For over 20 years, a select group of Yale undergraduates has been admitted into the year-long "Grand Strategy" seminar team-taught by John Lewis Gaddis and Paul Kennedy. Its purpose: to provide a grounding in strategic decision-making in the face of crisis to prepare future American leaders for important work. Now, John Lewis Gaddis has transposed the experience of that course into a wonderfully succinct, lucid and inspirational book, a view from the commanding heights of statesmanship across the landscape of world history from the ancient Greeks to Lincoln, and beyond.

The author of the legendary best seller Influence, social psychologist Robert Cialdini, shines a light on effective persuasion and reveals that the secret doesn't lie in the message itself but in the key moment before that message is delivered.

Nearly all of today’s major innovation workshops and programs call on organizations to drive innovation. What they miss is that innovation comes from the personal creativity of individuals. And creativity doesn’t require an advanced education or technical skills. All employees can be creative. Often, all they lack is a fitting mindset and the right skills.

In The Long Game, Rush Doshi draws from a rich base of Chinese primary sources, including decades worth of party documents, leaked materials, memoirs by party leaders, and a careful analysis of China's conduct to provide a history of China's grand strategy since the end of the Cold War.

War Transformed provides insights for those involved in the design of military strategy, and the forces that must execute that strategy. Emphasizing the impacts of technology, strategic competition, demography, and climate change, Mick Ryan uses historical and contemporary anecdotes to highlight key challenges faced by nations in a new era of great power rivalry. Just as previous industrial revolutions have advanced societies, the nascent fourth industrial revolution will have a similar impact on how humans fight, compete, and build military power in the twenty-first century.

In today’s frenetic, uncertain world, the “same old, same old” routines are perfect ways to go nowhere fast. What has worked for you before - professionally or personally - no longer gets results. Whether you’ve been downsized, reached the end of a long relationship, or found yourself questioning where you are in life, it’s clear you need to change. To innovate. Make it new. Make yourself new. Now, in this invaluable audiobook, the world-renowned “Dean of Innovation”, Jeff DeGraff, shares his tried-and-true techniques on how to reinvent yourself.

Based on his work at some of the world's largest companies, including Ford, Adidas, and Chanel, Christian Madsbjerg's Sensemaking is a provocative stand against the tyranny of big data and scientism, and an urgent, overdue defense of human intelligence. Christian Madsbjerg argues that our fixation with data often masks stunning deficiencies, and the risks for humankind are enormous. Blind devotion to number crunching imperils our businesses, our educations, our governments, and our life savings.

I have done my best to name the thoughts, feelings, and opportunities that accompany the journey through failure, because in naming a thing we gain power over it. What I ultimately hope for are empowered men and women who confidently embrace their stories to live more effectively and wholeheartedly in the world. Fail fast, fail often, fail forward...We live in an age that acknowledges the importance of failure to success. Yet our relentless focus on success can leave us ill-prepared for the trauma, grief, and confusion that can accompany failure.

In Strategy: A History, Sir Lawrence Freedman, one of the world's leading authorities on war and international politics, captures the vast history of strategic thinking, in a consistently engaging and insightful account of how strategy came to pervade every aspect of our lives.

In Spies, Lies, and Algorithms, Amy Zegart separates fact from fiction as she offers an engaging and enlightening account of the past, present, and future of American espionage as it faces a revolution driven by digital technology. Drawing on decades of research and hundreds of interviews with intelligence officials, Zegart provides a history of US espionage, gives an overview of intelligence basics and life inside America's intelligence agencies, and explores the vexed issues of traitors, covert action, and congressional oversight.

You may be surprised to learn that microchips are the new oil—the scarce resource on which the modern world depends. Today, military, economic, and geopolitical power are built on a foundation of computer chips. Virtually everything—from missiles to microwaves—runs on chips, including cars, smartphones, the stock market, even the electric grid. Until recently, America designed and built the fastest chips and maintained its lead as the #1 superpower, but America’s edge is in danger of slipping, undermined by players in Taiwan, Korea, and Europe taking over manufacturing.

Plenty of experts argue that anyone who wants to develop a skill, play an instrument, or lead their field should start early, focus intensely, and rack up as many hours of deliberate practice as possible. But a closer look at research on the world’s top performers shows that early specialization is the exception, not the rule. David Epstein examined the world’s most successful athletes, artists, musicians, inventors, forecasters and scientists. He discovered that in most fields—especially those that are complex and unpredictable—generalists, not specialists, are primed to excel.

What will the world look like in 2050? How will complex forces of change—demography, the environment, finance, technology and ideas about governance—affect our global society? And how, with so many unknowns, should we think about the future? One of Europe’s foremost voices on global trends in economics, business and society, Hamish McRae takes us on an exhilarating journey through the next 30 years. Drawing on decades of research, and combining economic judgement with historical perspective, Hamish weighs up the opportunities and dangers we face.

One of the US government's leading China experts reveals the hidden strategy fueling that country's rise - and how Americans have been seduced into helping China overtake us as the world's leading superpower.

Innovation is the main event of the modern age, the reason we experience both dramatic improvements in our living standards and unsettling changes in our society. Forget short-term symptoms like Donald Trump and Brexit, it is innovation itself that explains them and that will itself shape the 21st century for good and ill. Yet innovation remains a mysterious process, poorly understood by policy makers and businessmen, hard to summon into existence to order, yet inevitable and inexorable when it does happen.

