Emerging technology and innovative thinkers are shaping a future in which we’ll see dramatic changes in the way we communicate, learn, do business, and live our daily lives. Of course this new world, built on disruptive forces, will present both challenges and opportunities.
To help you better understand and prepare for what’s ahead, our latest book picks offer road maps from technology and business leaders, successful entreprenuers, futurists, productivity experts, and others. Together these reads provide a range of perspectives on today’s evolving environment as well as how to successfully navigate the major shifts coming our way.
Are you ready?
Book Picks: The Technology and Innovators Defining Our Future
The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future by
Much of what will happen in the next 30 years is inevitable, driven by technological trends that are already in motion. In this provocative new book, Kevin Kelly provides an optimistic road map for the future, showing how the coming changes in our lives—from virtual reality in the home to an on-demand economy to artificial intelligence embedded in everything we manufacture—can be understood as the result of a few long-term, accelerating forces. Kelly both describes these deep trends—flowing, screening, accessing, sharing, filtering, remixing, tracking, and questioning—and demonstrates how they overlap and are co-dependent on one another. These larger forces will completely revolutionize the way we buy, work, learn, and communicate with each other. By understanding and embracing them, says Kelly, it will be easier for us to remain on top of the coming wave of changes and to arrange our day-to-day relationships with technology in ways that bring forth maximum benefits.
Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World by
In Originals, Grant addresses the challenge of improving the world from the perspective of becoming original: choosing to champion novel ideas and values that go against the grain, battle conformity, and buck outdated traditions. Using surprising studies and stories spanning business, politics, sports, and entertainment, the author explores how to recognize a good idea, speak up without getting silenced, build a coalition of allies, choose the right time to act, and manage fear and doubt. Learn from an entrepreneur who pitches his start-ups by highlighting the reasons not to invest, a woman at Apple who challenged Steve Jobs from three levels below, an analyst who overturned the rule of secrecy at the CIA, a billionaire financial wizard who fires employees for failing to criticize him, and a TV executive who didn’t even work in comedy but saved Seinfeld from the cutting-room floor. The payoff is a set of groundbreaking insights about rejecting conformity and improving the status quo.
Smarter Faster Better: The Secrets of Being Productive in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg
At the core of Smarter Faster Better are eight key concepts—from motivation and goal setting to focus and decision-making—that explain why some people and companies get so much done. Drawing on the latest findings in neuroscience, psychology, and behavioral economics—as well as the experiences of CEOs, educational reformers, four-star generals, FBI agents, airplane pilots, and Broadway songwriters—the author explains that the most productive people, companies, and organizations don’t merely act differently. They view the world, and their choices, in profoundly different ways. They know that productivity relies on making certain choices. The way we frame our daily decisions; the big ambitions we embrace and the easy goals we ignore; the cultures we establish as leaders to drive innovation; the way we interact with data: These are the things that separate the merely busy from the genuinely productive. This book offers a groundbreaking exploration of the science of productivity, one that can help anyone learn to succeed with less stress and struggle.
The Industries of the Future by Alec Ross
Leading innovation expert Alec Ross explains what’s next for the world, including the advances and stumbling blocks that will emerge in the next 10 years and how we can navigate them. Highlighting the best opportunities for progress and explaining why countries thrive or sputter, he examines the specific fields that will most shape our economic future, including robotics, cybersecurity, the commercialization of genomics, the next step for big data, and the coming impact of digital technology on money and markets. Ross blends storytelling and economic analysis to give a vivid and informed perspective on how sweeping global trends are affecting the ways we live. Incorporating the insights of leaders ranging from tech moguls to defense experts, The Industries of the Future takes intimidating, complex topics and boils them down into clear, plainspoken language. This is an essential book for understanding how the world works—now and tomorrow—and a must-read for businesspeople in every sector, from every country.
The Third Wave: An Entrepreneur’s Vision of the Future by Steve Case
This book explains a new paradigm we’re entering, called the “Third Wave” of the Internet. The first wave saw AOL and other companies lay the foundation for consumers to connect to the Internet. The second wave saw companies like Google and Facebook build on top of the Internet to create search and social networking capabilities, while apps like Snapchat and Instagram leverage the smartphone revolution. Now, author Steve Case says, we’re entering a period in which entrepreneurs will vastly transform major “real world” sectors like health, education, transportation, energy, and food—and in the process change the way we live our daily lives. With passion and clarity, the author explains the ways in which newly emerging technology companies will have to rethink their relationships with customers, competitors, and governments, and offers advice for how entrepreneurs can make winning business decisions and strategies—and how all of us can make sense of this changing digital age.
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Posted by: Margot Knorr Mancini
