You have a great idea, now what? That first mile—where an innovation moves from an idea on paper to the market—is often plagued by failure. In fact, less than one percent of ideas launched by big companies end up having real impact. The ideas aren’t the problem. It’s the process. The First Mile focuses on the critical moment when an innovator moves from planning to reality. It is a perilous place where hidden traps snare entrepreneurs and roadblocks slow innovators inside large companies. In this practical and enlightening manual, strategic adviser Scott Anthony equips innovators with new tools, questions, and examples to speed through this crucial early stage of innovation. You’ll learn: • How to evaluate your idea’s strengths and weaknesses using the “DEFT” process—Document, Evaluate, Focus, and Test • Fourteen recipes from an “experiment cookbook” to gain confidence in your idea or business • Why “spinouts,” “wrong turns,” and other challenges commonly trip up innovation—and the practical strategies you can use to avoid them • Why innovators need to seek chaos in an age of constant change—and other essential leadership skills Drawing on his decade of experience as an innovation adviser and investor, Anthony describes hard-won lessons from disruptive start-ups and global giants alike. The First Mile will give you the knowledge and confidence to travel this perilous—but ultimately promising—terrain. The first mile can be a scary place, but you don’t have to traverse it alone. This book can help.

Master optical First Mile technologies with this end-to-end solutions guide that incorporates the most current advances and features Understand the range of First Mile technologies available in the marketplace and the policies and technologies impacting future trends Review step-by-step guides to building end-to-end solutions for optical networking Master Free Space Optics, EPON, and PON design and concepts Learn technology options with coverage of the latest optical switching systems Named by an IEEE task force, the first mile refers to the connections between business/residential subscribers and the public networks central office or point of presence. This task force, of which Cisco is a member, is developing standards and products that use Ethernet as the Layer 2 protocol of choice for the economical and efficient delivery of broadband related services. "First Mile Advanced Access Technologies" reviews the standards, policies, products, features and services related to the growing delivery of broadband services. It provides an overview of all the protocols currently bringing services to the first mile, including DSL, cable modems, ISDN, satellite, and broadband wireless. The book then moves forward detailing the advancements and capabilities of optical networking. The book also provides end-to-end solution designs, incorporating the latest advancements in the technologies and reviewing the capabilities of some of the newest optical switching systems. A specific review of scalability keeps current design guides in tune with potential future needs. "First Mile Advanced Access Technologies" offers readers step-by-step, basic to advanced coverage of an end-to-end solution foroptical networking. Ashwin Gumaste is currently completing a PhD in Optical Networking and is also part of the Photonics Networking Laboratory with Fujitsu. He is the author of DWDM Network Design and Engineering Solutions from Cisco Press. , b>Tony Anthony, CCNP, CCIP, is a Technical Marketing Engineer with the Optical Networking Group at Cisco Systems. He is the author of DWDM Network Design and Engineering Solutions from Cisco Press.

The epic story of the fastest boat ride in history, on a hand-built dory named the "Emerald Mile," through the heart of the Grand Canyon on the Colorado river.

Publisher Description

The remarkable, amusing and inspiring adventures of a Canadian couple who make a year-long attempt to eat foods grown and produced within a 100-mile radius of their apartment. When Alisa Smith and James MacKinnon learned that the average ingredient in a North American meal travels 1,500 miles from farm to plate, they decided to launch a simple experiment to reconnect with the people and places that produced what they ate. For one year, they would only consume food that came from within a 100-mile radius of their Vancouver apartment. The 100-Mile Diet was born. The couple’s discoveries sometimes shook their resolve. It would be a year without sugar, Cheerios, olive oil, rice, Pizza Pops, beer, and much, much more. Yet local eating has turned out to be a life lesson in pleasures that are always close at hand. They met the revolutionary farmers and modern-day hunter-gatherers who are changing the way we think about food. They got personal with issues ranging from global economics to biodiversity. They called on the wisdom of grandmothers, and immersed themselves in the seasons. They discovered a host of new flavours, from gooseberry wine to sunchokes to turnip sandwiches, foods that they never would have guessed were on their doorstep. The 100-Mile Diet struck a deeper chord than anyone could have predicted, attracting media and grassroots interest that spanned the globe. The 100-Mile Diet: A Year of Local Eating tells the full story, from the insights to the kitchen disasters, as the authors transform from megamart shoppers to self-sufficient urban pioneers. The 100-Mile Diet is a pathway home for anybody, anywhere. Call me naive, but I never knew that flour would be struck from our 100-Mile Diet. Wheat products are just so ubiquitous, “the staff of life,” that I had hazily imagined the stuff must be grown everywhere. But of course: I had never seen a field of wheat anywhere close to Vancouver, and my mental images of late-afternoon light falling on golden fields of grain were all from my childhood on the Canadian prairies. What I was able to find was Anita’s Organic Grain & Flour Mill, about 60 miles up the Fraser River valley. I called, and learned that Anita’s nearest grain suppliers were at least 800 miles away by road. She sounded sorry for me. Would it be a year until I tasted a pie? —From The 100-Mile Diet

