Place Advantage

Using psychology to develop spaces that enrich human experience Place design matters. Everyone perceives the world around them in a slightly different way, but there are fundamental laws that describe how people experience their physical environments. Place science principles can be applied in homes, schools, stores, restaurants, workplaces, healthcare facilities, and the other spaces people inhabit. This guide to person-centered place design shows architects, landscape architects, interior designers, and other interested individuals how to develop spaces that enrich human experience using concepts derived from rigorous qualitative and quantitative research. In Place Advantage: Applied Psychology for Interior Architecture, applied environmental psychologist Sally Augustin offers design practitioners accessible environmental psychological insights into how elements of the physical environment influence human attitudes and behaviors. She introduces the general principles of place science and shows how factors such as colors, scents, textures, and the spatial composition of a room, as well as personality and cultural identity, impact the experience of a place. These principles are applied to multiple building types, including residences, workplaces, healthcare facilities, schools, and retail spaces. Building a bridge between research and design practice, Place Advantage gives people designing and using spaces the evidence-based information and psychological insight to create environments that encourage people to work effectively, learn better, get healthy, and enjoy life.

In the new global economy, where rapid technological change is the norm, the skills of the workforce are a key to local economic vitality. This practical book shows how cities and regions can invest in their long-term prosperity by expanding opportunities to ensure that all citizens have competitive skills, and by aligning workforce development systems to existing and emerging industry needs. Clearly written, generously illustrated, with an effective blend of theory and practice, "People and the Competitive Advantage of Place" documents the challenges and opportunities involved in workforce development, effective approaches for resolving contemporary problems, what traps to avoid, and strategies for investing in the workforce of the future. The author integrates ideas and techniques from the fields of workforce development, economic development, and community development to present a comprehensive guide to approaching workforce needs from a city or region-wide perspective. Each chapter presents lessons from relevant research; experiences from private, public, and community-based approaches; and evaluations of what is working and why.

There is a competitive advantage out there, arguably more powerful than any other. Is it superior strategy? Faster innovation? Smarter employees? No, New York Times best-selling author, Patrick Lencioni, argues that the seminal difference between successful companies and mediocre ones has little to do with what they know and how smart they are and more to do with how healthy they are. In this book, Lencioni brings together his vast experience and many of the themes cultivated in his other best-selling books and delivers a first: a cohesive and comprehensive exploration of the unique advantage organizational health provides. Simply put, an organization is healthy when it is whole, consistent and complete, when its management, operations and culture are unified. Healthy organizations outperform their counterparts, are free of politics and confusion and provide an environment where star performers never want to leave. Lencioni’s first non-fiction book provides leaders with a groundbreaking, approachable model for achieving organizational health—complete with stories, tips and anecdotes from his experiences consulting to some of the nation’s leading organizations. In this age of informational ubiquity and nano-second change, it is no longer enough to build a competitive advantage based on intelligence alone. The Advantage provides a foundational construct for conducting business in a new way—one that maximizes human potential and aligns the organization around a common set of principles.

Take a journey with Force Recon Marine and Pro MMA Champion Chad Robichaux as he shares glimpses into the life of special operations, professional fighting, and deep insight into this world's spiritual battles. Chad shares successes and failures experienced in Afghanistan, the MMA cage, and his biggest fights: struggling with PTSD, a near divorce, and almost becoming another veteran suicide statistic. Each chapter shares parallel stories of biblical warriors who faced similar struggles and reveals the unfair advantage that led them to victory in the midst of those battles. Discover that same advantage for the battles you face, and unlock the warrior spirit sewn in your heart by God himself.

"Following the success of its predecessor, the second edition updates and broadens the scope from ""country image"" to ""place branding."" Many new studies have emerged since the first edition was published, and they are integrated in the new edition. The second edition is still aimed at three audiences: students of international marketing and business courses as a supplement to global product and advertising strategy; to international marketing managers; and to those industry and government officials who must deal with the problems of creating and maintaining a country's national image. "

Like the Greeks who sailed with Jason in search of the Golden Fleece, the new Argonauts--foreign-born, technically skilled entrepreneurs who travel back and forth between Silicon Valley and their home countries--seek their fortune in distant lands by launching companies far from established centers of skill and technology. Their story illuminates profound transformations in the global economy. Economic geographer AnnaLee Saxenian has followed this transformation, exploring one of its great paradoxes: how the "brain drain" has become "brain circulation," a powerful economic force for development of formerly peripheral regions. The new Argonauts--armed with Silicon Valley experience and relationships and the ability to operate in two countries simultaneously--quickly identify market opportunities, locate foreign partners, and manage cross-border business operations. The New Argonauts extends Saxenian's pioneering research into the dynamics of competition in Silicon Valley. The book brings a fresh perspective to the way that technology entrepreneurs build regional advantage in order to compete in global markets. Scholars, policymakers, and business leaders will benefit from Saxenian's firsthand research into the investors and entrepreneurs who return home to start new companies while remaining tied to powerful economic and professional communities in the United States. For Americans accustomed to unchallenged economic domination, the fast-growing capabilities of China and India may seem threatening. But as Saxenian convincingly displays in this pathbreaking book, the Argonauts have made America richer, not poorer.

Most of us have an intuitive sense of superior branding. We prefer to purchase brands we find distinctive—that deliver on some important, relevant dimension better than other brands. These brands have typically achieved positional advantage. Yet few professionals have had the formal training that goes beyond marketing theory to bridge the “theory-doing gap”—understanding the specific techniques and strategies that can be used to create brands that attain positional advantage in the marketplace. Positioning for Advantage is a comprehensive how-to guide for creating, building, and executing effective brand strategies. Kimberly A. Whitler identifies essential marketing strategy techniques and moves through the major stages of positioning a brand to achieve in-market advantage. Introducing seven tools—from strategic positioning concepts to strategy mapping to influencer maps—Whitler provides templates, frameworks, and step-by-step processes to build and manage growth brands that achieve positional advantage. This book presents real-world scenarios, helping readers activate tools to increase skill in creating brands that achieve positional advantage. Brimming with insights for students and professionals alike, Positioning for Advantage helps aspiring C-level leaders understand not only what superior branding looks like but also how to make it come to life.

