The Truth About Innovation And How To Unleash It Inside Business: Fill & Download for Free

Start anticipating early and don’t ignore the signs.Increasingly, companies will succeed and fail according to the quality of the digital experiences that they offer. So why wait? Go after the shockingly disruptive innovation for your business. Let’s discuss how you could achieve this goal.Begin with a small problemPeter Drucker once wrote, “Effective innovations start small. They are not grandiose.” He was spot on.Take a look at any really, really big thing and, inevitably, its modest origins. Microsoft became one of the world’s most valuable companies by focusing on software, an area so inconsequential at the time that IBM was willing to write it off. Apple made a splash with the Macintosh in large part by capitalizing on innovations that Xerox tossed aside.Yet, the great thing about thinking small is that you can risk failure because failure is sustainable. You can falter, pick yourself up and try again. Eventually, you’ll get it right and when you do, there are no limits. If you can survive, you can thrive.Collect and leverage observed dataMost leaders demand hard data when making critical decisions. In times of disruptive change, robust data rarely exist. Leaders must use any information they can obtain from any source inside and outside the company—but then complement that data by using their gut to round out the equation.Read books and magazines, and watch videos and presentations on topics you wouldn’t normally. Attend conferences in seemingly unrelated fields. Pay attention to products or company ideas coming from other countries and other fields.Know these: Facts on Innovation: 6 Amazing Ones You Need to KnowLook for latent desiresSteve Jobs was a big believer in latent desires in customers … customers that couldn’t tell you what they wanted. A great example comes from the Apple ecosystem. There were plenty of digital music players around when Steve Jobs and Apple launched the iPod. Note he also combined his player with iTunes, which made content both more accessible and palatable to music companies. He then threw new products into the mix – the iPhone, iPad and now Siri – creating more combinations and even greater value.Connect the disconnectedWhile we like to think of innovators being lonely men on the mountain, only coming down, like Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, to proclaim great revelations, the truth is that important breakthroughs usually come from synthesizing ideas from different domains.One famous historical example is that of the discovery of genetics. In 1865, when Gregor Mendel published his groundbreaking study of inheritance of characteristics in pea plants, it went nowhere. It took nearly a half century before the concept was combined with Darwin’s natural selection to unleash a torrent of innovations in medicine and science.Focus on adding valueBusiness models are often neglected when considering new ideas for your business. They shouldn’t be. One of the best examples of an innovative business model is from Safelite Auto Glass. What’s innovative here you may be thinking? It’s simple. An auto glass repair business that comes to you for your repair. Saving you time and convenience. A value proposition and business model that is hard to top.Another good example is eBay, reflecting a new model and application of supply, demand, and sales.Look at things in a new wayDisruptive innovation and change is a process chock full of surprise—failures, successes, unexpected technological advancements, competitive moves, customer feedback, political and regulatory shifts, and other unforeseen events. Most leaders assume surprises always should be avoided. But those who realize that surprises are an inevitable part of a business (just like life) are best equipped to actually use surprise as a strategic tool—which makes them the most agile and fastest to respond to or capitalize on unforeseen events.Shift ideas into a new contextA simple example of this is the use of milk cartons to display missing persons’ picture and description details. Can you imagine a better place to get this kind of attention?Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. You can find him and his writing on G+, Facebook, Twitter, Digital Spark Marketing, Pinterest, and LinkedIn.

