Business, Finance & Law Books

Book SynopsisIf you want to be the best, you have to have the right skillset.From effective business writing and presentations to running productive meetings, THE ULTIMATE BUSINESS COMMUNICATION BOOK is a dynamic collection of tools, techniques, and strategies for success.Discover the main themes and key ideas, and bring it all together with practical exercises.This is your complete course in business communication.ABOUT THE SERIESULTIMATE books are for managers, leaders, and business executives who want to succeed at work. From marketing and sales to management and finance, each title gives comprehensive coverage of the essential business skills you need to get ahead in your career. Written in straightforward English, each book is designed to help you quickly master the subject, with fun quizzes embedded so that you can check how you''re doing.

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Book SynopsisThe Greats on Leadership is an in-depth tour of the best leadership ideas of the past 25 centuries, drawing out the key leadership insights from classic authors, weaving them together with business examples, the best contemporary research, and tools to help put it all into practice.Among the 20 specific leadership topics included are:Leadership Traps (Shakespeare) Change (Machiavelli) Power (Sophocles) Dilemmas (Madison, Hamilton) Communication (Lincoln, Pericles) Personality Types (Jung) Motivation (Frankl) Judgment (Maupassant, Melville, Austen, Shaw) Character (Churchill, Plutarch, Shelley, Joyce)The Greats on Leadership shows there are no greater lessons to follow than the classics in the search for practical wisdom.Trade ReviewDavis provides a book of substance that is a joy to read. In doing so, she demonstrates the relevance of the humanities even in a fast-changing 21st-century world. - SUCCESS magazineFor anyone who wants to be a great leader in one manageable book. - Marshall Goldsmith, Thinkers 50 #1 Thinker on Leadership in the WorldEminently practical. A great balance of introspection, inspiration, and impetus toward execution. - 800-CEO-READS Editor's ChoiceA delightful and mind stretching read that, when coupled with application tools and exercises, transforms the theoretical to the actionable. - Richard Whiteley, author of The Customer Driven Company, Love the Work You re With, The Corporate ShamanWhenever I hear Jocelyn Davis talk about leadership, I listen. Her latest, The Greats on Leadership, is indispensable to the novice and a great resource for the experienced. - Bryan Burrough, co-author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Barbarians at the GateBrings to life the writings of many of our most- loved authors and applies their thinking to present day business. This is a book you will return to, time and time again. - Karen Blal, CIPD Regional Director AsiaA rare blend of old and new. Davis draws together leadership lessons with the best of modern business writers. - Robert Mass, Partner, Head of International Compliance, Goldman SachsA great reminder to think about leadership in terms of the scope of the leader s impact and not rungs on the corporate ladder. - Carmelita Lubos, Director, Global Talent Management, Burberry

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Book SynopsisA New York Times Critics'' Pick for 2023 Born into a Jewish family in Vienna in 1919, George Weidenfeld fled to England in 1938 to escape the Nazi regime. There he began a career in publishing that would make him one of the most influential figures in the industry. Over the course of his long and illustrious career he championed some of the most important voices of the twentieth century, from Vladimir Nabokov, Mary McCarthy and Saul Bellow to Harold Wilson, Isaiah Berlin and Henry Kissinger.But what do we know about the man himself? Was he, as described by some, the ''greatest salesperson'', ''the world''s best networker'', ''the publisher''s publisher'' and ''a great intellectual''? Was his lifelong effort to be the world''s most famous host a cover for his desperate loneliness? Who, in fact, was the real George Weidenfeld and how did he rise so successfully within the ranks of London and New York society? Providing a full, unvarnished and at times difTrade ReviewA history of the golden age of publishing from the perspective of one man . . . fascinating -- Anne de Courcy * SPECTATOR *A marvellous biography . . . Thomas Harding has brought a great publisher and the shenanigans of the book trade gloriously to life -- Jilly Cooper * DAILY MAIL *An entertaining biography . . . The Maverick is packed with fascinating accounts of book deals and debacles during the 'golden age of publishing,' as well as plenty of high-society gossip * WASHINGTON POST *Thomas Harding's admirably even-handed and readable biography places Weidenfeld in both his social and cultural contexts, never excusing his more dubious actions, but also celebrating his undeniable pizzazz, application and drive -- Alexander Larman * OBSERVER *The Maverick anchors George Weidenfeld as one of the foremost influencers in modern literature and a man who rose from extraordinary circumstances to lead an even more extraordinary life and legacy. A treasure trove of insight and history -- ARIANNA HUFFINGTONMeticulously researched, cunningly constructed and compellingly written. A vivid account of publishing's glory years told through the action-packed life of one of its most charismatic pioneers -- ANTHONY HOLDENThe Maverick recalls a champion of ideas with a knack for networking and a taste for the high life . . . an organizational feat * NEW YORK TIMES *Uncovers the secrets of a chameolonic