Virtual Local Manufacturing Communities: Online Simulations of Future Workshop Systems

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Distributed manufacturing offers the promise of bringing jobs back to local communities, producing goods that are personalized or harmonize with distinctive cultures, and thereby reversing significant aspects of the globalization that has dominated in recent years. Large corporations may still have important roles to play, but in collaboration with local workshops, providing machinery, software, databases of designs, and communication media suitable for a diverse and dynamic workforce. For years, a set of computer simulation laboratories has flourished, in which millions of people have used virtual machines to produce a great variety of products: massively multiplayer online role-playing games. Their systems are highly diverse, complex, and provide information capable of serious social science analysis.
This book deeply explores 30 of these production-capable social media, based on thousands of hours of observation and extensive collection of statistical data, extracting hypotheses that may generalize to the real-world distributed manufacturing of the near future. This book begins with an overview of this universe of online virtual worlds then demonstrates the principles of virtual manufacturing, modes of work-related communication, socio-economic structures and dynamics, and the function of artificial intelligence in these human-technology systems. It concludes with consideration of the large-scale technical and cultural variation illustrated both by individual examples and by the rather large industry in which they have long been successful.

Major Business and Technology Trends Shaping the Contemporary World

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This book builds upon a wide variety of academic and professional resources to offer an in-depth analysis of the nature, causes, and consequences of major business and technology trends of our time. First, prospects for energy, commodities, water, food, and healthcare services are explored. Then, leading business transformations such as the sharing economy, Fourth Industrial Revolution, gig economy, and recent developments in the global economy are analyzed. Finally, innovation and emerging technologies including automation, robotics, connectivity, quantum computing, and new materials and energies are examined and their business implications are discussed.
Major Business and Technology Trends Shaping the Contemporary World is a timely and relevant reference for business leaders, managers, students, and all those who are passionate about understanding our rapidly changing world.

The Generation Myth: How to Improve Intergenerational Relationships in the Workplace

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Many assumed characteristics of generational groupings are actually “myths,” meaning that generational stereo- types are not accurate across all members of a generation.
This book explores the Generation Myth by highlighting the complexity of the “generation” concept beyond simple age-based groupings and suggests that the over-reliance of generational stereotypes in workplaces and society can lead to less than optimal interactions and even confiict. Several successful strategies are presented throughout to help improve inter-generational relationships.

Project Portfolio Management: A Model for Improved Decision-Making

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Project portfolio management (PfM) is a critically important discipline, which organizations must embrace in order to extract the maximum value from their project investments. Essentially, PfM can be defined as the translation of strategy and organizational objectives into projects, programs, and operations (portfolio components); the allocation of resources to portfolio components according to organizational priorities;alignment of components to one or more organizational objectives; and the management and control of these components in order to achieve organizational objectives and benefits. The focus of this book is aimed at providing a mechanism to determine the individual and cumulative contribution of portfolio components to strategic objectives so that the right decisions can be made regarding those components.

To get a great inside look into the thought-process and experience of Clive Enoch, please watch this interview between Clive and Collection Editor, Tim Kloppenborg.

The Lost Art of Planning Projects

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Appropriate planning is the hallmark of professional project management. Good planning is what sets apart great projects from accidents. Purposeful planning is what ensures that the executive actions undertaken remain connected to the goals and outcomes expected by the stakeholders.
This book examines the process and products of planning, in the contexts of projects, programs, and portfolios. With a plan seen as a model, it looks at how the use of models in planning creates and extends the way in which project, program, and portfolio managers control and structure their environment. To tell this story, we have distilled over 70 years of our combined personal experience of supporting project managers deliver, and thousands of person-years of others’ practical knowledge to illustrate powerful planning tools, models, and approaches. There is also supplementary material and tools on a website associated with this book. We ho

Qualitative Marketing Research: Understanding How Behavioral Complexities Drive Marketing Strategies

