At the Edge of Uncertainty
At the Edge of Uncertainty

Author: Michael Brooks

Publisher: Profile Books

Published: 2014-06-26

Total Pages: 324

ISBN-13: 1847659667

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The atom. The Big Bang. DNA. Natural selection. All ideas that have revolutionised science - and that were dismissed out of hand when they first appeared. The surprises haven't stopped: here, Michael Brooks, bestselling author of 13 Things that Don't Make Sense, investigates the new wave of unexpected insights that are shaping the future of scientific discovery. Through eleven radical new insights, Brooks takes us to the extreme frontiers of what we understand about the world. He journeys from the observations that might rewrite our history of the universe, through the novel biology behind our will to live, and on to the physiological root of consciousness. Along the way, he examines how the underrepresentation of women in clinical trials means that many of the drugs we use are less effective on women than men and more likely to have adverse effects, explores how merging humans with other species might provide a solution to the shortage of organ donors, and finds out if there is such a thing as the will to live. When we think about science, we often think of iron-clad facts. But today more than ever, our unshakeable truths have been shaken apart. As Michael Brooks reveals, the best science is about open-mindedness, imagination and a love of mind-boggling adventures at the edge of uncertainty.

Thrive
Thrive

Author: Meridith Elliott Powell, MBA, CSP

Publisher: Sound Wisdom

Published: 2021-06-22

Total Pages: 222

ISBN-13: 1640952837

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Thrive is the roadmap of how to grow your business and drive sales in highly shifting, constantly changing economic times. It is the story of those leaders and organizations that have seen consistent growth through several economic crises-companies that were founded in the late 1700’s to early 1900’s and they are still in business thriving today. In this book we share their stories, their struggles, and tell you exactly how they have not only overcome adversity, but thrived through it. Praise for the Book: “We live in a time when uncertainty is the order of the day. THRIVE is a must-read for all who strive to grow intellectually and to succeed through the opportunities an uncertain world offers.” —Ken Langone, Founder, Home Depot, American Billionaire and Philanthropist “Talk about the right book for the right time! What I liked most about THRIVE are the case studies of real companies and real people who weathered the storms and emerged more successful than before. THRIVE is both practical and inspirational. I’ve ordered copies for my entire team.” —Bill Cates, CSP, CPAE, Founder, The Cates Academy for Relationship Marketing, Author of Radical Relevance “In THRIVE, Meridith weaves in 250 years of business history to show how resilient businesses and people find opportunities in every situation. This is a must-read to gain ideas and perspective in a sea of change.” —Mary C. Kelly, PhD, CEO, Productive Leaders, Author of The Five Minute Leadership Guide “You do not merely read this book; you read, you think, you develop next steps. Meridith does a masterful job of detailing companies doing it right and then goes further by adding her insights to create a playbook of what you need to do. Perfect book for the time we’re in right now!” —Mark Hunter, CSP, “The Sales Hunter”, Author of A Mind For Sales “The only certainty in business is there will be times of great uncertainty. It’s how you react when your world—or the world—doesn’t go as planned that determines your future. Meridith studies how companies have thrived in their uncertain times to become global market leaders and shares the proven success strategies that you can implement in your business to do the same. If there was ever a time where our world needed this book, it’s now. Read it. Study it. And thrive!” —Sam Richter, CSP, CPAE, Hall of Fame Speaker, Bestselling Author, and Technology Entrepreneur

The Uncertainty Mindset
The Uncertainty Mindset

Author: Vaughn Tan

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2020-07-28

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 0231551878

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Innovation is how businesses stay ahead of the competition and adapt to market conditions that change in unpredictable and uncertain ways. In the first decade of the twenty-first century, high-end cuisine underwent a profound transformation. Once an industry that prioritized consistency and reliability, it turned into one where constant change was a competitive necessity. A top restaurant’s reputation and success have become so closely bound up with its ability to innovate that a new organizational form, the culinary research and development team, has emerged. The best of these R&D teams continually expand the frontiers of food—they invent a constant stream of new dishes, new cooking processes and methods, and even new ways of experiencing food. How do they achieve this nonstop novelty? And what can culinary research and development teach us about how organizations innovate? Vaughn Tan opens up the black box of elite culinary R&D to provide essential insights. Drawing on years of unprecedented access to the best and most influential culinary R&D teams in the world, he reveals how they exemplify what he calls the uncertainty mindset. Such a mindset intentionally incorporates uncertainty into organization design rather than simply trying to reduce risk. It changes how organizations hire, set goals, and motivate team members and leads organizations to work in highly unconventional ways. A revelatory look at the R&D kitchen, The Uncertainty Mindset upends conventional wisdom about how to organize for innovation and offers practical insights for businesses trying to become innovative and adaptable.