outsider who made himself a fixture of the cultural establishment . . . [A] compact, unfussy and well-sourced life * Financial Times *George Weidenfeld was a titan of a man, an irresistible character and something of a genius. This book does him full justice -- SIMON HEFFER, author of THE AGE OF DECADENCE and HIGH MINDS[George Weidenfeld] modernized Britain's small but influential publishing sector. . . The Maverick traces the parallel arcs of Weidenfeld's career and postwar publishing through his contacts and contracts . . . a skillful and subtle study in biography, British attitudes and the book business -- Dominic Green * WALL STREET JOURNAL *Like George Weidenfeld himself, Thomas Harding's accomplishment is substantial, lively and full of interest. The Maverick is a fine biography -- HENRY KISSINGERHarding has fun detailing his subject's four marriages and associated romantic interludes . . . We're always on the edge, wondering if George, the cosmopolitan charmer who made it to the House of Lords, will pull another cracker from the hat -- Andrew Lycett * DAILY MAIL *Offers a behind-the-scenes peek at an imprint that published some of the most seminal works of the 20th century, when books, and the ideas within them, were far more revered. A golden age indeed * IRISH TIMES *A fascinating biography of an unlikely cultural hero. I couldn't put it down -- ALAN POSENER, journalist for Die WeltThe Maverick is a vivid portrait, warts and all, of perhaps the most successful publisher in post-war Britain. But it is much more than this - a gripping study of the assimilation of Jewish emigres into Britain's strangely rigid but porous class system, a guide to the golden age of publishing, an analysis of post-war intellectual life through a succession of landmark books -- ADRIAN WOOLDRIDGE, Bloomberg OpinionIf a publisher can be called a genius . . . [George Weidenfeld] undoubtedly merits a place on this list. [He made] an astounding contribution to the world of literature and ideas. The riveting standout among Harding's chapters is the story of Weidenfeld's publication, in 1976, of David Pryce-Jones's biography of Unity Mitford -- Mark Bostridge * THE OLDIE *Weidenfeld was perhaps the most well-connected man in the Western world, whose calls to politicians, thinkers, business leaders and philanthropists - even popes - would always be taken. The strength of Thomas Harding's biography is the context it provides . . . by structuring the book as a series of chapters telling the stories behind Weidenfeld's publication of various key books, and then diverting within those stories to other aspects of his life - ignoring chronology to explore what made Weidenfeld tick, what he was interested in and what he was doing - The Maverick well reflects Weidenfeld himself, who was never at any time focused on just one thing . . . a sensitive and worthy study of a great man * THE JEWISH CHRONICLE *[An] intriguing life story * SUNDAY INDEPENDENT *A revealing look behind the scenes . . . Harding takes an intriguing approach by looking at Weidenfeld's life story through the lens of specific books he published. Along the way, readers are treated to firsthand accounts of author versus publisher spats and insights into the challenges of managing international rights for a surefire bestseller . . . will leave readers with a vivid picture of the working life of a publisher * PUBLISHERS WEEKLY *Thomas Harding has doggedly unearthed fascinating and surprising tales from George Weidenfeld's life as he rose from poverty and Nazi persecution to become one of the world's most powerful publishers. Harding reveals a complex personality in a richly told narrative that leaves the reader awed -- LYNN MEDFORD, former editor, Washington Post Magazine[George Weidenfeld] was fascinating in many ways. [He] had more backbone than most . . . his life was courageous, too * THE ECONOMIST *Makes the inspired choice of leading with the books that built the publisher's fame and fortune . . . Harding's approach works exceptionally well and allows him to cover a huge amount of ground . . . Will inform and entertain in equal measure * PROSPECT *

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Book SynopsisUncharitable investigates how for-profit strategies could and should be used by nonprofits. Uncharitable goes where no other book on the nonprofit sector has dared to tread. Where other texts suggest ways to optimize performance inside the existing charity paradigm, Uncharitable suggests that the paradigm itself is the problem and calls into question our fundamental canons about charity. Dan Pallotta argues that society’s nonprofit ethic creates an inequality that denies the nonprofit sector critical tools and permissions that the for-profit sector is allowed to use without restraint. These double standards place the nonprofit sector at an extreme disadvantage. While the for-profit sector is permitted to use all the tools of capitalism, the nonprofit sector is prohibited from using any of them. Capitalism is blamed for creating inequities in our society, but charity is prohibited from using the tools of capitalism to rectify them—and ironically, this is all done in the name of charity. This irrational system, Pallotta explains, has its roots in four-hundred-year-old Puritan ethics that banished self-interest from the realm of charity. The ideology is policed today by watchdog agencies and the use of so-called efficiency measures, which Pallotta argues are flawed, unjust, and should be abandoned. By declaring our independence from these obsolete ideas, Pallotta theorizes, we can dramatically accelerate progress on the most urgent social issues