Dan Heath and Chip Heath explain why it's not enough to give people something they need.

Dan Heath and Chip Heath ask, Have you been looking closely enough at your business?

Dan Heath and Chip Heath explain why you should grow your next generation of talent, not recruit it.

Dan Heath and Chip Heath go to eighth grade, Google, and a Van Halen concert to find early-warning signals for big problems.

Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com and author of Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose, introduces a lesson on how to rally employees around a unified plan from Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard, by Chip Heath and Dan Heath.

Find a bright spot and clone it.

That's the first step to fixing everything from addiction to corporate malaise to malnutrition. A problem may look hopelessly complex. But there's a game plan that can yield movement on even the toughest issues. And it starts with locating a bright spot -- a ray of hope.

If you've ever been part of a discussion on ethics, in school or elsewhere, chances are you didn't spend much time talking about your feelings. It's believed that to live ethically, we must engage our reason, which reins in the whims and follies of emotion. Ethics, then, is heavy on Spock and light on Sally Struthers. But what if unethical behavior is actually spurred, rather than prevented, by reason?

We're awash in data. Here's how to make yours matter.

he best baseball players don't always get elected All-Stars. And the Nobel Prize doesn't always go to the most deserving member of the scientific community. This, according to a pair of recent studies, is because such recognition can depend upon how well known an individual is rather than on merit alone. Moreover, because it's human nature for people to try to find common ground when talking to others, simple everyday conversations could have the unfortunate side effect of blocking many of the best and most innovative ideas from the collective social consciousness.

When the economy finally turns around, you'll start hiring people again. You'll sift through dozens of impressive-sounding résumés -- who knew there were so many VPs in the world? -- and bring in the standouts for the critical final stage: the interview. You'll size them up, test the "culture fit," and peer into their souls. Then you'll make your decision. This is the Official Hiring Process of America. And it ignores, almost completely, what decades of research tell us about how to pick good employees.

Here's the reality: Interviews are less predictive of job performance than work samples, job-knowledge tests, and peer ratings of past job performance. Even a simple intelligence test is dramatically more useful.

Viral marketing has become a hip, low-cost way to reach a lot of people very quickly -- with little effort. But as marketers slash ad budgets, "viral" needs to mean more than "free" and "fueled by prayer." Making an idea contagious isn't a mysterious marketing art. It boils down to a couple of simple rules.

Why do companies make it so hard to say thank you to the right people?

Why you should learn to love checking boxes.

How is your attitude about your abilities affecting your success?

Your product may be good, but will it spark a conversation?

Tales of groundbreaking innovation sound a lot alike. Like action-adventure movies, they have a predictable structure. Some ordinary guys, without money or power, triumph via a brilliant insight and scrappy groundwork. But what if those stories mislead us about what it takes to generate great ideas?

Psychologists know false stories thrive in situations of heightened anxiety. Chip Heath, a Stanford-trained psychologist, is doing research to try and explain why, in more normal times, people tell each other rumors and urban legends on a day-to-day basis.