Books
by Jim Carroll
Dancing in the Rain
Released June 20, 2025
A powerful guide for navigating the chaos of economic downturns and uncertainty.
Written by globally renowned futurist Jim Carroll, the book explores how resilient leadership, innovation, and adaptability become the most valuable assets in turbulent times.
READ MOREThrough bold ideas and hard-won insights, it challenges readers to step forward—not back—when the future feels unclear.
Drawing from decades of experience advising world-class organizations, Carroll unpacks what successful companies do differently when crisis hits. Rather than retreat, they refocus. Instead of freezing, they move fast. They rethink everything—from strategy and talent to customer connection and innovation pipelines—turning volatility into momentum. Backed by real-world research and stories from past downturns, each chapter offers practical frameworks and mindset shifts that help leaders thrive when others stall.
This isn’t just a book about surviving recessions. It’s a blueprint for growing through them. Dancing in the Rain is for leaders who refuse to wait for stability to begin building their next chapter. Because the future doesn’t pause for the uncertain—it rewards those brave enough to shape it.
Learn more, and get the book, at dancing.jimcarroll.com
How to Accelerate Your Future and Achieve Breakthrough Results
ESCAPING MEDIOCRITY
Finally, a book that dares you to aim higher — and mean it.
Now in print!
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In a world addicted to playing it safe, Escaping Mediocrity is a no- nonsense guide to breaking free from the habits, fears, and false comforts that keep us stuck. It’s the antidote to stagnation — a sharp, practical companion for anyone ready to trade in excuses for forward motion.
Whether you’re stuck in a rut, leading a team through change, or simply tired of “good enough,” this book will challenge your thinking, stretch your ambition, and kick-start your momentum. You’ll learn to recognize the subtle signals that it’s time to challenge yourself with bigger ideas and bolder goals — and what it actually takes to do so. After all, you might already know what settling for less looks like. Isn’t it time you found out what escaping feels like?
Learn more, Learn more, and get the book, at mediocrity.jimcarroll.com
Embracing Mediocrity: How to do Nothing Notable and Accomplish As Little as Possible!
Finally, a book that celebrates the art of doing just enough to get by!
(It’s actually a brilliant teambuilding book!)
In a world obsessed with excellence, “Embracing Mediocrity” offers a refreshingly tepid approach to life’s greatest question: Why try at all? This groundbreaking guide to underachievement provides readers with a meticulously crafted road map to embracing their inner average!
Learn more, Learn more, and get the book, at mediocrity.jimcarroll.com
In a world obsessed with excellence, “Embracing Mediocrity” holds up a funhouse mirror to the countless ways we rationalize settling for less.
This satirical guide catalogs every self-defeating behaviour and limiting belief you’ve ever entertained – and probably a few you haven’t thought of yet!
Whether you’re leading a team, building an organization, or pursuing personal goals, this. comprehensive manual delivers a masterclass in identifying the habits, mindsets, and cultural patterns that keep us comfortably average.
You’ll discover the liberating “joy” of lowered expectations and the “subtle art” of strategic under-performance – and in doing so, chart your course in the opposite direction.After all, why shoot for the stars when the ground is within reach?(Unless, of course, this tongue-in- cheek guide to mediocrity inspires you to do exactly that!)
Turning Curiosity, Creativity, and Courage into Your Competitive Edge
BEING UNIQUE
Release date Autumn 2025
In a world shaped by constant disruption and relentless change, standing out isn’t just an advantage—it’s a necessity.
Being Unique is a bold manifesto for anyone ready to unleash the power of thinking differently. Futurist Jim Carroll reveals why those who cultivate originality, challenge assumptions, and act with bold curiosity are the ones who will shape the future.
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Blending real-world insight with powerful storytelling, Carroll explores the traits that define truly unique individuals—from cognitive flexibility to creative courage, from adaptive resilience to intuitive recognition. Through the lens of rebels, visionaries, and change-makers like David Bowie, Grace Hopper, and Richard Feynman, readers are shown how to develop a mindset that doesn’t just navigate change—but thrives on it.
Whether you’re an entrepreneur, executive, educator, or simply someone tired of playing it safe, Being Unique offers a practical framework to break free from mediocrity. With sharp tools and inspiring perspective, this book is your guide to transforming curiosity into action, imagination into influence, and rebellion into impact.
THINK BIG, START SMALL, SCALE FAST
The book captures the unique insight and guidance that he has developed from 25 years of speaking and appearing on stage around the world.
What does the book cover? It is a story of inspiration, observation and transformation providing motivational guidance to those who seek how to navigate our increasingly complex and ever faster world.
The book provides insight into what people and organizations must do to deal with a world of massive disruption and transformation in everything they know.
It is based on what I have learned from a long career as an advisor to my clients around the world.
Quite simply, I have been speaking to organizations around the world for well over 25 years about the future, and the attitudes and actions that can help us to turn it into a world of opportunity.
Somewhere along the way, I came to realize that this unique experience — a life on the stage — had provided me with some very unique insights into how people try to deal with a world of massive change and challenge. Over time, I began to take some sort of observation — usually inspirational, sometimes controversial — and layered them on top of a photo where I had appeared on stage and shared them with people via my social networks.
Then suddenly, in late July 2016, through a variety of colliding circumstances, the opportunity to focus my thinking into a message of hope and inspiration took on a life of its own. Since that moment in time, I have started each and every workday, without fail, very early in the morning, with my coffee, my laptop, and a moment of quiet reflection. They are a critical part of a very important journey, that of painting a picture of hope and optimism each and every day for what the day might bring.
How important are they? I have not missed one day, since starting this in early August 2016. I mark my personal progress and success one day at a time by my ability to inspire myself and others each and every day through this small personal thought.
