Social Entrepreneurship: From Issue to Viable Plan

Social Entrepreneurship: From Issue to Viable Plan

$21.99

This book provides a guided deep dive into the early stages of venture development of social entrepreneurship. It introduces concepts that provide important insights necessary for social venture success. It introduces a set of entrepreneurial tools designed for the unique set of challenges faced in selecting and designing social entrepreneurial ventures. With this book as a guide, you will develop a feasible venture concept and communicate it effectively. This book introduces concepts that frame new ways to approach information gathering and analysis for social entrepreneurial ideas. The book provides you guidance on: * how to move from heart-tugging issues to social entrepreneurial opportunities with high potential; * how to understand and assess the societal and policy environment in which the opportunity would be implemented; * how to analyze and select the best approaches for that circumstance; and * how to communicate the product or new approach to gain investors, grants, and community engagement

Designing Supply Chains for New Product Development

Designing Supply Chains for New Product Development

$21.99

Because supply chains themselves in recent years have become a source of sustainable competitive advantage, they are a topic of great interest to business professionals. While the literature on supply-chain management is extensive, the same cannot be said for supply-chain design in general and R&D supply chains in particular.
Research and development (R&D) supply chains are often designed without the process discipline and rigor that typically characterize the development of products emerging from R&D programs. This book should help everyday supply chain practitioners involved in research and new product development, who are migrating their products to full commercialization. The book should also aid decision makers looking to improve the overall effectiveness and efficiency of their supply chain. When new products are developed, a significant divide typically emerges in trying to commercialize the product while attempting to meet project demands for cost, schedule, and quality. Simply put, in many cases the supply chains developed to accomplish R&D functions are usually woefully inadequate to meet the demands of large-scale commercial applications. This book recounts the real-world work efforts, rigor, and discipline used to transition from a supply chain supporting R&D functions to a world-class supply chain capable of supporting a multibillion-dollar hydrocarbon recovery project.

Sourcing to Support the Green Initiative

Sourcing to Support the Green Initiative

$21.99

The ‘green’ or environmental sustainability movement has taken hold throughout the world. Its staying power is confirmed by that fact that environmental emphasis in organizations did not decrease during the recent global recession, but rather increased. However, since most organizations rely heavily on their supply base for providing components, materials, and services that become part of their final products, organizations must revisit their sourcing processes and choices to have a real impact on the environment. This book begins with an introduction to the idea of sustainability and to the concept of what it means to source to support an organization’s green initiatives, and why this is important from a holistic, lifecycle perspective. The initial chapters will also provide a point of view of how green sourcing fits into the organization’s entire portfolio of sustainability initiatives. Examples of industries and associations that lead the way in green sourcing will be presented. In addition, best practices in green sourcing will be discussed. The book also provides a perspective on how organizations can encourage and support their suppliers in pursuing green initiatives, and what types of initiatives provide a good starting point.

Managing Expatriates: A Return on Investment Approach

Managing Expatriates: A Return on Investment Approach

$21.99

Expatriation is a big topic, and is getting bigger. Over 200 million people worldwide now live and work in a country other than their country of origin. Tens of billions of dollars are spent annually by organizations that move expatriates around the world. Yet, despite the substantial costs involved, expatriation frequently results in an unsatisfactory return on investment (ROI), with little or no knowledge as to how to improve it. Why is this so? Drawing on more than a decade of expertise, research, and publications in top journals, the authors provide you real solutions to achieve more than a satisfactory ROI from expatriates–with rule number one being: Understand expatriates themselves. This book provides a practical ‘insider’s’ guide that reveals why expatriates seek and accept international assignments; how they feel impacted by new forms of remuneration and other working conditions; how international assignments fit in with their longer-term career aspirations; and what complications arise in terms of their families. Whether you’re a manager or consultant, inside you’ll learn what modern-day global mobility is like (based on the authors’ decade-long study with nearly four hundred expatriates and their managers, as well as over a hundred who were interviewed personally), how it is changing, and why now, more than ever, a hard-nosed ROI approach is necessary.

Multi-objective Decision Analysis: Managing Trade-offs and Uncertainty

Multi-objective Decision Analysis: Managing Trade-offs and Uncertainty

$21.99

Whether managing strategy, operations or products, knowing how to make the best decision in a complex, uncertain business environment is dif_ cult. You might be faced with multiple, competing objectives, which means making trade-offs. To complicate matters, any uncertainty makes it hard to explicitly understand how different objectives will impact potential outcomes. This book will help you face these problems. It provides a decision analysis framework implemented as a simple spreadsheet tool. This multi-objective decision analysis framework helps you to measure trade-offs among objectives and incorporate uncertainties and risk preferences. With this book, you will be able to identify what information is needed to make a decision, de_ ne how that information should be combined, and, finally, provide quantifiable evidence to clearly communicate and justify the decision. The process involves minimal overhead and is perfect for busy professionals who need a simple, structured process for making, tracking, and communicating decisions. This process makes decision making more efficient by focusing only on information and factors that are well-defined, measureable, and relevant to the decision at hand. The framework requires clear characterization of a decision, ensuring that it can be traced and is consistent with the intended objectives and organizational values. Using this structured decision-making framework, anyone can consistently make better decisions to gain competitive and strategic advantage.

