The coauthors of the seminal book The Virtual Corporation describe how the rise of artificial intelligence and virtual environments are ushering in an epic cultural transformation—and how we can thrive in this new era.

We are at the dawn of the Autonomous Revolution, a turning point in human history as decisive as the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions. More and more, AI-based machines are replacing human beings, and online environments are gathering our data and using it to manipulate us. This loss of human autonomy amounts to nothing less than a societal phase change, a fundamental paradigm shift. The same institutions will remain—schools, banks, churches, and corporations—but they will radically change form, obey new rules, and use new tools.

William H. Davidow and Michael S. Malone go deeply into the enormous implications of these developments. They show why increases in productivity no longer translate into increases in the GDP and how zero cost, one-to-many communications have been turned into tools for cybercrime and propaganda. Many of the book's recommendations—such as using taxes to control irresponsible internet behavior and enabling people to put their data into what are essentially virtual personal information “safety deposit boxes”—are bold and visionary, but we must figure out how we will deal with these emerging challenges now, before the Autonomous Revolution overcomes us.

The coauthors of the seminal book The Virtual Corporation describe how the rise of artificial intelligence and virtual environments are ushering in an epic cultural transformation—and how we can thrive in this new era.

We are at the dawn of the Autonomous Revolution, a turning point in human history as decisive as the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions. More and more, AI-based machines are replacing human beings, and online environments are gathering our data and using it to manipulate us. This loss of human autonomy amounts to nothing less than a societal phase change, a fundamental paradigm shift. The same institutions will remain—schools, banks, churches, and corporations—but they will radically change form, obey new rules, and use new tools.

William H. Davidow and Michael S. Malone go deeply into the enormous implications of these developments. They show why increases in productivity no longer translate into increases in the GDP and how zero cost, one-to-many communications have been turned into tools for cybercrime and propaganda. Many of the book's recommendations—such as using taxes to control irresponsible internet behavior and enabling people to put their data into what are essentially virtual personal information “safety deposit boxes”—are bold and visionary, but we must figure out how we will deal with these emerging challenges now, before the Autonomous Revolution overcomes us.

The coauthors of the seminal book The Virtual Corporation describe how the rise of artificial intelligence and virtual environments are ushering in an epic cultural transformation-and how we can thrive in this new era.


We are at the dawn of the Autonomous Revolution, a turning point in human history as decisive as the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions. More and more, AI-based machines are replacing human beings, and online environments are gathering our data and using it to manipulate us. This loss of human autonomy amounts to nothing less than a societal phase change, a fundamental paradigm shift. The same institutions will remain-schools, banks, churches, and corporations-but they will radically change form, obey new rules, and use new tools.

William H. Davidow and Michael S. Malone go deeply into the enormous implications of these developments. They show why increases in productivity no longer translate into increases in the GDP and how zero cost, one-to-many communications have been turned into tools for cybercrime and propaganda. Many of the book's recommendations-such as using taxes to control irresponsible internet behavior and enabling people to put their data into what are essentially virtual personal information “safety deposit boxes”-are bold and visionary, but we must figure out how we will deal with these emerging challenges now, before the Autonomous Revolution overcomes us.

“This book shows how using business as a force for good, not just pursuing short-term profits, can be better for consumers, employees, local communities, the environment, and your company's long-term bottom line.”
—Tony Hsieh, New York Times bestselling author of Delivering Happiness and CEO, Zappos.com, Inc. 

B Corps are a global movement of more than 2,700 companies in 60 countries—like Patagonia, Ben & Jerry's, Kickstarter, Danone North America, and Eileen Fisher—that are using the power of business as a force for good. B Corps have been certified to have met rigorous standards of social and environmental performance, accountability, and transparency. This book is the authoritative guide to the what, why, and how of B Corp certification.

Coauthors Ryan Honeyman and Dr. Tiffany Jana spoke with the leaders of over 200 B Corps from around the world to get their insights on becoming a Certified B Corp, improving their social and environmental performance, and building a more inclusive economy. The second edition has been completely revised and updated to include a much stronger focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). These changes are important because DEI can no longer be a side conversation—it must be a core value for any company that aspires to make money and make a difference.

While this book is framed around the B Corp movement, any company, regardless of size, industry, or location, can use the tools contained here to learn how to build a better business. As the authors vividly demonstrate, using business as a force for good can help you attract and retain the best talent, distinguish your company in a crowded market, and increase trust in your brand.

“This book shows how using business as a force for good, not just pursuing short-term profits, can be better for consumers, employees, local communities, the environment, and your company's long-term bottom line.”
—Tony Hsieh, New York Times bestselling author of Delivering Happiness and CEO, Zappos.com, Inc. 

