See, Solve, Scale

Author: Danny Warshay
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 1250272327
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 304

Book Description
Inspired by Brown University’s beloved course—The Entrepreneurial Process—Danny Warshay’s See, Solve, Scale is a proven and paradigm-shifting method to unlocking the power of entrepreneurship. The Entrepreneurial Process, one of Brown University’s highest-rated courses, has empowered thousands of students to start their own ventures. You might assume these ventures started because the founders were born entrepreneurs. You might assume that these folks had technical or finance degrees, or worked at fancy consulting firms, or had some other specialized knowledge. Yet that isn’t the case. Entrepreneurship is not a spirit or a gift. It is a process that anyone can learn, and that anyone can use to turn a problem into a solution with impact. In See, Solve, Scale, Danny Warshay, the creator of the Entrepreneurial Process course and founding Executive Director of Brown’s Center for Entrepreneurship, shares the same set of tools with aspiring entrepreneurs around the world. He overturns the common misconception that entrepreneurship is a hard-wired trait or the sole province of high-flying MBAs, and provides a proven method to identify consequential problems and an accessible process anyone can learn, master, and apply to solve them. Combining real-world experience backed by surprising research-based insights, See, Solve, Scale guides the reader through forming a successful startup team and through the three steps of the process: find and validate a problem, develop an initial small-scale solution, and scale a long-term solution. It also details eleven common errors of judgment that entrepreneurs make when they rely on their intuition and provides instruction for how to avoid them. Leveraging Warshay’s own entrepreneurship successes and his 15 years of experience teaching liberal arts students, See, Solve, Scale debunks common myths about entrepreneurship and empowers everyone, especially those who other entrepreneurship books have ignored and left behind. Its lasting message: Anyone can take a world-changing idea from conception to breakthrough entrepreneurial success.

We the Possibility

Author: Mitchell Weiss
Publisher: Harvard Business Press
ISBN: 163369920X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 213

Book Description
Can we solve big public problems anymore? Yes, we can. This provocative and inspiring book points the way. The huge challenges we face are daunting indeed: climate change, crumbling infrastructure, declining public education and social services. At the same time, we've come to accept the sad notion that government can't do new things or solve tough problems—it's too big, too slow, and mired in bureaucracy. Not so, says former public official, now Harvard Business School professor, Mitchell Weiss. The truth is, entrepreneurial spirit and savvy in government are growing, transforming the public sector's response to big problems at all levels. The key, Weiss argues, is a shift from a mindset of Probability Government—overly focused on safe solutions and mimicking so-called best practices—to Possibility Government. This means public leadership and management that's willing to boldly imagine new possibilities and to experiment. Weiss shares the three basic tenets of this new way of governing: Government that can imagine: Seeing problems as opportunities and involving citizens in designing solutions Government that can try new things: Testing and experimentation as a regular part of solving public problems Government that can scale: Harnessing platform techniques for innovation and growth The lessons unfold in the timely episodes Weiss has seen and studied: the US Special Operations Command prototyping of a hoverboard for chasing pirates; a heroin hackathon in opioid-ravaged Cincinnati; a series of experiments in Singapore to rein in Covid-19; among many others. At a crucial moment in the evolution of government's role in our society, We the Possibility provides inspiration and a positive model, along with crucial guardrails, to help shape progress for generations to come.

Speed & Scale

Author: John Doerr
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0593420470
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 449

Book Description
“If you care about climate change, John Doerr’s new book, Speed & Scale, offers concrete steps that we can all take to make a difference.” - Barack Obama With clear-eyed realism and an engineer’s precision, Doerr lays out the practical actions, global ambitions, and economic investments we need to avert climate catastrophe. Guided by real-world solutions, Speed & Scale features unprecedented, firsthand accounts from climate leaders such as Laurene Powell Jobs, Christiana Figueres, Al Gore, Mary Barra, John Kerry, and dozens of other intrepid policymakers, innovators, and scientists. In Speed & Scale, Doerr presents a compelling 10-step plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050–the global goal we need to reach to ensure a livable Earth for generations to come. From electrifying our energy grid to fixing our global food supply chain to capturing carbon from the air, Speed & Scale contains practical solutions for policymakers and entrepreneurs alike. As the world confronts an urgent climate crisis, Doerr reminds us that it is also the greatest economic opportunity of our lifetimes. Whether you’re a climate scientist or someone striving to make a difference in your local community, this book will help you to activate the sustainable solutions the world urgently needs. Praise for Speed & Scale: “Everybody should get Speed & Scale by John Doerr.” - Meryl Streep “A practical guide for participation in decarbonizing the global economy, a task as challenging as it is urgent.” - Christiana Figueres

Can You See what I See?

