‘Compelling and vivid’ – Robert Cialdini, author of Pre-Suasian

We all try to influence others in our daily lives. We are all marketers, whether you are a manager motivating your team, an employee making a big presentation, an activist staging a protest or a company executive selling the next big thing. In For the Culture, Marcus Collins argues that the most powerful vehicle for influencing behaviour is true cultural engagement. To inspire communities, we first need to think hard about how we appeal to their values and what we will contribute to their culture.

With a deep perspective based on a century’s worth of data, Collins breaks down the many ways in which culture influences behaviour. Using captivating stories from his own life as a top marketer – including spearheading digital strategy for Beyoncé, working with iTunes and Nike+ on their collaboration, and designing ads for McDonalds – he shows readers how they can do the same. Full of memorable examples, from 1960s hippy culture to the enduring success of Patagonia, For the Culture offers the essential tools for creating lasting engagement and influence.

‘Some people seem to intuitively ‘get it.’ Most do not. Collins articulates ‘it’ for the rest of us and provides not just an understanding, but a guide for how to actually engage and influence culture’ – Steve Huffman, co-founder and CEO, Reddit

Blue Ocean Shift is the essential follow-up to the classic Blue Ocean Strategy, the 3.6 million copy global bestseller by world-renowned professors W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne.

Drawing on more than a decade of new work, Kim and Mauborgne show you how to move beyond competing, how to inspire people’s confidence and seize new growth, guiding you step by step through how to take your organization from a red ocean, crowded with competition, to a blue ocean of uncontested market space. By combining the insights of human psychology with practical market-creating tools and real-world guidance, Kim and Mauborgne deliver the definitive guide to shift yourself, your team, or your organization to new heights of confidence, market creation and growth. They show why non-disruptive creation is as important as disruption in seizing new growth.

Blue Ocean Shift is packed with all-new research and examples of how leaders in diverse industries and organizations made the shift and created new markets by applying the processes and tools outlined in the book. Whether you are a cash-strapped start-up or a large, established company, a non-profit or national government, you will learn how to move from red to blue oceans in a way that builds people’s confidence so that they own and drive the process.

With battle-tested lessons learned from successes and failures in the field, Blue Ocean Shift is critical reading for leaders, managers and entrepreneurs alike. You’ll learn what works, what doesn’t, and how to avoid the pitfalls along the way. This book will empower you to succeed as you embark on your own blue ocean journey. Blue Ocean Shift is indispensable for anyone committed to building a compelling future.

Universal symbols have been used as a form of communication from the Bronze Age, when the dynasties of ancient Egypt began the evolution of the thousand characters used in Egyptian hieroglyphics. In pre-Columbian America the Mayan civilization set out on a similar course, using pictures as a narrative text.

With the adoption of written languages, symbols have come to represent an illustrated shorthand. The dollar sign in America evolved from colonists’ trade with the Spanish, and the widespread acceptance of Spanish currency in deals. Merchants’ clerks would shorten the repeated entry of “pesos” in their accounts ledgers, which needed to be written with a ‘p’ and an ‘s’. A single letter ‘s’ with the vertical stroke of the ‘p’ was much quicker. Historically correct dollar signs have a single stroke through the ‘S’.

Symbols are also used to impart quick, recognizable safety advice. The radio activity symbol was designed in Berkley in 1946 to warn of the dangers of radioactive substances – and following the widespread use of gas masks in WWII, the trefoil symbol echoed the shape of the mask.

There are many symbols of affiliation, not only to religious groups, but support of political causes or even brand loyalty. Symbols are used for identification, military markings and recognition of compatibility. They allow users to convey a large amount of information in a short space, such as the iconography of maps or an electrical circuit diagram. Symbols are an essential part of the architecture of mathematics.

And in the case of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics – the first Games to be held in an Asian country – symbols allowed the organizers to create event signage that wouldn’t be lost in translation. The set of Olympic sports pictograms for the Games was a novel solution, and one that was added to in Mexico and Munich.

Organized chronologically, 100 Symbols That Changed The World looks at the genesis and adoption of the world’s most recognizable symbols.

A good business developer, prospector and networker knows how to create a positive connection with the people they meet. They are the catalyst that creates a chemical reaction between strangers, and they know how to convert these opportunities into new business.

Louisa Clarke and David Kean have spent their careers catalysing strangers into contacts and converting contacts into clients – and even into friends. They have built successful businesses together using the proven techniques in this book, and they have helped hundreds of companies around the world win billions in new business by applying the same methods.

Catalyst is full of illustrative anecdotes, hard-won wisdom and a step-by-step methodology. Whatever industry you work in, if you need more clients to buy your services and you’re not sure how to find them, convince them or win them, this is the book for you. Follow this approach and new business will come. You might even make some friends along the way.

For many people, networking, prospecting and selling are scary. If the word ‘networking’ makes you recoil, if the word ‘prospecting’ conjures up terrifying spectres of endless cold calls, and if you run for the hills at the mention of ‘sales’, this book will be balm for you. Because, whilst it doesn’t make it effortless, it does make it easy.

‘Catalyst is a manual for winning business in today’s economy, recommended to anyone who wants to grow their client base. Catalyst is brimming with great advice and inspiration’ – Annette King, CEO Publicis Groupe UK

Why is Red Bull so popular – even though everyone hates the taste? Why do countdown boards on platforms take away the pain of train delays? And why do we prefer stripy toothpaste?

Discover the alchemy behind original thinking, as TED Talk superstar and Ogilvy advertising legend Rory Sutherland reveals why abandoning logic and casting aside rationality is the best way to solve any problem.

In his first book he blends cutting-edge behavioural science, jaw-dropping stories and a touch of branding magic on his mission to turn us all into idea alchemists. He shows how economists, businesses and governments have got it all wrong: we are not rational creatures who make logical decisions based on evidence. Instead, the big problems we face every day, whether as an individual or in society, could very well be solved by thinking less logically. To be brilliant, you have to be irrational.