Free Book (Kindle/nook) - Innovative Business Solutions based on Design Strategy

Update: 10/81/11 Also free from Barnes & Noble.

Innovative Business Solutions based on Design Strategy, a collection of titles by Ravi Sawhney, Deepa Prahalad, Robert Brunner, Stewart Emery, and Luke Williams, is free on Kindle.

Book Description
3 extraordinary eBooks help you drive maximum value from business innovation, design, and creativity!

Three remarkable eBooks take you to the cutting edge of business innovation, design strategy, and value creation! Predictable Magic: Unleash the Power of Design Strategy to Transform Your Business introduces a breakthrough process for crafting rewarding, empowering customer experiences that create deep emotional connections with your products, services, and brands. Do You Matter?: How Great Design Will Make People Love Your Company shows how to build a truly design-driven company: one that can consistently create designs that drive sustainable business performance improvements. Finally, in Disrupt: Think the Unthinkable to Spark Transformation in Your Business, frog design's Luke Williams integrates powerful creativity techniques with business discipline in a five-step program for identifying disruptive opportunities--and successfully executing on them!

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Free Book (Kindle/nook) - Doing Both

Update: 10/81/11 Also free from Barnes & Noble.

Doing Both: Capturing Today's Profit and Driving Tomorrow's Growth, by Inder Sidhu, is a repeat freebie in the Kindle store.

Book Description
Over the past seven years, in a highly unstable global economy, Cisco doubled revenue, tripled profits, and quadrupled earnings per share. How? By Doing Both. When companies face key strategic decisions, they often take one path and abandon the other. They focus on innovation and new business at the expense of core businesses or vice versa. They stress discipline and sacrifice flexibility. They focus on customers and ignore partners. And they struggle. Cisco believes there is a better way: Doing Both.

Doing Both means approaching every decision as an opportunity to seize, not a sacrifice to endure. It means avoiding false choices, reduced expectations, and weak compromises. It means finding ways to make each option benefit and mutually reinforce the other. In this book, Cisco Senior Vice President Inder Sidhu explains why “doing both” is today’s best strategy. Then, drawing on Cisco’s hardwon insights and the experiences of companies like Procter & Gamble, Whirlpool, and Harley-Davidson, Inder presents a complete blueprint for “doing both” in your organization, too.

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Free Book (Kindle/nook) - So, You Want to Start a Business?

Update: 10/81/11 Also free from Barnes & Noble.

So, You Want to Start a Business?: 8 Steps to Take Before Making the Leap, by Edward D. Hess and Charles D. Goetz, is free in the Kindle store, courtesy of FT Press.

Book Description
More than 5,000,000 new businesses are started each year…but 70% of them will fail. Now, two renowned experts on entrepreneurship identify the 8 “killer mistakes” that cause most business failures–and give you the knowledge, tools, and hands-on advice to avoid them, so you can build a business that thrives.

Unlike other books on entrepreneurship, this book focuses on the crucial operational issues associated with consistent profitability. You’ll learn how to identify the right opportunities and customers; design winning products and services; set the right prices; overcome customer inertia; avoid common day-to-day management mistakes; find and keep good employees; and finally, smoothly manage growth.

Throughout, the authors draw on real life entrepreneurial experiences, case studies, and leading-edge research. There’s nothing theoretical here: This is fast-paced, 100% practical advice you can use to make your business dreams and goals come true–starting right now.

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Free Book (Kindle/nook) - Lies, Damned Lies, and Science

Update: 10/81/11 Also free from Barnes & Noble.

Lies, Damned Lies, and Science: How to Sort through the Noise around Global Warming, the Latest Health Claims, and Other Scientific Controversies, by Sherry Seethaler, is free in the Kindle store, courtesy of FT Press.

Book Description
Don’t Get Hoodwinked! Make Sense of Health and Science News...and Make Smarter Decisions!

Every day, there’s a new scientific or health controversy. And every day, it seems as if there’s a new study that contradicts what you heard yesterday. What’s really going on? Who’s telling the truth? Who’s faking it? What do scientists actually know—and what don’t they know? This book will help you cut through the confusion and make sense of it all—even if you’ve never taken a science class! Leading science educator and journalist Dr. Sherry Seethaler reveals how science and health research really work...how to put scientific claims in context and understand the real tradeoffs involved...tell quality research from junk science...discover when someone’s deliberately trying to fool you...and find more information you can trust! Nobody knows what new controversy will erupt tomorrow. But one thing’s for certain: With this book, you’ll know how to figure out the real deal—and make smarter decisions for yourself and your family!

Watch the news, and you’ll be overwhelmed by snippets of badly presented science: information that’s incomplete, confusing, contradictory, out-of-context, wrong, or flat-out dishonest. Defend yourself! Dr. Sherry Seethaler gives you a powerful arsenal of tools for making sense of science. You’ll learn how to think more sensibly about everything from mad cow disease to global warming–and how to make better science-related decisions in both your personal life and as a citizen.

You’ll begin by understanding how science really works and progresses, and why scientists sometimes disagree. Seethaler helps you assess the possible biases of those who make scientific claims in the media, and place scientific issues in appropriate context, so you can intelligently assess tradeoffs. You’ll learn how to determine whether a new study is really meaningful; uncover the difference between cause and coincidence; figure out which statistics mean something, and which don’t.

Seethaler reveals the tricks self-interested players use to mislead and confuse you, and points you to sources of information you can actually rely upon. Her many examples range from genetic engineering of crops to drug treatments for depression...but the techniques she teaches you will be invaluable in understanding any scientific controversy, in any area of science or health.

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Free Book (Kindle) - A Home For Christmas

Update: 10/17/11 Now free for US Kindle customers.

A Home For Christmas, (US/UK), by Deborah Grace Staley, is free for UK customers in the Kindle store, courtesy of publisher Bell Bridge Books. I'd say it is likely to be free for US customers by morning.

Book Description
Book Two in Deborah Grace Staley's series about love and life in Angel Ridge, Tennessee.

Dr. Janice Thornton has been lonely for too long, especially at Christmas. But Angel Ridge, Tennessee, the one place that holds the key to what family should be, is offering her a chance at a new life. Could she find happiness by taking over her uncle's small town practice? Local contractor and carpenter Blake Ferguson comes from a big family. He'd like to fill his rambling old Victorian with one of his own. But there's one problem. He needs a wife! When Janice shows up at his house, Blake sets a course to win her, but soon finds she's built a wall around her heart this master carpenter finds difficult to dismantle. Can the magic of an Angel Ridge Christmas bring hearts home or will old hurts create an obstacle even the town's legendary angels can't overcome?