Beyond the Obvious
Killer Questions That Spark Game-Changing Innovation
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Narrated by:
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Ray Porter
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By:
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Phil McKinney
About this listen
Generating and executing great ideas is the key to staying ahead in a rapidly changing world. It seems so basic. Why is it so hard to actually get right? According to innovation expert Phil McKinney, the real problem is that we're teaching people to ask the wrong questions about their businesses - or none at all. There has to be a better way.
In Beyond the Obvious, McKinney will help you use his proven FIRE (Focus, Ideation, Rank, Execution) Method to dig deeper and get back to asking the right questions - the ones all companies must ask to survive. Full of real-world examples, this book will change the way you operate, innovate, and create, and it all begins with battle-tested questions Phil has gathered on note cards throughout his career. Shared for the first time here, these "Killer Questions" include:
- What are the rules and assumptions my industry operates under? What if the opposite were true?
- What will be the buying criteria used by my customer in 5 years?
- What are my unshakable beliefs about what my customers want?
- Who uses my product in ways I never anticipated?
At once prescriptive and deeply challenging, these questions will reframe the way you see your products, your customers, and the way the two interact. Whether you're a company of thousands or a lean startup, Beyond the Obvious will give you the skills and easy-to-follow plan you need to make both the revolutionary changes and nuanced tweaks required for success.
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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.
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Audiobook requires regular book
- By GoingGoingGone... on 07-01-18
By: Jeanne Liedtka, and others
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Inbound Selling
- How to Change the Way You Sell to Match How People Buy
- By: Brian Signorelli
- Narrated by: Kevin Stillwell
- Length: 7 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Over the past decade, Inbound Marketing has changed the way companies earn buyers’ trust and build their brands - through meaningful, helpful content. But with that change comes unprecedented access to information in a few quick keystrokes. Enter the age of the empowered buyer, one who no longer has to rely on a sales rep to research their challenges or learn more about how a company’s offering might fit their needs. Now, with more than 60 percent of purchasing decisions made in the absence of a sales rep, the role of the rep itself has been called into question.
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Should be titled sales and sales management 101
- By James on 12-11-23
By: Brian Signorelli
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Reality Check
- Outsmarting, Outmanaging, and Outmarketing Your Competition
- By: Guy Kawasaki
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 14 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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In Silicon Valley slang, a "bozo explosion" is what causes a lean, mean, fighting machine of a company to slide into mediocrity. As Guy Kawasaki puts it, "If the two most popular words in your company are partner and strategic, and partner has become a verb, and strategic is used to describe decisions and activities that don't make sense"...then it's time for a reality check.
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The Reality of Reality Check
- By Ben on 08-18-09
By: Guy Kawasaki
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The Innovation Secrets of Steve Jobs
- By: Carmine Gallo
- Narrated by: Sean Mangan
- Length: 8 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Innovation Secrets of Steve Jobs, best-selling author Carmine Gallo reveals the qualities that make the Apple co-founder the most innovative leader in business today. Each principle is backed with research, quotes, and first-person interviews with experts and business leaders, as well as specific ideas for applying those principles to every business, large or small.
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awful
- By Thomas on 10-15-11
By: Carmine Gallo
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Design to Grow
- How Coca-Cola Learned to Combine Scale and Agility (And How You Can Too)
- By: David Butler, Linda Tischler
- Narrated by: Peter Berkrot
- Length: 6 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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In Design to Grow, a Coca-Cola senior executive shares both the successes and failures of one of the world's largest companies. In this rare and unprecedented behind-the-scenes look, David Butler and senior Fast Company editor Linda Tischler, use case studies to show how this works at Coca-Cola - and how other companies can use the same approach to grow their business. This audiobook is a must for managers inside large corporations as well as entrepreneurs just getting started.
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Great content, difficult narration
- By nicholas hork on 05-06-15
By: David Butler, and others
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Free Prize Inside!
- The Next Big Marketing Idea
- By: Seth Godin
- Narrated by: Seth Godin
- Length: 2 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Purple Cow taught marketers the value of standing out from the herd, which is how companies like Krispy Kreme and JetBlue made it big. But it left readers hungry for more: How do you actually think up new Purple Cows? And how do you get them adopted by risk-averse Brown Cow companies? Free Prize Inside delivers those answers and much more.
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Another gem from Seth
- By Daryl on 12-29-09
By: Seth Godin
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The Self-Made Billionaire Effect
- How Extreme Producers Create Massive Value
- By: John Sviokla, Mitch Cohen
- Narrated by: Erik Synnestvedt
- Length: 6 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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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.
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Waste of time!
- By Anonymous User on 05-30-20
By: John Sviokla, and others
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Snap Selling
- Speed Up Sales and Win More Business with Today's Frazzled Customers
- By: Jill Konrath
- Narrated by: Jill Konrath
- Length: 6 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Selling is tougher than ever before. Potential customers are under extreme pressure to do more with less money, less time, and fewer resources, and they're wary of anyone who tries to get them to buy or change anything. Under such extreme conditions, yesterday's sales strategies no longer work. Sales strategist Jill Konrath tells you how to overcome obstacles, get more appointments, speed up decisions, and win sales with today's short-fused, frazzled customers.
