Too Small To Fail

What do you do when your mum, your dad and sixteen camels are in trouble and only you can save them? The sometimes sad but mostly funny story of a boy, a girl, a dog and four trillion dollars.

Too Small to Fail analyzes how several successful 'small' countries, with populations under twenty million, have made a virtue out of their physical limitations. The book seeks to understand what it is they do differently, and why. What is their recipe for achieving better-educated, more egalitarian and wealthier populations? The book looks first at the forest and then the trees. It examines the characteristics shared by small countries, such as Switzerland, Ireland, Singapore, and the Scandinavian states. It draws parallels and discovers patterns shared among them that are common to each of their success stories. The book then looks at the policies of selected countries that have paved the way for remarkable improvements; and considers the individuals, corporations and institutions that have made a positive and sustainable impact. It further goes on to explain how these small countries are reshaping the World in a never before manner.

In the summer of 2013, just as a small town in Quebec was decimated due to a train derailment, heavy rainfall prompted thirty Alberta communities to declare a state of emergency. Whereas a SWAT team surrounded train conductor Thomas Harding and brought him to court where he was charged with the deaths of forty-seven in Quebec, Calgary mayor Naheed Nenshi emerged from the Alberta crisis as a folk hero. As the Lac-Mégantic train derailment and the flood in Alberta demonstrate, political, economic, legal, and cultural climates influence the way disasters are received and managed. In Too Critical to Fail, Kevin Quigley, Ben Bisset, and Bryan Mills identify the social context that shapes the Canadian government’s ability to prepare for and respond to emergencies. Using original research on natural disasters, pandemics, industrial failures, cyber-attacks, and terrorist threats, the authors evaluate the risk regulation regimes that monitor, interpret, and respond to failures in Canada’s critical infrastructure to limit their possibilities and consequences. More broadly, this book identifies key vulnerabilities and regulatory challenges for both the government and the private sector in mitigating threats to safety and security. Too Critical to Fail applies an investigative lens to the multiple and competing risks that the government balances to secure assets that enable modern civilization. Raising questions about Canadians’ ability to protect critical infrastructure and respond to threats, this book challenges the biases that determine who is held to account when the system fails.

Why has Switzerland - a tiny, land-locked country with few natural advantages - become so successful for so long at so many things? In banking, pharmaceuticals, machinery, even textiles, Swiss companies rank alongside the biggest and most powerful global competitors. How did they get there? How do they continue to refresh themselves? Does the Swiss 'Sonderfall' (special case) provide lessons others can learn and benefit from? Can the Swiss continue to perform in a hyper-competitive global economy? Swiss Made offers answers to these and many other questions about the country as it describes the origins, structures and characteristics of the most important Swiss companies. The authors suggest success is due to a large degree to sound entrepreneurial thinking and an openness to new ideas. And they venture a surprising forecast on the country's ability to keep pace in an age of globalisation.

If you want your startup to succeed, you need to understand why startups fail. “Whether you’re a first-time founder or looking to bring innovation into a corporate environment, Why Startups Fail is essential reading.”—Eric Ries, founder and CEO, LTSE, and New York Times bestselling author of The Lean Startup and The Startup Way Why do startups fail? That question caught Harvard Business School professor Tom Eisenmann by surprise when he realized he couldn’t answer it. So he launched a multiyear research project to find out. In Why Startups Fail, Eisenmann reveals his findings: six distinct patterns that account for the vast majority of startup failures. • Bad Bedfellows. Startup success is thought to rest largely on the founder’s talents and instincts. But the wrong team, investors, or partners can sink a venture just as quickly. • False Starts. In following the oft-cited advice to “fail fast” and to “launch before you’re ready,” founders risk wasting time and capital on the wrong solutions. • False Promises. Success with early adopters can be misleading and give founders unwarranted confidence to expand. • Speed Traps. Despite the pressure to “get big fast,” hypergrowth can spell disaster for even the most promising ventures. • Help Wanted. Rapidly scaling startups need lots of capital and talent, but they can make mistakes that leave them suddenly in short supply of both. • Cascading Miracles. Silicon Valley exhorts entrepreneurs to dream big. But the bigger the vision, the more things that can go wrong. Drawing on fascinating stories of ventures that failed to fulfill their early promise—from a home-furnishings retailer to a concierge dog-walking service, from a dating app to the inventor of a sophisticated social robot, from a fashion brand to a startup deploying a vast network of charging stations for electric vehicles—Eisenmann offers frameworks for detecting when a venture is vulnerable to these patterns, along with a wealth of strategies and tactics for avoiding them. A must-read for founders at any stage of their entrepreneurial journey, Why Startups Fail is not merely a guide to preventing failure but also a roadmap charting the path to startup success.

