Books

Master creative thinking in the AI age with practical tools that blend imagination and discipline for better innovation in this updated, award-winning business bestseller.

Now updated with 20 percent new content, this Porchlight Business Book of the Year returns with all-new case studies and a groundbreaking chapter on creative partnerships with AI and emerging technologies. Natalie Nixon demonstrates that humans are hardwired for creativity—a competency anyone can develop by balancing wonder (awe, audacity, and curiosity) with rigor (discipline, skill-building, and attention to detail).

Drawing on interviews with professionals across diverse industries—from farming to medicine to technology—Nixon reveals how inquiry, improvisation, and intuition enhance creative capacity in every kind of work. This second edition features fresh success stories from resourceful businesses that have mastered the delicate dance between human imagination and artificial intelligence in a rapidly changing world.

Combining practical creativity tools with illuminating stories of innovative people and organizations, this book serves as a provocation, an inspiration, and an invitation to unleash the innate creativity within each of us. Nixon offers a dynamic approach to adaptation and innovation that allows the freedom to access our full human potential—even as technology continues to reshape how we work. This essential guide helps anyone cultivate the creative thinking needed to thrive in today's complex business landscape.

The most successful organizations add a healthy dose of play into their daily or weekly routines. In fact, research has shown that when people actually enjoy their jobs they're more creative, more productive, and more committed to doing their jobs well. Companies like the Colorado Health Sciences Center and Southwest Airlines attest to the positive effect of fun at work. Both trace increased job satisfaction and decreased employee downtime to concerted efforts to make fun a part of their corporate identity.
With 301 Ways to Have Fun at Work , Dave Hemsath and Leslie Yerkes offer a complete resource anyone can use to create a dynamic workplace that encourages and inspires fun-and-games camaraderie among employees. It combines thorough research with practical hands-on tools, and features hundreds of ideas real companies have used to lighten up the workplace.
The authors surveyed over 1,500 individuals from organizations around the world and received enthusiastic responses that yielded a broad range of ways to spice up the work day. The suggestions in 301 Ways to Have Fun at Work include humorous training films, dress-up and dress-down days, silly job titles, awards for people who go "above and beyond the call of duty" when a coworker is on vacation, "ritual dances" at the completion of a project, a fashion show when it's time to choose a new uniform-even foam dart fights after meetings.
Hemsath and Yerkes offer ideas for instilling an element of fun into various business functions-from office environment, to meetings, training, communication, hiring, recognition, team building, and "simple acts of fun." In addition to the fun ideas in these chapters, a series of side bars, called "fun facts," "fun quotes," and "fun resources" offer humorous and interesting facts and statements about the effects of fun on workplace performance and job satisfaction, and direct readers to useful sources for products and services to enhance workplace "funativity."
Hemsath and Yerkes show that creating a fun atmosphere in the workplace increases productivity and morale and has a positive effect on the bottom line. Most importantly, they give readers the tools to have more fun at work, no matter where they work, or what position they're in.

Female partnerships are deeply rewarding and a powerful way for women to advance in a world still suffering from gender bias. So why don't women work together more often? Polk and Chotas address the myths and fears that keep women from partnering and offer expert advice on how to make female partnerships thrive.

For the second time this decade, the U.S. economy is sinking into a recession due to the collapse of a financial bubble. The most recent calamity will lead to a downturn deeper and longer than the stock market crash of 2001. Dean Baker's Plunder and Blunder chronicles the growth and collapse of the stock and housing bubbles and explains how policy blunders and greed led to the catastrophic-but completely predictable-market meltdowns. An expert guide to recent economic history, Baker offers policy prescriptions to help prevent similar financial disasters.

In this inspiring and practical guide for achieving better decision-making and management, Linda Tarr-Whelan shows how having women account for at least 30% of representation at decision-making tables marks the tipping point for positive organizational and societal change, and she offers readers concrete tools and resources for reaching that target.

Our world is at a crossroads; we must choose between two alternatives. The first is capitalism as we know it today-an amoral culture of short-term self-interest, profit maximization, emphasis on shareholder value, isolationist thinking, and profligate disregard of long-term consequences. Based on narrow assumptions about human nature and motivation, this system is unsustainable, a monster set to consume itself. The second alternative is "spiritual capital"-a values-based business culture in which wealth is accumulated in order to generate a decent profit while acting to raise the common good. Rather than emphasizing shareholder value, spiritual capital emphasizes "stakeholder value," where stakeholders include the whole human race, present and future, and the planet itself. Spiritual capital nourishes and sustains the human spirit. The crucial question is how we can move from one alternative to the other-how we can move from present-day business capitalism to Spiritual Capital.
Danah Zohar and Ian Marshall introduce the concept of spiritual intelligence (SQ), and describe how it can be used to shift individuals and our culture from a state of acting from lower motivations (fear, greed, anger, and self-assertion) to one of acting from higher motivations (exploration, cooperation, power-within, mastery, and higher service). Zohar and Marshall describe how this shift actually happens a given organizational culture. They look in depth at the issues that dominate corporate culture and how they are influenced by the processes of SQ transformation and discuss the leadership elite who must be the ones to bring about and embody this cultural shift. Finally, Zohar and Marshall argue that spiritual capital is still a valid and workable form of capitalism and detail what we, as individuals, can do to make it happen.