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OK sales book with some good take aways
- By Glenn on 05-22-11
By: Jill Konrath
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Company of One
- Why Staying Small Is the Next Big Thing for Business
- By: Paul Jarvis
- Narrated by: Paul Jarvis
- Length: 7 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Paul Jarvis left the corporate world when he realized that working in a high-pressure, high profile world was not his idea of success. In Company of One, Jarvis explains how you can find the right pathway to do the same, including planning how to set up your shop, determining your desired revenues, dealing with unexpected crises, keeping your key clients happy, and of course, doing all of this on your own. Company of One is a refreshingly new approach centered on staying small and avoiding growth, for any size business.
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Starts out strong...
- By Oliver Nielsen on 05-02-20
By: Paul Jarvis
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Shark Tank Jump Start Your Business
- How to Launch and Grow a Business from Concept to Cash
- By: Michael Parrish DuDell, Mark Cuban, Barbara Corcoran, and others
- Narrated by: Michael Parrish DuDell
- Length: 6 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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From the ABC hit show Shark Tank, this book - filled with practical advice and introductions from the Sharks themselves - will be the ultimate resource for anyone thinking about starting a business or growing the one they have. Full of tips for navigating the confusing world of entrepreneurship, the book will intersperse words of wisdom with inspirational stories from the show.
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Middle School material. Vague, no depth.
- By nate on 12-22-13
By: Michael Parrish DuDell, and others
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The Entrepreneur's Playbook
- More Than 100 Proven Strategies, Tips, and Techniques to Build a Radically Successful Business
- By: Leonard C. Green, Paul B. Brown
- Narrated by: Leonard C. Green, Tim Andres Pabon
- Length: 5 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Big new ideas rarely make great businesses. Laboring on a business plan can be a waste of time. You are going to need dramatically more start-up money than you think you do. Counterintuitive concepts like these have helped the world's best entrepreneurs succeed. Yet most of us only learn them the hard way. Len Green, an experienced investor, entrepreneur, and business professor, shares inside secrets and proven tactics for launching a business.
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Need a narrator who is not phlegmy
- By Leo on 01-19-18
By: Leonard C. Green, and others
What listeners say about Beyond the Obvious
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Amazon Customer
- 05-22-18
very inspiring. Very intriguing and mind probing
allows us to ask the deeper question to do self-examination and to make discoveries and how we think and what are neural linguistic language programming is and ways to make adjustments in it.
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- Carlos COSTAS
- 05-28-12
Practical Book
What did you like best about Beyond the Obvious? What did you like least?
Best Theory, Least stories too long thats it
no more comments for it
Would you recommend Beyond the Obvious to your friends? Why or why not?
Yes, to open a mind
thats it
no more comments for it
Did Ray Porter do a good job differentiating all the characters? How?
Yes, in a normal way
Was Beyond the Obvious worth the listening time?
Yes
thats it
no more comments for it
Any additional comments?
no
thats it
no more comments for it
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- Steven
- 03-16-12
Superb advice on systematizing innovation
What made the experience of listening to Beyond the Obvious the most enjoyable?
The anecdotes, example questions and reasoning behind why asking them is important made the book an excellent enlightening experience.
What was one of the most memorable moments of Beyond the Obvious?
The critical takeaway for me is that innovation is something that can be achieved by any company if the right processes, learning, and questioning is in place. It is not necessary to rely entirely on serendipitous strokes of genius and vision of special individuals alone.
What does Ray Porter bring to the story that you wouldn???t experience if you just read the book?
The reading voice inspires confidence and was good for driving home critical points.
If you were to make a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?
Game changing innovation: you can do it too.
Any additional comments?
Have begun implementing the authors advice in my business, and achieving success.
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1 person found this helpful
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- George
- 10-05-12
If you want to advance in business, then read this
Would you listen to Beyond the Obvious again? Why?
Yes, Phil McKinney has great insight and poses great questions to truly make you think and evolve how you approach business. Like many others, I have found myself in ruts were I just take the normal and accepted approach to tasks, but Phil McKinney's book has definitely opened my mind to innovation and challenging the accepted business norm.
Any additional comments?
A must read for anyone wanting to grow in business. I loved the book and immediately started following McKinney on twitter.
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- Brandon M Larson
- 04-18-16
a great book on innovation
this book was one of my favorite books that I've read recently on Innovation and Innovation management. It really has a great actionable guideline for creating your own process within your own organization and team. It is Well written and well structured with good examples and not a lot of fluff.
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- Dave Nelson
- 02-12-12
Don't Waste Your Time
Would you ever listen to anything by Phil McKinney again?
I would not listen to anything by Phil McKinney again.
Any additional comments?
I have to tell you that I only made it a little over half-way through listening to this book before I gave up on it, I really wanted to stop much earlier than that. Ray Porter does an excellent job narrating this book, but he did not have much to work with.
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2 people found this helpful