Knowledge workers create the innovations and strategies that keep their firms competitive and the economy healthy. Yet, companies continue to manage this new breed of employee with techniques designed for the Industrial Age. As this critical sector of the workforce continues to increase in size and importance, that's a mistake that could cost companies their future. Thomas Davenport argues that knowledge workers are vastly different from other types of workers in their motivations, attitudes, and need for autonomy--and, so, they require different management techniques to improve their performance and productivity. Based on extensive research involving over 100 companies and more than 600 knowledge workers, Thinking for a Living provides rich insights into how knowledge workers think, how they accomplish tasks, and what motivates them to excel. Davenport identifies four major categories of knowledge workers and presents a unique framework for matching specific types of workers with the management strategies that yield the greatest performance. Written by the field's premier thought leader, Thinking for a Living reveals how to maximize the brain power that fuels organizational success. Thomas Davenport holds the President's Chair in Information Technology and Management at Babson College. He is director of research for Babson Executive Education; an Accenture Fellow; and author, co-author, or editor of nine books, including Working Knowledge: How Organizations Manage What They Know (HBS Press, 1997).

Can one idea be worth a million dollars? Of course. But what is a million-dollar idea worth if it is poorly executed? In this ground-breaking, paradigm-shifting book, creative genius Joey Reiman presents a convincing argument for the value of raw ideas.

The internationally acclaimed novelist Siri Hustvedt has also produced a growing body of nonfiction. She has published a book of essays on painting (Mysteries of the Rectangle) as well as an interdisciplinary investigation of a neurological disorder (The Shaking Woman or A History of My Nerves). She has given lectures on artists and theories of art at the Prado, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. In 2011, she delivered the thirty-ninth annual Freud Lecture in Vienna. Living, Thinking, Looking brings together thirty-two essays written between 2006 and 2011, in which the author culls insights from philosophy, neuroscience, psychology, psychoanalysis, and literature. The book is divided into three sections: the essays in Living draw directly from Hustvedt's life; those in Thinking explore memory, emotion, and the imagination; and the pieces in Looking are about visual art. And yet, the same questions recur throughout the collection. How do we see, remember, and feel? How do we interact with other people? What does it mean to sleep, dream, and speak? What is "the self"? Hustvedt's unique synthesis of knowledge from many fields reinvigorates the much-needed dialogue between the humanities and the sciences as it deepens our understanding of an age-old riddle: What does it mean to be human?

Who would imagine that plants can become master teachers of a radical new way of seeing and interacting with the world? Plants are dynamic and resilient, living in intimate connection with their environment. This book presents an organic way of knowing modeled after the way plants live. When we slow down, turn our attention to plants, study them carefully, and consciously internalize the way they live, a transformation begins. Our thinking becomes more fluid and dynamic; we realize how we are embedded in the world; we become sensitive and responsive to the contexts we meet; and we learn to thrive within a changing world. These are the qualities our culture needs in order to develop a more sustainable, life-supporting relation to our environment. While it is easy to talk about new paradigms and to critique our current state of affairs, it is not so easy to move beyond the status quo. That’s why this book is crafted as a practical guide to developing a life-infused way of interacting with the world.

For young Christians about to embark on the collegiate experience, David Horner provides a guide to thinking as a Christian. Carefully exploring how ideas work, he gives students essential tools for thinking critically, contextually and coherently, unpacking worldviews and discerning truth.

“Unbox Your Life will take you on an exciting journey of self-discovery and to a fulfilling life of meaning and purpose.” —Sean Covey, president of FranklinCovey Education and New York Times bestselling author of The 4 Disciplines of Execution In this international bestseller, Tobias Beck shows you how to successfully steer your own life instead of having it determined by others. Keep killjoys, energy vampires, and chronic complainers out of your life with Tobias Beck’s Liberated® philosophy. Polarizing, provocative, and unconventional, Unbox Your Life urges readers to liberate themselves from a negative attitude, navigate a highly sensitive personality, and finally live successfully and authentically. Unbox Your Life follows Beck’s own inspiring story about success and what it really means. Pairing fifteen years of experience in personality development and behavioral psychology with stories that are as entertaining as they are instructive, Unbox Your Life provides:Self-motivation tips to help you forge your own path and be guided by your dreamsAdvice to seek out people who support you, let you grow, and move forwardFunny comics that illustrate proven-to-work strategies

This quick, 25-day plan for thinking more clearly and effectively in every area of life shows readers how desires and emotions distort thinking and how they can correct such situations.

Nancy Kline's Time To Think process builds an independent thinking culture in organisations and relationships. Over many years Nancy has refined this highly acclaimed system called the Thinking Environment. It identifies 10 behaviours that dramatically improve the way people listen, think and interact with one another. In this new book Nancy takes her thinking into a more personal sphere. Through a series of letters to her three goddaughters she addresses the fundamental questions of how we can live well, find meaning in our lives, and be happy. Applying the Thinking Environment philosophy, she demonstrates how thinking for ourselves underpins successful in all dimensions of life. From the Amy Question: 'what do you know now, that you are going to find out in a year?, to the power of expressing a complex idea idea in one sentence, to the generative invitation: 'what do you think?', she offers deeply stimulating, inspiring ways to the way we think - and live.

Contemporary psychology - as well as our own self-understanding - remains largely ego-centric in focus, with the self being seen as the primary source of meaning and value. According to Mark Freeman, this perspective is belied by much of our experience. Working from this basic premise, he proposes that we adopt a more "ex-centric" perspective, one that affirms the priority of the Other in shaping human experience. In doing so, he offers nothing less than a radical reorientation of our most basic ways of making sense of the human condition. In speaking of the "Other," Freeman refers not only to other people, but also to those non-human "others" - for instance, nature, art, God - that take us beyond the ego and bring us closer to the world. In speaking of the Other's priority, he insists that there is much in life that "comes before us." By thinking and living the priority of the Other, we can therefore become better attuned to both the world beyond us and the world within. At the heart of Freeman's perspective are two fundamental ideas. The first is that the Other is the primary source of meaning, inspiration, and existential nourishment. The second is that it is the primary source of our ethical energies, and that being responsive and responsible to the world beyond us is a defining feature of our humanity. There is a tragic side to Freeman's story, however. Enraptured though we may be by the Other, we frequently encounter it in a state of distraction and fail to receive the nourishment and inspiration it can provide. And responsive and responsible though we may be, it is perilously easy to retreat inward, to the needy ego. The challenge, therefore, is to break the spell of the "ordinary oblivion" that characterizes much of everyday life. The Priority of the Other can help us rise to the occasion.