From my research and observation, I found that there are ten processes that may help us to become more creative and innovative.1. Convention - Breaking The Mould - Rebelling, Revolting, And RevolutionizingInnovative leaders are driven by a burning cause. The sense of purpose drives their performance and pursuits.The logic is simple: Passion about the 'why's for creating positive changes will compel them to find out the 'how's.They are rebels with a cause. They are willing to leave behind the past, refresh their life and revolt for a better and endless frontier.They are not confined by borders and boundaries and neither are they restricted by out-of-bounds markers.They are not rooted to any frill, fad, fetish, or fashion. They go beyond the surface to study the spirit and substance of the subject.Innovative leaders have a healthy dissatisfaction with the current situation. They are not concern about being like the rest and that's why they can come across as being more unreasonable than reasonable. Abnormal than normal.They look at the world from inside out as well as from outside in. They take a helicopter and a 360-degree view of life to explore all possibilities.The word impossible is not a part of their accepted lexicon.They endeavour to see the world through a grain of sand and a grain of sand through the world. And they make sense of where the sand should be in the world and where the world should be in the sand.They are restless souls, always desiring to know the unknown and discover the undiscovered so as to expand their worldview. They are constantly thinking about how to disrupt current patterns and look for the next breakthrough.While others are thinking about what's next, they are studying about what's coming after 'what's next.' They are looking ahead of the curve and around the bend to invest in the future and be future-ready.They recreate themselves rigorously, relentlessly and unrelentingly.To them, there are much more to gain in recreating themselves than not to do it. In fact, if they don't change, the increasing rate of change in the new economy may render them irrelevant and redundant. They are aware that they may stand to lose everything.2. Immersion - Living In Creativity - Inhabiting, Internalizing, And InvolvingThe innovative leaders cannot accept an environment of mediocrity. They do not want to live a routine, ordinary and predictable life.They prefer not be found in the company of the brain-dead, the blind-followers, the aimless drifters, and the unchanging human rock. Neither do they allow these people to influence them and affect their outcomes in life.They are drawn to creative engagements, people and environment. They are juiced up by innovative leaders, radical ideas, and unchartered territories.They attract those who dare to be mad, foolish, crazy, and abandoned for the sake of positive breakthroughs. By applying the biblical 'iron sharpens iron' principle, they increase each other's creative quotient (CQ) and outputs.As they develop a creative environment externally, they improve the world within them. Their mind becomes fertile soil for a thousand flowers to bloom.3. Collaboration - Joining The Dots - Connecting, Collaborating, and Co-Creating Solutions (Mingle and Merge).Innovative leaders realise that who and what they associate with and how they associate with them can be ingredients for creativity. The more positive ingredients they have in their minds, the higher the chances for more and better innovative results.As innovative leaders immerse themselves in creative and innovative environments, they pursue new thoughts, feelings, relationships, activities, and experiences.They flood their minds with an inventory of important ideas, knowledge, expertise, and other resources.They are constantly re-thinking about how to do well within the box. At the same time, they are also thinking out of the box by, for example, finding out what other people are thinking about in their boxes.They seek feedback about their thoughts and thought processes regularly.They subscribe to 'Creativity by wandering around.' In other words, they interact with people from different career, creed, culture, custom, and country - personally and as a group so as to seek radical breakthroughs.They make it a point to attend relevant courses, seminars, conferences, and exhibitions. They pick the brains of domain knowledge experts and continue to explore ways to achieve best practice.They focus on the things that would make an impact on their work, life and future. By learning how to sieve through and leverage on information, they are able to discover emerging trends and make better informed judgements.Innovative leaders initiate and leverage on mastermind groups. These are groups of people who are competent and are committed to help each other improve and achieve better results.They have comparatively more and better dots in their minds. They find more and better ways to join the dots and do so in an infinite number of ways to achieve radical breakthroughs.4. Innovation - Developing A Sixth Sense - Sensitising, Searching, And SeekingInnovative leaders realise that what is real may not be real.The mental view of ourselves may not be ourselves. Similarly, the "GPS" in our brain may not be the actual territory.The map in our mind may not show us the way to our destination.Therefore, they do not assume that an accepted truth is definitely the truth.They continue to refresh, refine, and sometimes refute clinically-tested theories and even widely-accepted empirical conclusions.Innovative leaders are curious, inquisitive and adventurous. They are constantly looking for an unbeaten track or