A guide to promoting literacy in the digital age With young children gaining access to a dizzying array of games, videos, and other digital media, will they ever learn to read? The answer is yes—if they are surrounded by adults who know how to help and if they are introduced to media designed to promote literacy, instead of undermining it. Tap, Click, Read gives educators and parents the tools and information they need to help children grow into strong, passionate readers who are skilled at using media and technology of all kinds—print, digital, and everything in between. In Tap, Click, Read authors Lisa Guernsey and Michael H. Levine envision a future that is human-centered first and tech-assisted second. They document how educators and parents can lead a new path to a place they call 'Readialand'—a literacy-rich world that marries reading and digital media to bring knowledge, skills, and critical thinking to all of our children. This approach is driven by the urgent need for low-income children and parents to have access to the same 21st-century literacy opportunities already at the fingertips of today's affluent families.With stories from homes, classrooms and cutting edge tech labs, plus accessible translation of new research and compelling videos, Guernsey and Levine help educators, parents, and America's leaders tackle the questions that arise as digital media plays a larger and larger role in children's lives, starting in their very first years of life. Tap, Click, Read includes an analysis of the exploding app marketplace and provides useful information on new review sites and valuable curation tools. It shows what to avoid and what to demand in today's apps and e-books—as well as what to seek in community preschools, elementary schools and libraries. Peppered with the latest research from fields as diverse as neuroscience and behavioral economics and richly documented examples of best practices from schools and early childhood programs around the country, Tap, Click, Read will show you how to: Promote the adult-child interactions that help kids grow into strong readers Learn how to use digital media to build a foundation for reading and success Discover new tools that open up avenues for creativity, critical thinking, and knowledge-building that today's children need The book's accompanying website keeps you updated on new research and provides vital resources to help parents, schools and community organizations.

The World’s Most Influential Book on Personal Success The bestselling classic that made Systems Over Goals, Talent Stacking, and Passion Is Overrated universal success advice has been reborn. Once in a generation, a book revolutionizes its category and becomes the preeminent reference that all subsequent books on the topic must pay homage to, in name or in spirit. How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big by Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, is such a book for the field of personal success. A contrarian pundit and persuasion expert in a class of his own, Adams has reached hundreds of millions directly and indirectly through the 2013 first edition’s straightforward yet counterintuitive advice—to invite failure in, embrace it, then pick its pocket. The second edition of How to Fail is a tighter, updated version, by popular demand. Yet new and returning readers alike will find the same candor, humor, and timeless wisdom on productivity, career growth, health and fitness, and entrepreneurial success as the original classic. How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big, Second Edition is the essential read (or re-read) for anyone who wants to find a unique path to personal victory—and make luck find you in whatever you do.

“A Humane Economy is like a seminar on integral freedom conducted by a professor of uncommon brilliance.” —Wall Street Journal “If any person in our contemporary world is entitled to a hearing it is Wilhelm Röpke.” —New York Times A Humane Economy offers one of the most accessible and compelling explanations of how economies operate ever written. The masterwork of the great twentieth-century economist Wilhelm Röpke, this book presents a sweeping, brilliant exposition of market mechanics and moral philosophy. Röpke cuts through the jargon and statistics that make most economic writing so obscure and confusing. Over and over, the great Swiss economist stresses one simple point: you cannot separate economic principles from human behavior. Röpke’s observations are as relevant today as when they were first set forth a half century ago. He clearly demonstrates how those societies that have embraced free-market principles have achieved phenomenal economic success—and how those that cling to theories of economic centralization endure stagnation and persistent poverty. A Humane Economy shows how economic processes and government policies influence our behavior and choices—to the betterment or detriment of life in those vital and highly fragile human structures we call communities. “It is the precept of ethical and humane behavior, no less than of political wisdom,” Röpke reminds us, “to adapt economic policy to man, not man to economic policy.”