Sarah van Gelder and the staff of Yes! Magazine marshal fascinating research, indepth
essays and compelling personal stories to counter the consumerist party
line. It's things like healthy communities, strong relationships, and a thriving planet
that lead to lasting happiness, and this book shows how we can achieve them.

Entrepreneur and executive development expert Mike Dulworth's THE CONNECT EFFECT provides readers with a simple framework and practical tools for developing that crucial competitive advantage: a high-quality personal, professional/organizational and virtual network.

Former Human Rights Campaign president Joe Solmonese shares powerful lessons learned from negotiating and collaborating with others who disagreed and even despised him. Takeaway: you can accomplish wonders-like achieving marriage equality-if you can use your anger strategically and channel it in the direction of the greater good.


Under Joe Solmonese's leadership, the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest LGBT rights organization, became the model other organizations look toward to create effective social and political change. Ranked among the National Journal's top five most effective groups, HRC was instrumental in passing landmark national legislation such as the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr.
Hate Crimes Prevention Act, the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," and the passage of marriage equality in eight states.

Beginning with a moving story of working with Matthew Sheppard's mother Virginia in passing the hate crimes bill that bears Matthew's name, Solmonese shows how he discovere that channeled anger can drive a commitment to change. Mrs. Sheppard taught him to keep his unquestionably justifiable anger from blinding him in the moment, and instead use it strategically, in the service of a larger purpose. In this book he uses the lessons he learned during tenure at HRC, as well as his previous position as the CEO of Emily's List, and his current work as a corporate consultant, to teach readers how they can affect real, lasting change in society and at work. His often-surprising lessons may not be entirely expected or celebrated by all groups, e.g., don't shame your enemies, find allies wherever you can, and ask for the doable, not the impossible. Most striking in this book are the stories of Joe's ability to draw some kind of win-however small-from seeming enemies. Many of these former enemies became stalwart allies over time. Joe's book is more concerned with the “long game” of changing culture and achieving long-term goals, not the “short game” of enforcing purity or litmus tests.

Bestselling author Margaret Wheatley and long-time Berkana Institute collaborator Deborah Frieze take readers on a learning journey into seven diverse communities that have walked out of limiting beliefs and practices and walked on to something new. From Brazil to Ohio, they demonstrate how each of these communities made a conscious choice to develop a healthier, more resilient world based on the idea to “create with what we have.”

Charismatic activist and chief organizer for ACORN (the nation's largest grassroots community organization, with more than 400,000 low- and moderate-income family members), Wade Rathke reveals how building citizen-wealth using tactics that benefit both the poor and the institutions (like banks) is the key to combating poverty

“Wonderfully profound. … It’s as if Thoreau meets Lao Tzu on the trail and we are fortunate enough to overhear their wisdom on what the wilderness has to offer 21st century civilization.”
—Jeff Salz, PhD, explorer, adventurer, anthropologist, and author of The Way of Adventure

Whether you are a world-weary worker juggling the demands of a hectic life or a seeker of soul-satisfying experiences, this deceptively simple book is your key to refresh, renew, rethink, and recharge. From an unexpectedly arduous backpacking trip, Eileen McDargh discovers truths from the experience. Deep in grime, grit, and grace-filled mornings, she finds insights for business, for relationships, for family, for life, and for the soul.

Just as the ocean inspired Anne Morrow Lindbergh's classic, Gifts from the Sea, so too can a mountain become a lyrical metaphor for coping with life's complexities. Whether musing on wild onions or mosquitoes, river crossings or thunderbolts, Eileen shares lessons for understanding the mundane and the magnificent, the difficult and the delightful, the ordinary and the extraordinary. Mountains become a lyrical metaphor for coping with life's complexities. You'll be reminded of what you may already know but have likely forgotten in the tension of time constraints, work worries, and family frustrations. McDargh will jar your memory, evoke new awareness, and spur you to action. Each two-page spread features a full-color watercolor painting illuminating these concise, graceful reflections. Gifts from the Mountain helps us pay attention to the process of life and to take joy in the journey.

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.

Build real trust in the remote workplace by mastering proven strategies for leading employees who work from home, the corner coffee shop, or the downtown office.

The shift to remote work has fundamentally changed how we build and maintain trust in organizations. Drawing on extensive research and experience, trusted leadership expert David Horsager and communication scholar Dr. Peggy Kendall present the seven essential strategies that create strong virtual and hybrid workplace relationships.

Readers will learn to do the following:

• Amplify communication
• Clarify direction
• Build predictability
• Redefine accountability
• Create connections
• Equip their people
• Leverage in-person experiences

Trust at a Distance addresses common remote-work challenges, such as unclear communication, lack of information, and weakened relationships. This guide is perfect for leaders navigating hybrid and remote teams. By the time readers are finished reading, they will be inspired and confident that trust really can be built at a distance!

Bestselling author and renowned futurist Bob Johansen combines with business innovation guru Karl Ronn to produce a visionary book on the biggest innovation opportunity in history: giving away what you have to learn how to make money in new ways. They call it the reciprocity advantage.

The bestselling coauthor of The Serving Leader (over 90,000 copies sold) provides a roadmap that all leaders can use to create and align entire organizations around an inspiring purpose that drives superior performance.