Business

Brief Summary Play to Your Strengths: Managing Your Internal Labor Markets for Lasting Competitive Advantage The breakthrough approach for aligning people with strategy for higher profits Organizations that select, develop, deploy, manage, and motivate their people to produce outstanding business results have an extraordinary competitive advantage that others can't copy. Backed by Mercer's nine-year, $10 million study of leading companies around the world, Play to Your Strengths shows how to leverage a company's human capital strategy into business results that are measurable and profitable and that will create exceptional, enduring competitive advantages. This bottom-line-boosting guide gives managers, senior executives, and consultants the theory, tools, and processes they need to: • Measure the effects of people on business results • Determine the impact of strategies before making them • Focus on the organization's most effective people strategies • Deliver more money to the bottom line in a sustainable manner • Create enduring, copy-proof competitive advantages ISBN:9780071422536 Author:Haig Nalbantian,? Richard Guzzo,? Dave Kieffer and Jay Doherty

Brief Summary Digilogue: How to Win the Digital Minds and Analogue Hearts of Tomorrow's Customer How to leverage the enduring human need for analogue experiences to attract and retain more customers in a digital world. Anything that can be digitized will be digitized. But can the digital-connect ever really replace the personal touch? Is word-of-mouse always more effective than word-of-mouth? And what of customers’ enduring need for analogue experiences (think analogue watches, paperback books and multiplex movie theatres, for example). In your rush to embrace your customers’ digital mind are you ignoring an equally valuable asset: their analogue heart? Better yet, how can you leverage the analogue heart to provide your company or brand with an unbeatable competitive edge? The answer, according to internationally acclaimed futurist, Anders Sormon-Nilsson is Digilogue — the ‘translational sweet-spot, the convergence of the digital and the analogue.’ A book that will revolutionize how you do business in a digital world, Digilogue provides powerful insights, strategies and tools to help you provide value to digital minds, while connecting with analogue hearts. " ISBN:9781118641385 Author:Anders Sorman-Nilsson

Brief Summary Creativity in Business: Based on the Famed Stanford University Course That Has Revolutionized the Art of Success. This exploration of innovative thinking in companies of all kinds "shows us how creativity in business can enrich us, and those who work with us." -- Spencer Johnson, co-author, The One Minute Manager. ISBN:9780385248518 Author:Michael Ray and Rochelle Myers

Brief Summary Creative Capitalism: A Conversation with Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and Other Economic Leaders Bill Gates is more than the world's most successful capitalist; he's also the world's biggest philanthropist. Gates has approached philanthropy the same way he revolutionized computer software: with a fierce ambition to change the rules of the game. That's why at the 2008 annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Gates advocated a creative capitalism in which big corporations, the distinguishing feature of the modern global economy, integrate doing good into their way of doing business. This controversial new idea is discussed and debated by the more than forty contributors to this book, among them three Nobel laureates and two former U.S. cabinet secretaries. Edited by author and columnist Michael Kinsley, Creative Capitalism started as a first-of-its-kind online conversation that brought together some of the world's best minds to engage Gates's challenge. From Warren Buffett, who seconds Gates's analysis, to Lawrence Summers, who worries about the consequences of multiple corporate objectives, the essays cover a broad spectrum of opinion. Judge Richard Posner dismisses Gates's proposal as trumped-up charity that will sap the strengths of the profit-maximizing corporation, while journalist Martin Wolf maintains that the maximization of profit is far from universally accepted, and rightly so. Chicago Nobel laureate Gary Becker wonders whether altruistic companies can survive in a competitive economy, while Columbia Nobel laureate Edmund Phelps argues that a little altruism might be the right prescription for a variety of market imperfections. Creative Capitalism is not just a book for philanthropists. It's a book that challenges the conventional wisdom about our economic system, a road map for the new global economy that is emerging as capitalism adapts itself once again to a changing world. ISBN:9781416599418 Author:Michael E. Kinsley and Conor Clarke