complete an uncompleted journey to achieve radical breakthroufhs.They switch on all their five senses to study the variegated terrains and make sense of their internal and external landscapes all the time.They look at the world through different lenses and from different perspectives. They explore the terrains and re-imagine the future so as to lead themselves and others to the promiseland.Therefore, they are curious, inquisitive and adventurous. They may intrude wisely so as to find a lost trail or follow a new trail to the end of it.Innovative leaders are sensing the internal and external landscapes all the time. They switch on all their five senses to study the variegated terrains.They look at the world from different perspectives and through different lenses. They explore the terrains and re-imagine the future so as to lead themselves and others to the promise land.They discipline themselves to hear beyond sounds, see beyond sights, smell beyond smells, taste beyond tastes, and feel beyond feelings.They are constantly developing intelligence outposts to find out the latest trends and changes. They seek material information, including information that can help them enhance their performance and results.5. Experimentation - Pushing The Envelopes - Trying, Tinkering, And TestingNothing successful has been achieved without exploration, experiment, and execution.Innovative leaders are explorers of the minds. They know that by changing their mindset, they can change their behaviour and results.Their mind is therefore like a constant battlefield. There is a healthy circuit of debates and arguments, including self-critical dialogues.They are constantly ideating in their mind. They are exploring for the next breakthrough and experimenting on how to change the course of life.Innovative leaders are also regularly changing their behaviour so as to change their mindset and outputs. They try out different things in different ways in the process of living their life.For example, they may vary their normal routines. If they usually walk on the left side of the street, they may try walking on the right.They subject themselves to different exposures and experiences. They cultivate different expertise to come out with more and better ideas.They are prepared to destroy or deconstruct things around them to find out how they work and how they can work in a better or different way. They are ready to redesign, reengineer and rebuild them so as to create radical breakthroughs.They test their ideas with different people, especially with groups and individuals who operate at a different or at a higher plane in life. They are not afraid to model after and improve on what is good and discard what is bad.Through a series of trial, tinkering and testing, innovative leaders discover a better way to succeed.6. Contention - Turning Over The Stones - Probing, Probing, And ProbingInnovative leaders clean the slate that life offers them on a regular basis and dream on it. They build layers of design and systems on it so as to bring life to the dream.Along the way, they challenge old and current concepts and practices. They defy all odds, including the odds they have created within themselves.They have a perpetual research and development laboratory in their minds. They thrive on creating hypotheses and testing them to find out the truths.They realise the quality of their creative outputs depends on the quantity of quality questions they pose to themselves. They are constantly questioning, probing, and seeking the facts behind what may seem to be imponderables in life.Asking the right question acts as a rudder to help them navigate through fears, doubts and uncertainties and helps them sail to the right port of call. When the right questions are being posed, our Creator will somehow provide the right answers.They ask questions to help them think about the unthinkable and do the un-doable. The right question helps them to know the unknown and discover the undiscovered. To do that, they learn to ask questions that ordinary people will not ask.They ask questions that defy the norm. They ask:"Why it can be done?" instead of "Why it can't be done?""What if it can be done?" instead of "What if it can't be done?""Why not?" instead of "Why ?""Great idea, how can we make it work?" instead of "Great idea, why this will not work?""How you know you know?" and not just "How you know?""What has yet to be known and discovered?" and not just "What do we know and have here?"They constantly ask themselves:"What are tomorrow's problems we need to start resolving today? What are tomorrow's opportunities that we need to start capitalising today?"By asking the right questions, they change their thoughts and how they think. They change the way they map the so-called realities in their minds.They apply a process of disciplined inquiry and critical thought. Along the way, they sieve through the responses to determine how they can translate them into useful knowledge and social consequences.They keep asking questions until they come out with perhaps a not-so-clear-cut but better solution. And they work on perfecting the solution.This iterative and endless process of inquiry, development, correction, and continuos improvement helps them fulfill their current dream and pursue more and better dreams.7. Implementation - Persevering To The End - Pursuing, Pressing On, And PersistingLiving a creative life is not a short-distance sprint but a long-distance race.Innovative leaders realise that they need to foster passion and perseverance to achieve both short and long term visions and to finish the race. Through commitment, discipline and grit, they