Business Play

In 1984, soon-to-be college dropout Michael Dell hid signs of his fledgling PC business in the bathroom of his University of Texas dorm room. Almost 30 years later, at the pinnacle of his success as founder and leader of Dell Technologies, he found himself embroiled in a battle for his company’s survival. What he’d do next could ensure its legacy — or destroy it completely.

Steve Jobs tried to stop this moment from ever happening. Google and Microsoft made bids to preempt it. The music industry blocked it time and again. Yet, on a summer's eve in 2011, the whiz-kid CEO of a Swedish start-up celebrated his company's US launch. In the midst of the Apple-Android tech war and a music-label crusade against piracy and illegal downloading, Spotify redrew the battle lines, sent shock waves through Silicon Valley, and got the hardline executives at Universal, Sony, and Warner to sign with its "free-mium" platform.

Throughout her career in the super-competitive, male-dominated media industry, Gail Evans, one of the country's most powerful executives, has met innumerable women who tell her that they feel lost in the workplace, almost as if they were playing a game without knowing the directions. In this book, she reveals the secrets to the playbook of success and teaches women at all levels of the organization - from assistant to vice president - how to play the game of business to their advantage.

Winning today isn't about beating the competition at the old game. It's about inventing a whole new game - defining a new market category, developing it, and dominating it over time. You can't build a legendary company without building a legendary category. If you think that having the best product is all it takes to win, you're going to lose. In this farsighted, pioneering guide, the founders of Silicon Valley advisory firm Play Bigger rely on data analysis and interviews to understand the inner workings of "category kings".

In Plays Well With Others, Eric Barker dives into these questions, drawing on science to reveal the truth beyond the conventional wisdom about human relationships. Combining his compelling storytelling and humor, Barker explains what hostage negotiation techniques and marital arguments have in common, how an expert con-man lied his way into a twenty-year professional soccer career, and why those holding views diametrically opposed to our own actually have the potential to become our closest, most trusted friends.

Too often, the sales process is all about fear. Customers are afraid that they will be talked into making a mistake; salespeople dread being unable to close the deal and make their quotas. No one is happy. Mahan Khalsa and Randy Illig offer a better way. Salespeople, they argue, do best when they focus 100 percent on helping clients succeed. When customers are successful, both buyer and seller win. When they aren't, both lose.

An inspiring memoir from the CEO of Dick’s Sporting Goods about building a multibillion-dollar business, coming to the defense of embattled youth sports programs, and taking a principled - and highly controversial - stand against the types of guns that are too often used in mass shootings and other tragedies.

The Swedish firm Hästens enjoys an outstanding international reputation for creating the finest beds in the world, as evidenced by a client list that includes everyone from Hollywood royalty to actual crowned heads of state. Its luxurious, handcrafted, top-of-the-line Grand Vividus sells for as much as $750,000. Now the family business lovingly run by fifth generation and CEO Jan Ryde sells its beautiful beds in fifty countries around the world. In When Business Is Love, Jan shares his leadership philosophy and explains how any business, in any field, can operate on the basis of love.

In Impact Players, New York Times best-selling author and researcher Liz Wiseman reveals the secrets of these stellar professionals who play the game at a higher level. Drawing on insights from leaders at top companies, Wiseman explains what the most influential players are doing differently, how small and seemingly insignificant differences in how we think and act can make an enormous impact, and why - with a little coaching - this mindset is available to everyone who wants to contribute at their highest level.

Self-awareness is key for new and seasoned leaders who want to avoid micro-managing, handle criticism with grace, and give others the credit they deserve. Maxwell also aims to help current and new managers looking to identify their strengths, become a better learner, and improve listening skills.

First published in 1925, this inspirational little book has helped countless thousands achieve a sense of purpose and belonging through understanding that life is not a battle but a game of giving and receiving - that whatever we send out into the world will eventually be returned to us.

Do you live in constant fear? Do you worry that something terrible is about to happen? Do you have trouble breathing, relaxing, and sleeping? Do you think you're losing control, and that you're going to die? Are you trapped in your own personal hell, and don’t know how to get out? I've been there, and I know what it’s like. Shallow breathing, tension in the gut, chest pains, rapid heartbeat... Every moment is exhausting, crushing, and painful. Anxiety destroys your confidence, your productivity, your relationships, and your ability to enjoy life.

This audiobook has inspired thousands of people around the world to find a sense of purpose and belonging. It asserts that life is not a battle but a game of giving and receiving, and that whatever we send out into the world will eventually be returned to us. This little book will help you discover how your mind and its imaging faculties play leading roles in the game of life.

El autor plantea en este maravilloso libro, que la vida es un juego. Sí, un juego que si aprendemos a jugar de acuerdo con las enseñanzas metafísicas, entonces obtendremos la victoria. De esta manera aprendemops a reconocer los triunfos que nos llevan a la victoria final: convertir el resentimietno en amor, la carencia en prosperidad, el miedo en confianza, la envidia en generosidad. Las reglas de este juego están basadas en las enseñanzas tanto del Antiguo como del Nuevo Testamento.

Troy Horne here. Your mental-toughness guide! I am here to help parents understand how to help your young athlete navigate this mental-toughness journey. I know where you are, and I know how to help you help your young athlete find their mental toughness.

Kaulius arms you with perspective changes and mindset tools that can help anyone achieve greatness. These techniques have made world champions in multiple sports and helped CEOs and executives dominate in the business world and thrive at home. They can help you flourish too!

Take your business to the next level by identifying the opportunities in your simple numbers. Looking for an investment opportunity with the capacity for long-term high yields? Put your business to work for you! Greg Crabtree demystifies common accounting and reveals the growth potential going unnoticed in your balance sheets. Learn how to make decisions based on data you already have to guide your business to be its best, most profitable self.

According to the Leisure Studies Department at the University of Iowa, true leisure is “that place in which we realize our humanity.” If that’s true, argues Brigid Schulte, then we're doing dangerously little realizing of our humanity. In Overwhelmed, Schulte, a staff writer for The Washington Post, asks: Are our brains, our partners, our culture, and our bosses making it impossible for us to experience anything but “contaminated time”?

NOBODY CARES ABOUT YOUR CAREER is a real playbook. It’s about how work really works and how you can get work to work for you. It’s about thank you notes and thankless tasks, the energy in meetings and energy vampires, how to pick a boss and how to get a boss to pick you. It’s about being all in (but not bringing your whole self to work—some of you is better left at home) and becoming valuable to your workplace. It’s about participating—with your brain, your skills, your experience, and your willingness to pitch in and offer yourself up for something you may not even know how to do yet.

In User Friendly, Cliff Kuang and Robert Fabricant reveal the untold story of a paradigm that quietly rules our modern lives: the assumption that machines should anticipate what we need. Spanning over a century of sweeping changes, from women’s rights to the Great Depression to World War II to the rise of the digital era, this audiobook unpacks the ways in which the world has been - and continues to be - remade according to the principles of the once-obscure discipline of user-experience design.