Questions Are the Answer
Questions Are the Answer

Author: Hal Gregersen

Publisher: HarperCollins

Published: 2018-11-13

Total Pages: 351

ISBN-13: 0062844776

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2018 Nautilus Book Awards Silver Winner What if you could unlock a better answer to your most vexing problem—in your workplace, community, or home life—just by changing the question? Talk to creative problem-solvers and they will often tell you, the key to their success is asking a different question. Take Debbie Sterling, the social entrepreneur who created GoldieBlox. The idea came when a friend complained about too few women in engineering and Sterling wondered aloud: "why are all the great building toys made for boys?" Or consider Nobel laureate Richard Thaler, who asked: "would it change economic theory if we stopped pretending people were rational?" Or listen to Jeff Bezos whose relentless approach to problem solving has fueled Amazon’s exponential growth: “Getting the right question is key to getting the right answer.” Great questions like these have a catalytic quality—that is, they dissolve barriers to creative thinking and channel the pursuit of solutions into new, accelerated pathways. Often, the moment they are voiced, they have the paradoxical effect of being utterly surprising yet instantly obvious. For innovation and leadership guru Hal Gregersen, the power of questions has always been clear—but it took some years for the follow-on question to hit him: If so much depends on fresh questions, shouldn’t we know more about how to arrive at them? That sent him on a research quest ultimately including over two hundred interviews with creative thinkers. Questions Are the Answer delivers the insights Gregersen gained about the conditions that give rise to catalytic questions—and breakthrough insights—and how anyone can create them.

13 Things That Don't Make Sense
13 Things That Don't Make Sense

Author: Michael Brooks

Publisher: Profile Books

Published: 2010-07-09

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 1847651305

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Science starts to get interesting when things don't make sense. Even today there are experimental results that the most brilliant scientists can neither explain nor dismiss. In the past, similar anomalies have revolutionised our world: in the sixteenth century, a set of celestial irregularities led Copernicus to realise that the Earth goes around the sun and not the reverse. In 13 Things That Don't Make Sense Michael Brooks meets thirteen modern-day anomalies that may become tomorrow's breakthroughs. Is ninety six percent of the universe missing? If no study has ever been able to definitively show that the placebo effect works, why has it become a pillar of medical science? Was the 1977 signal from outer space a transmission from an alien civilization? Spanning fields from chemistry to cosmology, psychology to physics, Michael Brooks thrillingly captures the excitement and controversy of the scientific unknown.

When the Conflict Ends, While Uncertainty Continues
When the Conflict Ends, While Uncertainty Continues

Author: Alessandra La Vaccara

Publisher: Editions Pedone/Hart

Published: 2019-06-13

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781509931798

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One of the most challenging elements during any armed conflict and its aftermath is the need to determine the fate of the missing and to support families dealing with uncertainty. Another layer of complexity is added in cases where a missing person might have been involved in criminal activity. This book examines how international law meets these two distinct, but intertwined, needs. It shows that the duty to account for missing persons is cross-cutting in nature, requiring measures needing implementation before, during, and after armed conflict. At the same time, those measures cannot substitute any required to establish responsibility for IHL/IHRL violations and international crimes. Exploring specific examples, the book examines the role that international law plays in the international community's attempts to articulate humanitarian and accountability-driven efforts when dealing with the missing. By so doing, it suggests how linkages between such efforts can be established, both through legal and policy avenues.

