Remote: Office Not Required

The “work from home” phenomenon is thoroughly explored in this illuminating new book from bestselling 37signals founders Fried and Hansson, who point to the surging trend of employees working from home (and anywhere else) and explain the challenges and unexpected benefits.  Most important, they show why – with a few controversial exceptions such as Yahoo -- more businesses will want to promote this new model of getting things done.

The Industrial Revolution's "under one roof" model of conducting work is steadily declining owing to technology that is rapidly creating virtual workspaces and allowing workers to provide their vital contribution without physically clustering together.  Today, the new paradigm is "move work to the workers, rather than workers to the workplace."  According to Reuters, one in five global workers telecommutes frequently and nearly ten percent work from home every day. Moms in particular will welcome this trend.  A full 60% wish they had a flexible work option. But companies see advantages too in the way remote work increases their talent pool, reduces turnover, lessens their real estate footprint, and improves the ability to conduct business across multiple time zones, to name just a few advantages.  In Remote, inconoclastic authors Fried and Hansson will convince readers that letting all or part of work teams function remotely is a great idea--and they're going to show precisely how a remote work setup can be accomplished.

Included in Your Creative Career.

Game Frame: Using Games as a Strategy for Success

Ever wonder why teens can spend entire weekends playing video games but struggle with just one hour of homework? Why we’re addicted to certain websites and steal glances at our smartphones under the dinner table? Or why some people are able to find joy in difficult or repetitive jobs while others burn out? It’s not the experiences themselves but the way they’re structured that matters.

All our lives we’ve been told that games are distractions—playful pastimes, but unrelated to success. In Game Frame, Aaron Dignan shows us that the opposite is true: games produce peak learning conditions and accelerated achievement. Here, the crucial connection between the games we love to play and the everyday tasks, goals, and dreams we have trouble realizing is illuminated.

Aaron Dignan is the thirty-something founder of a successful digital strategy firm that studies the transformative power of technology in culture. He and his peers were raised on a steady diet of games and gadgets, ultimately priming them to challenge the status quo of the modern workplace. What they learned from games goes deeper than hand-eye coordination; instead, this generation intrinsically understands the value of adding the elements of games into everyday life.

Game Frame is the first prescriptive explanation of what games mean to us, the human psychology behind their magnetic pull, and how we can use the lessons they teach as a framework to achieve our potential in business and beyond.

Games are a powerful way to influence and change behavior in any setting. Here, Dignan outlines why games and play are such important trends in culture today, and how our technology, from our iPhones to our hybrid cars, primes us to be instinctive players. Game Frame tackles the challenging task of defining games and the mechanics that make games work from several perspectives, then explores these ideas through the lens of neuroscience. Finally, Dignan provides practical tips for using basic game mechanics in a variety of settings, such as motivating employees at work or encouraging children at home, giving readers the tools to develop their own games to solve problems in their everyday lives.

Illuminated throughout with a series of real-world examples and hypothetical scenarios, Game Frame promises a crash course in game design and behavioral psychology that will leave the reader—and, by extension, the world itself—more productive. Revolutionary, visionary, practical, and time-tested, Game Frame will change the way you approach life.

Included in Your Creative Career.

Maximize Your Potential: Grow Your Expertise, Take Bold Risks & Build an Incredible Career

Success isn't about being the best. It's about always getting better.

Can you step outside your comfort zone? Bounce back from failure? Build new skills? Tapping into your true potential is no idle endeavor. It demands creativity, dedication, and a whole lot of hustle.

With wisdom from 21 leading creative minds, 99U's Maximize Your Potential will show you how to generate new opportunities, cultivate your creative expertise, build valuable relationships, and take bold, new risks so that you can utilize your talents to the fullest.

Maximize Your Potential features contributions from: Teresa Amabile, Sunny Bates, Michael Bungay Stanier, David Burkus, John Caddell, Ben Casnocha, Jack Cheng, Jonathan Fields, Joshua Foer, Jocelyn K. Glei, Heidi Grant Halvorson, Frans Johansson, Steffen Landauer, Mark McGuinness, Cal Newport, Robert Safian, Michael Schwalbe, Tony Schwartz, Tina Seelig, and Scott H. Young. Plus, a foreword from Behance founder & CEO Scott Belsky.

Included in Your Creative Career.

The Creative Process Illustrated: How Advertising's Big Ideas Are Born

Creative directors, art directors and advertising copywriters are some of the great artists and thinkers of our time. Considering the scope and power of their influence in our culture, that's not such a crazy idea.

Take an intimate look into the creative processes of some of the top minds in the advertising industry. Get inspired as you learn about the people behind smart ad campaigns and see how they visualize their own search for a great idea.

You'll find outstanding work from an eclectic mix of agencies, including TBWA\CHIAT\DAY, The Jupiter Drawing Room, Wieden+Kennedy, McGarryBowen, McCann Erickson, Ogilvy & Mather, Carmichael Lynch and 72andSunny.

The Creative Process Illustrated represents a rare and remarkable look at the minds that fuel the ad industry. You'll be inspired to fresh thinking and better work immediately. Inside you'll find:

• Process canvases--sketches that visually represent the thought process leading to an idea, from some of the best minds in advertising.
• Profiles--insightful commentary from contributors, samples of their favorite work, perspectives from their colleagues and details of their professional accomplishments.
• Practical analysis--a breakdown of models of creativity, creativity as a problem-solving device, and putting the creative process to work for you.

Included in Advertising.