of our time. Uncharitable is an important, provocative, timely, and accessible book—a manifesto about equal economic rights for charity. This edition has a new, updated introduction by the author.Trade Review“Philanthropists and charity execs should read [Uncharitable] to ponder, if judiciously, its lessons.” * Boston Globe *“Pallotta turns on its head the assumption that charity and capitalism should be forever divided. Don't charitable causes deserve the same kind of competitive forces that work to get results in the for-profit sector? Wouldn't social causes be better served if charitable organizations were headed by the kind of bright, aggressive executives that work in the for-profit sector? Pallotta traces the history of nonprofit organizations to Puritan notions of charity and self-denial. He also offers a detailed case study of TeamWorks and other trends in the nonprofit sector that only tweak around the edges of a system that is sorely in need of change if it is to deliver on its mission to improve social inequities or cure diseases. A passionate, thought-provoking look at the nonprofit sector.” * Booklist *“Pallotta produces quite a lot of both data and logic. If you do not first analyze a fundraiser’s results, how is it possible to judge whether what it spent was justified? He also makes a convincing case for charities to spend far more on advertising, perhaps even selling shares to pay for it. If this makes you queasy, read Mr. Pallotta’s book. As he says, ‘To mount a campaign to convert 6 billion people to love—which is essentially the role of charity—takes a lot of money. . . . . Raise the capital to promote the idea by offering a return on investment, hire the best people to manage the effort, and run the advertising to spread the word. You beat capitalism at its own game.’” * The Economist *“This tome is big-time out-of-the-box thinking that will cause ripples. Yet if you care about charity, it is a must read. While I don’t want to lose the volunteer passion and compassion in charitable work, it’s high time we confront the fact that, for the most part, this is no longer a bake sale.” * In Los Angeles Magazine *“Everyone who cares about nonprofit organizations and their potential accomplishments—from journalists to sophisticated donors to foundation officials—should read this book. They’ll surely be convinced that fundraising ratios and program expense ratios are a silly, useless, and even fraudulent way to compare “efficiency” across nonprofit organizations.” * Stanford Social Innovation Review *“What scales would our nonprofit organizations have to achieve to eradicate the great social problems that confront us, and how do our traditions and beliefs about charity stand in their way? Pallotta has elevated the questions we need to be asking. His book provocatively challenges traditional views of how charities should operate and provides a thought-provoking alternative.” -- Dr. David Ho, Time magazine’s 1996 Man of the Year and director of the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center“Pallotta has written the clearest and most articulate critique I have read of the system of values that our charities and other nonprofit organizations are supposed to follow. He explains in graphic detail how these values undercut what charities are trying to do and prevent them from accomplishing all that they might. Not everyone may agree with his position, but the nonprofit world will surely benefit from a vigorous discussion of his arguments.” -- Derek Bok, former president of Harvard UniversityTable of ContentsIntroduction to New EditionIntroduction1. The Morality of OutcomesNonprofit IdeologyA Model of Christian CharityConclusion2. The Foundations of Our MisconstructionEconomic ApartheidThe First Error—Constraints on Compensation: Charity and Self-Deprivation Are Not the Same ThingThe Second Error—Prohibition on Risk: Punishing Courage, Rewarding TimidityThe Third Error—Discouragement of Long-Term Vision: The Need for Immediate Gratification Institutionalizes SufferingThe Fourth Error—Discouragement of Paid Advertising: If You Don’t Advertise Here, Your Competition WillThe Fifth Error—Prohibition on Investment Return: The Limits of No Return, and a Stock Market for CharityConclusion3. Stop Asking This QuestionEfficiency Measures—The Puritan GuardEfficiency Measures Miss the PointEfficiency Measures Don’t Measure EfficiencyEfficiency Measures Are UnjustOverhead Is a FictionSummaryNew Questions and a Very Large Assessment Apparatus4. CourageA Cold World?Strategic PlanReclaiming Our DreamsAcknowledgmentsCase Study—Pallotta TeamWorksMethods and ControversyCollapse of the CompanyImpact on Organizations’ AIDS and Breast Cancer FundraisingNotesBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisPress photography is not just a career - it's a way of life - and photojournalists have a ringside seat on contemporary history. This book explains how to capitalise on that ringside seat. Written by an expert in the field, the core skills of the working photographer are detailed, with reference to areas of speciality in news, fashion, royalty, advertising, sport and war photography, and social history issues. Allied essential skills such as caption-writing, keywording and archiving images are also covered. This comprehensive book includes invaluable information on the latest developments in picture transmission, the role of the picture desk in the modern newspaper or news agency, the legal aspects of photojournalism and the rights and moral responsibility of the photographer. Finally, a guide to established career paths into photojournalism offers useful sources for further investigation.