develop the stamina to stay the course and up the game.Innovative leaders learn how to enhance their capacity, ability, adaptability, agility, and tenacity to overcome challenges. They need to develop these qualities to help them go and grow through adversities and failures.They race against themselves to live out our Creator's blueprint for their life. How others run the race matters only if it helps them enjoy the race and run it in a better way.What seem to be setbacks are but feedback and experiences to guide them. They are lessons to help them find an easier, faster and better way to achieve the desired outcome.Every attempt and even failure at creativity can help them improve their creativity quotient and rate of success.Perseverance helps them attain excellence in their pursuits and achieve major accomplishments in life. It is a vital part of the creativity toolkit for achieving sustainable success.8. Reflection - Drawing From The Deep Recesses - Reflecting, Realigning, And ResolvingCreativity is a revolving door that opens inward first before opening itself externally. In other words, we need to relax, find our centre, and search from the deep reservoir of our creative resources first.Then we need to open ourselves to the resources and possibilities out there and then bring them back into the deep recesses of our being so as to process and create innovative breakthroughs.However, we live in a world where noise abounds. Silence has somewhat taken a gradual retreat.To make sense of the complexity of the post-modernistic world and the fast pace of change, innovative leaders return back to silence regularly. They discipline themselves and make time for deep reflection.They meditate about life and how to live it out creatively. They carefully consider their options and how to create better ones.Reflections help them fine-tune their presuppositions and worldview. By crafting better mental maps, they can better track through the terrains of life.They are mindful that they could be wrong and the terrains may change. That's why they ensure that they are constantly updated about changes and latest findings.Through critical self-reflection, they are able to re-think past experiences and their significance to work and life. Critical self-reflection compel them to change, learn and improve.They can better focus on issues and analyse them. There is more clarity and with more clarity, there will be more power to create more and better solutions.9. Persuasion - Persuasion - Selling - Preempting, Preparing, And PersuadingInnovative leaders realise that they need to change mindsets to galvanise support. They need to attract buy-ins so as to raise the necessary resources to turn their creative ideas into useful innovations.That's why they spend time to study the personality, needs, and requirements of their stakeholders. They research and develop ways to appeal to them and win their support.They preempt problems, concerns and questions and prepare themselves vigorously to address them. They may proactively respond to them even before these issues are being raised by the stakeholders.They learn to allay stakeholders' anxieties and fears. They demonstrate to them that their ideas and innovations can be a plus factor and will value add to them on both personal and corporate levels.These creative initiatives may not be in total alignment with current customs and practices. However, they are able to show that the outcomes of their innovations will contribute to organisational bottom line and aspirations.10. Direction - Leading The Change - Dreaming, Designing, And DeliveringWe are all in the people business. It is the people in an organisation that makes the organisation works.Creativity is also a team's sports. Without contributions from others, we will not be able to generate more and better ideas and turn them into a reality.Innovative leaders realise that to raise the creativity level in their team, it begins with themselves. They need to set an example and live out a life of creativity.They form teams with different talents and expertise to complement themselves. They seek a variety of inputs to foster unique and beneficial ideas and innovations.They help their team mates realise the creative genius within them and help them unleash their creative energy to achieve the best outcomes.They appeal to healthy values, meanings, purposes and dreams.They groom innovative cheerleaders on every level of the organisational hierarchy. These cheerleaders are used as catalysts to enhance creativity, lead projects, and help overcome roadblocks to creative outputs.They create a safe environment, an environment that embraces risk and failure so that their team mates can feel unfettered in creating new breakthroughs.They encourage their team in pushing the creative wheel through potholes, puddles, and pitfalls until they reach the tipping point to become an innovative team and beyond.They foster healthy internal competition and incentivise their team mates to come out with more and better ideas.They realise that creativity needs 'legs' to help it to stand on its feet. They raise the necessary resources to transform an idea into a useful innovation that will impact lives on a protracted basis.They spend time with the innovators in their team and motivate them privately. They will also recognise them publicly, regularly and generously.Through these 10 processes, they become dream chasers and world changers.In conclusion. remember the best way to start becoming creative is to start creating. To be innovative, innovate.The best time to start is now. The best place to start is from where you are.Start ideating right now.

