How we can effectively address our most pressing challenges in a rapidly changing and increasingly interdependent world.

The first clear guide to the Semantic Web and its upcoming impact on the business world Imagine that, in 1992, someone handed you a book about the future of something called the World Wide Web. This book claimed that through a piece of software called a "browser", which accesses "web sites", the world economy and our daily lives would change forever. Would you have believed even 10 percent of that book? Did you take advantage of the first Internet wave and get ahead of the curve? Pull is the blueprint to the next disruptive wave. Some call it Web 3.0; others call it the semantic web. It's a fundamental transition from pushing information to pulling, using a new way of thinking and collaborating online. Using the principles of this book, you will slash 5-20 percent off your bottom line, make your customers happier, accelerate your industry, and prepare your company for the twenty-first century. It isn't going to be easy, and you don't have any choice. By 2015, your company will be more agile and your processes more flexible than you ever thought possible. The semantic web leads to possibilities straight from science fiction, such as buildings that can order their own supplies, eliminating the IRS, and lawyers finally making sense. But it also leads to major changes in every field, from shipping and retail distribution to health care and financial reporting. Through clear examples, case studies, principles, and scenarios, business strategist David Siegel takes you on a tour of this new world. You'll learn: -Which industries are already ahead. -Which industries are already dead. -How to make the power shift from pushing to pulling information. -How software, hardware, media, and marketing will all change. -How to plan your own strategy for embracing the semantic web. We are at the beginning of a new technology curve that will affect all areas of business. Right now, you have a choice. You can decide to start preparing for the exciting opportunities that lay ahead or you can leave this book on the shelf and get left in the dust like last time.

In a radical break with the past, information now flows like water, and we must learn how to tap into its stream. Individuals and companies can no longer rely on the stocks of knowledge that they've carefully built up and stored away. Information now flows like water, and we must learn how to tap into the stream. But many of us remain stuck in old practices -- practices that could undermine us as we search for success and meaning. In this revolutionary book, three doyens of the Internet age, whose path-breaking work has made headlines around the world, reveal the adjustments we must make if we take these changes seriously. In a world of increasing risk and opportunity, we must understand the importance of pull. Understood and used properly, the power of pull can draw out the best in people and institutions by connecting them in ways that increase understanding and effectiveness. Pull can turn uncertainty into opportunity, and enable small moves to achieve outsized impact. Drawing on pioneering research, The Power of Pull shows how to apply its principles to unlock the hidden potential of individuals and organizations, and how to use it as a force for social change and the development of creative talent. The authors explore how to use the power of pull to: Access new sources of information Attract likeminded individuals from around the world Shape serendipity to increase the likelihood of positive chance encounters Form creation spaces to drive you and your colleagues to new heights Transform your organization to adapt to the flow of knowledge The Power of Pull is essential reading for entrepreneurs, managers, and anybody interested in understanding and harnessing the shifting forces of our networked world.

A fascinating journey into the hidden psychological influences that derail our decision-making, Sway will change the way you think about the way you think. Why is it so difficult to sell a plummeting stock or end a doomed relationship? Why do we listen to advice just because it came from someone “important”? Why are we more likely to fall in love when there’s danger involved? In Sway, renowned organizational thinker Ori Brafman and his brother, psychologist Rom Brafman, answer all these questions and more. Drawing on cutting-edge research from the fields of social psychology, behavioral economics, and organizational behavior, Sway reveals dynamic forces that influence every aspect of our personal and business lives, including loss aversion (our tendency to go to great lengths to avoid perceived losses), the diagnosis bias (our inability to reevaluate our initial diagnosis of a person or situation), and the “chameleon effect” (our tendency to take on characteristics that have been arbitrarily assigned to us). Sway introduces us to the Harvard Business School professor who got his students to pay $204 for a $20 bill, the head of airline safety whose disregard for his years of training led to the transformation of an entire industry, and the football coach who turned conventional strategy on its head to lead his team to victory. We also learn the curse of the NBA draft, discover why interviews are a terrible way to gauge future job performance, and go inside a session with the Supreme Court to see how the world’s most powerful justices avoid the dangers of group dynamics. Every once in a while, a book comes along that not only challenges our views of the world but changes the way we think. In Sway, Ori and Rom Brafman not only uncover rational explanations for a wide variety of irrational behaviors but also point readers toward ways to avoid succumbing to their pull.

This first book on load-pull systems is intended for readers with a broad knowledge of high frequency transistor device characterization, nonlinear and linear microwave measurements, RF power amplifiers and transmitters. Load-Pull Techniques with Applications to Power Amplifier Design fulfills the demands of users, designers, and researchers both from industry and academia who have felt the need of a book on this topic. It presents a comprehensive reference spanning different load-pull measurement systems, waveform measurement and engineering systems, and associated calibration procedures for accurate large signal characterization. Besides, this book also provides in-depth practical considerations required in the realization and usage of load-pull and waveform engineering systems. In addition, it also provides procedure to design application specific load-pull setup and includes several case studies where the user can customize architecture of load-pull setups to meet any specific measurement requirements. Furthermore, the materials covered in this book can be part of a full semester graduate course on microwave device characterization and power amplifier design.

When Jane’s partner goes missing she needs to find out if he’s in danger while also contending with the politics of a large international film festival: Hollywood power brokers, Russian oil speculators, Chinese propagandists, and a board chair who seemingly has it out for her. Jane has been appointed interim director of the Worldwide Toronto Film Festival after her boss has been removed for sexual harassment. Knives are out all around her, as factions within the community want to see her fail. At the same time, her partner, a fund manager, has disappeared, and strange women appear, uttering threats about misused funds. Yet the show must go on. As Jane struggles to juggle all the balls she’s been handed and survive in one piece, she discovers unlikely allies and finds that she’s stronger than she thinks.

The Sunday Times bestseller and Richard & Judy Book Club Pick, from the acclaimed author of Room. The Pull of the Stars is set during three days in a maternity ward at the height of the Great Flu. 'Moving, gripping and dazzlingly written' - Stylist Dublin, 1918. In a country doubly ravaged by war and disease, Nurse Julia Power works at an understaffed hospital in the city centre, where expectant mothers who have come down with an unfamiliar flu are quarantined together. Into Julia's regimented world step two outsiders: Doctor Kathleen Lynn, on the run from the police, and a young volunteer helper, Bridie Sweeney. In the darkness and intensity of this tiny ward, over the course of three days, these women change each other's lives in unexpected ways. They lose patients to this baffling pandemic, but they also shepherd new life into a fearful world. With tireless tenderness and humanity, carers and mothers alike somehow do their impossible work. In The Pull of the Stars, Emma Donoghue tells an unforgettable and deeply moving story of love and loss. 'A visceral, harrowing, and revelatory vision of life, death, and love in a time of pandemic. This novel is stunning' - Emily St. John Mandel, author of Station Eleven 'Reads like an episode of Call The Midwife set during a pandemic' - Mail on Sunday Guardian, Cosmopolitan and Telegraph's 'Books of the Year'