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Book SynopsisWe are living through a cost of living crisis, with interest rate hikes and the prices of everyday consumables and energy bills sky-rocketing. Why is this happening? Sometimes we are told that wages are too high, or that the government has "printed" too much money or that events far away, such as the war in Ukraine, are solely to blame. The plain argument that high prices go together with high profits, falling wages, and weak production is often distorted and hidden by mainstream commentary in the media and elsewhere. This plain-speaking pamphlet tells it straight: the big businesses dominating production and distribution make huge profits out of high inflation, while working people lose out. It sets out factual evidence to illustrate that the source of record profits is the fall in real wages as inflation rises. A large part of the income of working people is being transferred directly into the profits of big business. The pamphlet shows that the deeper roots of the "cost of living crisis" lie in the very low investment and poor productivity growth for many years. The basic steps to resolving the crisis are simple: prices, especially of essentials, must be brought down, and wages, salaries, benefits, and pensions must be increased.Trade Review[An] excellent little book -- Will Podmore * The Morning Star *A small book with a mighty big punch ... Closely argued in clear, accessible language, [The Cost of Living Crisis] demolishes the decades-old lie that wage rises are the source of inflation, and backs that case with hard facts. * Scottish Socialist Voice *

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Book SynopsisThe Great Post Office Scandal is the extraordinary story behind the recent ITV drama series Mr Bates vs The Post Office. This gripping page-turner recounts how thousands of subpostmasters were accused of theft and false accounting on the back of evidence from Horizon, the flawed computer system designed by Fujitsu, and how a group of them, led by Alan Bates, took their fight to the High Court. Their eventual victory in court vindicated their claims about the defects of the software and exposed the heavy handed attempts by the Post Office to suppress them. The book also chronicles how successive senior managers, business leaders, lawyers, civil servants and Government ministers, at best failed to expose the injustice or, even worse, sought to cover it up, resulting in one of the largest miscarriages of justice in UK history. The author, Nick Wallis, is a journalist and broadcaster who has been reporting on the scandal for over ten years and who acted as script consultant on Mr Bates vs The Post Office, the ITV drama that brought the affair into the national consciousness. As the public inquiry reaches its climax, and senior figures such as Paula Vennells come to be questioned, The Great Post Office Scandal reveals the full scale of what happened and will leave you enraged at how so many of our trusted institutions allowed the saga to go on for nearly a quarter of a century, shattering the lives of thousands of innocent people.