B Corps are a global movement of more than 2,700 companies in 60 countries—like Patagonia, Ben & Jerry's, Kickstarter, Danone North America, and Eileen Fisher—that are using the power of business as a force for good. B Corps have been certified to have met rigorous standards of social and environmental performance, accountability, and transparency. This book is the authoritative guide to the what, why, and how of B Corp certification.

Coauthors Ryan Honeyman and Dr. Tiffany Jana spoke with the leaders of over 200 B Corps from around the world to get their insights on becoming a Certified B Corp, improving their social and environmental performance, and building a more inclusive economy. The second edition has been completely revised and updated to include a much stronger focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). These changes are important because DEI can no longer be a side conversation—it must be a core value for any company that aspires to make money and make a difference.

While this book is framed around the B Corp movement, any company, regardless of size, industry, or location, can use the tools contained here to learn how to build a better business. As the authors vividly demonstrate, using business as a force for good can help you attract and retain the best talent, distinguish your company in a crowded market, and increase trust in your brand.

“This book shows how using business as a force for good, not just pursuing short-term profits, can be better for consumers, employees, local communities, the environment, and your company's long-term bottom line.”
-Tony Hsieh, New York Times bestselling author of Delivering Happiness and CEO, Zappos.com, Inc.

More than 2,4570 companies from 130 industries and 50 countries are leading a global movement to redefine success in business. They're called B Corporations, and they create high-quality jobs, build stronger communities, and restore the environment, all while generating solid financial returns. Coauthor and B Corp owner Ryan Honeyman worked with over 100 B Corp CEOs and senior executives to share their tips, advice, and best-practice ideas for how to build a better business, and how to meet the rigorous standards for-and enjoy the benefits of-B Corp certification.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion measures have now become a key part of achieving B Corp certification. In this second edition, new coauthor and B Corp owner Tiffany Jana contributes an introduction about DEI, and works with Honeyman to integrate new DEI frameworks, and provide advice and end-of-chapter discussion questions to get companies talking about critical DEI issues at every stage of the certification process.

THE WAYS WE GO about changing organizations usually don't work, asserts Geoff Bellman. Our underlying assumptions predetermine the results and preclude the broad success we so desperately seek. Change efforts often end up off-track because of small expectations. What is needed are grand expectations, so big that they cannot be realized in many lifetimes. It is only when people awaken to and work toward these immense purposes that they have the chance of finding fulfillment. Organizations are the perfect place to do this-these "beasts" which we create and curse, love and hate, that are so essential to our lives. In The Beauty of the Beast, Bellman shows how we can explore our huge potential and shift our daily organizational focus to one of long life and fulfillment-and in the process redesign our organizations for tomorrow. Bellman examines why we keep creating these creatures that fall so far short of our dreams for them. He reveals how to recognize the beast in ourselves, showing how organizational control and hierarchy multiply our natural and less constructive inclinations many times over. He points out that the problem is not the existence of organizations but in the ways we imagine them. Bellman asks us to consider what we want to pass on to future generations, helps us imagine the organizations we would be proud to create, and challenges us to take action from where we are today. He offers twenty renewal assertions to help us in redesigning organizations for tomorrow. These solid guides (with related questions for work groups) open the organization to new possibilities, helping us to embrace the organizational world as it really is while working hard to change it. In the process we will also change ourselves, as we ultimately feel less distant from-and more responsible for-creating those troubling structures we love to vent about. The Beauty of the Beast. will help people see their daily work in a new and larger perspective. It will help them embrace the real organizational world while they work at renewing it. And it will help people to recognize the choices available to them-and to exercise those choices for positive results.

THE WAYS WE GO about changing organizations usually don't work, asserts Geoff Bellman. Our underlying assumptions predetermine the results and preclude the broad success we so desperately seek. Change efforts often end up off-track because of small expectations. What is needed are grand expectations, so big that they cannot be realized in many lifetimes. It is only when people awaken to and work toward these immense purposes that they have the chance of finding fulfillment. Organizations are the perfect place to do this-these "beasts" which we create and curse, love and hate, that are so essential to our lives. In The Beauty of the Beast, Bellman shows how we can explore our huge potential and shift our daily organizational focus to one of long life and fulfillment-and in the process redesign our organizations for tomorrow. Bellman examines why we keep creating these creatures that fall so far short of our dreams for them. He reveals how to recognize the beast in ourselves, showing how organizational control and hierarchy multiply our natural and less constructive inclinations many times over. He points out that the problem is not the existence of organizations but in the ways we imagine them. Bellman asks us to consider what we want to pass on to future generations, helps us imagine the organizations we would be proud to create, and challenges us to take action from where we are today. He offers twenty renewal assertions to help us in redesigning organizations for tomorrow. These solid guides (with related questions for work groups) open the organization to new possibilities, helping us to embrace the organizational world as it really is while working hard to change it. In the process we will also change ourselves, as we ultimately feel less distant from-and more responsible for-creating those troubling structures we love to vent about. The Beauty of the Beast. will help people see their daily work in a new and larger perspective. It will help them embrace the real organizational world while they work at renewing it. And it will help people to recognize the choices available to them-and to exercise those choices for positive results.

