Keeping The Edge

Harold H. "Dynamite" Payson is a professional boatbuilder who specializes in light plywood construction, though in the past he build traditional plank-on-frame craft. Most of his boats-among them the famed Gloucester Light Dory and the Instant Boat series-are from the board of Philip C. Bolger. Many of the prototypes of Bolger's small boats have been built by Payson as part of their continuing association. Dynamite is a retired lobster fisherman, a saw sharpener, and the proprietor of H.H.Payson & Co., which offers boatbuilding plans for sale to the average boatbuilder. He is the author of Instant Boats, How to Build the Gloucester Light Dory, Go Build Your Own Boat!, Build the New Instant Boats, and a number of magazine articles. He lives and works in South Thomaston, Maine.

Technology innovations in the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) have delivered unmatched national security capability for the United States for the greater part of the last seven decades. Federal research and development funding is at the heart of the U.S. high-technology advantage. Continuing to push the technology envelope is central to maintaining U.S. preeminence in military capability. As Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter made clear in his Silicon Valley speech in April 2015, “threats to our security and our country’s technological superiority are proliferating and diversifying.” The U.S. global lead in defense technology is being actively eroded by potential competitors who themselves are pursuing advanced technologies to develop asymmetric capabilities that challenge the U.S. ability to carry out critical missions. This report explores the context of the global innovation environment that is driving the need for DoD to better connect with the global commercial economy. Through an expansive set of interviews with experts, practitioners, and senior officials, the CSIS study team developed a set of recommendations, divided here into two general proposals: (1) encourage better awareness of outside innovation; and (2) enable better access to that outside innovation once it has been identified.

The acclaimed novel of Spain's economic crisis - a timely masterpiece. Under a weak winter sun in small-town Spain, a man discovers a rotting corpse in a marsh. It’s a despairing town filled with half-finished housing developments and unemployment, a place defeated by the burst of the economic bubble. Stuck in the same town is Esteban, his small factory bankrupt, his investments gone, the sole carer to his mute, invalid father. As Esteban’s disappointment and fury lead him to form a dramatic plan to reverse financial ruin, other voices float up from the wreckage. Stories of loss twist together to form a kaleidoscopic image of Spain’s crisis. And the corpse in the marsh is just one. Chirbes’s rhythmic, torrential style creates a Spanish masterpiece for our age.

The Sales EDGE reframes your and your sales team's approach to business-to-business sales so you can solve those problems and deliver sales success. Author Gene McNaughton developed the EDGE selling process from his 25 years in the trenches as a salesperson, sales manager, and sales consultant training thousands of salespeople. His game-changing strategies and tactics are required reading for any executive, manager, or salesperson responsible for driving revenue and closing new business. This comprehensive, step-by-step how-to guide creates a new paradigm in B2B sales, and makes traditional selling techniques look antiquated, outdated, and downright ineffective. The Sales EDGE delivers a methodology and a plan to help you build a sales team that delivers.

For the past three-quarters of a century, the United States has led the world in technological innovation and development. The nation now risks falling behind its competitors, principally China. The United States needs to advance a national innovation strategy to ensure it remains the predominant power in a range of emerging technologies. Innovation and National Security: Keeping Our Edge outlines a strategy based on four pillars: restoring federal funding for research and development, attracting and educating a science and technology workforce, supporting technology adoption in the defense sector, and bolstering and scaling technology alliances and ecosystems. Failure could lead to a future in which rivals strengthen their militaries and threaten U.S. security interests, and new innovation centers replace the United States as the source of original ideas and inspiration for the world.

In 1989, Dick Schaaf, co-author of "Service Edge", which profiled 101 leading organizations that were making service their #1 priority. Now, in "Keeping the Edge", Schaaf revisits the surviving 99 companies, including American Express, Disney, and Home Depot, to see how they have fared.

How the US can rectify organizational and managerial problems to maximize its military effectiveness.

Get ready to stay up all night with three full novels of suspense, intrigue, and action… UNDER DARK SKIES X-Files meets Bones in this 7 book series with more to come! In NightShade nothing is as it seems . . . Strange clues. Strange cases. Stranger investigators. BLUFF CITY BUTCHER A series of seemingly solved murders rips a city apart when the “Butcher” comes back to town. Not only wasn’t he dead, he was hiding a decades old secret… WHO BY WATER Jo Wiley thought she had her life figured out and had made peace with her past when she moved around the world to Slovenia. Only there are more ghosts in Slovenia than in the life she left behind… Buckle up and hang on tight to over 1000 pages of nail-biting, edge-of-your-seat thrill rides.