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Book Description

Future First is a practical guide for any business leader who wants to build, expand, or reinvent their company by finding new value in global challenges. Traditional companies often view issues like income equality, global warming, and resource scarcity as "problems." By contrast, future first leaders understand them as opportunities, as innovation challenges.

Through real-life business examples ranging from Nike to Opower, this book lays out how to identify and adopt the future first leadership mindset and business capabilities required to achieve lasting and integrated performance results. Future FirstĀ examines how leaders from companies including Unilever, Etsy, Revolution Foods, Method Products, and others have adopted this mindset toward innovation and people practices, accelerating business ecosystem transformation.

Alice Mann, an organizational psychologist with twenty years of experience consulting and coaching on executive leadership, organization design, and business transformation, interviewed scores of business leaders to understand how their companies are expanding into new value frontiers. Future First makes a convincing argument that successful partnerships and alliances among big global companies and small mission-driven ones can reshape the global ecosystems of apparel, food, automobiles, and energy, and remake the future of our world.

Table of Contents

  1. Cover Page
  2. Praise
  3. Future First
  4. Title
  5. Copyright
  6. Dedication
  7. Contents
  8. Introduction: Winning at the Value Frontier of the Future
    1. What is Future First?
    2. Why I Wrote this Book
    3. Navigating the Many Paths of Future First Companies
    4. Notes
  9. 1 The Power to Change Everything
    1. The Good, the Bad, and the Possible
    2. Bringing Externalities Back Inside
    3. Valuing Transformation
    4. How Change Happens Now
    5. Valuing Innovation
    6. Notes
  10. 2 Embracing Our Biggest Innovation Challenges
    1. Innovation Challenge #1: Climate Change
    2. Innovation Challenge #2: Resource Scarcity
    3. Innovation Challenge #3: Social Dynamism
    4. The Urgency of Tomorrow
    5. Notes
  11. 3 Selecting the Future with Big Questions
    1. What is the Future of Investing?
    2. What is the Future of Social Responsibility?
    3. What is the Future of Consumption?
    4. What is the Future of Money?
    5. What is the Future of Energy?
    6. What is the Future of Apparel?
    7. What is the Future of Everything?
    8. Notes
  12. 4 Free Your Mindset
    1. Failing: To Succeed
    2. Embracing Innovation Challenges
    3. Overcoming Presentism
    4. Adopting Integrative Thinking
    5. Pipeline Angels
    6. Expanding Values in Business Decisions
    7. Going Beyond One-company, One-leader at a Time
    8. Notes
  13. 5 Future-proofing your Leadership
    1. Embracing Innovation Challenges
    2. Switching your Mindset Out of the Present Tense
    3. Adopting Integrative Thinking
    4. Expanding the Values in All Business Decisions
    5. Ecosystems: No Business is an Island
    6. Trade-offs are Not the Only Answer
    7. Checklist #1. Developing your Future First Mindset as a Leader
    8. Checklist #2. Developing Future First Mindset as an Executive Team
    9. Notes
  14. 6 Building Future First DNA into Etsy, Apple, and Nike
    1. Embracing Innovation Challenges
    2. Overcoming Presentism
    3. Developing Integrative Thinking
    4. Bringing Broader Values into Business Decisions
    5. Moving Beyond One-company, One-leader
    6. Why Future First DNA Matters More than Ever
    7. Notes
  15. 7 The Value of Future First Talent Strategies
    1. Future First Leadership as the Bedrock of Talent Strategies
    2. Getting the Most from Future First Talent
    3. Expand the Value Frontier with Future First Talent Strategies
    4. Notes
  16. 8 Multiplying your Impact through Ecosystem Partnerships
    1. The David and Goliath Partnership
    2. Expanding your Mission with an Acquisition
    3. Joining Forces with your Competition through an Ecosystem Coalition
    4. Paving the Way for New Government and Consumer Choices
    5. Scaling Up the Alternative Into Something Bigger and Better
    6. Surprising Elements of Ecosystem Partnerships
    7. Notes
  17. Epilogue: Future First in the Era of Backwards Politics
  18. Acknowledgements
  19. About the Author
  20. Index
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