THE WAYS WE GO about changing organizations usually don't work, asserts Geoff Bellman. Our underlying assumptions predetermine the results and preclude the broad success we so desperately seek. Change efforts often end up off-track because of small expectations. What is needed are grand expectations, so big that they cannot be realized in many lifetimes. It is only when people awaken to and work toward these immense purposes that they have the chance of finding fulfillment. Organizations are the perfect place to do this-these "beasts" which we create and curse, love and hate, that are so essential to our lives. In The Beauty of the Beast, Bellman shows how we can explore our huge potential and shift our daily organizational focus to one of long life and fulfillment-and in the process redesign our organizations for tomorrow.
Bellman examines why we keep creating these creatures that fall so far short of our dreams for them. He reveals how to recognize the beast in ourselves, showing how organizational control and hierarchy multiply our natural and less constructive inclinations many times over. He points out that the problem is not the existence of organizations but in the ways we imagine them.
Bellman asks us to consider what we want to pass on to future generations, helps us imagine the organizations we would be proud to create, and challenges us to take action from where we are today. He offers twenty renewal assertions to help us in redesigning organizations for tomorrow. These solid guides (with related questions for work groups) open the organization to new possibilities, helping us to embrace the organizational world as it really is while working hard to change it. In the process we will also change ourselves, as we ultimately feel less distant from-and more responsible for-creating those troubling structures we love to vent about.
The Beauty of the Beast. will help people see their daily work in a new and larger perspective. It will help them embrace the real organizational world while they work at renewing it. And it will help people to recognize the choices available to them-and to exercise those choices for positive results.

What does teaching look like at its very best? How are great teachers able to ignite a love of learning and change students' lives? In this book you'll learn from seven remarkable teachers who stretch beyond the conventional foundations of good teaching to transform their classrooms into exciting, dynamic places where teachers and students cocreate the learning experience. Based on six years of extensive work, the book outlines a framework that identifies four dimensions of effective teaching and learning that are integrated in these highly effective teachers' classrooms—and that all teachers can use to recognize and release the potential in themselves and their students.

What does teaching look like at its very best? How are great teachers able to ignite a love of learning and change students’ lives? In this book you’ll learn from seven remarkable teachers who stretch beyond the conventional foundations of good teaching to transform their classrooms into exciting, dynamic places where teachers and students cocreate the learning experience. Based on six years of extensive work, the book outlines a framework that identifies four dimensions of effective teaching and learning that are integrated in these highly effective teachers’ classrooms—and that all teachers can use to recognize and release the potential in themselves and their students.

What turns ordinary teachers into highly effective teachers? How are great teachers able to ignite the love of learning among their students, accelerate that learning, and change students' lives? What does teaching look like at its very best? This book provides the best researched and most revealing answers to these questions.

"Messrs. Gow and Kells have made an invaluable contribution, writing in an amused tone that nevertheless acknowledges the firms' immense power and the seriousness of their neglect of traditional responsibilities. 'The Big Four' will appeal to all those interested in the future of the profession--and of capitalism itself." —Jane Gleeson-White, Wall Street Journal

With staffs that are collectively larger than the Russian army and combined revenues of over $130 billion a year, the Big Four accounting firms—Deloitte, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Ernst & Young, and KPMG—are a keystone of global commerce. But leading scholar Ian Gow and award-winning author Stuart Kells warn that a house of cards may be about to fall.

Stretching back to the Medicis in Renaissance Florence, this book is a fascinating story of wealth, power, and luck. The founders of the Big Four lived surprisingly colorful lives. Samuel Price, for example, married his own niece. Between the world wars, Nicholas Waterhouse collected postage stamps while also hosting decadent parties in his fashionable London home.

All four firms have endured major calamities in recent decades. There have been hundreds of court cases and legal prosecutions for failed audits, tax scandals, and breaches of independence. The firms have come so close to “extinction level events” that regulators have required them to prepare “living wills.” And today, the Big Four face an uncertain future—thanks to their push into China, their vulnerability to digital disruption and competition, and the hazards of providing traditional services in a new era of transparency.