This book captures but a small number of those morning reflections. As of this writing, I am approaching close to 1,000. You can find all of them at https://inspiration.jimcarroll.com
Reinvention and the Role of Optimism in Finding Your New Future
NOW WHAT?
Reinvention surrounds us.
It is inherent to our future, fundamental to our success, and a pathway to our actions.
But how do you achieve it?
In this fast-moving, inspirational, and powerful book Futurist Jim Carroll takes a look at the concept of ‘reinvention’ from a personal, business, and societal perspective.
What is the essence of the mindset of those who have successfully reinvented? What drives their attitude, motivates their action, and accelerates their efforts?
In this book, Jim Carroll provides a powerful pathway into the future, the mindset necessary to get there, and the bold actions that must be pursued!
READY, SET, DONE
How to Innovate When Faster is the New Fast.
It will help you to think differently about your current
strategy, goals, opportunities and methods of
innovating.
Ready, Set, Done:
How to innovate when faster is the new fast
“Forget about the concept of innovation as simply involving the design of cool new products. In the high-velocity economy, where faster is the new fast, it’s your ability to adapt, change, and evolve, through a constant flood of new ideas, that will define your potential for success.”
If you are trying to figure out how to deal with the faster world that surrounds you, then you need this book. Think about it – the high velocity global economy of today drives rapid consumer, business, industrial and marketplace change.
The fast paced world around us is relentless and unforgiving. It drives increased customer and business partner expectations, requires faster innovation, and necessitates a faster more complex response to rapidly changing circumstances.
That’s why you need to learn how to innovate when faster is the new fast – by getting into a mindset where you’re prepared to figure out a solution to a problem, almost before you know you have a problem.
Ready, Set, Done: How to Innovate When Faster is the New Fast provides unique insight into how to innovate when faster is the new fast
- Velocity: you’ll understand the rapid change that increasingly drives our world, and why it’s critical to constantly innovate in order to keep ahead
- Agility: you’ll learn how organizations ensuring they can respond to fast-changing circumstances
- Innovation: you’ll gain insight into how innovation can apply to everything you do, every day
- Activity: you’ll learn what you should start doing now to elevate the importance of your innovation efforts.
Ready, Set, Done: How to Innovate When Faster is the New Fast is a timely book. It captures the rapidity that is found in our world today, whether it be rapidly shifting business models, technological change, the rapid advancement of science, the emergence of new competitors, and rapidly evolving professional skills and knowledge.
The book takes a look at the concept of innovation in a new, and well, innovative way, in that it helps you understand how to link your innovation efforts to the high velocity change that surrounds you. It examines the concept of agility, how organizations can ensure they structure themselves to take advantage of and respond to fast-changing circumstances. It builds upon that message, by examining some of the key innovation success strategies that you should be thinking about.
Sprinkled throughout the book are various observations that I have made, of some of the innovative practices I’ve seen with various organizations, large and small. When you’ve been looking for innovative stories for close to a decade, you discover quite a bit of wonderful insight.
The book will provide you the inspiration to adapt and change in order to keep up with high velocity change. It will also open up the minds of your staff as to the need for day to day transformation in what they do, how they do it, and why they do it. And it will frame the issue of innovation for you in a new and critical way.
THE FUTURE BELONGS TO THOSE WHO ARE FAST
It features the best of the insight from JimCarroll.com. With over 1,000 blog entries, there’s a wealth of information throughout the blog. This book allows you to access the best of this insight in a quick and easy way!
We live in a period of time in which change is happening faster than ever before. Success will come to those who innovate, change and adapt!
The Future Belongs to Those Who are Fast features the best of the insight from Jim Carroll’s blog, in which he covers issues related to creativity, innovation and future trends.
From the Introduction:
Notes Jim in the introduction to the book: “What I have learned over time, regardless of the industry or group, is that the pace of change that we have seen in the last few years is not going to slow down – the future does truly belong to those who are fast.
The future doesn’t belong to those who have owned a market place because of their history. Past success doesn’t guarantee a future of winning. Resting on ones laurels is perhaps the best method to place yourself at the greatest risk in the future.
We live in a world in which business models evolve at a furious pace. In which customers are demanding and expecting new forms of interaction. In which technology and mobile devices are changing industries at a furious pace. Everywhere you look, you witness rates of change and innovation which are accelerating, not slowing down.
That leads to an undeniable fact – it will be the ability of an individual, a leader, and an organization to keep up with fast paced change that will increasingly define their potential for future success.”
What I Learned
From Frogs in Texas
Saving Your Skin With Forward
Thinking Innovation.
What I Learned from Frogs in Texas
From the Opening Chapter
“Forget about the concept of innovation as simply involving the design of cool new products. In the high-velocity economy, where faster is the new fast, it’s your ability to adapt, change, and evolve, through a constant flood of new ideas, that will define your potential for success.”
“If they don’t get off that road, there is going to be a big problem and it’s going to be ugly!” With that quirky observation of a group of frogs in Texas, Jim Carroll captures the essence of the challenges faced by organizations today.
We live in an era of unprecedented and relentless change. The emergence of China as a superpower; hyper-innovation and business market turmoil; constant career change and rapid scientific advances. Competition is changing over-night and product life cycles often last for just a few months. Permanence has been torn asunder. We are in a time that demands a new agility and flexibility: leaders must have the skill and insight to prepare for a future that is rushing at them faster than ever before.
Jim Carroll provides concrete guidance on how to turn challenges into opportunity
- Anticipate future trends that will impact you
- Move from a culture of indecision to one that is forward thinking and decisive
- Instill an innovative culture within your organization
- Develop key leadership skills for the future
- View change as an opportunity to pursue not as a threat to be feared
GET IN TOUCH
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