John Kao, a master of innovation, shows how you can put your life and business on a trajectory to uncommon success. The journey begins with a conceptual prototype of your own making and ends with you realizing your ambition. Representatives of our newest client, a pharmaceutical maker, arrived this morning at 7:45--six executives, all eager to get started. They stared at the emptiness of our white walls but said nothing. I asked them to explain what brought them to us. "It’s simple," one of them said, knowing it wasn’t simple at all. "We’re a $40 billion-a-year corporation, and we want to keep growing at 7 percent annually. In other words, we need another $2.8 billion in sales every year." I tapped the calculator on my iPhone. "That’s about $54 million a week," I said. "We don’t care about some $100 million opportunity," the man went on. "Only mega-ideas will do." "What you need," I said, "is the equivalent of two dozen blockbuster movies a year."
Two best friends create a computer that can predict the future. But what they can’t predict is how it will tear their friendship—and society—apart. “A fantastic page-turner and a future classic.”—Peter Clines, New York Times bestselling author of Paradox Bound IN DEVELOPMENT AS AN HBO MAX ORIGINAL SERIES If you had the chance to look one year into the future, would you? For Ben Boyce and Adhi Chaudry, the answer is unequivocally yes. And they’re betting everything that you’ll say yes, too. Welcome to The Future: a computer that connects to the internet one year from now, so you can see who you’ll be dating, where you’ll be working, even whether or not you’ll be alive in the year to come. By forming a startup to deliver this revolutionary technology to the world, Ben and Adhi have made their wildest, most impossible dream a reality. Once Silicon Valley outsiders, they’re now its hottest commodity. The device can predict everything perfectly—from stock market spikes and sports scores to political scandals and corporate takeovers—allowing them to chase down success and fame while staying one step ahead of the competition. But the future their device foretells is not the bright one they imagined. Ambition. Greed. Jealousy. And, perhaps, an apocalypse. The question is . . . can they stop it? Told through emails, texts, transcripts, and blog posts, this bleeding-edge tech thriller chronicles the costs of innovation and asks how far you’d go to protect the ones you love—even from themselves.
Elon Musk named Our Final Invention one of five books everyone should read about the future—a Huffington Post Definitive Tech Book of 2013. Artificial Intelligence helps choose what books you buy, what movies you see, and even who you date. It puts the “smart” in your smartphone and soon it will drive your car. It makes most of the trades on Wall Street, and controls vital energy, water, and transportation infrastructure. But Artificial Intelligence can also threaten our existence. In as little as a decade, AI could match and then surpass human intelligence. Corporations and government agencies are pouring billions into achieving AI’s Holy Grail—human-level intelligence. Once AI has attained it, scientists argue, it will have survival drives much like our own. We may be forced to compete with a rival more cunning, more powerful, and more alien than we can imagine. Through profiles of tech visionaries, industry watchdogs, and groundbreaking AI systems, Our Final Invention explores the perils of the heedless pursuit of advanced AI. Until now, human intelligence has had no rival. Can we coexist with beings whose intelligence dwarfs our own? And will they allow us to? “If you read just one book that makes you confront scary high-tech realities that we’ll soon have no choice but to address, make it this one.” —The Washington Post “Science fiction has long explored the implications of humanlike machines (think of Asimov’s I, Robot), but Barrat’s thoughtful treatment adds a dose of reality.” —Science News “A dark new book . . . lays out a strong case for why we should be at least a little worried.” —The New Yorker
What if, instead of trying to predict the future, we could just pick the one we want - and then invent it? Well, we can. Think of the wealth of technological resources already available to us. The computing power in that smartphone in your pocket could have guided 120 million Apollo-era spacecrafts to the moon and back. A gigabyte of memory cost $300,000 in the 1980s - today, it costs a fraction of a penny. Now, try to imagine 2050, when your computing devices will be a million times more powerful or available at one-millionth of today's prices.In this deeply researched and compelling book, the authors do the imagining for you, describing seven so-incredible-as-to-be-almost-magical capabilities that will be available by 2050 in computing, communication, information, genomics, energy, water, and transportation. You may finally get that flying car, have ample water even in a desert, and be treated for disease through microscopic robots in your bloodstream.Drawing on their decades of experience helping major organizations formulate strategies for innovation, the authors demonstrate how to use combinations of those seven capabilities to imagine "perfect" futures, whether that means reversing climate change, resolving today's disinformation crisis, or living 20 years longer. This book paints visions of how the world could - and should - look as we pass the planet on to future generations.We can use those visions to start inventing a perfect future - today.