Revenue Recognition: Principles and Practices

Revenue Recognition: Principles and Practices

$21.99

Revenue is the ‘top’ line on the income statement and is the fundamental driver of business success. To understand all the complexities involved in recognizing revenue under Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) you should primarily be concerned with two things: (a) the timing aspect (the when issue) and (b) the amount to be recorded (the how much issue). This book will provide just that–extensive guidance in assisting you with the appropriate answers and much more. This book is designed for you and all the organizational responsibility you carry for your company in order to deliver real profits. It’s a comprehensive yet readable examination of the existing rules of revenue recognition for corporate entities, and after reading the book, you’ll have a thorough understanding of how accountants measure and record revenue. This ‘skill-set’ will prove invaluable in understanding the impact that your business decisions will have on the financial statements with an emphasis on the income statement and the statement of cash flows. (It will also have an executive-level overview of the proposed ‘IASB and FASB Standard: Revenue from Contracts with Customers.’)

Customer-Oriented Marketing Strategy: Theory and Practice

Customer-Oriented Marketing Strategy: Theory and Practice

$21.99

What is customer orientation? And how does it fit in your idea of a good marketing strategy? This book can help you understand more about the relationships, applications, and steps to take to drive continuous relationships with customers to aid in the process of defining and implementing niche strategies, international marketing efforts, and electronic commerce. Inside, the authors start with classic marketing concepts and then review important developments and research of the latest findings (both from the theoretical and applied points of view) to present specific examples, methodologies, policy measures, and strategies that can be implemented to increase and perfect customer satisfaction. Both manufacturing and service businesses are addressed, and the results will give you a combination of the major studies in this specific field of marketing and strategy to offer a comprehensive strategic tool for decision makers in organizations.

Business Model Design and Learning: A Strategic Guide

Business Model Design and Learning: A Strategic Guide

$21.99

So many of us have asked ourselves–what’s a business model? What’s a good business model? This book has all the answers–it explains what a business model is, what you have to do to get one, and what to do about the one you’ve already got.
So many of us have asked ourselves–what’s a business model? What’s a good business model? This book has all the answers–it explains what a business model is, what you have to do to get one, and what to do about the one you’ve already got. To be successful, your business model must be focused sharply on your customer. And you must think strategically about how to use your business model if you want to gain an advantage over your competitors. Whether an aspiring entrepreneur or a practicing manager who wants to create new business model, or a manager and leader who wants to understand, refine, and even reinvent a current model, this book will help with the creation, the delivery, and the capture of value. Business models describe the value proposition to the customer, the system that must be in place to create that value, and the logics needed to capture a reasonable share of that value for the _ rm. This book shows that the core of every business model is an agreement with your customers. If they don’t get the value they are seeking, you won’t either.

Game Theory: Anticipating Reactions for Winning Actions

Game Theory: Anticipating Reactions for Winning Actions

$21.99

From its beginnings in the early 1900s, game theory has been a very mathematical, technical subject. However, it also provides valuable, everyday lessons that are important for managers and executives to understand. But current books and textbooks are mostly highly mathematical, and almost all are very long. This book will deliver a focused and precise, but nonmathematical, overview of topics in game theory that are directly relevant to managing an organization. Game theory is the science of action and reaction. While most standard economic analyses embody the science of making an optimal choice, this kind of analysis is largely undertaken in a vacuum. For example, when a firm raises or lowers its price, this is rarely the end of the story–competitors are likely to react by changing their prices and quantities as well. Game theory adds in this extra layer of realism. It teaches managers to think ahead and foresee possible reactions to their actions.

Understanding the Dynamics of the Value Chain

Understanding the Dynamics of the Value Chain

$21.99

In his 1985 book, Competitive Advantage, Michael Porter introduced the concept of the value chain and described it as ‘a systematic way of examining all activities a firm performs and how they interact, (necessary) for analyzing the sources of competitive advantage,’ and introduced the idea of ‘linkages,’ which was the real breakthrough in management thinking. Thinking of a firm as a series of horizontal and vertical linkages put the spotlight on the silo mentality within which firms operated and how business schools structured curriculum.In his 1985 book, Competitive Advantage, Michael Porter introduced the concept of the value chain and described it as ‘a systematic way of examining all activities a firm performs and how they interact, (necessary) for analyzing the sources of competitive advantage,’ and introduced the idea of ‘linkages,’ which was the real breakthrough in management thinking. Thinking of a firm as a series of horizontal and vertical linkages put the spotlight on the silo mentality within which firms operated and how business schools structured curriculum. The silo mentality caused business students unable to see the firm as a holistic entity, an understanding of how all of its parts fit together to develop competitive advantage. Students graduating with a silo mentality perpetuated the silo mentality in business firms. This book draws together existing knowledge to help facilitate the shift of mind necessary to effectively manage the value chain, and introduces a new conception of the value chain, one that has been copyrighted (2006) and provides a new perspective of the value chain commensurate with the demands of the 21st-century global economy.