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Book SynopsisComprising a collection of interview essays with nineteen public intellectuals and scholars from around the world, this book reflects on some of the most pressing questions of our age: what is global inequality; what causes it; and how should we deal with it? Leading figures within the fields of History, Sociology, Economics, Anthropology and Postcolonial Studies, shed light on how their personal backgrounds, places of work, and hometowns have shaped their views on global inequality. We learn about the causes of global inequality, the historical factors that have shaped the world into an unequal place, and the challenges that humanity is confronted with in the face of the widening gap between the poor and the rich. Bringing together voices from the Global North and South, this book helps us to think more broadly about inequality and deepens our understanding of how this long-lasting phenomenon is, and has been, experienced across the globe.Table of Contents1. Introduction; Christian Olaf Christiansen, Oliver Bugge Hunt, Melanie Lindbjerg Machado-Guichon, Sofía Mercader Priyanka JhaPart I. Deep Roots: Legacies of Imperialism and Colonialism2. Global Equality and Inequality: Notes for a New History; Siep Sturrman3. Poverty and Ideology: Historic Pathways to Global Inequality; Julia McClure4. Anti-Imperalism and Global Inequality; Göran Therborn5. The Colonial Matrix of Power as a Wakeup Call; Walter Mignolo6. From Third World to First, and Back Again: Colonial Logics and Global Inequality; Kho Tung-YiPart II. Unequal Entanglements: A Capitalist World System7. Global Finance and Global Inequality: An Analysis Built on Global Measurement; James K. Galbraith8. How the Global Movement of Money and People Turns the World Upside Down; Alastair Greig9. The Need to Centre Imperialism in Our Study of Global Inequality; Ingrid Kvangraven10. Global Inequality and the Crisis of Neoliberal Capitalism; Gilbert Achcar11. The Unequal Effects of Climate Change; Patrick BondPart III. The Inertia of Hierarchies: Class, Caste, Race and Gender12. Reflecting on Global Inequality through my Experience of Inequality in India; Krishnas Swamy13. Writing about Poverty and Caste as a Novelist and Cultural Critic; Subramanian Shankar14. From the Personal to the Global; Arabo Ewinyu15. Global Solidarities against Global Inequality; Manushi Yami BhattaraiPart IV. Thinking Beyond Economics: The Politics of Inequalities16. From Chile to New York: Inequality, Corruption and Ogliarchic Domination; Camila Vergara17. Thinking about Global Inequality: From Buenos Aires to Belgrade; Agustín Cosovschi18. Making the Familiar Strange: Anthropological Reflections on Global Inequality; Tania Li19. Mauritius in an Unequal World; Sheila Bunwaree.

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Book SynopsisIntroductory courses in combinatorial optimization are popular at the upper undergraduate/graduate levels in computer science, industrial engineering, and business management/OR, owed to its wide applications in these fields. There are several published textbooks that treat this course and the authors have used many of them in their own teaching experiences. This present text fills a gap and is organized with a stress on methodology and relevant content, providing a step-by-step approach for the student to become proficient in solving combinatorial optimization problems. Applications and problems are considered via recent technology developments including wireless communication, cloud computing, social networks, and machine learning, to name several, and the reader is led to the frontiers of combinatorial optimization. Each chapter presents common problems, such as minimum spanning tree, shortest path, maximum matching, network flow, set-cover, as well as key algorithms, such as greedy algorithm, dynamic programming, augmenting path, and divide-and-conquer. Historical notes, ample exercises in every chapter, strategically placed graphics, and an extensive bibliography are amongst the gems of this textbook.Trade Review“This book introduces combinatorial optimization with a methodology-oriented organization. It targets undergraduate and graduate students and contains a good mix of theoretical results (with proof) and examples, which helps the reader acquire ideas and concepts. The chapters end with a list of exercises for the students.” (Francisco Chicano, Mathematical Reviews, January, 2024)“The book can appropriately be used as a textbook in a graduate course. All the algorithms are clearly explained and presented. It is a very valuable book for successful application of real problems from combinatorial optimization. … this book is an excellent contribution to the field of combinatorial optimization, and it is highly recommended to the students and researchers in optimization.” (Samir Kumar Neogy, zbMATH 1512.90001, 2023)Table of Contents1. Introduction.-2. Divide-and-Conquer.- 3. Dynamic Programming and Shortest Path.- 4. Greedy Algorithm and Spanning Tree.- 5. Incremental Method and Maximum Network Flow.- 6. Linear Programming.- 7. Primal-Dual Methods and Minimum Cost Flow.- 8. NP-hard Problems and Approximation Algorithms.- 9. Restriction and Steiner Tree.- 10. Greedy Approximation and Submodular Optimization.- 11. Relaxation and Rounding. 12. Nonsubmodular Optimization.- Bibliography.