A guide for individuals and organizations navigating the complex and ambiguous Future of Work Foreword by New York Times columnist and best-selling author Thomas L. Friedman Technology is changing work as we know it. Cultural norms are undergoing tectonic shifts. A global pandemic proves that we are inextricably connected whether we choose to be or not. So much change, so quickly, is disorienting. It's undermining our sense of identity and challenging our ability to adapt. But where so many see these changes as threatening, Heather McGowan and Chris Shipley see the opportunity to open the flood gates of human potential—if we can change the way we think about work and leadership. They have dedicated the last 5 years to understanding how technical, business, and cultural shifts affecting the workplace have brought us to this crossroads, The result is a powerful and practical guide to the future of work for leaders and employees. The future can be better, but only if we let go of our attachment to our traditional (and disappearing) ideas about careers, and what a "good job" looks like. Blending wisdom from interviews with hundreds of executives, The Adaptation Advantage explains the profound changes happening in the world of work and posits the solution: new ways to think about careers that detach our sense of pride and personal identity from our job title, and connect it to our sense of purpose. Activating purpose, the authors suggest, will inherently motivate learning, engagement, empowerment, and lead to new forms of pride and identity throughout the workforce. Only when we let go of our rigid career identities can we embrace and appreciate the joys of learning and adapting to new realities—and help our organizations do the same. Of course, making this transition is hard. It requires leaders who can attract and motivate cognitively diverse teams fueled by a strong sense of purpose in an environment of psychological safety—despite fierce competition and external pressures. Adapting to the future of work has always called for strong leadership. Now, as a pandemic disrupts so many aspects of work, adapting is a leadership imperative. The Adaptation Advantage is an essential guide to help leaders meet that challenge.

INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER • An engaging, deeply researched guide to flourishing in a world of increasing stress and negativity—the inspiration for one of the most popular TED Talks of all time “Powerful [and] charming . . . A book for just about anyone . . . The philosophies in this book are easily the best wire frames to build a happy and successful life.”—Medium Happiness is not the belief that we don’t need to change; it is the realization that we can. Our most commonly held formula for success is broken. Conventional wisdom holds that once we succeed, we’ll be happy; that once we get that great job, win that next promotion, lose those five pounds, happiness will follow. But the science reveals this formula to be backward: Happiness fuels success, not the other way around. Research shows that happy employees are more productive, more creative, and better problem solvers than their unhappy peers. And positive people are significantly healthier and less stressed and enjoy deeper social interaction than the less positive people around them. Drawing on original research—including one of the largest studies of happiness ever conducted—and work in boardrooms and classrooms across forty-two countries, Shawn Achor shows us how to rewire our brains for positivity and optimism to reap the happiness advantage in our lives, our careers, and even our health. His strategies include: • The Tetris Effect: how to retrain our brains to spot patterns of possibility so we can see and seize opportunities all around us • Social Investment: how to earn the dividends of a strong social support network • The Ripple Effect: how to spread positive change within our teams, companies, and families By turns fascinating, hopeful, and timely, The Happiness Advantage reveals how small shifts in our mind-set and habits can produce big gains at work, at home, and elsewhere.

Research Shows Organizations That Focus on Employee Experience Far Outperform Those That Don't Recently a new type of organization has emerged, one that focuses on employee experiences as a way to drive innovation, increase customer satisfaction, find and hire the best people, make work more engaging, and improve overall performance. The Employee Experience Advantage is the first book of its kind to tackle this emerging topic that is becoming the #1 priority for business leaders around the world. Although everyone talks about employee experience nobody has really been able to explain concretely what it is and how to go about designing for it...until now. How can organizations truly create a place where employees want to show up to work versus need to show up to work? For decades the business world has focused on measuring employee engagement meanwhile global engagement scores remain at an all time low despite all the surveys and institutes that been springing up tackle this problem. Clearly something is not working. Employee engagement has become the short-term adrenaline shot that organizations turn to when they need to increase their engagement scores. Instead, we have to focus on designing employee experiences which is the long term organizational design that leads to engaged employees. This is the only long-term solution. Organizations have been stuck focusing on the cause instead of the effect. The cause is employee experience; the effect is an engaged workforce. Backed by an extensive research project that looked at over 150 studies and articles, featured extensive interviews with over 150 executives, and analyzed over 250 global organizations, this book clearly breaks down the three environments that make up every single employee experience at every organization around the world and how to design for them. These are the cultural, technological, and physical environments. This book explores the attributes that organizations need to focus on in each one of these environments to create COOL spaces, ACE technology, and a CELEBRATED culture. Featuring exclusive case studies, unique frameworks, and never before seen research, The Employee Experience Advantage guides readers on a journey of creating a place where people actually want to show up to work. Readers will learn: The trends shaping employee experience How to evaluate their own employee experience using the Employee Experience Score What the world's leading organizations are doing around employee experience How to design for technology, culture, and physical spaces The role people analytics place in employee experience Frameworks for how to actually create employee experiences The role of the gig economy The future of employee experience Nine types of organizations that focus on employee experience And much more! There is no question that engaged employees perform better, aspire higher, and achieve more, but you can't create employee engagement without designing employee experiences first. It's time to rethink your strategy and implement a real-world framework that focuses on how to create an organization where people want to show up to work. The Employee Experience Advantage shows you how to do just that.