Books about Consensus from Amazon.com

In this fascinating book, New Yorker business columnist James Surowiecki explores a deceptively simple idea: Large groups of people are smarter than an elite few, no matter how brilliant–better at solving problems, fostering innovation, coming to wise decisions, even predicting the future.

With boundless erudition and in delightfully clear prose, Surowiecki ranges across fields as diverse as popular culture, psychology, ant biology, behavioral economics, artificial intelligence, military history, and politics to show how this simple idea offers important lessons for how we live our lives, select our leaders, run our companies, and think about our world..
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Selected as one of the "Best Books on Innovation, 2008" by BusinessWeek magazine. .

Named the "Best Human-Capital Book of 2008" by Strategy + Business magazine

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A crash course in the business of learning-from the bestselling author of The Innovator's Dilemma and The Innovator's Solution�

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"Provocatively titled, Disrupting Class is just what America's K-12 education system needs--a well thought-through proposal for using technology to better serve students and bring our schools into the 21st Century. Unlike so many education 'reforms,' this is not small-bore stuff. For that reason alone, it's likely to be resisted by defenders of the status quo, even though it's necessary and right for our kids.
We owe it to them to make sure this book isn't merely a terrific read; it must become a blueprint for educational transformation.".
--Joel Klein, Chancellor of the New York City Department of Education

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�A brilliant teacher, Christensen brings clarity to a muddled and chaotic world of education.�
--Jim Collins, bestselling author of Good to Great. .

According to recent studies in neuroscience, the way we learn doesn't always match up with the way we are taught. If we hope to stay competitive-academically, economically, and technologically-we need to rethink our understanding of intelligence, reevaluate our educational system, and reinvigorate our commitment to learning. In other words, we need �disruptive innovation.�

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Now, in his long-awaited new book, Clayton M. Christensen and coauthors Michael B. Horn and Curtis W. Johnson take one of the most important issues of our time-education-and apply Christensen's now-famous theories of �disruptive� change using a wide range of real-life examples. Whether you're a school administrator, government official, business leader, parent, teacher, or entrepreneur, you'll discover surprising new ideas, outside-the-box strategies, and straight-A success stories.

You'll learn how

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• Customized learning will help many more students succeed in school.
• Student-centric classrooms will increase the demand for new technology.
• Computers must be disruptively deployed to every student.
• Disruptive innovation can circumvent roadblocks that have prevented other attempts at school reform.
• We can compete in the global classroom-and get ahead in the global market.

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Filled with fascinating case studies, scientific findings, and unprecedented insights on how innovation must be managed, Disrupting Class will open your eyes to new possibilities, unlock hidden potential, and get you to think differently. Professor Christensen and his coauthors provide a bold new lesson in innovation that will help you make the grade for years to come.

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The future is now. Class is in session.

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Price: $17.67 [Notify me when price goes down.]

"The best book on collaboration ever written!"
—Diane Flannery, founding CEO, Juma Ventures

And now this classic book is even better—much better. Completely revised and updated, the second edition is loaded with new tools and techniques

• Two powerful new chapters on agenda design
• A full section devoted to reaching closure
• More than twice as many tools for handling difficult dynamics
• 70 brand-new pages and over 100 pages significantly improved

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Price: $22.83 [Notify me when price goes down.]