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Book SynopsisIf you're a business leader looking to stay ahead of the curve, this book is an essential guide. It offers a comprehensive overview of the major trends shaping the future of business, drawing on reviews of 70 recent management books and interviews with 21 senior leaders.What sets this book apart is that it's grounded in the real-world experiences of active business leaders. From political affairs to family businesses and everything in between, each of the eight parts offers expert insights on the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead. Whether you're seeking to adapt your strategy to the external environment, lead your organization towards fulfilling its mission, or simply stay ahead of the competition, this book has got you covered.Table of ContentsPrelude.- Political and World Affairs - Where We Are Today: Practice Insights.- Introduction to Political and World Affairs.- Essential Books to Learn About Political and World Affairs - Where We Are.- Closing Remarks.- Adapting the Firm's Strategy to the External Environment - Getting Started: Practice Insights.- Introduction to Adapting the Firm's Strategy to the External Environment - Getting Started.- Essential Books to Learn About Adapting the Firm's Strategy to the External Environment - Getting Started.- Executive Profiles of Business Leaders.- Closing Remarks.- The Business - Your Company: Practice Insights.- Introduction to the Business - Your Company.- Essential Books to Learn About the Business - Your Company.- Executive Profiles of Business Leaders.- Closing Remarks.- Strategic Options - Strategy Means Choice: Practice Insights.- Introduction to Strategic Options - Strategy Means Choice.- Essential Books to Learn About Strategic Options - Strategy Means Choice.- Executive Profiles of Business Leaders.- Closing Remarks.- The Family Business - An Inspiring Source: Practice Insights.- Introduction to the Family Business - An Inspiring Source.- Essential Books to Learn About the Family Business - An Inspiring Source.- Executive Profiles of Business Leaders.- Closing Remarks.- Investing to Maximize Wealth - Value Creation and Growth: Practice Insights.- Introduction to Investing to Maximize Wealth - Value Creation and Growth.- Essential Books to Learn About Investing to Maximize Wealth - Value Creation and Growth.- Executive Profiles of Business Leaders.- Closing Remarks.- Leading the Organization - Towards Fulfilling the Mission: Business Insights.- Introduction to Leading the Organization - Towards Fulfilling the Mission.- Essential Books to Learn About Leading the Organization - Towards Fulfilling the Mission.- Executive Profiles of Business Leaders.- Closing Remarks.- Leadership and Self - Now to You: Practice Insights.- Introduction to Leadership and Self - Now to You.- Essential Books to Learn About Leadership and Self - Now to You.- Closing Remarks.- Conclusions: Postface.- Conclusions on Accelerated Learning for Business Success.

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Agile coaches, you're gonna be happy with this book. Kenny Rubin has created an indispensable resource for us. Do you have a manager that just doesn't 'get it'? Hand them this book and ask them to flip to Chapter 3 for a complete explanation of how Scrum is less risky than plan-driven management. It's written just for them-in management-speak. Want to help the team come to a common understanding of Scrum? The visual icon language used throughout this book will help you help them. These are just two ways this book can aid you to coach Scrum teams. Use it well." -Lyssa Adkins, Coach of Agile Coaches, Agile Coaching Institute; author, Coaching Agile Teams "One of the best, most comprehensive descriptions of the core Scrum framework out there! Essential Scrum is for anyone-new to or experienced with Scrum-who's interested in the most important aspects of the process. Kenny does an excellent job of distilling the key tenets of the Scrum framework into a simple format with compelling visuals. As a Scrum coach for many teams, I continually reference the material for new ways to help teams that are learning and practicing the framework. I've seen Scrum continually misinterpreted and poorly implemented by big companies and tool vendors for more than ten years. Reading this book will help you get back to the basics and focus on what's important." -Joe Balistrieri, Process Development Manager, Rockwell Automation "Corporate IT leadership, which has been slow to embrace agile methods, would benefit immensely from giving a copy of this book to all of their project and delivery managers. Kenny Rubin has laid out in this book all the pragmatic business case and process materials needed for any corporate IT shop to successfully implement Scrum." -John F. Bauer III, veteran of technical solution delivery in large corporate IT shops "Kenny's extensive experience as a consultant, trainer, and past managing director of the Scrum Alliance is evident in this book. Along with providing the