"Josh Linkner, CEO of ePrize, is a tremendous business leader who has established a successful and sustainable company, as well as a culture that nurtures employees to help them maximize their potential." - Jennifer M. Granholm, Governor, State of Michigan "Leaning Forward is a deep and highly aware look into the future of interactive marketing. A must-read for anybody who plans to compete and win in the brain age." - Dan Gilbert, Chairman and Founder, Quicken Loans and Majority Owner, Cleveland Cavaliers "Josh has given you reason to fear the programmed nature of obsolescence but more importantly his deep consumer knowledge will give you hope This book will never be obsolete " - David Sable, Vice Chairman/Chief Operating Officer, Wunderman (largest direct marketing company in the world) Leaning Forward takes a penetrating look at the future of Interactive marketing. Major brands throughout the world have embraced the 'Digital Revolution', and have fundamentally changed the way they interact with their consumers. As a marketer, you will learn what you need to know to stay ahead of the curve and compete in this dramatically changed landscape. Renowned entrepreneur Josh Linkner shows you real world examples of what the best marketers are doing today and where the trends are heading. You'll learn how the most savvy marketers: . Establish and nurture direct, one-to-one relationships . Motivate specific consumer behavior . Get marketing messages heard above the non-stop "noise" . Combine brand immersive experiences with proven direct-marketing techniques . Generate "hand-raisers" . Increase relevancy, response-rates, and overall performance . Drive immediate and measurable results By examining the major sea of change that has happened over the last ten years, Linkner shares best practices, trends, and helps readers avoid common pitfalls. A must-read for today's marketing professional, business owner, or aspiring entrepreneur. Josh Linkner --Founder and CEO, ePrize As a pioneer in interactive marketing and promotions, Josh has been involved in the development of thousands of digital marketing strategies over the last 14 years. As the founder and CEO of ePrize, he has led the firm from inception to being ranked the #1 fastest growing and #3 overall promotion agency by PROMO Magazine. ePrize has produced an industry-leading 4,000 interactive promotions for clients including Coca-Cola, American Express, The Gap, Procter & Gamble, Warner Bros. Dell, adidas, Citibank and General Motors. Josh has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, AdAge, Inc. magazine, Entrepreneur, and Adweek, and is a regular keynote speaker at industry events and conferences. Josh has won several business, technology, and design awards. He is also an accomplished and well-respected Jazz musician from which he draws the same passion and excitement toward business, and creating a culture of innovation, discipline, and creativity.

Raising the Floor confronts America's biggest economic challenge--the fundamental restructuring of the economy and the emerging disruptive technology that threaten secure jobs and income. Andy Stern convincingly shows why it is time to consider a universal basic income as the nation's twenty-first-century solution to increasing inequality. In 2010, troubled by watching families chase the now-elusive American Dream, Andy Stern began a five-year journey to investigate how technology will impact jobs and the future of work. Stern, formerly the head of the nation's most influential and fastest-growing union, the Service Employees International Union, investigated these issues with a wide range of CEOs, futurists, economists, workers, entrepreneurs, and investment bankers who are shaping the future. The sobering assessment that emerged from his research across the political spectrum, from libertarians at the CATO Institute to the leaders of the progressive left, is that this time is different: there will be meager benefits that come with full-time work and fewer good jobs overall. Facing such a challenging moment, Stern's solution is fittingly bold: to establish a universal basic income by eliminating many current government programs and adding new resources. At once vivid, provocative, and pragmatic, Raising the Floor will spark a national conversation about creating the new American Dream.

The adviser to Senator Hillary Clinton, Bill Gates, and President Bill Clinton proves that small is big by identifying 75 hidden-in-plain-sight trends that are moving America, revealing that the nation is no longer a melting pot but a collection of communities with many individual tastes and lifestyles. "The ideas in his book will help you see the world in a new way." --Bill Clinton "Mark Penn has a keen mind and a fascinating sense of what makes America tick, and you see it on every page of Microtrends ." --Bill Gates In 1982, readers discovered Megatrends . In 2000, The Tipping Point entered the lexicon. Now, in Microtrends , one of the most respected and sought-after analysts in the world articulates a new way of understanding how we live. Mark Penn, the man who identified "Soccer Moms" as a crucial constituency in President Clinton's 1996 reelection campaign, is known for his ability to detect relatively small patterns of behavior in our culture-microtrends that are wielding great influence on business, politics, and our personal lives. Only one percent of the public, or three million people, is enough to launch a business or social movement. Relying on some of the best data available, Penn identifies more than 70 microtrends in religion, leisure, politics, and family life that are changing the way we live. Among them: People are retiring but continuing to work. Teens are turning to knitting. Geeks are becoming the most sociable people around. Women are driving technology. Dads are older than ever and spending more time with their kids than in the past. You have to look at and interpret data to know what's going on, and that conventional wisdom is almost always wrong and outdated. The nation is no longer a melting pot. We are a collection of communities with many individual tastes and lifestyles. Those who recognize these emerging groups will prosper. Penn shows readers how to identify the microtrends that can transform a business enterprise, tip an election, spark a movement, or change your life. In today's world, small groups can have the biggest impact.

