Bold

December 1, 2014
The future is now—and we need to figure out how to take advantage of it, say coauthors Diamandis, CEO of educational nonprofit X Prize, and journalist Kotler in this cogent, energetic follow-up to their previous collaboration, Abundance. Here, they introduce readers to the concept of exponential technology, which applies to any field “doubling in power on a regular basis” and currently includes robotics, genomics, and nanotechnology. The book aims to help entrepreneurs, activists, and leaders proceed quickly from idea to execution, all while bettering the world. Notably, it’s not just big companies pushing all of these changes; there are also small ones involved, such as Airbnb. As such, more and more people have been able to innovate. The authors run through the mental adjustment required for this increased rate of change, the practical considerations involved in staging and scaling goals, and the process of building communities that can reach them. This invigorating discussion drives home the point that with better tools than we’ve ever had before, what we need most of all are great leaders. Agent: John Brockman, Brockman Inc.

December 15, 2014
Through their work with the Abundance 360 community, Flow Genome Project, Singularity University, XPRIZE Foundation, and AbundanceHub.com, the authors offer entrepreneurs access to exponential tools and technologies to realize wealth and abundance. The Exponential Framework is described as following the 6Ds, which include Deception and Disruption but lead to Democratization. As an example of the shift from the linear growth of the past to the exponential growth happening now, in 2012 Kodak, a hundred-year-old giant with 140,000 employees and a 1996 valuation of $28 billion, filed for bankruptcy, while the same year the photo-sharing service Instagram, with 13 employees, was purchased by Facebook for $1 billion. The authors describe technologies that are following this course, like 3D printing and robotics, and tools that make exponential growth possible, such as cloud computing and crowd funding. They profile four of the prime movers who have harnessed this power to build multibillion-dollar companies that changed the world: Elon Musk, Richard Branson, Jeff Bezos, and Larry Page. This is a manual for today's big thinkers to become tomorrow's bold leaders, using crowd-powered tools accessible to everyone.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)