Breaking Out: How to Build Influence in a World of Competing Ideas

Description

What can we learn from the people who've successfully taken their ideas to the world at large? How can you make your idea break out? Breaking Out looks to some of the most popular influencers of our time to pull tips from their journeys. By highlighting the paths of French lifestyle guru Mireille Guiliano (French Women Don't Get Fat), dog behavior specialist Cesar Millan, TOMS founder Blake Mycoskie, and others, author John Butman shows how to take your deeply-felt idea and break it from the pack to capture the attention it deserves and propel it to a much wider audience.

John Butman advises and collaborates with individual content experts and leaders of global companies, not-for-profit institutions, consultancies, and government organizations, helping them shape and express their ideas and establish idea platforms. He has written or collaborated on many books, including New York Times, Boston Globe, BusinessWeek, and Toronto Globe and Mail bestsellers. His firm, Idea Platforms, is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

"To take the next steps in turning your now crystallized idea into a life path, Read Butman's Breaking Out." -- Kare Anderson, Forbes.com "an interesting tome on leadership as the storytelling demonstrates how 'breaking out' has occurred in the past." -- Product Development and Management Association "In a world overflowing with new ideas, why do some catch on and blossom, and others not? Drawing on interviews with "idea entrepreneurs" (including Al Gore), Butman explains the relationship between the person who comes up with an idea and those that spread it, highlighting what it takes to make an idea popular." -- Business Digest "Breaking Out is populated by a surprising crowd of creatives--from Ralph Waldo Emerson to Eckhart Tolle, Ben Franklin to Blake Mycoskie (TOMS shoes), Mohandas Gandhi to Barack Obama--that reflects Butman's belief that idea entrepreneurs 'seek to influence the thinking of others, not repress it or dismiss it. They want change, not power.' There is no doubt that you will learn from Butman, and these inimitable "idea entrepreneurs," no matter what your message and medium." -- 800 CEO READ ADVANCE PRAISE for Breaking Out: Nicholas A. Christakis, MD, PhD, Professor, Harvard University; coauthor, Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives-- "In Breaking Out, John Butman gives the marketplace of ideas the human form it deserves. He vividly explores the life history of ideas, the people who espouse them, and the world into which they are flung." Eric von Hippel, Professor, MIT Sloan School of Management-- "John Butman teaches people to better understand, develop, and communicate their core work-related passions--a very important matter." Maryanne Wolf, John DiBiaggio Professor of Citizenship and Public Service, Tufts University; author, Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain-- "In this compelling book on the emerging concept of an 'idea entrepreneur,' John Butman brings to life and propels our understanding of this new cultural phenomenon, and in so doing, makes his own contribution to its role in our society. Bravo!