Brief Summary International relations is a vibrant field of significant growth and change. This book guides students through the complexities of the major theories of international relations and the debates that surround them, the core theoretical concepts, and the key contemporary issues. Introduced by an overview of the discipline's development and general structure, the more than 40 entries are broken down as follows: Part two introduces the key theories and each chapter includes: a broad overview; a discussion of methodologies; a review of empirical applications; and a guide to further reading and useful websites. Part three discusses the major concepts and for each concept provides: an introduction to the core questions; an overview of the definitions and theoretical perspectives; a review of empirical problems; and links to other entries, further reading and useful websites. Clear and highly readable, "Key Concepts in International Relations" is an essential guide for students on politics and international relations courses. ISBN:9781412928489 Author:Thomas Diez,? Ingvild Bode and Aleksandra Fernandes da Costa

Brief Summary Research Design: Creating Robust Approaches for the Social Sciences Research design is of critical importance in social research, despite its relative neglect in many methods resources. Early consideration of design in relation to research questions leads to the elimination or diminution of threats to eventual research claims, by encouraging internal validity and substantially reducing the number of alternative explanations for any finite number of research ′observations′. This new book: discusses the nature of design; gives an introduction to design notation; offers a flexible approach to new designs; looks at a range of standard design models; and presents craft tips for real-life problems and compromises. Most importantly, it provides the rationale for preferring one design over another within any given context. Each section is illustrated with case studies of real work and concludes with suggested readings and topics for discussion in seminars and workshops, making it an ideal textbook for postgraduate research methods courses. Based on the author′s teaching on the ESRC Doctoral Training Centre "Masters in Research Methods" at the University of Birmingham, and his ongoing work for the ESRC Researcher Development Initiative, this is an essential text for postgraduate researchers and academics. There is no book like Research Design on the market that addresses all of these issues in an easy to comprehend style, for those who want to design research and make critical judgments about the designs of others. ISBN:9781446249024 Author:Stephen Gorard

Brief Summary Reality Check: The Irreverent Guide to Outsmarting, out-managing, and out-marketing Your Competition More uncommon common sense from the bestselling author of The Art of the Start. In Silicon Valley slang, a "bozo explosion” is what causes a lean, mean, fighting machine of a company to slide into mediocrity. As Guy Kawasaki puts it, "If the two most popular words in your company are partner and strategic, and partner has become a verb, and strategic is used to describe decisions and activities that don’t make sense” . . . it’s time for a reality check. For nearly three decades, Kawasaki has earned a stellar reputation as an entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and irreverent pundit. His 2004 bestseller, The Art of the Start, has become the most acclaimed bible for small business. And his blog is consistently one of the fifty most popular in the world. Now, Kawasaki has compiled his best wit, wisdom, and contrarian opinions in handy book form. From competition to customer service, innovation to marketing, he shows readers how to ignore fads and foolishness while sticking to commonsense practices. He explains, for instance: • How to get a standing ovation • The art of schmoozing • How to create a community • The top ten lies of entrepreneurs • Everything you wanted to know about getting a job in Silicon Valley but didn’t know who to ask Provocative, useful, and very funny, this "no bull shiitake” book will show you why readers around the world love Guy Kawasaki. ISBN:9781591842231 Author:Guy Kawasaki

Brief Summary The sixth edition of Entrepreneurship and Small Firms has been fully revised and updated with contributions from leading academics in the field. Retaining the popular style of the previous editions and offering a clear and accessible introduction to the topic, this book provides a thorough coverage of entrepreneurial and small firm theory, concepts, evidence, policy and practice. Integrating academic theory with the day-to-day realities that entrepreneurs may encounter it furnishes the student with a comprehensive analysis of entrepreneurship. This well-established text is justly popular for its clear and accessible approach, presenting the key topics of an entrepreneurship module in an engaging yet rigorous style. The book covers wide ranging topics from the economic influences on entrepreneurship and sources of finance, to issues of diversity, family business and social entrepreneurship. New to this edition is a chapter on Corporate Entrepreneurship offering students a unique insight into entrepreneurship activities in larger businesses and organizations. A reorganized chapter structure for the sixth edition allows students to navigate the four parts of the text from introductory concepts, the domains of entrepreneurship, through to strategy and to implementation. New part cases help to highlight the core themes and apply them to real business scenarios. The new edition retains a wealth of examples and cases throughout the chapters which illustrate entrepreneurship in action. ISBN:9780077136451 Author:Professor David Deakins