Sales is considered to be one of the most recession proof careers. Why should you consider a sales career, how to know if you would be good at it, how to write a resume and a gender neutral cover letter, what to include in your LinkedIn profile, how to do interview prep, what to wear, how to access the hidden job market, how to evaluate a job offer, how to resign from your current job …. it's all in this book! More Details: A study published by Jobfox, identified Sales Representative/Business Development as the most recession-proof profession. Profit Magazine reported; “Finding the right sales talent was one of the biggest concerns facing sales organizations today.” Similar studies conducted annually by Manpower Inc. report that the position of “sales representative” is consistently considered by management as one of the most difficult jobs to fill. According to the research in the book “How to Hire & Develop Your Next Top Performer – The Five Qualities That Make Sales People Great”, 1 in 4 people have an aptitude and are well suited for a career in sales. So, if there are that many sales organizations always looking to hire sales people, and so many people have the ability to sell, why are so many sales people having difficulties finding their dream sales position? It’s probably because few of us are ever taught how to actually find it. This eBook is going to fix that. “How to Find Your Dream Sales Job – The future is yours to create!” will ask and answer four basic questions: 1. Why should you consider a career in sales? 2. How to know if you would be good at it? 3. What does your dream job look like? 4. How do you go out into the job marketplace and find it? Why should you consider a sales career, how to know if you would be good at it, how to write a resume and a gender neutral cover letter, what to include in your LinkedIn profile, how to do interview prep, what to wear, how to access the hidden job market, how to evaluate a job offer, how to resign from your current job …. IT’S ALL IN THIS BOOK! Written by Susan A. Enns, a sales coach and author who has been in sales, in one form or another, for well over 3 decades. Over those 30 plus years, in all capacities at all levels of sales, sales management, and executive level management, she has interviewed hundreds, maybe even thousands of candidates for various sales and sales management positions. With that experience under her belt and a record of proven performance to her credit, she wrote this book. She started to write it the day she met a very enterprising young man who wanted to start a career in sales. He told her he found a company online and they were going to charge him more than $3000 to teach him how to find a sales job. She thought at the time that was highway robbery, let alone questioning if it was even legal. She finished writing it shortly after the COVID-19 Pandemic of 2020 changed the world, and so many talented sales people were forced to change jobs and were hitting the job market on a moment’s notice. As Confucius once said, “Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life”. Susan has had such a rewarding career in sales, she wants to help you explore the same opportunity. So let's get started!
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • At last, a book that shows you how to build—design—a life you can thrive in, at any age or stage • “Life has questions. They have answers.” —The New York Times Designers create worlds and solve problems using design thinking. Look around your office or home—at the tablet or smartphone you may be holding or the chair you are sitting in. Everything in our lives was designed by someone. And every design starts with a problem that a designer or team of designers seeks to solve. In this book, Bill Burnett and Dave Evans show us how design thinking can help us create a life that is both meaningful and fulfilling, regardless of who or where we are, what we do or have done for a living, or how young or old we are. The same design thinking responsible for amazing technology, products, and spaces can be used to design and build your career and your life, a life of fulfillment and joy, constantly creative and productive, one that always holds the possibility of surprise.
A rallying manifesto for the innovative problem-solving we need to build a better, more verdant, and sustainable planetary existence. Academics are letting Africa down. With all that we know, what do we have to show for it? Whose lives have been changed for the better by it? What have we done for and with our communities lately? In this provocative book—the first in a trilogy—Clapperton Chakanetsa Mavhunga argues that our critical thinkers must become actual thinker-doers. Taking its title from one of Thomas Sankara’s most inspirational speeches, Dare to Invent the Future looks for moments in Africa’s story where precedents of critical thought and knowledge in service of problem-solving are evident to inspire readers to dare to invent such a knowledge system. Mavhunga revisits insights from Edward Wilmot Blyden, Booker T. Washington, Aimé Césaire, Frantz Fanon, Amílcar Cabral, Julius Nyerere, and Thomas Sankara to illustrate how the academic disciplines have been, and could be, deployed in the service of and through problem-solving, building on what people are doing and know. At its core, he writes, knowledge in the service of and through problem-solving derives from reading the past for new questions, doing due diligence in the present, and contriving an anticipatory approach toward the future. Questioning the fundamental premises of Western and white knowledge production, especially regarding science and technology, Mavhunga proposes in this book refreshingly new approaches to thinking-doing that stem from African realities, in the hopes of inspiring a generation that will run toward, not away from, problems to solve them.
Examining the 50 coolest, most stylish, and most popular futuristic inventions, this handbook peers through the lens of today's science, looking at which ones have become reality and how they work, and which are still in the imagined future--will we ever get to ride our jetpacks? From prototype to realization, the technological evolution of each invention--such as the Star Trek communicator, which has become today's cell pho≠ the robot pets of Dr. Who; Vanilla Sky's cryonics; and even Sleeper's orgasmatron--is charted in this veritable history of the future.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • In this urgent, authoritative book, Bill Gates sets out a wide-ranging, practical—and accessible—plan for how the world can get to zero greenhouse gas emissions in time to avoid a climate catastrophe. Bill Gates has spent a decade investigating the causes and effects of climate change. With the help of experts in the fields of physics, chemistry, biology, engineering, political science, and finance, he has focused on what must be done in order to stop the planet's slide to certain environmental disaster. In this book, he not only explains why we need to work toward net-zero emissions of greenhouse gases, but also details what we need to do to achieve this profoundly important goal. He gives us a clear-eyed description of the challenges we face. Drawing on his understanding of innovation and what it takes to get new ideas into the market, he describes the areas in which technology is already helping to reduce emissions, where and how the current technology can be made to function more effectively, where breakthrough technologies are needed, and who is working on these essential innovations. Finally, he lays out a concrete, practical plan for achieving the goal of zero emissions—suggesting not only policies that governments should adopt, but what we as individuals can do to keep our government, our employers, and ourselves accountable in this crucial enterprise. As Bill Gates makes clear, achieving zero emissions will not be simple or easy to do, but if we follow the plan he sets out here, it is a goal firmly within our reach.
Chinese edition of The art of invention:The Creative Process of Discovery and Design by Steven J. Paley. In Traditional Chinese. Distributed by Tsai Fong Books, Inc.
