Few today realize that electric cabs dominated Manhattan's streets in the 1890s; that Boise, Idaho, had a geothermal heating system in 1910; or that the first megawatt turbine in the world was built in 1941 by the son of publishing magnate G. P. Putnam -- a feat that would not be duplicated for another forty years. Likewise, while many remember the oil embargo of the 1970s, few are aware that it led to a corresponding explosion in green-technology research that was only derailed when energy prices later dropped. In other words: We've been here before. Although we may have failed, America has had the chance to put our world on a more sustainable path. Americans have, in fact, been inventing green for more than a century. Half compendium of lost opportunities, half hopeful look toward the future, Powering the Dream tells the stories of the brilliant, often irascible inventors who foresaw our current problems, tried to invent cheap and energy renewable solutions, and drew the blueprint for a green future.

Lisa Sugar has an amazing job. She spends her days at POPSUGAR creating content about pop culture, must-have handbags and makeup, healthy recipes, and Instagram-worthy sweets. She manages an enormously successful, growing company with employees who love what they do. And her life is just as great at home. She and her husband have three daughters and she’s the number one soccer mom who loves reading bedtime stories every night. How did she do it? By figuring out what her dream job was, taking risks, and believing in herself. And now she wants to motivate others to do the same. She wants to show them how to live colorful, interesting lives where every second counts. She'll do so by sharing her personal and business story. Lisa knows that creating your dream job requires hard work, patience, and experience. She'll give advice, in big and small ways, about exactly how to do that, from starting a company to ditching a relationship that isn't working to becoming a fabulous boss. And with the great, accessible writing style that has made PopSugar such a hit, she'll make it fun!

Ten years of research uncover the secret source of growth and profit … Those who center their business on improving people’s lives have a growth rate triple that of competitors and outperform the market by a huge margin. They dominate their categories, create new categories and maximize profit in the long term. Pulling from a unique ten year growth study involving 50,000 brands, Jim Stengel shows how the world's 50 best businesses—as diverse as Method, Red Bull, Lindt, Petrobras, Samsung, Discovery Communications, Visa, Zappos, and Innocent—have a cause and effect relationship between financial performance and their ability to connect with fundamental human emotions, hopes, values and greater purposes. In fact, over the 2000s an investment in these companies—“The Stengel 50”—would have been 400 percent more profitable than an investment in the S&P 500. Grow is based on unprecedented empirical research, inspired (when Stengel was Global Marketing Officer of Procter & Gamble) by a study of companies growing faster than P&G. After leaving P&G in 2008, Stengel designed a new study, in collaboration with global research firm Millward Brown Optimor. This study tracked the connection over a ten year period between financial performance and customer engagement, loyalty and advocacy. Then, in a further investigation of what goes on in the “black box” of the consumer’s mind, Stengel and his team tapped into neuroscience research to look at customer engagement and measure subconscious attitudes to determine whether the top businesses in the Stengel Study were more associated with higher ideals than were others. Grow thus deftly blends timeless truths about human behavior and values into an action framework – how you discover, build, communicate, deliver and evaluate your ideal. Through colorful stories drawn from his fascinating personal experiences and “deep dives” that bring out the true reasons for such successes as the Pampers, HP, Discovery Channel, Jack Daniels and Zappos, Grow unlocks the code for twenty-first century business success.

The Power of Dreams tells the story of a couple, already in their 40?s, who uprooted themselves from urban life to follow their dream of living in the wilderness. They settled in a remote mountain valley called Precipice Valley, part of the ancient trade route linking B.C.'s Chilcotin plateau to the Pacific Coast. Surrounded by mountain vastness they lived there for nearly three decades, much of it in near-total isolation. Their dreams sustained them while they carved out a lifestyle that was both rewarding and challenging. These are the stories of how the two of them designed and hand-built a solar powered, two-storey post and beam house, which they named Firhome, all the while learning how to live off-grid and in conjunction with nature. They share their experiences with you; vivid descriptions of the events, places, practical solutions and ingenuity that filled their lives. Some of these stories are philosophical, ethereal or humourous - some are sad. These vignettes will give you a feeling for life in the wilderness and perhaps inspire you to fulfill your own wilderness dream, helping you find a path through these challenging times when new ideas and insights are so desperately needed.

