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
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Blog / Jack Covert Selects
Jack Covert Selects - The Big Thirst
By Porchlight
The Big Thirst: The Secret Life and Turbulent Future of Water by Charles Fishman, Free Press, 388 pages, $26. 99, Hardcover, April 2011, ISBN 9781439102077 If Charles Fishman were a baseball player, he’d be a pitcher worthy of the Cy Young Award year after year. Lucky for us, Fishman ended up a business writer—one of the most consistently excellent in the field.
Categories: jack-covert-selects
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Blog / News & Opinion
How We Can Help You
By Porchlight
These words are at the top of our home page, to point people in the appropriate direction to accomplish why they came to our site. Sometimes, that sentiment goes a bit further, when we deal directly with a customer throughout their order process. And sometimes within that process, things don't go as smoothly as usual.
Categories: news-opinion
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Blog / News & Opinion
Interview Unearthed
By Sally Haldorson
GoogleAlerts shared a little surprise with us this morning. An interview Jack and Todd did with Michael Bungay Stanier "back in the day" when The 100 Best Business Books of All Time was just a newborn was put up on Stanier's (great-looking) Great Work Interviews site. In this interview, Jack, Todd, and Michael talk about: A big aha!
Categories: news-opinion
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Blog / News & Opinion
ChangeThis: Issue 81
By Porchlight
Why "Free" Is the Wrong Price for Water—Even If You Live on $1 a Day by Charles Fishman “Free turns out to be exactly the wrong price for water—whether that water is being used by huge global corporations, farmers, ordinary middle-class citizens, or the poorest people living in developing countries. Water that is so cheap provides no incentive for big users—corporations, farmers, even cities—to spend money necessary to better manage their water. [.
Categories: news-opinion
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Blog / News & Opinion
The Entrepreneur Equation
By Porchlight
Carol Roth's new book, The Entrepreneur Equation: Evaluating the Realities, Risks, and Rewards of Having Your Own Business, is the truth serum needed by anyone interested in starting their own company. For some, it might be slightly bitter to taste, but the healing effects go a long way in the battle against blindly following passion into financial ruin and crushed dreams. Literally energized by her book, I immediately sent her a few questions.
Categories: news-opinion
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Blog / ChangeThis
The Three Gaps Between Goals and Greatness
By Porchlight
"In the global race to achieve faster, better, cheaper business greatness, most leaders face a huge gap between the goals they set and the actual results achieved by the people in their organizations. This phenomenon is not a failure to plan, but rather, a failure to execute. [...] While there are many possible explanations for the root cause of the gap, the one common, recurring element is a stubborn, nagging blind spot: People issues. They won't go away. They are always around. No matter how much you try to avoid them by setting goals and staying busy, people issues are always right in front of you, either helping or hurting your organization's competitive advantage in the marketplace." Like the Manifesto? Buy the book!
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Social Sharing Manifesto: The Arguments For and Against The Rise of the Sharing Consumer
By Porchlight
"Nothing has really changed, even with the popularity of terms like social consumer, sharing consumer etc. people have always shared. Whether sitting around the campfire, standing at the water cooler, or chatting over the garden fence, human beings share their opinions with others. If those opinions prove to be useful, that person will be sought out for an opinion about other things and on a more frequent basis."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Why "Free" Is the Wrong Price for Water—Even If You Live on $1 a Day
By Charles Fishman
"Free turns out to be exactly the wrong price for water—whether that water is being used by huge global corporations, farmers, ordinary middle-class citizens, or the poorest people living in developing countries."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
The Mistake Manifesto: How Making Mistakes Can Make Us Better
By Alina Tugend
"While I am not advocating that we all run around blundering and goofing up all the time—and certainly none of us like dealing with people who make the same mistake over and over—our fear of mistakes has a very high cost. We exert enormous energy blaming each other when something goes wrong rather than finding a solution. Defensiveness and accusations take the place of apologies and forgiveness. Mistake-avoidance creates workplaces where making changes and being creative while risking failure is subsumed by an ethos of mistake-prevention at the cost of daring and innovation."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
This Sentence Has 5ive Words: Eigen Values, Creating Truisms and the Future of Marketing
By Stephen Denny
"Our first sentence—"This sentence has five words—is an eigen value: a self-referencing, self-defining concept. The thing itself is its own definition. Our last rambling sentence is not an eigen value. It isn't self-defining and frankly lacks meaning to anyone but its author. This is an important distinction, because the casual reader of this sentence frankly doesn't care one way or another about the message or the messenger. The concept of eigen values comes from the vast body of work attributed to the father of cybernetics, Heinz von Foerster. His work, and the work of others in this field, has influenced the disciplines of philosophy, psychology, architecture, mathematics, cryptography and art. Why is this concept important to your idea, your brand or your movement? Because creating eigen values is what marketers do when they're doing their very best work. The concept of eigen values should change how you look at the marketing discipline completely."
Categories: changethis