Predictable Magic

Predictable Magic
Author: Deepa Prahalad
Publisher: Pearson Prentice Hall
Total Pages: 206
Release: 2010-07-19
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0131388045

Companies invest fortunes on innovation and product strategy. But, by some estimates, 80% of new products fail or dramatically underperform every year, though a few rare products succeed brilliantly. Why is this the case? Their creators have seamlessly integrated corporate strategy with design. They don’t deliver utilitarian objects: they craft rewarding, empowering experiences. To outsiders, this looks like magic: incomprehensible, and impossible to reproduce. But it isn’t. Predictable Magic presents a complete design process for making the “magic” happen -- over and over again. Veteran industrial designer Ravi Sawhney and business strategist Deepa Prahalad introduce Psycho-Aesthetics, a breakthrough approach for systematically creating deep emotional connections between consumers and brands. Step by step, the authors cover everything from research to strategy, implementation to consumer experience. They also demonstrate Psycho-Aesthetics at work – in case studies from some of the world’s top companies, including Sprint, Medtronic, Amana, and Hyundai. You’ll see how these great companies have used Psycho-Aesthetics to go beyond the utilitarian (or even the merely “beautiful”), to build products that powerfully connect with people... touch them... move them... time and again.

Magic Lessons

Magic Lessons
Author: Alice Hoffman
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 416
Release: 2021-09-07
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1982108851

In the 1600s, Maria was abandoned in a snowy field in rural England as a baby. Under the care of Hannah Owens, who recognizes that Maria has a gift, she learns about the 'Unnamed Arts.' When Maria is abandoned by the man who has declared his love for her, she follows him to Salem, Massachusetts. She invokes a curse that will haunt her family for generations. And she learns the lesson that she will carry with her for the rest of her life: Love is the only thing that matters.

Magic Under Glass

Magic Under Glass
Author: Jaclyn Dolamore
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 237
Release: 2010-01-01
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 1599904306

A wealthy sorcerer's invitation to sing with his automaton leads seventeen-year-old Nimira, whose family's disgrace brought her from a palace to poverty, into political intrigue, enchantments, and a friendship with a fairy prince who needs her help.

Encyclopedia of 5,000 Spells

Encyclopedia of 5,000 Spells
Author: Judika Illes
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 1503
Release: 2011-02-15
Genre: Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN: 0062047264

In The Encyclopedia Of 5,000 Spells: The Ultimate Reference Book for the Magical Arts, independent scholar, educator and author of several books of folklore, folkways, and mythology Judika Iles enables the reader to enter the world of folklore, myth and magic with binding spells and banishing spells, spells for love, luck, wealth, and power, as well as spells for spiritual protection, physical healing, and enhanced fertility drawn from Earth's every corner and spanning 5,000 years of magical history.

Ship of Magic

Ship of Magic
Author: Robin Hobb
Publisher: Spectra
Total Pages: 834
Release: 2003-12-30
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0553900250

The first book in a seafaring fantasy trilogy that George R. R. Martin has described as “even better than the Farseer Trilogy—I didn’t think that was possible.” Bingtown is a hub of exotic trade and home to a merchant nobility famed for its liveships—rare vessels carved from wizardwood, which ripens magically into sentient awareness. Now the fortunes of one of Bingtown’s oldest families rest on the newly awakened liveship Vivacia. For Althea Vestrit, the ship is her rightful legacy. For Althea’s young nephew, wrenched from his religious studies and forced to serve aboard the Vivacia, the ship is a life sentence. But the fate of the ship—and the Vestrits—may ultimately lie in the hands of an outsider: the ruthless buccaneer captain Kennit, who plans to seize power over the Pirate Isles by capturing a liveship and bending it to his will. Don’t miss the magic of the Liveship Traders Trilogy: SHIP OF MAGIC • MAD SHIP • SHIP OF DESTINY

From Impossible To Inevitable

From Impossible To Inevitable
Author: Aaron Ross
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2016-02-08
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1119166713

