Business & Economics Audiobooks

Pattern Breakers: Why Some Start-Ups Change the Future

Based on extensive research and real-world examples, Pattern Breakers upends accepted wisdom about how to achieve breakthrough success, and provides a playbook for anyone launching a startup or creating a new product. Pattern Breakers had its roots in the time when Mike Maples, a seasoned venture capitalist, was stumped, unable to get a grip on why some businesses he funded-Twitter, Twitch, and Okta, for example-took off, while others, some deemed "most likely to succeed," shut their doors despite doing everything right. Was it dumb luck that separated gold from dross? What Maples and Stanford University's Peter Ziebelman discovered contradicts accepted wisdom and upends today's formulaic approach to entrepreneurship: that one should look for a big open market, talk to prospective customers to find their highest needs, their "pain points" in that market, and then build what is missing. Rather, patterns are broken and the potential for breakthrough opportunity created when inflection points-events that offer the potential for new empowering capabilities-are harnessed, transforming how people think, work, feel, and act. Uber and Lyft, for example broke the pattern of transportation by harnessing the power of the GPS-enabled smartphone. The Covid pandemic spurred telemedicine. Pattern-breaking ideas like these unlock different powers and radically change the rules, driven by people with the independent-mindedness and courage to divert from the consensus. With intriguing and entertaining storytelling based on a lifetime of experience, Pattern Breakers vividly illustrates what differentiates breakthrough ideas from those that initially seem promising but that meet with mediocre results, and why others that initially seem unworthy-even idiotic-end up radically changing how people live.

Mike Maples, Peter Ziebelman (Author), TBD (Narrator)

Audiobook

The 8 Laws of Customer-Focused Leadership: New Rules for Building A Business Around Today’s Customer

A leadership playbook for making customer experience a core aspect of your business. In a rapidly changing world filled with uncertainties, one thing remains crystal clear: customers are increasingly fickle and no longer care about loyalty to any particular company. In addition, many well-intentioned companies are falling short of customer expectations, despite every organization's potential for excellence. The truth is customer experience is not what it used to be. New technologies, values, generational expectations, economic instability, - and the rapid pace of change all must be considered as you forge ahead. How do you put the customer first in the face of all these emerging trends? Using cutting-edge research and interviewing top leaders across industries, customer experience futurist Blake Morgan has pulled together eight new laws that the best companies follow in terms of building and maintaining a focus on the customer. Customer experience is a decision leaders must make every day, and this book shows you how: - C.reate a customer experience mindset. - eX.ceed longterm profit expectations by focusing on both short term and long term profits. - L.ay out your customer experience strategy creation and stick to it. - E.mbark on your 90 day get started plan. - A.nticipate the future by being a customer experience futurist. - D.on't forget that employees are customers too. - E.valuate success and measure what can be measured. - R.eaffirm the priority - keep CX front and center. Learn the laws, see how the best companies apply them, and build them into your organization to become a transformational customer experience leader!

Blake Morgan (Author), Blake Morgan, TBD (Narrator)

Audiobook

HBR Guide to Emotional Intelligence

Managing the human side of work Research by Daniel Goleman, a psychologist and coauthor of Primal Leadership, has shown that emotional intelligence is a more powerful determinant of good leadership than technical competence, IQ, or vision. Influencing those around us and supporting our own well-being requires us to be self-aware, know when and how to regulate our emotional reactions, and understand the emotional responses of those around us. No wonder emotional intelligence has become one of the crucial criteria in hiring and promotion. But luckily it's not just an innate trait: Emotional intelligence is composed of skills that all of us can learn and improve on. In this guide, you'll learn how to determine your emotional intelligence strengths and weaknesses, understand and manage your emotional reactions, deal with difficult people, make smarter decisions, bounce back from tough times, and help your team develop emotional intelligence. Arm yourself with the advice you need to succeed on the job, with the most trusted brand in business. Packed with how-to essentials from leading experts, the HBR Guides provide smart answers to your most pressing work challenges.