A bold and astute narrative history of conservatism's climb and one of the best-reviewed books of 2001. Rick Perlstein's "Before the Storm" tells the story of the rise of the conservative movement in the liberal 1960s -- a story that, until this book, had never been told. The figure at the heart of the story is, of course, Barry Goldwater, the handsome renegade Republican from Arizona who loathed the federal government, despised liberals on sight, and mocked "peaceful coexistence" with the USSR. But Perlstein's narrative shines a light on a whole world of conservatives and their antagonists, including William F. Buckley, Nelson Rockefeller, and Bill Moyers. Vividly and thrillingly written, "Before the Storm" is already recognized as an essential book about the 1960s..
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Every day in communities across America hundreds of committees, boards, church groups, and social clubs hold meetings where they spend their time engaged in shouting matches and acrimonious debate. Whether they are aware of it or not, the procedures that most such groups rely on to reach decisions were first laid out as Robert's Rules more than 150 years ago by an officer in the U.S. Army's Corps of Engineers. Its arcane rituals of parliamentary procedure and majority rule usually produce a victorious majority and a very dissatisfied minority that expects to raise its concerns, again, at the next possible meeting.
Breaking Robert's Rules clearly spells out how any group can work together effectively. After briefly explaining the problems created by Robert's Rules, the guide outlines the five key steps toward consensus building, and addresses the specific problems that often get in the way of a group's progress. Appendices include a basic one page "Handy Guide" that can be distributed at meetings and a case study demonstrating how the ideas presented in the book can also be applied in a corporate context.
Written in a non-technical and engaging style, and containing clear ideas and instructions that anyone can understand and use, this one-of-a-kind guide will prove an essential tool for any group desperate to find ways of making their meetings more effective. In addition, neighborhood associations, ad hoc committees, social clubs, and other informal groups lacking a clear hierarchy will find solid advice on how to move forward without resorting to "majority rules" or bickering over who will take leadership positions. Bound to become a classic, Breaking Robert's Rules will change the way you hold meetings forever, paving the way for efficiency, efficacy, and peaceful decision making..
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Collaboration is an everyday practice that many people find to be a frustrating, even exhausting, experience How to Make Collaboration Work provides a remedy: five principles of collaboration that have been tested and refined in organizations throughout the world. Author David Straus shows that these methods can help any group make better decisions and function more effectively. The five principles are: Involve the Relevant Stakeholders, Build Consensus Phase by Phase, Design a Process Map, Designate a Process Facilitator, and Harness the Power of Group Memory. Each principle addresses the specific challenges people face when trying to work collaboratively, and each can be applied to any problem-solving scenario..
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Shattered Consensus: The True State of Global Warming convincingly demonstrates the remarkable differences between what we commonly read about global warming and what is really happening. Nine chapters describe major problems with computer simulations of future climate that are the basis for wrenching policies being proposed by world leaders. Anyone who reads this book will come away with a new appreciation of the complexity of the climate issue and will question the need for expensive policies that are likely to have little or no detectable effect on the planet's temperature. Published in cooperation with the George C. Marshall Institute..
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In the decades before the Civil War, Americans debating the fate of slavery often invoked the specter of disunion to frighten or discredit their opponents. According to Elizabeth Varon, "disunion" was a startling and provocative keyword in Americans' political vocabulary: it connoted the failure of the founders' singular effort to establish a lasting representative government. For many Americans in both the North and the South, disunion was a nightmare, the image of a cataclysm that would reduce them to misery and fratricidal war. For many others, however, threats, accusations, and intimations of disunion were instruments they could wield to achieve their partisan and sectional goals.

In this bracing reinterpretation of the origins of the Civil War, Varon blends political history with intellectual and cultural history to show how Americans, as far back as the earliest days of the republic, agonized and strategized over disunion. She focuses not only on politicians but also on a wide range of reformers, editors, writers, and commentators. Included here are the voices of fugitive slaves, white Southern dissenters, free black activists, abolitionist women, and other outsiders to the halls of power. In a new and expanding nation still learning how to meld disparate and powerful interests, the rhetoric of disunion proved pervasive--and volatile. As the word was marshaled by competing sectional interests in the tumultuous 1840s and 1850s, the politics of compromise grew more remote and an epic collision between the free North and slaveholding South seemed the only way to resolve, once and for all, whether the struggling republic would survive..
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For undergraduate courses in Ethics, Social Ethics, and Contemporary Moral Problems. This anthology provides a comprehensive selection of readings on contemporary social issues revolving around three general themes: Matters of Life and Death, Matters of Equality and Diversity, and Expanding the Circle (duties beyond borders, living together with animals, and environmental ethics). Each set of readings is accompanied by an extensive introduction, a bibliographical essay, pre-reading questions, and discussion questions..
Price: $52.50 [Notify me when price goes down.]