The Cunning of Uncertainty
The Cunning of Uncertainty

Author: Helga Nowotny

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2015-11-19

Total Pages: 161

ISBN-13: 0745687652

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Uncertainty is interwoven into human existence. It is a powerful incentive in the search for knowledge and an inherent component of scientific research. We have developed many ways of coping with uncertainty. We make promises, manage risks and make predictions to try to clear the mists and predict ahead. But the future is inherently uncertain - and the mist that shrouds our path an inherent part of our journey. The burning question is whether our societies can face up to uncertainty, learn to embrace it and whether we can open up to a constantly evolving future. In this new book, Helga Nowotny shows how research can thrive at the cusp of uncertainty. Science, she argues, can eventually transform uncertainty into certainty, but into certainty which remains always provisional. Uncertainty is never completely static. It is constantly evolving. It encompasses geological time scales and, at the level of human experience, split-second changes as cells divide. Life and death decisions are taken in the blink of the eye, while human interactions with the natural environment may reveal their impact over millennia. Uncertainty is cunning. It appears at unexpected moments, it shuns the straight line, takes the oblique route and sometimes the unexpected short-cut. As we acknowledge the cunning of uncertainty, its threats retreat. We accept that any scientific inquiry must produce results that are provisional and uncertain. This message is vital for politicians and policy-makers: do not be tempted by small, short-term, controllable gains to the exclusion of uncertain, high-gain opportunities. Wide-ranging in its use of examples and enriched by the author’s experience as President of the European Research Council, one of the world’s leading funding organisations for fundamental research. The Cunning of Uncertainty is a must-read for students and scholars of all disciplines, politicians, policy-makers and anyone concerned with the fundamental role of knowledge and science in our societies today.

The Art of Uncertainty
The Art of Uncertainty

Author: Dennis Merritt Jones

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2011-06-09

Total Pages: 306

ISBN-13: 1101516984

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What if we could learn to accept I don't know and embrace the possibility that the future is full of mystery, excitement, and unlimited opportunity? The Art of Uncertainty is an invitation to the reader to consider its essential message: learning to love the unknown by staying present in the moment. If the difficulties of recent years have taught us anything-particularly those who "did everything right" and still saw it all fall apart-it's that none of us has as much control over our lives as we believe. The only thing we can control is our next thought. What if we could learn how to be at peace with uncertainty and embrace the possibility that the future is full of mystery, excitement, and unlimited opportunity? What if we discovered that a new paradigm can be more fulfilling, more rewarding, and more peaceful than what we have known? Living in the I don't know and loving it is an art form we can all master, and The Art of Uncertainty is the perfect guidebook.

Uncertainty
Uncertainty

Author: David Lindley

Publisher: Anchor

Published: 2008-02-12

Total Pages: 274

ISBN-13: 0307389480

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The gripping, entertaining, and vividly-told narrative of a radical discovery that sent shockwaves through the scientific community and forever changed the way we understand the world. Werner Heisenberg’s “uncertainty principle” challenged centuries of scientific understanding, placed him in direct opposition to Albert Einstein, and put Niels Bohr in the middle of one of the most heated debates in scientific history. Heisenberg’s theorem stated that there were physical limits to what we could know about sub-atomic particles; this “uncertainty” would have shocking implications. In a riveting and lively account, David Lindley captures this critical episode and explains one of the most important scientific discoveries in history, which has since transcended the boundaries of science and influenced everything from literary theory to television.

Uncertainty
Uncertainty

Author: William Briggs

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2016-07-15

Total Pages: 274

ISBN-13: 3319397567

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This book presents a philosophical approach to probability and probabilistic thinking, considering the underpinnings of probabilistic reasoning and modeling, which effectively underlie everything in data science. The ultimate goal is to call into question many standard tenets and lay the philosophical and probabilistic groundwork and infrastructure for statistical modeling. It is the first book devoted to the philosophy of data aimed at working scientists and calls for a new consideration in the practice of probability and statistics to eliminate what has been referred to as the "Cult of Statistical Significance." The book explains the philosophy of these ideas and not the mathematics, though there are a handful of mathematical examples. The topics are logically laid out, starting with basic philosophy as related to probability, statistics, and science, and stepping through the key probabilistic ideas and concepts, and ending with statistical models. Its jargon-free approach asserts that standard methods, such as out-of-the-box regression, cannot help in discovering cause. This new way of looking at uncertainty ties together disparate fields — probability, physics, biology, the “soft” sciences, computer science — because each aims at discovering cause (of effects). It broadens the understanding beyond frequentist and Bayesian methods to propose a Third Way of modeling.