Harvard Business Review (Author), Keith Sellon-Wright (Narrator)

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Aligned: Stakeholder Management for Product Leaders

Product management naturally incorporates empathy, psychology, and thinking outside the box in pursuit of the best design for products. But how often do you apply those same skills to your relationships with people in your company? By breaking the art of stakeholder management into simple lessons and frameworks, this practical book shows product managers how to manage the crucial relationships that will help you make an impact and advance your career. You'll learn how to build trusting relationships with stakeholders, optimize your communication for different audiences, get buy-in for your ideas and roadmaps, and have stakeholders appreciate it when you say no. You'll learn how to: build and maintain trust with your stakeholders; map your organization and identify the real power players; establish roles and build an extended team that works well together; communicate in a way that speaks to the needs and goals of different stakeholders; get buy-in on your ideas and roadmap; make stakeholders appreciate and support you when you say 'no'; sustain buy-in over time; and manage difficult stakeholders and personalities.

Bruce Mccarthy, Melissa Appel, Michael Connors (Author), April Doty (Narrator)

Audiobook

Leading Effective Engineering Teams: Lessons for Individual Contributors and Managers from 10 Years

In this insightful and comprehensive guide, Addy Osmani shares more than a decade of experience working on the Chrome team at Google, uncovering secrets to engineering effectiveness, efficiency, and team success. Engineers and engineering leaders looking to scale their effectiveness and drive transformative results within their teams and organizations will learn the essential principles, tips, and frameworks for building highly effective engineering teams. Osmani presents best practices and proven strategies that foster engineering excellence in organizations of all sizes. Through practical advice and real-world examples, Leading Effective Engineering Teams empowers you to create a thriving engineering culture where individuals and teams can excel. Unlock the full potential of your engineering team and achieve unparalleled success by harnessing the power of trust, commitment, and accountability. With this book, you'll discover: essential traits for engineering effectiveness and pitfalls to avoid; how to cultivate trust within your team; strategies to minimize friction, optimize career growth, and deliver maximum value; dynamics of successful engineering teams; how to implement a systems thinking approach for everyday problem-solving and decision-making; and self-advocacy techniques.

Addy Osmani (Author), Ray Greenley (Narrator)

Audiobook

Supremacy: AI, ChatGPT and the Race that Could Break the World

It took Facebook four years to reach 100 million users. ChatGPT, released in November 2022, did it in two months. The simple text box was unlike anything experienced before. It could craft poems, write screenplays and letters of condolence, and tell jokes. It told one writer that it was in love with him and another that it had spied on Microsoft's programmers through their webcams. But this is just the beginning. Things are going to get much, much worse, as Google and Microsoft compete to monetize this rapidly evolving technology. The danger isn't that humanity is going to be eliminated as in Terminator or The Matrix; no, the danger is that these untested, rapidly evolving technologies will undermine our way of life more insidiously, sucking value out of our economy, replacing high-level creative jobs and enabling a new, terrifying era of disinformation. It was never meant to be this way. The founders of the two companies behind the most advanced AIs in existence - San Francisco-based OpenAI and London-based DeepMind - started their journeys determined to solve humanity's greatest problems. But they couldn't develop their technologies without huge amounts of money and that much money comes with obligations - the kind that Google and Microsoft plan to make back a hundred-fold. Supremacy is the astonishing, untold, behind-the-scenes story of the battle between these two AI companies, their struggles to use their tech for good, and the dangerous direction that they're now going in. It's a story of manipulation, exploitation, secrecy and perhaps the greatest invention in technological history - but, above all, it's a story of ruthless, relentless human progress, and how it will impact all of us for years to come.