Author: Walter Wick
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
ISBN: 0439708702
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 41

Book Description
In this latest addition to the hugely successful CAN YOU SEE WHAT I SEE? series, acclaimed photographer Walter Wick welcomes readers out for some spooky search-and-find fun Co-creator of the popular I SPY series, Walter Wick is at it again. Mr. Wick dazzles the senses with spooky scenes that achieve new levels of aesthetic excellence This book offers readers lots of search and find fun as they peer through pages and pages of brilliant photographic compositions looking for fascinating toys and objects. This highly collectable book is a must.

Empathy at Scale

Author: Dana Publicover
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 1794802088
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 130

Book Description
How many times have you experienced organizational change that is, at best, a rebrand and business as usual at worst? To create real change, real change must occur. The way we work isn't working. Employees wear too many hats and spend all their time putting out fires instead of strategizing a brilliant future. Innovation is just a word in our tagline. We're looking for the Next Big Thing, but we can't afford to take a risk on anything different.It's time to try a new approach to problem-solving using tools already at your disposal. To understand the root cause of problems (and predict the impact of your solution), you must empathize with your user-your customer, your member, your client or even your employee. This book will teach you how to empathize with anyone and run a full-scale empathy study to collect actionable, qualitative data. You'll also learn problem-solving methods and ways to prove ideas early on to avoid costly mistakes down the line.If you find yourself with unsolvable problems and you're open to trying new ways of thinking, Empathy at Scale is the impetus you've been waiting for. Dana Publicover brings knowledge from years in startup business development, product design, user research and design thinking facilitation to show that there is always a creative solution-and it's not going to come out of routine brainstorms. Because if you could sit and think up a solution, you'd have the answer by now. This book is for anyone who knows it's time to change the way they work, who wants to change but isn't sure how, and who believes their work gets in the way of their job. REVIEWS: "Companies are beginning to realize that what is missing from their development process is a real understanding of the audiences they serve. Teams looking to gain that understanding should look to Empathy at Scale for a practical playbook to get people out of their own heads to better see into others'. Publicover has a wide variety of examples and tips to build empathy, a critical skill in the 21st century." - Gretchen Anderson, author of Mastering Collaboration "Dana's understanding of empathy and it's vital role in product and service design is as comprehensive and well-delivered in this book as any place you can find. She has rightfully put the horse in front of the cart which is the opposite of what most design thinkers do. This book is a guide to save time, save money, and create what your customers want and will use." -Cam Marston, President, Generational Insights.

Switch

Author: Chip Heath
Publisher: Crown Currency
ISBN: 030759016X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 322

Book Description
Why is it so hard to make lasting changes in our companies, in our communities, and in our own lives? The primary obstacle is a conflict that's built into our brains, say Chip and Dan Heath, authors of the critically acclaimed bestseller Made to Stick. Psychologists have discovered that our minds are ruled by two different systems - the rational mind and the emotional mind—that compete for control. The rational mind wants a great beach body; the emotional mind wants that Oreo cookie. The rational mind wants to change something at work; the emotional mind loves the comfort of the existing routine. This tension can doom a change effort - but if it is overcome, change can come quickly. In Switch, the Heaths show how everyday people - employees and managers, parents and nurses - have united both minds and, as a result, achieved dramatic results: • The lowly medical interns who managed to defeat an entrenched, decades-old medical practice that was endangering patients • The home-organizing guru who developed a simple technique for overcoming the dread of housekeeping • The manager who transformed a lackadaisical customer-support team into service zealots by removing a standard tool of customer service In a compelling, story-driven narrative, the Heaths bring together decades of counterintuitive research in psychology, sociology, and other fields to shed new light on how we can effect transformative change. Switch shows that successful changes follow a pattern, a pattern you can use to make the changes that matter to you, whether your interest is in changing the world or changing your waistline.

Scale

Author: Geoffrey West
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 014311090X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 498

Book Description
"This is science writing as wonder and as inspiration." —The Wall Street Journal Wall Street Journal From one of the most influential scientists of our time, a dazzling exploration of the hidden laws that govern the life cycle of everything from plants and animals to the cities we live in. Visionary physicist Geoffrey West is a pioneer in the field of complexity science, the science of emergent systems and networks. The term “complexity” can be misleading, however, because what makes West’s discoveries so beautiful is that he has found an underlying simplicity that unites the seemingly complex and diverse phenomena of living systems, including our bodies, our cities and our businesses. Fascinated by aging and mortality, West applied the rigor of a physicist to the biological question of why we live as long as we do and no longer. The result was astonishing, and changed science: West found that despite the riotous diversity in mammals, they are all, to a large degree, scaled versions of each other. If you know the size of a mammal, you can use scaling laws to learn everything from how much food it eats per day, what its heart-rate is, how long it will take to mature, its lifespan, and so on. Furthermore, the efficiency of the mammal’s circulatory systems scales up precisely based on weight: if you compare a mouse, a human and an elephant on a logarithmic graph, you find with every doubling of average weight, a species gets 25% more efficient—and lives 25% longer. Fundamentally, he has proven, the issue has to do with the fractal geometry of the networks that supply energy and remove waste from the organism’s body. West’s work has been game-changing for biologists, but then he made the even bolder move of exploring his work’s applicability. Cities, too, are constellations of networks and laws of scalability relate with eerie precision to them. Recently, West has applied his revolutionary work to the business world. This investigation has led to powerful insights into why some companies thrive while others fail. The implications of these discoveries are far-reaching, and are just beginning to be explored. Scale is a thrilling scientific adventure story about the elemental natural laws that bind us together in simple but profound ways. Through the brilliant mind of Geoffrey West, we can envision how cities, companies and biological life alike are dancing to the same simple, powerful tune.