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“Qualitative research is followed today beyond ethnography in marketing, management, and health sciences. This book blends contemporary approaches with the qualitative research epistemologies and encapsulates the systematic process of conducting research. It is a valuable contribution for management students, corporate managers, and researchers…” —Lou Chitkushev, PhD, Associate Dean of Academic Affairs, Metropolitan College, Boston University, Boston MA
“An excellent reference for researchers in the areas of social and management sciences. To understand the world from the people’s point of view, the qualitative research has been an age-old asset. This book guides researchers to schematically explore experiences of the subjects by walking in their shoes and understanding their behavior.” —Arturo Molina, PhD, Vice-Rector (Research & Technology Transfer), Tecnologico de Monterrey, Mexico
Qualitative research manages the fundamental challenge in interpreting the complexities associated with consumer behavior, particularly in large diversified marketplace and guides managers towards understanding consumers. This book discusses qualitative research modeling and new approaches of qualitative data collection, interpretation of results, reporting, and deriving managerial implications.
Discussions in the book present new insights on conducting and applying qualitative market research and emphasizes on the application of qualitative research in consumer-centric companies. The book argues that companies need to consider a broader perspective of marketing research to support marketing decisions derived by understanding consumer behavior using qualitative research methodology.

New World Technologies: 2020 and Beyond

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In today’s high-pressured world, digital transformation is everywhere on the agendas of corporate boards and has risen to the top of CEOs’ strategic plans. Artificial intelligence, blockchain, 3D printing, the Internet of Things, and drones are some of the emerging technologies that are already transforming our world. In this fast changing domain— predicted by few and now reality for all—how can companies transform today’s challenges into tomorrow’s opportunities?
This book is targeted to help a broad audience such as students, professionals, business, and technology managers to transform an old-world brick and mortar organization to a new-world digital leader. The author addresses various questions including: what essential components does digital transformation include, and how does it impact the enterprise? How does convergence of emerging technologies benefit your organization? How can you start transformation and technology planning projects?

Artist Development Essentials: The Key to Structuring a Sustainable Profile in the Music Industry

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As a constantly evolving and developing industry, the music business environment continues to establish new standards in terms of operational efficiency, dynamics between the different parties involved in the professional cycles, and constructing and performing methodologies in the process of achieving the desired results that all the participants in the music world have to adapt to in order to establish a sustainable career.
Hence, the main purpose of this book is to provide practical advice suitable to both aspiring music professionals and artists that need detailed guidance in the process of developing the basis of a fruitful, promising, and sustainable profile, not only in terms of business performance, but psychologically as well.

Powerful Performance: How to Be Influential, Ethical, and Successful in Business

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How do you empower yourself to maximize your impact? This book will show you how to do this ethically, using the nine key steps.
‧ Do you feel that your work and life should somehow be better than it is?
‧ Are you on a treadmill, doing things you don’t want to do, with no hope of getting off?
‧ Do you ? nd it hard to say what you want or even to know what you want?
‧ Are you intimidated by those in authority, whoever they are?
If so, then Powerful Performance is for you.
Join Mark Eyre on a journey to discover how you can be both ethical and powerful, and that it doesn’t have to be a choice between them, in business or in life. Through reading the in- sights and case studies in this book and completing the self- diagnostic exercises, you will learn the nine steps to ethical power. Mastering these steps will enable you to stand your ground and achieve your full potential.

Creating a Culture for Information Systems Success, Second Edition

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In the era of disruptive technology, the dilemma of why a particular information system encountered unanticipated resistance and never met expectations is still considered an emerging issue. While this context has been intensively studied, we still lack evidence on how this organizational context is affecting the success of information systems from a managerial action perspective. This type of managerial involvement is often neglected to the extent that it becomes a major obstacle to organizational performance.
The objective of Creating a Culture for Information Systems Success is to assist CIOs and IT managers on how to use their managerial actions to create a suitable cultural environment in the organization that leads to a successful and sustainable implementation of information systems function. The book provides guidelines for managers on how to create this organizational context, measure it, and make sure it leads to a successful implementation and use of information systems. It carefully illustrates its main theme by providing examples and cases to explain how the behavioral context of an organization led by its managers and executives would lead to the success of the information systems function.