This account of the past, present, and likely future of the Big Four is essential reading for anyone perplexed or fascinated by professional services, working or considering working in the industry, or simply curious about the fate of the global economy.

"Messrs. Gow and Kells have made an invaluable contribution, writing in an amused tone that nevertheless acknowledges the firms' immense power and the seriousness of their neglect of traditional responsibilities. 'The Big Four' will appeal to all those interested in the future of the profession--and of capitalism itself." —Jane Gleeson-White, Wall Street Journal

With staffs that are collectively larger than the Russian army and combined revenues of over $130 billion a year, the Big Four accounting firms—Deloitte, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Ernst & Young, and KPMG—are a keystone of global commerce. But leading scholar Ian Gow and award-winning author Stuart Kells warn that a house of cards may be about to fall.

Stretching back to the Medicis in Renaissance Florence, this book is a fascinating story of wealth, power, and luck. The founders of the Big Four lived surprisingly colorful lives. Samuel Price, for example, married his own niece. Between the world wars, Nicholas Waterhouse collected postage stamps while also hosting decadent parties in his fashionable London home.

All four firms have endured major calamities in recent decades. There have been hundreds of court cases and legal prosecutions for failed audits, tax scandals, and breaches of independence. The firms have come so close to “extinction level events” that regulators have required them to prepare “living wills.” And today, the Big Four face an uncertain future—thanks to their push into China, their vulnerability to digital disruption and competition, and the hazards of providing traditional services in a new era of transparency.

This account of the past, present, and likely future of the Big Four is essential reading for anyone perplexed or fascinated by professional services, working or considering working in the industry, or simply curious about the fate of the global economy.

The investment advice and management industry is built on fraud: the idea that professional advisors can predictably and consistently help you get a better rate of return on your investments. The industry sells us on this lie using manipulative tactics that are studied, refined, Wall Street minted, and Madison Avenue packaged. And extraordinarily effective. Here, Michael Edesess exposes the shocking truth that, in fact, behind the success of nearly every prosperous investment professional lies not the ability to procure higher rates of return on investment for his or her clients but the ability to procure astoundingly high fees from those clients and nothing more. Through fascinating and sometimes humorous anecdotes and straightforward explanations of investment theory and scientific evidence, Edesess reveals just how badly investors are being scammed by The Big Investment Lie. He examines how the master salespeople that make up the industry sell their cleverly concocted distortions of truth--to the tune of $200 billion a year--to unsuspecting consumers who swallow them hook, line and sinker. He then shines a spotlight on the true cost of the industry's useless advice, showing that a prudent independent investor, following a conservative strategy, can reap anywhere from 40 percent to over 100 percent more than an investor who falls for The Big Investment Lie. Detailing the Ten New Commandments for Smart Investing--practical advice for how, where, and when to invest your money to maximize wealth--The Big Investment Lie provides the guidance you need to secure your financial future without throwing your hard-earned money away on the fraudulent investment advice industry.

No professional investing advice is good advice. This hard-hitting book proves it with indisputable facts drawn from scientific research and the author's own thirty-five years of experience in the investment industry. Michael Edesess exposes “The Big Investment Lie”: that an investor will gain by hiring professional advisors to beat the market. He proves that no professional investment advisor or manager has ever consistently and predictably beat market averages, not even Warren Buffett. While The Big Investment Lie allows an entire industry to prosper lavishly, investors invariably lose when they hire professional help.

Once you know the truth, you'll want to adopt Edesess's Ten New Commandments for Smart Investing, simple rules you can follow to invest, get a profitable return, and avoid squandering any more of your hard-earned dollars on bogus expertise.

This exposé of regularized falsehood reveals the unfortunate truth behind the financial advisory industry - that professional investors cannot, and never have been able to, beat market averages. Written by a well-credentialed insider, this book additionally provides detailed insights into where people should really invest their money.

If you work, you probably manage projects every day-even if "project manager" isn't in your official title-and you know how frustrating the experience can be. Using the familiar story of six blind men failing to describe an elephant to each other as a metaphor, David Schmaltz brilliantly identifies the true root cause of the difficulties in project work: "incoherence" (the inability of a group of people to make common meaning from their common experience).
Schmaltz exposes such oft-cited difficulties as poor planning, weak leadership, and fickle customers as poor excuses for project failure, providing a set of simple, project coherence-building techniques that anyone can use to achieve success. He explains how "wickedness" develops when a team over-relies on their leader for guidance rather than tapping their true source of power and authority-the individual.
The Blind Men and the Elephant explores just how much influence is completely within each individual's control. Using real-world stories, Schmaltz undermines the excuses that may be keeping you trapped in meaningless work, offering practical guidance for overcoming the inevitable difficulties of project work.