Impossible Goals, Inevitable Successes Why are you struggling to grow your business when everyone else seems to be crushing their goals? If you needed to triple revenue within the next three years, would you know exactly how to do it? Doubling the size of your business, tripling it, even growing ten times larger isn’t about magic. It’s not about privileges, luck, or working harder. There’s a template that the world’s fastest growing companies follow to achieve and sustain much, much faster growth. From Impossible to Inevitable details the hypergrowth playbook of companies like the record-breaking Zenefits (which skyrocketed from $1 million to $100 million in two years), Salesforce.com (the fastest growing multibillion dollar software company), and EchoSign—aka Adobe Document Services—(which catapulted from $0 to $144 million in seven years). Whether you have a $1 billion or a $100,000 business, you can use the same insights as these notable companies to learn what it really takes to break your own revenue records. For instance, one of the authors shows how he grew his income from $67,000 to $720,000 in four years while maintaining a 20-30 hour work week and welcoming a new child—nine times. This book shows you how to surpass plateaus and get off of the up-and-down revenue rollercoaster by answering three questions about growing revenue to tens times its size: Why aren’t you growing faster? What does it take to get to hypergrowth? How do you sustain growth? This powerful, effective book provides a template for you to kick off your biggest growth spurt yet. This template includes The 7 Ingredients Of Hypergrowth: You’re not ready to grow until you Nail a Niche. Overnight success is a fairy tale. You’re not going to be magically discovered. You need sustainable systems that Create Predictable Pipeline. Growth exposes your weaknesses and it will cause more problems than it solves—until you Make Sales Scalable. It’s hard to build a big business out of small deals. Figure out how to Double Your Dealsize. It’ll take years longer than you want, but don’t quit too soon. Make sure you can Do the Time. Your people are renting, not owning their jobs. Develop a culture of initiative, not adequacy by Embracing Employee Ownership. Employees, you are too accepting of “reality” and too eager to quit. You can Define Your Destiny to make a difference, for yourself and your company, no matter what you do or where you work. The authors take each ingredient and break it down into specific steps to guide you through implementation. From Impossible to Inevitable helps you take impossible goals and turn them into inevitable successes for your business and team. You will achieve success even bigger than you can imagine from where you’re sitting today.

The McDonaldization of Society

The McDonaldization of Society
Author: George Ritzer
Publisher: SAGE
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2013
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1452226695

George Ritzer’s McDonaldization of Society, now celebrating its’ 20thanniversary, continues to stand as one of the pillars of modern day sociological thought. By linking theory to 21st century culture, this book resonates with students in a way that few other books do, opening their eyes to many current issues, especially in consumption and globalization. As in previous editions, the book has been updated and it offers new discussions of, among others, In-N-Out- Burger and Pret A Manger as possible antitheses of McDonaldization. The biggest change, however, is that the book has been radically streamlined to offer an even clearer articulation of the now-famous McDonaldization thesis.

Unnatural Magic

Unnatural Magic
Author: C. M. Waggoner
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 400
Release: 2019-11-05
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1984805851

A “brilliant and terrifically fun”* debut novel brings an enchanting new voice to fantasy. Onna can write the parameters of a spell faster than any of the young men in her village school. But despite her incredible abilities, she’s denied a place at the nation’s premier arcane academy. Undaunted, she sails to the bustling city-state of Hexos, hoping to find a place at a university where they don’t think there’s anything untoward about providing a woman with a magical education. But as soon as Onna arrives, she’s drawn into the mysterious murder of four trolls. Tsira is a troll who never quite fit into her clan, despite being the leader’s daughter. She decides to strike out on her own and look for work in a human city, but on her way she stumbles upon the body of a half-dead human soldier in the snow. As she slowly nurses him back to health, an unlikely bond forms between them, one that is tested when an unknown mage makes an attempt on Tsira’s life. Soon, unbeknownst to each other, Onna and Tsira both begin devoting their considerable talents to finding out who is targeting trolls, before their homeland is torn apart… *Kat Howard, Alex Award-winning author of An Unkindness of Magicians