Named #1 Best Business Book of 2011, by Patriot-News-PennLive.com If you have ever flown in an airplane, used electricity from a nuclear power plant, or taken an antibiotic, you have benefited from a brilliant mistake. Each of these life-changing innovations was the result of many missteps and an occasional brilliant insight that turned a mistake into a surprising portal of discovery. In Brilliant Mistakes, Paul Schoemaker, founder and chairman of Decision Strategies International, shares critical insights on the surprising benefits of making well-chosen mistakes. Brilliant Mistakes explores why minimizing mistakes may be the greatest mistake of all, situations when mistakes are most beneficial and when they should be avoided, the counter-intuitive idea that we should deliberately permit errors at times, and how to make the most of brilliant mistakes to improve business results. Brilliant Mistakes is based on solid academic research and insights from Schoemaker's work with more than 100 organizations, as well as his provocative Harvard Business Review article with Robert Gunther, "The Wisdom of Deliberate Mistakes." Schoemaker provides a practical roadmap for using mistakes to accelerate learning for your organization and yourself.

If you have ever flown in an airplane, used electricity from a nuclear power plant, or taken an antibiotic, you have benefited from a brilliant mistake. Schoemaker proveds a practical roadmap for using mistakes to accelerate learning for your organization and yourself.

Drawing on the lives of five great scientists, this “scholarly, insightful, and beautifully written book” (Martin Rees, author of From Here to Infinity) illuminates the path to scientific discovery. Charles Darwin, William Thomson (Lord Kelvin), Linus Pauling, Fred Hoyle, and Albert Einstein all made groundbreaking contributions to their fields—but each also stumbled badly. Darwin’s theory of natural selection shouldn’t have worked, according to the prevailing beliefs of his time. Lord Kelvin gravely miscalculated the age of the earth. Linus Pauling, the world’s premier chemist, constructed an erroneous model for DNA in his haste to beat the competition to publication. Astrophysicist Fred Hoyle dismissed the idea of a “Big Bang” origin to the universe (ironically, the caustic name he gave to this event endured long after his erroneous objections were disproven). And Albert Einstein speculated incorrectly about the forces of the universe—and that speculation opened the door to brilliant conceptual leaps. As Mario Livio luminously explains in this “thoughtful meditation on the course of science itself” (The New York Times Book Review), these five scientists expanded our knowledge of life on earth, the evolution of the earth, and the evolution of the universe, despite and because of their errors. “Thoughtful, well-researched, and beautifully written” (The Washington Post), Brilliant Blunders is a wonderfully insightful examination of the psychology of five fascinating scientists—and the mistakes as well as the achievements that made them famous.

'You can learn from your failures.' 'Entrepreneurship is trial and error.' These statements are hard to disagree with, but in reality it is not that simple. More than ever, we wish to be successful and erase all traces of mistakes and failures as soon as possible. This is not only a pity, but potentially dangerous as well, says professor Paul Louis Iske. Only when we dare to face what we do wrong can we make a thorough analysis and avoid unnecessary recurrence and disappointments. Fear of failure impedes creative thinking and innovation. This compelling book shows you how to develop a culture of openness in your organization and how failure paradoxically leads to significant progress. Institute of Brilliant Failures teaches you how to recognize recurring failing patterns at an early stage, how to harvest essential learnings and how to embrace uncertainty. Paul Louis Iske is professor of Open Innovation and Business Venturing at the School of Business and Economics, Maastricht University (the Netherlands) and Extraordinary Professor of Knowledge Management at Stellenbosch University (South Africa). He is Chief Failure Officer (CFO) at the Institute of Brilliant Failures, and a sought-after international consultant in the areas of innovation, sustainable business models, creativity and knowledge management.

Failure is an inevitable part of life and work. All leaders, no matter how capable, will face failure and setbacks in their careers. How a leader responds to those challenges, and more importantly, how he or she learns and grows from the experiences, will define his or her long term potential as a leader. In this book the author shares some of the failures he endured during his career and the most important learnings he derived from those experiences. The Brilliance in Failure is a unique look into the career of a successful executive and the many mistakes that he made on his leadership journey. Those mistakes and failures created huge opportunities for personal growth and turned out to be essential to his success over time. The authors central message is simply that failure is not something to be feared, but rather to be embraced as a learning opportunity that can shape your leadership style and expand your personal impact on an organization.

An elegant suspense novel set in the art world.

