Building upon the Age of Possibility first espoused in their provocative and acclaimed The 500 Year Delta, Watts Wacker and Jim Taylor now welcome readers to the Age of Uncertainty, where, because life has never been easier, it has never been more difficult.
In this unprecedented new book, Wacker and Taylor present a vision of the present and future that goes beyond all the chaos and complexity of our times. With a clear and firm grasp of their material, they proceed to chart a method for readers to create a personal course for the future. 
This navigational route is premised upon the authors' profound understanding of nine mind-boggling paradoxes that capture the imponderables of modern life, and define the business and social climates of the world as we move forward into the new millennium:
<ul>
<li>
The Paradox of the Visionary The closer your vision gets to a provable truth, the more you are simply describing the present. In the same way, the more certain you are of a future outcome, the more likely you will be wrong.</li>
<li>
The Paradox of Value The value of any product becomes inseparable from a buyer's perception of worth. Instead of intrinsic value, we have relative value only--the products that a business makes bear diminished relations to the physical content of the offering.</li>
<li>
The Paradox of Size The bigger you are, the smaller you need to be. </li>
<li> The Paradox of Time To succeed in the short term, you need to think in the long term. Yet the greater your vision and the longer the time interval over which you predict results, the greater the risk that you will be unable to take the necessary steps in the short term to achieve the long-term goals. The tension between short- and long-term planning has never been more tormented.</li>
<li>
The Paradox of Competition Your biggest competitor is your own view of your future; competition comes from everywhere and nowhere at the same time. </li>
<li>
The Paradox of Action You've got to go for what you can't expect to get; nothing will turn out exactly as it's supposed to. You must act intuitively and be equally ready to take resolute counter-intuitive action. </li>
<li>
The Paradox of Leadership To lead from the front, you have to stay inside the story. In an inherently inconsistent world, consistency is not the virtue it once was in our leaders.</li>
<li>
The Paradox of Leisure Play is hard work; play and work are blending and becoming indistinguishable. </li>
<li>
The Paradox of Reality Every person on planet Earth today has the potential to be connected to every other person, and every single one of us inhabits a world of our own and is a marketing segment of absolutely one. As our links become stronger, our individuation becomes starker.</li>
</ul>
A bold, incisive book, The Visionary's Handbook captures the interlocking web o paradoxes that abound in everyday business life, and provides an essential map to help make the future work for every individual and every company in the challenging and uncertain times ahead.

The Visionary's Handbook: Nine Paradoxes That Will Shape the Future of Your Business

Business & Money

Means, Howard

Taylor, Jim

Wacker, Watts

Management & Leadership

Harper Business

In The 500 Year Delta, Watts Wacker and Jim Taylor astounded readers with their sweeping vision of time and change. Now they proclaim the Age of the Individual – a world where life has never been more difficult, because it has never been easier.
 Today, individuals have far more power to claim their own futures than ever before, which means they have to follow four major rules to chart their courses: know who you are: know where you want to go; recognise your own seminal moments; and adopt an attitude of insurgency. As these rules are applied to organisations, they too can master the nine paradoxes that abound in everyday life and watch productivity go through the roof.

Visionary's Handbook: Nine Paradoxes That Will Shape the Future of Your Business

Biography & History

Harper Paperbacks

“As usual these two future-finders have their fi ngers on the pulse of what’s happening--and what we need to know about. In every business, in every organization, the seven most important words these days are: ‘But wait! A story goes with it!’ You need to read this book to fi nd out why.” —Alan Webber, Co-founder, Fast Company magazine “A great story sparks our imagination, challenges us to think, and resonates with our collective conscience. Ryan Mathews and Watts Wacker’s story about telling stories does exactly this. It is an essential guidebook for capturing and conveying the essence of corporate identities and enriching brands.” —Paul A. Laudicina, Managing Officer and Chairman of the Board, A.T. Kearney Storytelling is the universal human activity.Every society, at every stage of history, has told stories–and listened to them intently, passionately. Stories are how people tell each other who they are, where they came from, how they’re unique, what they believe. Stories capture their memories of the past and their hopes for the future. Stories are one more thing, too: They are your most powerful, most underutilized tool for competitive advantage.Whether you know it or not, your business is already telling stories. What’s Your Story? will help you take control of those stories and make them work for you. Legendary business thinkers Ryan Mathews and Watts Wacker reveal how to craft an unforgettable story…create the back story that makes it believable…make sure your story cuts through today’s relentless bombardment of consumer messages…and gets heard, remembered, and acted on. <ul>
<li>THE TEN FUNCTIONS OF STORYTELLING Discovering what stories can do for your business </li>
<li> THE ABOLITION OF CONTEXT Telling stories when the past no longer defines the future</li>
</ul>
<ul><li> THE FIVE MOST IMPORTANT STORY THEMES Leveraging themes your audiences will understand and believe</li></ul>
<ul><li> APPLIED STORYTELLING 101 Storytelling for your industry, your company, your brand, and you</li></ul>
<ul><li> MASTERING YOUR STORYTELLER’S TOOLBOX Making your stories more compelling, more believable, and downright unforgettable</li></ul>
Use Storytelling to Gain Powerful Competitive Advantage in Today’s Increasingly Skeptical Marketplace <ul>
<li> Leverage the incredible power of storytelling in marketing, sales, investor relations, recruitment, change management, and more </li>
<li> Indispensable techniques for every CxO, entrepreneur, and marketing, sales, and communications executive </li>
<li> The latest breakthrough book from best-selling futurists Ryan Mathews and Watts Wacker</li>
</ul>

