Cisco Systems is known among the technology elite in Silicon Valley as one of the most successful companies to emerge from the Valley in many years. It has been dubbed computing's next Superpower. Just as Intel and Microsoft soared to lofty heights with the rise of the personal computer, Cisco Systems is flying on the spectacular updraft of the Internet. The company, which makes specialized computers that route information through a network--acting as a sort of data traffic cop--has captured 85 percent of the market for routers used as the backbone of the biggest network of them all, the Internet. As a result, over the last five years, the value of Cisco's total outstanding stock has risen over 2,000 percent--twice the increase of Microsoft Corp. stock in the same period. Beginning as a tale of two college sweethearts at Stanford University who cofounded the company fifteen years ago, the often-told Cisco legend has all the makings of a great novel--love, money, a villain or two, corporate coups, and the sweet taste of victory. But mostly, the Cisco story is a very unusual tale of corporate success. Despite the struggle of passing through several regimes, Cisco managed to hit all the crucial spots of its business. Cisco consistently bested competitors like 3Com and IBM with insight, innovation, customer focus, and one of the biggest corporate buying sprees in history. Making the Cisco Connection deftly traces the networking giant's path to success, from its founding couple, Sandra Lerner and Leonard Bosack, to current CEO John Chambers. It highlights the company's astounding knack for buying other businesses and making them part of a huge conglomerate; its own highly developed use of technology; and its unusually tight-knit culture. Featuring the perspective of top Cisco executives and competitors, this book reveals how Cisco's technology, employees, and even its competition have blended to make Cisco possibly the most important company shaping the future of communications. Next to ruthless competitors Microsoft and Intel, Cisco shines with a kinder, gentler image, emphasizing happy customers and employees. You'll see how Cisco built its impressive culture by cultivating community, boosting morale, whittling down bureaucracy, and saving money to boot. This book also explains how Cisco is positioning itself to enter a new competitive playing field, moving beyond Internet routers in an attempt to build a single, giant, global communications system--based on the Internet--that would make the current telephone system obsolete. Cisco wants to be the company that delivers the infrastructure of this new network, which will combine computer networks with telephones, television, radio, and satellite communications. To do that, it is now challenging global giants such as Lucent Technologies and Fujitsu. Cisco plans to become the backbone of the entire communications industry, making it a corporation of incredible power as the Internet Age blossoms in the new millennium. Provocative and instructive, Making the Cisco Connection traces the unique history of one of the most profitable and enduring technology companies in business today. Acclaim for Making the CISCO Connection "If you want to learn the whole scoop about the first Internet-Age company, and one of the most successful firms of any age, you've come to the right place. Bunnell's treatment of Cisco's rise--and continued rise--is fascinating and full of human detail. It's clear that Cisco is not just a firm with great technology, but also great leaders and managers."--Thomas H. Davenport, Director, Andersen Consulting Institute for Strategic Change; Professor, Boston University School of Management "Cisco has emerged as a twenty-first century leader. David Bunnell captures the ongoing story of the Cisco executive team exploiting IT, structuring a unique organization, and creating a dynamic strategy for this breakaway dot com company."--Richard L. Nolan, William Barclay Harding Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School

Reduce Hiring Risks and Predict Success New Mindset. In The Best Team Wins,author Adam Robinson gives you a proven, straightforward, and effective method for hiring new employees. He teaches you how to rethink the process of finding, assessing, and hiring the right people. New Methods. Robinson, a recruiting professional with over twenty years experience, shows you how to— •Use a Data-Driven Job Profile to Assess Candidate Risk •Build a Candidate Scorecard •Rate the Candidate's Core Competencies •Ask the Right Questions to Dig Deeper in Interviews •Craft an Offer the Candidate Can’t Refuse Better Results. By following Robinson’s in-depth process, you can eliminate guesswork and focus on building a team that will bring value to your company’s culture and bottom line.

