Serious Play
Michael Schrage

Virtually every significant marketplace innovation in this century, from the airplane to the animated motion picture to the Internet, is a direct result of extensive prototyping and simulation. Wherever you look for the fundamental dynamics driving innovation, you find innovators managing models. Our fuzzy mental models become tangible and actionable only through the use of prototypes, ranging from scale models to spreadsheets. These prototypes engage the organization's thinking in the explicit. They externalize thought and spark conversation. In this summary, you'll learn how to effectively exploit prototypes while avoiding their surprising pitfalls. You'll come away equipped to energize the creative capabilities in your organization.

Smart Choices:  A Practical Guide to Making Better Decisions
John S. Hammond, Ralph L. Keeney, and Howard Raiffa

More than any other factor, making the right decisions determines how happy and successful we are. However, few of us consistently make decisions the right way. In Smart Choices, three renowned experts show how to avoid decision making pitfalls and start making more rewarding decisions.

The Innovator's Dilemma
Clayton M. Christensen

The story of the '90s: a market-leading firm loses its market to newer firms with newer technologies and better business models. In The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail, Harvard Business School Professor Clayton M. Christensen explains why this happens and what your company can do to take control of the situation. This summary should serve as both an urgent warning, and as a signal of opportunity. If your company is currently the industry leader, you need to pursue the strategies we'll discuss to avoid missing the next wave of innovation. If your firm is not on top, this is your chance to get there.

Organizing Genius
Warren Bennis & P.W. Biederman

By examining some of history's greatest groups--from the Manhattan Project to teams that invented the personal computer--Bennis and Biederman uncover the secrets of collective genius. They describe the free-form organization of Great Groups and the roles played by their leaders: gatherers of talent, sources of inspiration and bridges to the outside world. This is a must-listen summary for every leader.

Leading the Revolution
Gary Hamel

Hamel authored Competing for the Future, and today is arguably "the most influential thinker on strategy in the Western world."  He contends that new business revolutionaries are infiltrating every industry, blowing up old business models and creating new wealth everywhere.  Incumbents must join the revolution or perish!  This summary identifies the key criteria for building companies that are activist-friendly and revolution-ready.  It details the steps your company must take to make innovation an enduring capability.  It will transform the way you think.

Learning from the Future
Liam Fahey & Robert Randall

When companies cannot imagine the future, they are often blind-sided by what develops: competitors they didn't anticipate suddenly emerge, technologies in which they invested heavily become obsolete, customer demands take an unforeseen turn.  In many cases, these crises could have been turned into opportunities, if only the company had learned from the future, and started building the right competencies years in advance.

But how can decision-makers learn from the future before it happens? The answer is through scenario learning.  Scenario learning is not about trying to predict one "likely" future.  Instead, you must model three or four different visions of the future so you can make strategic decision that will succeed in a wide range of possible futures.  This process will help your company lay the foundations for tomorrow's success, while competing to win in today's marketplace.

Now, by listening to Audio-Tech's summary of Learning from the Future, you'll learn the proven techniques for identifying the most significant economic, social, and demographic trends, and for extrapolating likely future scenarios from them.  You'll learn how to think systematically about each scenario's implications, develop appropriate strategic responses, and test the ramifications of those responses.  This is a must-listen summary for every long-range decision-maker.

• Exploit the thrilling growth opportunities that technology will create in every industry.
• Develop a vision of your industry's long-range future.
• Create a strategy for dominating the future you foresee.
• Devise short-term tactics for improving your business today.
• Continue to thrive as a professional, in the midst of change.

The Leader's Edge
Guy Hale

For over 20 years, Hale has taught the five critical "thinking skills" to managers and professionals at some of the world's largest and most respected firms. -- As successful executives and professionals, we all practice most of these skills, in some form, almost every day.  However, few of us use them as effectively as we could. The Audio-Tech summary of The Leader's Edge lets you quickly and easily refresh and refine these important concepts so you can apply them for maximum impact.  

"Create or fail!"  That's the motto of John Kao who has taught creativity to students and executives at the Harvard Business School for the past 14 years. In Jamming, Kao explains how to engage employees' minds, stimulate their imaginations, and organize their processes in order to achieve break-through creativity. Extensive examples from leading-edge firms show how you can put these creativity techniques to work in your firm right now.

Patterns of High Performance
Jerry L. Fletcher

The key to energized performance, heightened creativity, and consistent excellence lies in discovering your individual High Performance Pattern. This is the distinctive sequence of steps you naturally follow when you are at your best when you feel enthusiastic; when the work flows easily; and when the results exceed your expectations. Jerry Fletcher shows how individuals can discover and apply their High Performance Patterns to sustain outstanding results.  

Techno-Trends
Daniel Burrus

Techno-Trends describes how to creatively apply the new tools of technology to create the exciting new products, services, markets, and careers that will revitalize your business and the American economy. Burrus conclusively demonstrates the need for all of us to understand and utilize the new technological tools that will determine economic winners and losers.

The Owner's Manual for The Brain
Pierce J. Howard, PH. D.

The human brain is the only resource every customer, supplier, and employee has at his or her disposal. The Owners Manual for the Brain shows us, for the first time, how to use it more effectively. Howard translates the amazing new scientific knowledge of how the brain works into practical, everyday advice for unlocking the brain's potential for the benefit of your company's bottom line. For example, I was surprised to find out about the ways in which environmental factors like color, lighting, fragrances, and textures can influence productivity or customer buying decisions. Similarly, finding out about the roles exercise, sleep, and diet play in determining our effectiveness prompted me to reconsider my personal habits and work styles. This summary also taught me the correct way to use brain-storming -- as opposed to the version most companies follow to help my staff think creatively. From my own experience, I have no doubt that The Owner's Manual for the Brain will get you on the road to greater personal satisfaction and effectiveness.