Creative Careers

Best-selling author and scholar Michael Roberto presents a thorough investigation of organizational obstacles to creative thought. Highly relevant to the growth crises many enterprises face in today's economic landscape, this book examines how to break barriers to spark creativity and foster new ideas.

When Hugh MacLeod was a struggling young copywriter living in a YMCA, he started to doodle on the backs of business cards while sitting at a bar. Those cartoons eventually led to a popular blog - gapingvoid.com - and a reputation for pithy insight and humor, in both words and pictures. MacLeod has opinions on everything from marketing to the meaning of life, but one of his main subjects is creativity. How do new ideas emerge in a cynical, risk-averse world?

Tackle your thorniest problems using the wise fool's savvy strategies! The wise fool is the archetypal contrarian known for his creativity, irreverence, and humor. He looks at life in unorthodox ways and pushes back against the status quo. Throughout history, powerful decision-makers (Egyptian pharaohs, Chinese emperors, Persian sultans, and European kings) consulted wise fools to question the assumptions that kept them mired in stale and obsolete solutions.

Real Madrid is the most successful sports team on the planet. The soccer club has more trophies than any other sports team, including 11 UEFA Champions League trophies. However, the story behind the triumph goes beyond the players and coaches. Generally unnoticed, a management team consisting mostly of outsiders took the team from near bankruptcy to the most valuable sports organization in the world. How did Real Madrid achieve such extraordinary success? Columbia Business School adjunct professor Steven G. Mandis investigates.

How do today's most successful tech companies—Amazon, Google, Facebook, Netflix, Tesla—design, develop, and deploy the products that have earned the love of literally billions of people around the world? Perhaps surprisingly, they do it very differently than most tech companies. In Inspired, technology product management thought leader Marty Cagan provides listeners with a master class in how to structure and staff a vibrant and successful product organization, and how to discover and deliver technology products that your customers will love—and that will work for your business.

A practical four-step methodology for any leader or manager facing a tough choice, and for creating integrative solutions to big, complex, and pressing problems. Stimulating and practical, Creating Great Choices blends storytelling, theory, and hands-on advice to help any leader or manager facing a tough choice.

The co-founder and longtime president of Pixar updates and expands his 2014 New York Times bestseller on creative leadership, reflecting on the management principles that built Pixar’s singularly successful culture, and on all he learned during the past nine years that allowed Pixar to retain its creative culture while continuing to evolve.

In The Sale, bestselling author Jon Gordon and rising star Alex Demczak deliver an invaluable lesson about what matters most in life and work and how to achieve it. The book teaches four lessons about integrity in order to create lasting success.

Every year, six million companies and more than 100,000 products are launched. They all need an awesome name, but many (such as Xobni, Svbtle, and Doostang) look like the results of a drunken Scrabble game. In this entertaining and engaging book, ace naming consultant Alexandra Watkins explains how anyone - even noncreative types - can create memorable and buzz-worthy brand names. No degree in linguistics required.

The traditional attitude toward creativity in the American business world is to "think outside the box": to brainstorm without restraint in hopes of coming up with a breakthrough idea, often in moments of crisis. Sometimes it works, but it’s a problem-specific solution that does nothing to engender creative thinking more generally. Inside the Box demonstrates Systematic Inventive Thinking (SIT), a method that systemizes creativity as part of the corporate culture. SIT requires thinking "inside the box", working in one’s familiar world to create new ideas independent of specific problems.

Best-selling author Jason Jennings believes that urgency and speed are keys to the growth of any business. Leaders need to adapt and ignite their workplace cultures to prevent everyone from falling behind. Jennings draws on years of research and 11,000+ in-depth interviews with executives, business owners, and CEOs across the country to uncover how successful leaders build cultures that support constant innovation and growth.

In a world where AI is revolutionizing every industry, there's a thin line between those who thrive and those who fall behind. This exclusive three-audiobook bundle is your access key to the AI winners' club. This isn't just about “using ChatGPT and AI”—millions of people do that. It's about mastering it completely, turning it into a money-making machine that works 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, even while you sleep.

Small business specialist Elaine Pofeldt offers her blueprint for getting a running start with your microbusiness—that is, a business with no more than four employees, including yourself. Following her previous book, The Million-Dollar, One-Person Business, Pofeldt shows listeners the steps toward their next entrepreneurial venture, including testing an idea’s market viability while limiting risk, finding cash without giving up control, protecting your personal time and avoiding burn out, and knowing when it is time to start micro-scaling.

It's become accepted wisdom that established companies can't build and scale new ventures the way startups can—after all, startups are lean and agile, while incumbents are too big, slow, and inflexible. But that's nonsense, and it's time to challenge that idea. Linda Yates, the founder and CEO of Silicon Valley-based Mach49, argues that to thrive, companies can and must harness their power—their ideas, talent, data, cash, resources, channels, and customers—to build a portfolio of game-changing ventures and beat the startups at their own game.

Messy: The Power of Disorder to Transform Our Lives celebrates the benefits that messiness has in our lives: why it’s important, why we resist it, and why we should embrace it instead. Using research from neuroscience, psychology, social science, as well as captivating examples of real people doing extraordinary things, Tim Harford explains that the human qualities we value – creativity, responsiveness, resilience – are integral to the disorder, confusion, and disarray that produce them.

There's a Customer Born Every Minute reveals the lost wisdom of famous entrepreneur and showman, P. T. Barnum. Barnum was much more than a showman; he was a dedicated businessman and entrepreneur with a razor-sharp mind. In this delightful and absorbing new edition, Joe Vitale reveals the secrets of Barnum's success and shares the 10 key business practices that Barnum developed and lived by.

Game-changing disruptions will likely unfold on your watch. Be ready. In Dual Transformation, Scott Anthony, Clark Gilbert, and Mark Johnson propose a practical and sustainable approach to one of the greatest challenges facing leaders today: transforming your business in the face of imminent disruption. Dual Transformation shows you how your company can come out of a market shift stronger and more profitable, because the threat of disruption is also the greatest opportunity a leadership team will ever face.

Untwist the question mark from your life to start living authentically. Unstuck offers a path forward for those who are "stuck" - despite the comfort, security, and what should feel like success. Do you feel disengaged from a life that looks good on paper? Do you feel like there must be something more? This is your guide to getting unstuck, breaking free of your comfortable cocoon, and discovering what you are meant to be.

Drawing on the experience and insights of CEOs across several industries, as well as lessons from neuroscience, computer science, psychology, and philosophy, BCG's Martin Reeves and Jack Fuller provide a fascinating look into the mechanics of imagination and lay out a six-step process for creating ideas and bringing them to life. The Imagination Machine is the guide you need to demystify and operationalize this powerful human capacity, to inject new life into your company, and to head into unknown territory with the right tools by your side.

How to Be Unstoppable is Vol. 7 of a series about personal transformation. It is part of a set of books that will help you to achieve long lasting change and success in your life in a wide variety of areas. It is meant to be a blueprint to get you on the way to creating massive momentum towards achieving the goals that you have for your life. This book, like all the others in the series, can be listened to on its own or along with the others to build a foundation in your quest to create change in your life.