Amazon is the fastest company ever to reach $100 billion in sales, and they didn’t reach that landmark by staying in their comfort zone. Risk-taking is the key that unlocked the door to growth at Amazon, but those risks were (and are) intentional, calculated, and strategic. Thomas Edison believed: “I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.” Like Edison, Amazon’s founder Jeff Bezos has also linked experimentation and failure with growth and success.

We're in the midst of a revolution. Quantum leaps in technology are enabling organizations to observe and measure people's behavior in real time, communicate internally at extraordinary speed, and innovate continuously. These new, software-driven technologies are transforming the way companies interact with their customers, employees, and other stakeholders.

Most startups fail. But many of those failures are preventable. The Lean Startup is a new approach being adopted across the globe, changing the way companies are built and new products are launched.

Peter Senge's groundbreaking ideas on building organizations have made him a household name among corporate managers. His theories help businesses to clarify their goals, to defy the odds, to more clearly understand threats, and to recognize new opportunities. He introduces managers to a new source of competitive advantage, and offers a marvelously empowering approach to work.

Here is the best-selling guide that created a new game plan for marketing in high-tech industries. Crossing the Chasm has become the bible for bringing cutting-edge products to progressively larger markets. This edition provides new insights into the realities of high-tech marketing, with special emphasis on the Internet. It's essential reading for anyone with a stake in the world's most exciting marketplace.

In business, performance is key. In performance, how you organize can be the key to growth. In the past five years, the business world has seen the birth of a new breed of company - the Exponential Organization - that has revolutionized how a company can accelerate its growth by using technology.

Developing and implementing a strategy is the central task of a leader. A good strategy is a specific and coherent response to - and approach for - overcoming the obstacles to progress. A good strategy works by harnessing and applying power where it will have the greatest effect. Yet, Rumelt shows that there has been a growing and unfortunate tendency to equate Mom-and-apple-pie values, fluffy packages of buzzwords, motivational slogans, and financial goals with “strategy”.

Clayton M. Christensen is a professor of business administration at Harvard Business School. Michael E. Raynor is a director at Deloitte Research. Together, they outline an innovative plan that urges businesses to create disruption rather than fleeing from it. Named one of 2003's Best Business Books by Business Week, this book is a Wall Street Journal and New York Times best seller.

Paradigmatic shifts in the business landscape, known as inflection points, can either create new, entrepreneurial opportunities or they can lead to devastating consequences. Rita McGrath contends that inflection points, though they may seem sudden, are not random. Every seemingly overnight shift is the final stage of a process that has been subtly building for some time. Armed with the right strategies and tools, smart businesses can see these inflection points coming and use them to gain a competitive advantage.

The myth of innovation is that brilliant ideas leap fully formed from the minds of geniuses. The reality is that most innovations come from a process of rigorous examination through which great ideas are identified and developed before being realized as new offerings and capabilities. This is not a book by designers for designers; this is a book for creative leaders seeking to infuse design thinking into every level of an organization's products or service to drive new alternatives for business and society.

Blue Ocean Shift is the essential follow-up to Blue Ocean Strategy, the classic 3.6 million copy global best seller by world-renowned professors W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne. Drawing on more than a decade of new work, Kim and Mauborgne show you how to move beyond competing, inspire your people's confidence, and seize new growth, guiding you step by step through how to take your organization from a red ocean crowded with competition to a blue ocean of uncontested market space.

Creating something from nothing is an unpredictable journey. The first mile births a new idea into existence, and the final mile is all about letting go. We love talking about starts and finishes, even though the middle stretch is the most important and often the most ignored and misunderstood. Broken into three sections with 100-plus insights, this no-nonsense audiobook will help you find your way through the hardest parts of any bold project or new venture.

After founding or co-founding over 15 start-ups and investing in another 50 early stage ventures as an angel investor, author Howard Love came to understand that a start-up unfolds in a predictable pattern. The more aware entrepreneurs are of this pattern, the better able they will be to capitalize on it.

Entrepreneur and best-selling author of The Lean Startup Eric Ries reveals how entrepreneurial principles can be used by businesses ranging from established companies to early stage startups to grow revenues, drive innovation, and emerge as truly modern organizations poised to take advantage of the enormous opportunities of the 21st century.

