Looptail – How One Company Changed the World by Reinventing Business

More and more nowadays, we hear about people who are not simply entrepreneurial leaders, but who are leaders with a social conscience – social entrepreneurs. Leading this vanguard is Bruce Poon Tip, a resident of Toronto who heads up the most…

THE WILLPOWER INSTINCT | By Kelly McGonigal, Ph.D.

Welcome to the world of craving. Whether it’s the double espresso shots in the already jitter-inducing coffee, the incessant iPhone check or play, the carcinogenic cigarette, or a habitual way of treating others, we all understand willpower - or more…

The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business

Charles Duhigg, Random House 2012 The science of habits is a fascinating subject, one that held Charles Duhigg, the Pulitzer Prize-winning business reporter with the New York Times, in a ten-year thrall and inspired his 2012 international bestseller The Power…

Collaboration: How Leaders Avoid the Traps, Create Unity and Reap Big Results by Dr. Morten Hansen

Collaboration is an effort by a group to produce greater results.

When deciding whether collaboration will produce greater results, Dr. Morten Hansen, the author of the 2009 book Collaboration*, encourages us to ask: “[Assuming we could do collaboration within our company well,] what is the potential for innovation, sales, and operations?” In other words, make it a mandate to construct a business case to determine collaboration value, taking into account: 1) Opportunity Costs. “What else could we do with the time, effort, and resources [we’re putting into this]?” and 2) Collaboration Costs. Delays, budget overruns, poor quality, and lost sales.

The Innovator’s DNA by Clayton M. Christensen, Jeff Dyer and Hal Gregersen

The title of the book alone deserves mentioning; it is that smart. The subheading: Mastering the Five Skills of Disruptive Innovators, could have been used, but it doesn’t quite have the edge that captures—that seems to imply: “DNA can be changed!... gotta buy this right now! ....could change it during my summer vacation!” (Yes, you could—if your vacation time was 1,459,999,999,979 trillion days longer—which is how long it’s taken DNA to evolve.)

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert B Cialdini

Have you ever gotten an unsolicited key-chain in the mail, and donated money to the charity that sent it? At Christmas time, have you wondered why it’s suddenly impossible to find that special toy your child wants? At some point in your life, have you found yourself wanting to keep up with “the Jones’s”? Or against your better judgment, have agreed to accept less-than favourable conditions in a negotiation?