The IEEE 802,.3ah Ethernet in the First Mile standard is a new, inexpensive competitor to DSL and cable modems. This book annotates and explains the complex language of the standard document, focusing on how the EFM dovetails with other standards, making it invaluable for engineers developing new products and services.

Most organizations spend much of their effort on the start of the value creation process: namely, creating a strategy, developing new products or services, and analyzing the market. They pay a lot less attention to the end: the crucial “last mile” where consumers come to their website, store, or sales representatives and make a choice. In The Last Mile, Dilip Soman shows how to use insights from behavioral science in order to close that gap. Beginning with an introduction to the last mile problem and the concept of choice architecture, the book takes a deep dive into the psychology of choice, money, and time. It explains how to construct behavioral experiments and understand the data on preferences that they provide. Finally, it provides a range of practical tools with which to overcome common last mile difficulties. The Last Mile helps lay readers not only to understand behavioral science, but to apply its lessons to their own organizations’ last mile problems, whether they work in business, government, or the nonprofit sector. Appealing to anyone who was fascinated by Dan Ariely’s Predictably Irrational, Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein’s Nudge, or Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow but was not sure how those insights could be practically applied, The Last Mile is full of solid, concrete advice on how to put the lessons of behavioral science to work.

Are you spiritually inquisitive? Willing to set aside time each day to pursue personal spiritual growth? Baby Steps Of Faith-The First Mile by Charles E. Perry Sr. is a fifty-day journey towards better relationships-both with God and with other people. The goal is to gain fresh insights regarding God's promises, His love, His justice, and our role in the big picture. Discovering our role in God's plan might take place early in life or it might occur later; but we must never forget that we do have a role in His plan. Baby Steps of Faith is about seeking God's direction, following it, and then enjoying the results. It's a fifty-day walk of learning how to overcoming obstacles through the mighty power of the Holy Spirit. Each day's baby step is one step closer to realizing our full potential in our journey of faith. Abounding with simple, practical truths, Baby Steps of Faith is your guide to a deeper relationship with God.

“[A] superb novel whose roots can be traced to Harper Lee and Carson McCullers”—from the New York Times–bestselling author of Ten Thousand Saints (O, The Oprah Magazine). Cotton County, Georgia, 1930: in a house full of secrets, two babies—one light-skinned, the other dark—are born to Elma Jesup, a white sharecropper’s daughter. Accused of her rape, field hand Genus Jackson is lynched and dragged behind a truck down the Twelve-Mile Straight, the road to the nearby town. In the aftermath, the farm’s inhabitants are forced to contend with their complicity in a series of events that left a man dead and a family irrevocably fractured. Despite the prying eyes and curious whispers of the townspeople, Elma begins to raise her babies as best as she can, under the roof of her mercurial father, Juke, and with the help of Nan, the young black housekeeper who is as close to Elma as a sister. But soon it becomes clear that the ties that bind all of them together are more intricate than any could have ever imagined. As startling revelations mount, a web of lies begins to collapse around the family, destabilizing their precarious world and forcing all to reckon with the painful truth. Acclaimed author Eleanor Henderson has returned with a novel that combines the intimacy of a family drama with the staggering presence of a great Southern saga. Tackling themes of racialized violence, social division, and financial crisis, The Twelve-Mile Straight is a startlingly timely, emotionally resonant, and magnificent tour de force. “Henderson immerses you in characters worthy of Flannery O’Connor . . . A masterful piece of storytelling.” —The Seattle Times