Here are some books which I feel are mind expanding.Note: Some of them may already have been mentioned in answers below, but I hope there is at least one new book you found out through this list.Why Does the World Exist? - Jim HoltIt asks the question "Why is there a world when there should be nothing?" It is related to metaphysics. It is also tinged with philosophy and is quite a good read.Bulfinch's Mythology - Thomas BulfinchThis book retells the Greek Myths in all their glory. Learn about Zeus, Venus, Hera and other Olympian Gods. These gods are fallible too. After reading this book, you will have a greater understanding of the Greek mythology. It is also interspersed with Roman Mythology.Supernormal: Science, Yoga and the Evidence for Extraordinary abilities - Dean RadinCan yoga and meditation unleash our inherent supernormal mental powers, such as telepathy, clairvoyance, and precognition? Is it really possible to perceive another person's thoughts and intentions? Influence objects with our minds? Envision future events? And is it possible that some of the superpowers described in ancient legends, science fiction, and comic books are actually real, and patiently waiting for us behind the scenes? Are we now poised for an evolutionary trigger to pull the switch and release our full potentials? These and many more questions are answered in this book. It is certainly a very engrossing read.Alone Together - Sherry TurkleIn Alone Together, MIT technology and society professor Sherry Turkle explores the power of our new tools and toys to dramatically alter our social lives. It’s a nuanced exploration of what we are looking for—and sacrificing—in a world of electronic companions and social networking tools, and an argument that, despite the hand-waving of today’s self-described prophets of the future, it will be the next generation who will chart the path between isolation and connectivity.The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less - Barry SchwartzIn The Paradox of Choice, Barry Schwartz explains at what point choice--the hallmark of individual freedom and self-determination that we so cherish--becomes detrimental to our psychological and emotional well-being. In accessible, engaging, and anecdotal prose, Schwartz shows how the dramatic explosion in choice--from the mundane to the profound challenges of balancing career, family, and individual needs--has paradoxically become a problem instead of a solution. Schwartz also shows how our obsession with choice encourages us to seek that which makes us feel worse.The Purity Myth: How America's Obsession with Virginity is Hurting Young Women - Jessica ValentThe Purity Myth presents a revolutionary argument that girls and women are overly valued for their sexuality, as well as solutions for a future without a damaging emphasis on virginity.Prisoner's Dilemma - William PoundstoneA layman's introduction to Game Theory. It is based on the work by Von Neumann. And its thoroughly interesting.The Ethical Brain: The Science of our Moral Dilemmas - Michael S. GazzanigaIn The Ethical Brain, preeminent neuroscientist Michael S. Gazzaniga presents the emerging social and ethical issues arising out of modern-day brain science and challenges the way we look at them. Courageous and thought-provoking -- a work of enormous intelligence, insight, and importance -- this book explores the hitherto uncharted landscape where science and society intersectResource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict - Michael KlareInternational security expert Michael T. Klare argues that in the early decades of the new millennium, wars will be fought not over ideology but over access to dwindling supplies of precious natural commodities. The political divisions of the Cold War, Klare asserts, have given way to a global scramble for oil, natural gas, minerals, and water. And as armies throughout the world define resource security as a primary objective, widespread instability is bound to follow, especially in those areas where competition for essential materials overlaps with long-standing territorial and religious disputes. In this clarifying view, the recent explosive conflict between the United States and Islamic extremism stands revealed as the predictable consequence of consumer nations seeking to protect the vital resources they depend on.The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing And What Can Be Done About It? - Paul CollierIn the universally acclaimed and award-winning The Bottom Billion, Paul Collier reveals that fifty failed states--home to the poorest one billion people on Earth--pose the central challenge of the developing world in the twenty-first century. The book shines much-needed light on this group of small nations, largely unnoticed by the industrialized West, that are dropping further and further behind the majority of the world's people, often falling into an absolute decline in living standards.The Ascent Of Money - Niall FergussonNiall Ferguson follows the money to tell the human story behind the evolution of finance, from its origins in ancient Mesopotamia to the latest upheavals on what he calls Planet Finance.The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity EvolvesMatt Ridley does more than describe how things are getting better. He explains why. Prosperity