Upstream

Author: Dan Heath
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1982134747
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 320

Book Description
Wall Street Journal Bestseller New York Times bestselling author Dan Heath explores how to prevent problems before they happen, drawing on insights from hundreds of interviews with unconventional problem solvers. So often in life, we get stuck in a cycle of response. We put out fires. We deal with emergencies. We stay downstream, handling one problem after another, but we never make our way upstream to fix the systems that caused the problems. Cops chase robbers, doctors treat patients with chronic illnesses, and call-center reps address customer complaints. But many crimes, chronic illnesses, and customer complaints are preventable. So why do our efforts skew so heavily toward reaction rather than prevention? Upstream probes the psychological forces that push us downstream—including “problem blindness,” which can leave us oblivious to serious problems in our midst. And Heath introduces us to the thinkers who have overcome these obstacles and scored massive victories by switching to an upstream mindset. One online travel website prevented twenty million customer service calls every year by making some simple tweaks to its booking system. A major urban school district cut its dropout rate in half after it figured out that it could predict which students would drop out—as early as the ninth grade. A European nation almost eliminated teenage alcohol and drug abuse by deliberately changing the nation’s culture. And one EMS system accelerated the emergency-response time of its ambulances by using data to predict where 911 calls would emerge—and forward-deploying its ambulances to stand by in those areas. Upstream delivers practical solutions for preventing problems rather than reacting to them. How many problems in our lives and in society are we tolerating simply because we’ve forgotten that we can fix them?

Can You See what I See?

Author: Walter Wick
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
ISBN: 0439026431
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 42

Book Description
A new search-and-find adventure from the bestselling photographer, Walter Wick Amazing photos accompany a fun search-and-find game by Walter Wick, the creator the NY TIMES BESTSELLING Can You See What I See? series and the photographer of the enormously successful I Spy series. A pirate ship and a chest of gold take readers on a journey through time that leads to the location of purloined treasures. Beginning with a zoom of a gold coin, photographs pull back to reveal the story of the coin's travels from the hull of a pirate ship in the 1700's to the shore of a beach town today.

Why Startups Fail

Author: Tom Eisenmann
Publisher: Currency
ISBN: 0593137027
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 370

Book Description
If you want your startup to succeed, you need to understand why startups fail. “Whether you’re a first-time founder or looking to bring innovation into a corporate environment, Why Startups Fail is essential reading.”—Eric Ries, founder and CEO, LTSE, and New York Times bestselling author of The Lean Startup and The Startup Way Why do startups fail? That question caught Harvard Business School professor Tom Eisenmann by surprise when he realized he couldn’t answer it. So he launched a multiyear research project to find out. In Why Startups Fail, Eisenmann reveals his findings: six distinct patterns that account for the vast majority of startup failures. • Bad Bedfellows. Startup success is thought to rest largely on the founder’s talents and instincts. But the wrong team, investors, or partners can sink a venture just as quickly. • False Starts. In following the oft-cited advice to “fail fast” and to “launch before you’re ready,” founders risk wasting time and capital on the wrong solutions. • False Promises. Success with early adopters can be misleading and give founders unwarranted confidence to expand. • Speed Traps. Despite the pressure to “get big fast,” hypergrowth can spell disaster for even the most promising ventures. • Help Wanted. Rapidly scaling startups need lots of capital and talent, but they can make mistakes that leave them suddenly in short supply of both. • Cascading Miracles. Silicon Valley exhorts entrepreneurs to dream big. But the bigger the vision, the more things that can go wrong. Drawing on fascinating stories of ventures that failed to fulfill their early promise—from a home-furnishings retailer to a concierge dog-walking service, from a dating app to the inventor of a sophisticated social robot, from a fashion brand to a startup deploying a vast network of charging stations for electric vehicles—Eisenmann offers frameworks for detecting when a venture is vulnerable to these patterns, along with a wealth of strategies and tactics for avoiding them. A must-read for founders at any stage of their entrepreneurial journey, Why Startups Fail is not merely a guide to preventing failure but also a roadmap charting the path to startup success.