What's Your Story?: Storytelling to Move Markets, Audiences, People, and Brands

Mathews, Ryan

Marketing & Sales

Ft Pr

Don’t consider yourself deviant? Well, that just may be a career breaker. Odds are the idea or product that will transform your business or industry tomorrow is out there right now, hiding in the shadows of the Fringe, raw, messy, untamed, and just waiting to be exploited. Trapping, taming, and marketing it is the key to burying your competition and staying ahead of your market. Deviance is nothing more than a marked separation from the norm and is the source of innovation, the kind of breakthrough thinking that creates new markets and tumbles traditional ones. Positive deviation is an inexhaustible font of new ideas, products, and services. It’s the source of all creative thinking and dynamic new market development and ultimately the basis of all incremental profit. The Deviant’s Advantage describes how deviance proceeds along a traceable trajectory from the Fringe, where it originates but has zero commercial potential; to the Edge, where word of mouth creates a limited audience; to the Realm of the Cool, where the buzz and market momentum really start to build; to the Next Big Thing, where demand is honed and intensifies; finally landing at Social Convention, the heart of the mass market. Ryan Mathews and Watts Wacker, two of America’s most respected futurists, trace the “Path of the Devox” (the voice, spirit, or incarnation of deviant ideas, products, and individuals), using it as a way to explain how and why: * Christian fundamentalism morphed from college Bible studies to Republican party king-making * Reebok cares more about what’s on the feet of kids in Detroit and Philadelphia than what the so-hip-it-hurts set is wearing in New York or on Rodeo Drive * Napster exploded from an idea germinating inside a sixteen-year-old to a movement with 60 million subscribers that very nearly destroyed the music industry * Hugh Hefner went from America’s most public pornographer to a cultural icon with decidedly Puritan sensibilities Mathews and Wacker also look at what happens to formerly deviant products and ideas after they are replaced by the next wave from the Fringe—how they morph into Cliché (where their commercial potential may actually increase), become Icons or even Archetypes, or fade into Oblivion, and how you can profitably manage even a fading concept. Looking for the next big idea for your business? Then it’s past time to quit staring at the Social Convention for inspiration and start scouring the Fringes of society. Tomorrow’s breakthrough concept is lurking out there right now, in the mind of a deviant individual. Your choice is simple: find it and exploit it, or be buried by those who do.

The Deviant's Advantage: How Fringe Ideas Create Mass Markets

Economics

Crown Business

The 500 Year Delta

HarperAudio

In the tradition of Alvin Toffler's Future Shock and John Naisbitt's Megatrends, The 500-Year Delta offers an enthralling glimpse of what businesses and individuals should expect as the five-hundred-year-old "Age of Reason" segues into the "Age of Possibility." 
 According to visionary futurists Jim Taylor and Watts Wacker, we stand at not one but several crossroads-marked points of discontinuity between past and present. These include: 
<ul>
<li> The shift from reason-based to chaos-based logic </li>
<li> The splintering of social, political, and economic organization </li>
<li>The collapse of producer-controlled consumer markets </li>
</ul>
 For a world caught in this swirling intersection of change, Jim Taylor and Watts Wacker provide tested strategies to help companies and individuals reset their course toward an unpredictable future, offering new models to accommodate the increasing chaos of everyday life. 
 Describing our present point of transformation as a "triple witching hour," the authors chart a future course that is at once bracing, forbidding, joyous, and ultimately redemptive.

The 500 Year Delta: What Happens After What Comes Next

Don’t be afraid of deviants. They just may save your business. In today's challenging and sometimes puzzling business environment, deviance equals innovation--the kind of breakthrough thinking that creates new markets and tumbles traditional ones. In The Deviant's Advantage, two of America's most respected futurists show how this deviance proceeds along a traceable trajectory, explaining how and why: • Christian fundamentalism morphed from college Bible studies to Republican party king-making • Reebok cares more about what’s on the feet of kids in Detroit and Philadelphia than what the so-hip-it-hurts set is wearing in New York or on Rodeo Drive • Hugh Hefner, the creator of Playboy, transformed into a cultural icon with decidedly Puritan sensibilities Tomorrow's breakthrough concept is lurking out there right now in the mind of a deviant individual. Your choice is simple: find it and exploit it or be buried by those who do.

The Deviant's Advantage: How to Use Fringe Ideas to Create Mass Markets

Watts Wacker

A Freethinker’s A-Z of the New World of Business… Including… Absolut Adobe Barbie balanced scorecard Bloomberg Byrne Cap Gemini co-opetition corporate universities data warehousing Demos Drudge dumbing down Dyson Eisner Fast Company Frit? Gateway 2000 Global Business Network Grove Kleiner LG marketspace Meyer Milken New Pig power SantaFeInstitute Saturn smart cards Starbucks storytelling Wal-Mart xybernaut Zander…

A Freethinker's A-Z of the New World Business

Crainer, Stuart

Tulgan, Bruce

Education & Reference

Capstone

This work offers insights into the evolving business future, over the next 500 years. It asks, "How will the accelerating pace of technology transform the way people view themselves and organize their lives?", and, "Why will the workplace of the future only be occupied by owners and temps?".

500 Year Delta What Happpens After What

LPC Group

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Wacker, Watts. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Wacker, Watts