Going beyond the bestsellers Predictably Irrational and Thinking, Fast and Slow, the first “how to” guide that shows you how to help customers, employees, coworkers, and clients make better choices to get what they truly want. Of the ten million bits of information our brains process each second, only fifty bits are devoted to conscious thought. Because our brains are wired to be inattentive, we often choose without thinking, acting against our own interests—what we truly want. As the former Chief Scientist of Express Scripts, a Fortune 25 healthcare company dedicated to making the use of prescription medications safer and more affordable, Bob Nease is an expert on applying behavioral sciences to health care. Now, he applies his knowledge to the wider world, providing important practical solutions marketers, human resources professionals, teachers, and even parents can use to improve the behavior of others around them, and get the positive results they want. Nease offers a set of powerful and effective strategies to change behavior, including: Require Choice—compel people to deliberately choose among options Lock in Good Intentions—allow people to make decisions today about choices they will face in the future Let It Ride—set the default to the desired option and let people opt out if they wish Get in the Flow—go to where peoples’ attention is likely to be naturally Reframe the Choices—set the framework people use to consider options and choices Piggyback It—connect the desired choice or behavior with something they already like or are engaged in Simplify . . . Wisely—make right choices frictionless and easy, make wrong choices more difficult And more.

'Blown to Bits' is about how the digital explosion is changing everything. The text explains the technology, why it creates so many surprises and why things often don't work the way we expect them to. It is also about things the information explosion is destroying: old assumptions about who is really in control of our lives.

Amoral, cunning, ruthless, and instructive, this multi-million-copy New York Times bestseller is the definitive manual for anyone interested in gaining, observing, or defending against ultimate control – from the author of The Laws of Human Nature. In the book that People magazine proclaimed “beguiling” and “fascinating,” Robert Greene and Joost Elffers have distilled three thousand years of the history of power into 48 essential laws by drawing from the philosophies of Machiavelli, Sun Tzu, and Carl Von Clausewitz and also from the lives of figures ranging from Henry Kissinger to P.T. Barnum. Some laws teach the need for prudence (“Law 1: Never Outshine the Master”), others teach the value of confidence (“Law 28: Enter Action with Boldness”), and many recommend absolute self-preservation (“Law 15: Crush Your Enemy Totally”). Every law, though, has one thing in common: an interest in total domination. In a bold and arresting two-color package, The 48 Laws of Power is ideal whether your aim is conquest, self-defense, or simply to understand the rules of the game.

Push a button and turn on the television; tap a button and get a ride; click a button and “like” something. The touch of a finger can set an appliance, a car, or a system in motion, even if the user doesn't understand the underlying mechanisms or algorithms. How did buttons become so ubiquitous? Why do people love them, loathe them, and fear them? In Power Button, Rachel Plotnick traces the origins of today's push-button society by examining how buttons have been made, distributed, used, rejected, and refashioned throughout history. Focusing on the period between 1880 and 1925, when “technologies of the hand” proliferated (including typewriters, telegraphs, and fingerprinting), Plotnick describes the ways that button pushing became a means for digital command, which promised effortless, discreet, and fool-proof control. Emphasizing the doubly digital nature of button pushing—as an act of the finger and a binary activity (on/off, up/down)—Plotnick suggests that the tenets of precomputational digital command anticipate contemporary ideas of computer users. Plotnick discusses the uses of early push buttons to call servants, and the growing tensions between those who work with their hands and those who command with their fingers; automation as “automagic,” enabling command at a distance; instant gratification, and the victory of light over darkness; and early twentieth-century imaginings of a future push-button culture. Push buttons, Plotnick tells us, have demonstrated remarkable staying power, despite efforts to cast button pushers as lazy, privileged, and even dangerous.

If you want to "change lives, change organizations, change the world," the Stanford business school’s motto, you need power. Is power the last dirty secret or the secret to success? Both. While power carries some negative connotations, power is a tool that can be used for good or evil. Don’t blame the tool for how some people used it. If fully understood and harnessed effectively, power skills and understanding become the keys to increasing salaries, job satisfaction, career advancement, organizational change, and, happiness. In 7 Rules of Power, Jeffrey Pfeffer, professor of organizational behavior at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, provides the insights that have made both his online and on-campus classes incredibly popular—with life-changing results often achieved in 8 or 10 weeks. Rooted firmly in social science research, Pfeffer’s 7 rules provide a manual for increasing your ability to get things done, including increasing the positive effects of your job performance. The 7 rules are: 1) Get out of your own way. 2) Break the rules. 3) Show up in powerful fashion. 4) Create a powerful brand. 5) Network relentlessly. 6) Use your power. 7) Understand that once you have acquired power, what you did to get it will be forgiven, forgotten, or both. With 7 Rules of Power, you’ll learn, through both numerous examples as well as research evidence, how to accomplish change in your organization, your life, the lives of others, and the world.

How tech companies like Google, Airbnb, StubHub, and Facebook learn from experiments in our data-driven world—an excellent primer on experimental and behavioral economics Have you logged into Facebook recently? Searched for something on Google? Chosen a movie on Netflix? If so, you've probably been an unwitting participant in a variety of experiments—also known as randomized controlled trials—designed to test the impact of different online experiences. Once an esoteric tool for academic research, the randomized controlled trial has gone mainstream. No tech company worth its salt (or its share price) would dare make major changes to its platform without first running experiments to understand how they would influence user behavior. In this book, Michael Luca and Max Bazerman explain the importance of experiments for decision making in a data-driven world. Luca and Bazerman describe the central role experiments play in the tech sector, drawing lessons and best practices from the experiences of such companies as StubHub, Alibaba, and Uber. Successful experiments can save companies money—eBay, for example, discovered how to cut $50 million from its yearly advertising budget—or bring to light something previously ignored, as when Airbnb was forced to confront rampant discrimination by its hosts. Moving beyond tech, Luca and Bazerman consider experimenting for the social good—different ways that governments are using experiments to influence or “nudge” behavior ranging from voter apathy to school absenteeism. Experiments, they argue, are part of any leader's toolkit. With this book, readers can become part of “the experimental revolution.”

Bits and Atoms explores the governance potential found in the explosive growth of digital information and communication technology in areas of limited statehood. Today, places with weak or altogether missing state institutions are tied internally and to the larger world by widely available digital technology. The chapters in the book explore questions of when and if the growth in digital technology can fill some of the governance vacuum created by the absence of an effective state. For example, mobile money could fill a gap in traditional banking or mobile phones could allow rural populations to pay for basic services and receive much needed advice and market pricing information. Yet, as potentially revolutionary as this technology can be to areas of limited statehood, it still faces limitations. Bits and Atoms is a thought-provoking look at the prospects for and limitations of digital technology to function in place of traditional state apparatuses.

Bits & Pieces: Some Things to Think About: I always felt that there is so much to learn if we only would seek knowledge. When we are born, we begin to learn. Every day we learn something new about our surroundings and all the people that are in our milieu. In our youth, we spend 12 to 20 years in schools to learn. We never stop learning. The trick is to learn the good things and avoid learning the bad things. The computer adage; Garbage in... garbage out, is true. The day we stop learning is usually the day we die. My father in law, A. Z. Shmina, once told me, “When I meet someone, I think... that maybe I can learn something from him. If I find that I can’t, and then I think... well maybe I can teach him something.” That’s the spirit of this book.