
Blog / Staff Picks
Where Did the Jobs Go?
Book Review by Porchlight
From the authors of Where Does the Money Go? : Your Guided Tour to the Federal Budget Crisis and Who Turned Out the Lights? : Your Guided Tour to the Energy Crisis, comes a new book about an issue of grave national importance that has touched most of our lives recently, and will be central to the political debate this election year.
Categories: staff-picks