For innovation and leadership guru Hal Gregersen, the power of questions has always been clear - but it took some years for the follow-on question to hit him: If so much depends on fresh questions, shouldn’t we know more about how to arrive at them? That sent him on a research quest ultimately including more than 200 interviews with creative thinkers. Questions Are the Answer delivers the insights Gregersen gained about the conditions that give rise to catalytic questions - and breakthrough insights - and how anyone can create them.

Moments of Impact is an audiobook on a mission: to eradicate time-sucking, energy-depleting workshops and meetings. In our fast-changing world, organizations have important challenges and opportunities to address - and no time to waste. Moments of Impact delivers the single most useful resource for managers and leaders who need better strategic conversation - now - to shape the future of their organizations.

Jeanne Liedtka and Tim Ogilvie educate listeners on one of the hottest trends in business development: "design thinking", or the ability to turn abstract ideas into practical applications for maximal business growth. Jeanne Liedtka's recent book, The Catalyst: How YOU Can Lead Extraordinary Growth, was named a Top Innovation and Design Thinking Book by Business Week. Tim Ogilvie has been hailed as a visionary for his pioneering contributions to service innovation, business model innovation, and customer experience design.

How the world's leading innovators push their ideas to fruition, time and time again. Edison famously said that genius is 1 percent inspiration, 99 percent perspiration. Ideas for new businesses, solutions to the world's problems, and artistic breakthroughs are common, but great execution is rare. According to Scott Belsky, the capacity to make ideas happen can be strengthened by anyone willing to build their organizational habits and harness the forces of community.

Merger and acquisition activity across the globe continues to grow, and is also playing a major role in the development of expanding markets. A well-managed integration effort is essential to success, and failure means a tremendous waste in terms of time and money, as well as the rapid destruction of shareholder value. The Complete Guide to Mergers and Acquisitions: Process Tools to Support M&A Integration at Every Level, Third Edition is an invaluable resource to guide firms in managing M&A integration and maximize the value of their deals.

What do Apple CEO Steve Jobs, comedian Chris Rock, prize-winning architect Frank Gehry, the story developers at Pixar films, and the Army Chief of Strategic Plans all have in common? Best-selling author Peter Sims found that all of them have achieved breakthrough results by methodically taking small, experimental steps in order to discover and develop new ideas.

Design-oriented firms such as Apple and IDEO have demonstrated how design thinking can directly affect business results. Yet most managers lack a real sense of how to put this new approach to use for issues other than product development and sales growth. Solving Problems with Design Thinking details 10 real-world examples of managers who successfully applied design methods at 3M, Toyota, IBM, Intuit, and SAP; entrepreneurial start-ups such as MeYou Health; and government and social sector organizations.

Business today is global - and success requires a new set of skills. But not to worry, whether you're negotiating with vendors in Asia, exploring potential markets in Africa, or leading a diverse team at home, you don't have to master the nuances of every culture you encounter. With cultural intelligence, or CQ, you can lead effectively in any context.

The workplace is going through a large-scale transition with digitization, automation, and acceleration. Critical skills and expertise are imperative for companies and their employees to succeed in the future, and the most forward-thinking companies are being proactive in adapting to the shift in the workforce. Kelly Palmer, Silicon Valley thought leader from LinkedIn, Degreed, and Yahoo, and David Blake, cofounder of ed-tech pioneer Degreed, share their experiences and describe how some of the smartest companies in the world are making learning and expertise a major competitive advantage.

Listening is harder than it looks - but it's the difference between business success and failure. Nothing causes bad decisions in organizations as often as poor listening. But Bernard Ferrari, adviser to some of the nation's most influential executives, believes that such missteps can be avoided and that the skills and habits of good listening can be developed and mastered. He offers a step-by-step process that will help you become an active listener, able to shape and focus any conversation.

Careers are not linear, predictable ladders any longer; they are fluid trajectories. No matter our age, life stage, bank account balance, or seniority, we are all being asked to navigate career changes much more frequently than in years past. The average employee tenure in America is just four to five years, and even those roles change dramatically within that time. Our economy now demands that we create businesses and careers based on creativity, growth, and impact. In this dynamic world of work, the only move that matters is your next one.

Imagine what Atari might have achieved if Steve Jobs had stayed there to develop the first massmarket personal computer. Or what Steve Case might have done for PepsiCo if he hadn't left for a gaming start-up that eventually became AOL. What if Salomon Brothers had kept Michael Bloomberg, or Bear Stearns had exploited the inventive ideas of Stephen Ross? Scores of top-tier entrepreneurs worked for established corporations before they struck out on their own and became self-made billionaires.

Black Faces in High Places is the essential guide for Black professionals who are moving up through their organizations or industries but need a roadmap for how to get to the top and stay there. Based on the authors' considerable experiences in business, in the public eye, and as a minority, the book shows how African-American professionals can (and must) think and act both entrepreneurially and "intrapreneurially".

There has never been a better time to build an audience around your idea or product. But with so many people and companies clamoring for attention, it's also more challenging than ever to do work that deeply resonates with the marketplace and creates true and lasting impact.

Managers want great teams, but most build them around decades-old ideas and practices made popular by companies that have lost their edge. Extreme Teams looks at the new generation of teams driving growth in today's most innovative firms. They do this by doing things differently: hiring the right person instead of the best person; focusing on one priority while leaving room to explore new ideas; creating an environment where people are comfortable dealing with the uncomfortable.