comes from everybody working for everybody else. The habit of exchange and specialization—which started more than 100,000 years ago—has created a collective brain that sets human living standards on a rising trend. The mutual dependence, trust, and sharing that result are causes for hope, not despair.The Code Breakers - David KahnThe magnificent, unrivaled history of codes and ciphers -- how they're made, how they're broken, and the many and fascinating roles they've played since the dawn of civilization in war, business, diplomacy, and espionage.The Revenge of Geography - Robert KaplanIn The Revenge of Geography, Kaplan builds on the insights, discoveries, and theories of great geographers and geopolitical thinkers of the near and distant past to look back at critical pivots in history and then to look forward at the evolving global scene.Justice: Whats The Right Thing To Do - Michael SandelWhat are our obligations to others as people in a free society? Should government tax the rich to help the poor? Is the free market fair? Is it sometimes wrong to tell the truth? Is killing sometimes morally required? Is it possible, or desirable, to legislate morality? Do individual rights and the common good conflict?These questions are at the core of our public life today—and at the heart of Justice, in which Michael J. Sandel shows how a surer grasp of philosophy can help us to make sense of politics, morality, and our own convictions as well.Mind Wars - Jonathan MorenoJonathan D. Moreno investigates the deeply intertwined worlds of cutting-edge brain science, U.S. defense agencies, and a volatile geopolitical landscape where a nation's weaponry must go far beyond bombs and men. The first-ever exploration of the connections between national security and brain research, Mind Wars: Brain Research and National Defensereveals how many questions crowd this gray intersection of science and government and urges us to begin to answer them.The Myth of The Rational Voter - Bryan CaplanThe greatest obstacle to sound economic policy is not entrenched special interests or rampant lobbying, but the popular misconceptions, irrational beliefs, and personal biases held by ordinary voters. This is economist Bryan Caplan's sobering assessment in this provocative and eye-opening book. Caplan argues that voters continually elect politicians who either share their biases or else pretend to, resulting in bad policies winning again and again by popular demand.The Rise and Fall of the British Empire - James LawrenceGreat Britain's geopolitical role has undergone many changes over the last four centuries. Once a maritime superpower and ruler of half the world, Britain now occupies an isolated position as an economically fragile island often at odds with her European neighbors.Lawrence James has written a comprehensive, perceptive, and insighful history of the British Empire. Spanning the years from 1600 to the present day, this critically acclaimed book combines detailed scholarship with readable popular history.The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing And the Psychology of Genocide - Robert Jay LiftonNazi doctors did more than conduct bizarre experiments on concentration-camp inmates; they supervised the entire process of medical mass murder, from selecting those who were to be exterminated to disposing of corpses. Lifton (The Broken Connection; The Life of the Self shows that this medically supervised killing was done in the name of "healing," as part of a racist program to cleanse the Aryan body politic).Civilization: The West and The Rest - Niall FergussonWhat was it about the civilization of Western Europe that allowed it to trump the outwardly superior empires of the Orient? The answer, Niall Ferguson argues, was that the West developed six "killer applications"?that the Rest lacked: competition, science, democracy, medicine, consumerism and the work ethic. The key question today is whether or not the West has lost its monopoly on these six things. If so, Ferguson warns, we may be living through the end of Western ascendancy.Influencer: The Power to Change Anything - Kerry PattersonInfluencing human behavior is one of the most difficult challenges faced by leaders. This book provides powerful insight into how to make behavior change that will last.Big Data - Kenneth Kukier“Big data” refers to our burgeoning ability to crunch vast collections of information, analyze it instantly, and draw sometimes profoundly surprising conclusions from it. This emerging science can translate myriad phenomena—from the price of airline tickets to the text of millions of books—into searchable form, and uses our increasing computing power to unearth epiphanies that we never could have seen before. A revolution on par with the Internet or perhaps even the printing press, big data will change the way we think about business, health, politics, education, and innovation in the years to come. It also poses fresh threats, from the inevitable end of privacy as we know it to the prospect of being penalized for things we haven’t even done yet, based on big data’s ability to predict our future behavior.The Fine Art Of Small Talk - Debra FineThe Fine Art of Small Talk will help you learn to feel more comfortable in any type of social situation, from lunch with the boss to an association event