humble beginnings

From “Cumulative Advantage: How to Build Momentum for Your Ideas, Business, and Life Against All Odds” by Mark W. Schaefer Our exploration of the inner workings of Cumulative Advantage starts in 1968 with a Columbia University professor named Meyer Robert Schkolnick  Meyer was born into a poor family of Russian Jews who had immigrated to

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The pace of technological change

From “Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation” by Steven Johnson It is one of the great truisms of our time that we live in an age of technological acceleration; the new paradigms keep rolling in, and the intervals between them keep shortening. This acceleration reflects not only the flood of new

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the success of givers

From “Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success” by Adam Grant In this book, I want to persuade you that we underestimate the success of givers like David Hornik. Although we often stereotype givers as chumps and doormats, they turn out to be surprisingly successful. To figure out why givers dominate the top

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The Dynamics of Persuasion

From “How Minds Change: The Surprising Science of Belief, Opinion, and Persuasion” by David McRaney More specifically, as psychologist Richard N. Perloff explained years ago in his book The Dynamics of Persuasion, we can avoid coercion by sticking to symbolic communication in the form of messages meant to alter another person’s attitudes, beliefs, or both

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The One Thing That Changes Everything

From “The Speed of Trust: The One Thing That Changes Everything” by Stephen M. R. Covey There is one thing that is common to every individual, relationship, team, family, organization, nation, economy, and civilization throughout the world – one thing which, if removed, will destroy the most powerful government, the most successful business, the most

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priorities, balancing plans with opportunities, and allocating your resources

From “How Will You Measure Your Life?” by Clayton M. Christensen, James Allworth, and Karen Dillon The final element is execution. The only way a strategy can get implemented is if we dedicate resources to it.  Good intentions are not enough – you’re not implementing the strategy that you intend if you don’t spend your

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