The World’s Most Influential Book on Personal Success The bestselling classic that made Systems Over Goals, Talent Stacking, and Passion Is Overrated universal success advice has been reborn. Once in a generation, a book revolutionizes its category and becomes the preeminent reference that all subsequent books on the topic must pay homage to, in name or in spirit. How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big by Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, is such a book for the field of personal success. A contrarian pundit and persuasion expert in a class of his own, Adams has reached hundreds of millions directly and indirectly through the 2013 first edition’s straightforward yet counterintuitive advice—to invite failure in, embrace it, then pick its pocket. The second edition of How to Fail is a tighter, updated version, by popular demand. Yet new and returning readers alike will find the same candor, humor, and timeless wisdom on productivity, career growth, health and fitness, and entrepreneurial success as the original classic. How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big, Second Edition is the essential read (or re-read) for anyone who wants to find a unique path to personal victory—and make luck find you in whatever you do.

A deeply informed, yet playful and ironic look at how the internet has changed human experience, memory, and our sense of self, and that belongs on the shelf with the best writings of Roland Barthes and Jean Baudrillard. “One day, as I was daydreaming on the boulevard Beaumarchais, I had the idea—it came and went in a flash, almost in spite of myself—of Googling to find out what I’d been up to and where I’d been two evenings before, at five o’clock, since I couldn’t remember on my own.” So begins Maël Renouard’s Fragments of an Infinite Memory, a provocative and elegant inquiry into life in a wireless world. Renouard is old enough to remember life before the internet but young enough to have fully accommodated his life to the internet and the gadgets that support it. Here this young philosopher, novelist, and translator tries out a series of conjectures on how human experience, especially the sense of self, is being changed by our continual engagement with a memory that is impersonal and effectively boundless. Renouard has written a book that is rigorously impressionistic, deeply informed historically and culturally, but is also playful, ironic, personal, and formally adventurous, a book that withstands comparison to the best of Roland Barthes and Jean Baudrillard.

A game-changing book on the origins of life, called the most important scientific discovery 'since the Copernican revolution' in The Observer.

No Home for You Here is a memoir of a life lived in the shadow of Ronald Reagan. Raised in rural Ohio, Adam Theron-Lee Rensch tells the story of a millennial trying—and failing—to leave behind the shame of growing up poor in the middle of nowhere. Interweaving personal narrative and political criticism with recent social and political history, No Home for You Here shows how the interrelationship of class, culture, and identity stifles working-class solidarity by constructing an imagined cultural divide that those in power use to maintain the status quo. With one foot on each side of this division, Rensch moves between the flat horizon of the Midwest and the densely populated streets of the city, bearing witness to the tragic effects of a precarious free-market economy on family and friends. Rather than wallowing in despair, however, No Home for You Here is a timely, passionate call for class consciousness in an era of economic crisis and staggering inequality.

'I started reading this with my ten-year-old son ... until he decided the book was so good, he had to carry on without me' - Val, parent reviewer'A superbly funny debut comedy story ... A wonderful read, full of fun but, above all, heart and a clear message to not give up on your dreams' - Karla, Netgalley reviewer-----------------------------------------------------The hilarious bestselling debut children's adventure from YouTuber Adam B!There's nothing thirteen-year-old Adam wants more than to become a successful YouTuber, but it has always seemed impossible. Then one day a mysterious pop-up ad calling itself Popularis Incrementum promises to make ALL HIS DREAMS COME TRUE. Suddenly a world of FAME, FORTUNE and FANCY TVs awaits!All Adam has to do is gain one million followers in one year. And if he doesnt ... ? GULP!Featuring bold black-and-white illustrations from bestselling illustrator James Lancett. The perfect summer holiday read for budding young YouTubers everywhere! Fans of David Baddiel, Greg James and Chris Smith and Noel Fitzpatrick's Vetman will be spellbound.This brilliant paperback edition features exclusive bonus material, including a Q+A with Adam - featuring interviewer Callum B!And watch out for Adam's second out-of-this-world adventure - Adam Destroys the Internet!