The world we live in today is more volatile than ever. The security of free nations is threatened by rogue states, the global economy is in flux, and the rapid advance of technology forces constant reevaluation of our society. With so many powerful forces at work and seemingly unpredictable events occurring, to many the future seems dark, and its possibilities frightening. Peter Schwartz disagrees. A world-renowned visionary in the field of scenario planning, Schwartz’s startling—and accurate— predictions have been employed by government agencies and major corporations for more than twenty-five years. He argues that the future is foreseeable, and that by examining the dynamics at work today we can predict the “inevitable surprises” of tomorrow. Timely and thought-provoking, Inevitable Surprises is a book that no one with an interest in business—or the future of our society—can afford to miss.

A struggle is taking place--not just among corporate titans, but among entire industries. At stake is control of the world's fastest-growing industry: communications. The contestants are Hollywood studios, television networks, and cable, telephone, computer, publishing, and consumer-electronics companies. All are vying to collect a toll on the information superhighway. And as they jockey for control, they tread on volatile ground, as one fixation after another (cable, interactive TV) is dumped in favor of the next (satellite, the Internet). There is no better account of this turmoil than the one provided here by Ken Auletta, bestselling author of Three Blind Mice ("the best book ever written on network television"*) and Greed and Glory on Wall Street, who for five years has brilliantly tracked the communications industry for The New Yorker. Auletta's access to the principal players is unparalleled (six days with Rupert Murdoch, summit meetings with John Malone), and his grasp of the issues--from boardroom politics to regulatory and technological pressures--is unmatched by any other journalist. In this riveting collection of his best pieces Auletta takes the reader on a behind-the-scenes tour of such companies as Disney, Viacom, Microsoft, Time Warner, and Telecommunications, Inc., and keenly chronicles the vanities and visions of the new Highwaymen--Rupert Murdoch, Ted Turner, Michael Eisner, Sumner Redstone, Bill Gates, and more. Just as Three Blind Mice was heralded as "the new bible of the broadcasting business," The Highwaymen will be received as an indispensable guide to the future of this explosive new world. * Frank Stanton, former president of CBS

The office of tomorrow is already with us. You can see it in coffee shops, airport lounges and hotel lobbies across the world. It's called the mobile office and in some instances consists of only a laptop and a wireless broadband card. Even now mobile office options are evolving rapidly and the bewildering range of add-ons is growing every day. Ironically, the choices meant to make your life simpler and more productive are in fact becoming more and more complex. Arthur Goldstuck has once again come to the rescue. This vital roadmap guides you through the jungle of competing products and connectivity options, and helps you to decipher the hard-sell you are bombarded with daily. Should you upgrade now? Should you wait for the next version? Are you being led down an electronic dead-end? This book answers such questions with insights into older technologies that are still viable, practical advice on current office options and predictions on what will arrive in the near future. Whether you are self-employed, an entrepreneur looking to start up a small business or a corporate looking to become more efficient, this book could hold the key to your streamlined success.

Book by Stein, Harry

Contrary to the viewpoint of many Western scholars, the authors of this penetrating analysis argue that private farming is not a viable option in Russia's future. Instead, a convergence of Soviet-style subsidiary farming with traditional and reorganized collective farms is the most plausible path of evolution in most rural areas.Grigory Ioffe and Tatyana Nefedova arrive at this conclusion by a careful examination of ongoing reform efforts in Russian agriculture against the backdrop of European and Russian agrarian history and rural spatial development since the late nineteenth century. The comparisons at the national level are then filled in with consideration of a number of Russian provinces (oblasti) and regions (raiony). Their research reveals the substantial negative impact of rural depopulation on the Russian agrarian economy. Seventy original maps richly complement and support the narrative.