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.

In The Attacker's Advantage, Charan reveals the upside of uncertainty for those leaders who are nimbly positioned to anticipate the catalysts of disruption and embrace change. He updates and adapts the principles of his previous best sellers to address the current turbulent business environment, cutting through the veil of complexity to concentrate on the new customer needs and expectations and providing the tools for corporate leaders to take their companies to a higher level.

Based on an acclaimed professor's legendary strategy course at Harvard Business School, The Strategist offers a radically new perspective on a leader's most vital role. "Are you a strategist?" That's the first question Cynthia Montgomery asks the business owners and senior executives from all over the world who participate in her highly regarded executive education course. It's not a question they anticipate, but by the time the program ends, they cannot imagine leading their companies to success without being - and living the role of - a strategist.

What to Do When Machines Do Everything is a guidebook to succeeding in the next generation of the digital economy. When systems running on artificial intelligence can drive our cars, diagnose medical patients, and manage our finances more effectively than humans, it raises profound questions on the future of work and how companies compete.

“What would Jeff do?” Since leaving Amazon to advise start-ups and corporations, John Rossman has been asked this question countless times by executives who want to know “the secret” behind Amazon’s historic success. In this step-by-step guide, he provides 50½ answers drawn from his experience as an Amazon executive - and shows today’s business leaders how to think like Amazon, strategize like Bezos, and beat the competition like nobody’s business.

The Amazon Way on IoT is for the leader who wants to understand how the Internet of things is transforming business and society. Listeners will discover business cases, key concepts, technologies and tools to help develop, explain and execute their own IoT approach through understanding Amazon's and other leading companies sophisticated IoT technologies and strategies.

In What's Your Moonshot? trend and innovation strategist John Sanei explains how to ask the bigger, bolder, more courageous questions that will help you thrive - rather than merely survive - in our exponentially changing times. With a future-focused victor mindset, Sanei decodes the mega-trends that are reshaping human behavior and the way we do business - not to mention, the way we live our lives.

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.

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.

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.

This book stitches together a complete design journey from beginning to end in a way that you've likely never seen before, guiding listeners (you) step-by-step in a practical way from the initial spark of an idea all the way to scaling it into a better business. Design a Better Business includes a comprehensive set of tools (over 20 total!) and skills that will help you harness opportunity from uncertainty by building the right team(s) and balancing your point of view against new findings from the outside world.

In the past few years, a number of well-known firms have failed; think of Blockbuster, Kodak, or RadioShack. When we hear about their demise, it often seems inevitable - a natural part of "creative destruction." But closer examination reveals a disturbing truth: Companies large and small are shuttering more quickly than ever. What does it take to buck this trend? The simple answer is: ambidexterity. Firms must remain competitive in their core markets, while also winning in new domains.

The best companies in the world discover what their customers desire - and then deliver it in memorable and deeply human experiences. How well do you know your customers? What Customers Crave examines how the hyper-connected economy is radically changing consumer expectations, and reveals what companies need to do to stay on top. The solution rests on two simple questions: What do your customers love? What do they hate? Find the answers, and you're well on your way to success

Playing to Win, a noted Wall Street Journal and Washington Post best seller, outlines the strategic approach Lafley, in close partnership with strategic adviser Roger Martin, used to double P&G’s sales, quadruple its profits, and increase its market value by more than $100 billion when Lafley was first CEO (he led the company from 2000 to 2009). The book shows leaders in any type of organization how to guide everyday actions with larger strategic goals built around the clear, essential elements that determine business successwhere to play and how to win.

How can great companies do everything right - identify real customer needs, deliver excellent innovations, beat their competitors to market - and still fail? The sad truth is that many companies fail because they focus too intensely on their own innovations, and then neglect the innovation ecosystems on which their success depends. In our increasingly interdependent world, winning requires more than just delivering on your own promises. It means ensuring that a host of partners - some visible, some hidden - deliver on their promises, too.

In 1990, IBM had its most profitable year ever. By 1993, the company was on a watch list for extinction, victimized by its own lumbering size, an insular corporate culture, and the PC era IBM had itself helped invent.