If you’re aiming to innovate, failure along the way is a given. But can you fail better? Whether you’re rolling out a new product from a city-view office or rolling up your sleeves to deliver a social service in the field, learning why and how to embrace failure can help you do better, faster. Smart leaders, entrepreneurs, and change agents design their innovation projects with a key idea in mind: ensure that every failure is maximally useful. In Fail Better, Anjali Sastry and Kara Penn show how to create the conditions, culture, and habits to systematically, ruthlessly, and quickly figure out what works, in three steps: 1. Launch every innovation project with the right groundwork 2. Build and refine ideas and products through iterative action 3. Identify and embed the learning Fail Better teaches you how to design your efforts to test the boundaries of your thinking, explore crucial interdependencies, and find the factors that can shift results from just acceptable to groundbreaking—or even world-changing. Practical instructions intertwined with compelling real-world examples show you how to: • Make predictions and map system relationships ahead of time so you can better assess results • Establish how much failure you can afford • Prioritize project activities for disconfirmation and iteration • Learn from every action step by collecting and examining the right data • Support efficient, productive habits to link action and reflection • Distill, share, and embed the lessons from every success and failure You may be a Fortune 500 manager, scrappy start-up innovator, social impact visionary, or simply leading your own small project. If you aim to break through without breaking the bank—or ruining your reputation—this book is for you.

Discover the essential thinking tools you’ve been missing with The Great Mental Models series by Shane Parrish, New York Times bestselling author and the mind behind the acclaimed Farnam Street blog and “The Knowledge Project” podcast. This first book in the series is your guide to learning the crucial thinking tools nobody ever taught you. Time and time again, great thinkers such as Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett have credited their success to mental models–representations of how something works that can scale onto other fields. Mastering a small number of mental models enables you to rapidly grasp new information, identify patterns others miss, and avoid the common mistakes that hold people back. The Great Mental Models: Volume 1, General Thinking Concepts shows you how making a few tiny changes in the way you think can deliver big results. Drawing on examples from history, business, art, and science, this book details nine of the most versatile, all-purpose mental models you can use right away to improve your decision making and productivity. This book will teach you how to: Avoid blind spots when looking at problems. Find non-obvious solutions. Anticipate and achieve desired outcomes. Play to your strengths, avoid your weaknesses, … and more. The Great Mental Models series demystifies once elusive concepts and illuminates rich knowledge that traditional education overlooks. This series is the most comprehensive and accessible guide on using mental models to better understand our world, solve problems, and gain an advantage.

In her short story collection, Even Greater Mistakes, Charlie Jane Anders upends genre cliches and revitalizes classic tropes with heartfelt and pants-wettingly funny social commentary. The woman who can see all possible futures is dating the man who can see the one and only foreordained future. A wildly popular slapstick filmmaker is drawn, against his better judgment, into working with a fascist militia, against a background of social collapse. Two friends must embark on an Epic Quest To Capture The Weapon That Threatens The Galaxy, or else they’ll never achieve their dream of opening a restaurant. The stories in this collection, by their very outrageousness, achieve a heightened realism unlike any other. Anders once again proves she is one of the strongest voices in modern science fiction, the writer called by Andrew Sean Greer, “this generation’s Le Guin.” At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

"Warning: Your career might be in danger of going off the rails. You probably have blind spots that are leaving you closer to the edge than you realize. Fortunately, Carter Cast has the solution. In this smart, engaging book he shows you how to avoid career derailment by becoming more self-aware, more agile, and more effective. This is the book you wish you had twenty years ago, which is why you should read it now." -- Daniel H. Pink, New York Times bestselling author of Drive and To Sell Is Human The Right -- and Wrong -- Stuff is a candid, unvarnished guide to the bumpy road to success. The shocking truth is that 98 percent of us have at least one career-derailment risk factor, and half to two-thirds actually go off the rails. And the reason why people get fired, demoted, or plateau is because they let the wrong stuff act out, not because they lack talent, energy, experience, or credentials. Carter Cast himself had all the right stuff for a brilliant career, when he was called into his boss's office and berated for being obstinate, resistant, and insubordinate. That defining moment led to a years-long effort to understand why he came so close to getting fired, and what it takes to build a successful career. His wide range of experiences as a rising, falling, and then rising star again at PepsiCo, an entrepreneur, the CEO of Walmart.com, and now a professor and venture capitalist enables him to identify the five archetypes found in every workplace. You'll recognize people you work with (maybe even yourself) in Captain Fantastic, the Solo Flyer, Version 1.0, the One-Trick Pony, and the Whirling Dervish, and, thanks to Cast's insights, they won't be able to trip up your future.