to a cocktail party where you don't know a soul.In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto - Michael PollanPollan proposes a new answer to the question of what we should eat that comes down to seven simple but liberating words: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. Pollan's bracing and eloquent manifesto shows us how we can start making thoughtful food choices that will enrich our lives, enlarge our sense of what it means to be healthy, and bring pleasure back to eating.The Sex Myth - Brooke MagnatiIs there any truth to the epidemic of sex addiction? Are our children really getting sexualised younger? Are men the only ones who like porn? Brooke Magnanti looks at all these questions and more - and proves that perhaps we've all been taking the answers for granted.Sexual Politics in Modern Iran - Janet AfaryJanet Afary is a native of Iran and a leading historian. Her work focuses on gender and sexuality and draws on her experience of growing up in Iran and her involvement with Iranian women of different ages and social strata. These observations, and a wealth of historical documents, form the kernel of this book, which charts the history of the nation's sexual revolution from the nineteenth century to today. What comes across is the extraordinary resilience of the Iranian people, who have drawn on a rich social and cultural heritage to defy the repression and hardship of the Islamist state and its predecessors. It is this resilience, the author concludes, which forms the basis of a sexual revolution taking place in Iran today, one that is promoting reforms in marriage and family laws, and demanding more egalitarian gender and sexual relations.One Minute to Midnight - Michael DobbsIn October 1962, at the height of the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union appeared to be sliding inexorably toward a nuclear conflict over the placement of missiles in Cuba. Veteran "Washington Post" reporter Michael Dobbs has pored over previously untapped American, Soviet, and Cuban sources to produce the most authoritative book yet on the Cuban missile crisis. In his hour-by-hour chronicle of those near-fatal days, Dobbs reveals some startling new incidents that illustrate how close we came to Armageddon.The Most Dangerous Place - Imtiaz GulImtiaz Gul, who knows the ins and outs of these groups and their leaders, tackles the toughest questions about the current situation: What can be done to bring the Pakistani Taliban under control? Who funds these militants and what are their links to Al Qaeda? Are they still supported by the ISI, Pakistan's all-powerful intelligence agency?Inside the Crosshairs: Snipers In Vietnam - Michael LanningAt the start of the war in Vietnam, the United States had no snipers; by the end of the war, Marine and army precision marksmen had killed more than 10,000 NVA and VC soldiers--the equivalent of an entire division--at the cost of under 20,000 bullets, proving that long-range shooters still had a place in the battlefield. Now noted military historian Michael Lee Lanning shows how U.S. snipers in Vietnam--combining modern technology in weapons, ammunition, and telescopes--used the experience and traditions of centuries of expert shooters to perfect their craft.Churchill's Secret War - Madhushree MukherjeeAs journalist Madhusree Mukerjee reveals, at the same time that Churchill brilliantly opposed the barbarism of the Nazis, he governed India with a fierce resolve to crush its freedom movement and a profound contempt for native lives. A series of Churchill's decisions between 1940 and 1944 directly and inevitably led to the deaths of some three million Indians. The streets of eastern Indian cities were lined with corpses, yet instead of sending emergency food shipments Churchill used the wheat and ships at his disposal to build stockpiles for feeding postwar Britain and Europe.Combining meticulous research with a vivid narrative, and riveting accounts of personality and policy clashes within and without the British War Cabinet, Churchill's Secret War places this oft-overlooked tragedy into the larger context of World War II, India's fight for freedom, and Churchill's enduring legacy. Winston Churchill may have found victory in Europe, but, as this groundbreaking historical investigation reveals, his mismanagement facilitated by dubious advice from scientist and eugenicist Lord Cherwella devastated India and set the stage for the massive bloodletting that accompanied independence.God Created the Integers - Stephen HawkingBestselling author and physicist Stephen Hawking explores the "masterpieces" of mathematics, 25 landmarks spanning 2,500 years and representing the work of 15 mathematicians, including Augustin Cauchy, Bernard Riemann, and Alan Turing. This extensive anthology allows readers to peer into the mind of genius by providing them with excerpts from the original mathematical proofs and results. It also helps them understand the progression of mathematical thought, and the very foundations of our present-day technologies. Each chapter begins with a biography of the featured mathematician, clearly explaining the significance of the result, followed by the full proof of the work, reproduced from the original publication.These are what I think are mind expanding.I'll add more as I remember.