Parmy Olson (Author), Lisa Flanagan, TBD (Narrator)

Audiobook

What Went Wrong With Capitalism

Ruchir Sharma (Author), Fajer Al-Kaisi, TBD (Narrator)

Audiobook

Pattern Breakers: The Secrets Behind the World's Most Successful Start-Ups

Mike Maples Jr, Peter Ziebelman (Author), Mike Maples Jr, Peter Ziebelman, TBD (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Wine List: Stories and Tasting Notes behind the World's Most Remarkable Bottles

A one-of-a-kind exploration of the relationship between culture, politics, history, and wine. Vintage refers to the year grapes are harvested, and that vintage holds meaning. You can look up the weather in any almanac, but some stories are known only to insiders-until now. In this wine book Grant Reynolds, award-winning sommelier, deciphers these signatures to reveal the impact of marketing and mentorship, technology and trends, and influencers old and new. Beginning in the late eighteenth century with a tale about Thomas Jefferson's secret White House stash and spanning over a quarter of a millennium to social media's effect on chenin blanc's popularity, The Wine List explores both the chemistry and sociology that have made vintages taste a certain way, fetch a certain price, or go extinct altogether. Featuring sidebars on topics like the taste of climate change, mini timelines capturing significant historical moments, and collage-style illustration, these entries solidify the idea that every bottle is a product of a particular moment in time. A must-listen for fans of wine books like Wine Folly or The World Atlas of Wine, The Wine List is a fresh new wine bible perfect for anyone looking for bar cart books or gifts for wine lovers.

Grant Reynolds (Author), Preston Geer (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Trolls of Wall Street: How the Outcasts and Insurgents Are Hacking the Markets

From renowned financial and technology journalist Nathaniel Popper, the dramatic story of a new generation of financial strivers, living online and playing the stock and crypto markets by a new set of rules. Following a cast of young, all male characters, who went from the fringes of the internet to the front pages of newspapers, The Trolls of Wall Street tells the tale of how social media and startups like Robinhood and Reddit allowed for the formation of a powerful online movement in which the most unlikely participants took on the old guard—and each other. In The Trolls of Wall Street, journalist Nathaniel Popper charts the evolution from the idealism of Occupy Wall Street in 2011 to the anarchic chaos of online outrage leading to the market crash of 2022, showing how a combination of new technology and broader cultural and economic forces created an online revolution led by bands of predominantly young men, who gathered on Reddit and proudly referred to themselves as “degenerates.” This unlikely online gang took their frustration at the current economic system and social climate and created a powerful cultural movement that upended global financial markets and set in motion far reaching changes to how money flows through the economy—all of this just a decade after a financial crisis that most people assumed would forever kill interest in the stock markets. A character-driven, human story of kids who made and lost millions, battled with each and with Wall Street for power, and ultimately upended the economy, The Trolls of Wall Street is a fast moving, suspenseful, and sobering account of how millions of young Americans became obsessed with money and the markets and how that has affected politics, popular culture, finance and more.

Nathaniel Popper (Author), Robert Fass, Tbd (Narrator)

Audiobook

A Day in the Life of the Global Green Economy: How the Eco Revolution is Changing Your World

Dharshini David (Author), Sophie Roberts, TBD (Narrator)

Audiobook

New Methods for Women, A Manifesto: A Fresh Perspective on Life, Work and Relationships

Brought to you by Penguin. What does real empowerment look like, and how do you achieve it? Whether it's teaching you how to have stronger relationships and find purpose, meaning and success at work, or giving you the tools and tips needed to build community, be creative and achieve personal growth, New Methods for Women is the ultimate guide to living a more purposeful and empowered life. Drawing on her vast experiences as an entrepreneur, business-owner, tech and beauty visionary, Sharmadean Reid MBE reveals the secret formula for lifting up yourself and the women around you, based on her own successes. New Methods for Women will help any beauty junkie, female entrepreneur, working mum or hustler to achieve their goals. Sharmadean distills ancient teachings, the wisdom of her favourite authors, and her own experiences with business, leadership and as a co-parenting mother into 10 of the most valuable life lessons any of us can hope to learn. ©2024 Sharmadean Reid (P)2024 Penguin Audio

Sharmadean Reid (Author), Sharmadean Reid, TBD (Narrator)

Audiobook