From Space to Earth tracks the evolution of the technology of photovoltaics, the use of solar cells to convert the sun's energy into electricity. John Perlin's painstaking research results in a fascinating account of the development of this technology, from its shaky nineteenth-century beginnings mired in scientific controversy to its high-visibility success in the space program, to its current position as a versatile and promising power source.

Discover how to create “success in all aspects of life and business” (Lisa Nichols, New York Times bestselling author) with this comprehensive, bulletproof plan for taking your business from startup mode to the multi-million-dollar mark straight from the inventor of the Predictable Success Method™. In the United States, most small business owners struggle daily to make ends meet. Two-thirds of businesses earn less than $25,000 a year. Thankfully, Susie Carder—entrepreneur and business coach to everyone from Steve Harvey to Paul Mitchell—has developed the ultimate formula for incredible success. But she didn’t create it overnight. Susie Carder was at rock bottom financially during the Great Recession of 2008 when she was inspired to dig in and rebuild her fortune from the ground up. Today, she takes what she learned during that difficult time and shares her radical business strategies that have helped countless entrepreneurs and small business owners increase their revenues by more than 3,000%. As the creator of the Predictable Success Method™, Carder has a proven, twenty-year track record that includes building two $10 million companies herself, which she later sold. Filled with clear-eyed and practical advice, Power Your Profits teaches you how to run your daily operations, understand your finances, account for sales, and employ marketing systems that lead to predictable and substantial revenue and profit growth. And now, she’s sharing her hard-won wisdom—worth $5,000 an hour in coaching fees—with you.

"A marketing expert explains why some small companies grow into bigger and better organizations and others falter and asserts that companies can best expand their brand by using creative and sometimes counter-intuitive strategies to generate growth."--Publisher description.

From two influential and visionary thinkers comes a big idea that is changing the way movements catch fire and ideas spread in our highly connected world. For the vast majority of human history, power has been held by the few. "Old power" is closed, inaccessible, and leader-driven. Once gained, it is jealously guarded, and the powerful spend it carefully, like currency. But the technological revolution of the past two decades has made possible a new form of power, one that operates differently, like a current. "New power" is made by many; it is open, participatory, often leaderless, and peer-driven. Like water or electricity, it is most forceful when it surges. The goal with new power is not to hoard it, but to channel it. New power is behind the rise of participatory communities like Facebook and YouTube, sharing services like Uber and Airbnb, and rapid-fire social movements like Brexit and #BlackLivesMatter. It explains the unlikely success of Barack Obama's 2008 campaign and the unlikelier victory of Donald Trump in 2016. And it gives ISIS its power to propagate its brand and distribute its violence. Even old power institutions like the Papacy, NASA, and LEGO have tapped into the strength of the crowd to stage improbable reinventions. In New Power, the business leaders/social visionaries Jeremy Heimans and Henry Timms provide the tools for using new power to successfully spread an idea or lead a movement in the twenty-first century. Drawing on examples from business, politics, and social justice, they explain the new world we live in--a world where connectivity has made change shocking and swift and a world in which everyone expects to participate.

Here is the truth that the powerful Dirty Energy public relations machine doesn't want you to know: the ascent of solar energy is upon us. Solar-generated electricity has risen exponentially in the last few years and employment in the solar industry has doubled since 2009. Meanwhile, electricity from coal has declined to pre-World War II levels as the fossil fuel industry continues to shed jobs. Danny Kennedy systematically refutes the lies spread by solar's opponents—that it is expensive, inefficient, and unreliable; that it is kept alive only by subsidies; that it can't be scaled; and many other untruths. He shows that we need a rooftop revolution to break the entrenched power of the coal, oil, nuclear, and gas industries Solar energy can create more jobs, return our nation to prosperity, and ensure the sustainability and safety of our planet. Now is the time to move away from the dangerous energy sources of the past and unleash the amazing potential of the sun.