basics and introduction to Scrum, this book addresses the questions of masses-what happens to project managers? Essential Scrum helps us understand the big picture and guides how organization leaders can support and be involved with their Scrum teams for successful agile transformations." -Sameer S. Bendre CSM, PMP, Senior Consultant, 3i Infotech Inc. "If you're new to agile development or to Scrum, this book will give you a flying start. The examples and descriptions are clear and vivid, and you'll often find yourself asking a question just before the book addresses that very topic." -Johannes Brodwall, Principal Solution Architect, Steria Norway "Kenny's well-structured explanations have a clarity to them that echoes the sensibilities of Smalltalk-the development environment with which he worked for years and from which both Scrum and Extreme Programming were born. This book pulls together a thorough set of agile management principles that really hit the mark and will no doubt guide you toward a more effective agile approach." -Rowan Bunning, Founder, Scrum WithStyle "There are lots of books on Scrum these days, but this book takes a new angle, a reality check for software practitioners. Kenny uses real-world examples and clear illustrations to show what makes a solid foundation for successful agile development. Readers will understand the value of building quality in, and the reality that we can't get everything right up front; we must work incrementally and learn as we go. It might have 'Scrum' in the title, but the book leverages effective practices from the larger agile universe to help managers and their teams succeed." -Lisa Crispin, coauthor, Agile Testing "Kenny Rubin managed to write the book that I want everyone associated with Scrum development to read! He covers everything you'll need to know about Scrum and more!" -Martine Devos, European Scrum Pioneer and Certified Scrum Trainer "I've reviewed a number of agile books in the past few years, so the question of 'Do we really need another one?' always comes to my mind. In the case of Kenny's book, I very much believe the answer is 'yes.' Getting the benefit of different, experienced perspectives on commonly encountered and needed material is valuable. Kenny has one of those valuable perspectives. One unique aspect of the book is an interesting 'iconography'-a new icon language for Scrum and agile that Kenny has created. I believe you'll find value-added material in this book to expand your ideas for how Scrum can be applied." -Scott Duncan, Agile/Scrum coach and trainer "Anyone who has had Scrum training or has been part of a Scrum team will find Essential Scrum to be a great follow-up read. It dives into the details of how to become more agile through implementing Scrum processes, and it explains exactly how to break down complex projects into manageable initiatives (or 'sprints'). Kenny Rubin provides a wealth of relevant case studies on what worked-or what didn't-in a variety of organizations. The simple layout and businesslike graphics make it easy to scan quickly and find specific topics. Any organization that is seeking to evolve from a traditional waterfall approach toward a more agile methodology will find Essential Scrum a definitive guidebook for the journey." -Julia Frazier, product manager "Developing software is hard. Adopting a new way of working while in a project is even harder. This book offers a bypass of many of the pitfalls and will accelerate a team's ability to produce business value and become successful with Scrum. I wish I had this kind of book when I started using Scrum." -Geir Hedemark, Development Manager, Basefarm AS "I am convinced that Essential Scrum will become the foundation reference for the next generation of Scrum practitioners. Not only is it the most comprehensive introduction to Scrum in publication today, but it is also extremely well written and easy on the eye with its fantastic new visual Scrum language. If that isn't enough, Kenny shares a range of his valuable personal insights and experiences that we can all certainly learn from." -Ilan Goldstein, Agile Solutions Manager, Reed Elsevier "Scrum is elegantly simple, yet deceptively complex. In Essential Scrum, Kenny Rubin provides us with a step-by-step guide to those complexities while retaining the essential simplicity. Real-world experiences coupled with enlightening illustrations make Scrum come to life. For senior managers and team members alike, this is a must-read book if you are starting or considering whether to implement Scrum in your organization. This will certainly be a book recommended to my students." -John Hebley, Hebley & Associates "Kenny unpacks a wealth of wisdom and knowledge in Essential Scrum, providing valuable and comprehensive insights to the practical application of agile/Scrum. Whether you're new to agile or are looking to reach a greater maturity of continuous improvement in your organization, this is a definitive handbook for your toolbox." -David Luzquinos, Head of Agile Enablement, Agile Coach, Betfair "Kenny Rubin continues to provide clarity and insight into adopting agile in a pragmatic way. In one hand he holds the formal or ideal Scrum definition and in the other, the pragmatic application of it. He brings the wisdom of his workshops and years of experience to the table, and now for you to read in his latest book. If you are about to start out on your agile adoption journey or are seeking guidance midcourse, grab a copy." -Cuan Mulligan, freelance coactive Agile coach "A decade after publication of the first Scrum books, it is time to combine the essential aspects of the Scrum framework with the practical experiences and approaches of the last ten years. Kenny Rubin does so in a satisfying and nondogmatic way. The reader gets a pragmatic look at Scrum and learns when and how to best apply Scrum to achieve business benefits." -Yves Stalgies, PhD, Director IT, www.etracker.com "Adoption of Scrum is most successful when everyone involved-even peripherally-with product development has a good understanding of the fundamentals. Essential Scrum provides an ideal overview of both the big picture and the details in an accessible style. It is sure to become a standard reference." -Kevin Tureski, Principal, Kevin Tureski ConsultingTable of ContentsList of Figures xxv Foreword by Mike Cohn xxxi Foreword by Ron Jeffries xxxiii Preface xxxv Acknowledgments xxxix About the Author xliii Chapter 1: Introduction 1 What Is Scrum? 1 Scrum Origins 3 Why Scrum? 4 Genomica Results 4 Can Scrum Help You? 5 Closing 10 Part I: Core Concepts 11 Chapter 2: Scrum Framework 13 Overview 13 Scrum Roles 14 Scrum Activities and Artifacts 16 Closing 28 Chapter 3: Agile Principles 29 Overview 29 Variability and Uncertainty 32 Prediction and Adaptation 37 Just-in-Time Work 43 Validated Learning 44 Work in Process (WIP) 48 Progress 54 Performance 56 Closing 58 Chapter 4: Sprints 61 Overview 61 Timeboxed 62 Short Duration 64 Consistent Duration 67 No Goal-Altering Changes 69 Definition of Done 74 Closing 78 Chapter 5: Requirements and User Stories 79 Overview 79 Using Conversations 81 Progressive Refinement 82 What Are User Stories? 83 Level of Detail 86 INVEST in Good Stories 88 Nonfunctional Requirements 93 Knowledge-Acquisition Stories 93 Gathering Stories 95 Closing 98 Chapter 6: Product Backlog 99 Overview 99 Product Backlog Items 100 Good Product Backlog Characteristics 101 Grooming 104 Definition of Ready 108 Flow Management 110 Which and How Many Product Backlogs? 112 Closing 118 Chapter 7: Estimation and Velocity 119 Overview 119 What and When We Estimate 120 PBI Estimation Concepts 123 PBI Estimation Units 128 Planning Poker 129 What Is Velocity? 133 Calculate a Velocity Range 134 Forecasting Velocity 135 Affecting Velocity 135 Misusing Velocity 137 Closing 138 Chapter 8: Technical Debt 139 Overview 139 Consequences of Technical Debt 141 Causes of Technical Debt 144 Technical Debt Must Be Managed 148 Managing the Accrual of Technical Debt 149 Making Technical Debt Visible 153 Servicing the Technical Debt 155 Closing 162 Part II: Roles 163 Chapter 9: Product Owner 165 Overview 165 Principal Responsibilities 166 Characteristics/Skills 171 A Day in the Life 174 Who Should Be a Product Owner? 176 Product Owner Combined with Other Roles 181 Product Owner Team 182 Closing 184 Chapter 10: ScrumMaster 185 Overview 185 Principal Responsibilities 185 Characteristics/Skills 188 A Day in the Life 190 Fulfilling the Role 191 Closing 193 Chapter 11: Development Team 195 Overview 195 Role-Specific Teams 195 Principal Responsibilities 196 Characteristics/Skills 198 Closing 211 Chapter 12: Scrum Team Structures 213 Overview 213 Feature Teams versus Component Teams 213 Multiple-Team Coordination 218 Closing 223 Chapter 13: Managers 225 Overview 225 Fashioning Teams 227 Nurturing Teams 231 Aligning and Adapting the Environment 233 Managing Value-Creation Flow 235 Project Managers 237 Closing 243 Part III: Planning 245 Chapter 14: Scrum Planning Principles 247 Overview 247 Don’t Assume We Can Get the Plans Right Up Front 248 Up-Front Planning Should Be Helpful without Being Excessive 248 Keep Planning Options Open Until the Last Responsible Moment 249 Focus More on Adapting and Replanning Than on Conforming to a Plan 249 Correctly Manage the Planning Inventory 251 Favor Smaller and More Frequent Releases 252 Plan to Learn Fast and Pivot When Necessary 254 Closing 255 Chapter 15: Multilevel Planning 257 Overview 257 Portfolio Planning 259 Product Planning (Envisioning) 259 Release Planning 261 Sprint Planning 264 Daily Planning 264 Closing 265 Chapter 16: Portfolio Planning 267 Overview 267 Scheduling Strategies 270 Inflow Strategies 275 Outflow Strategies 280 In-Process Strategies 283 Closing 285 Chapter 17: Envisioning (Product Planning) 287 Overview 287 SR4U Example 290 Visioning 291 High-Level Product Backlog Creation 294 Product Roadmap Definition 295 Other Activities 298 Economically Sensible Envisioning 299 Closing 306 Chapter 18: Release Planning (Longer-Term Planning) 307 Overview 307 Release Constraints 311 Grooming the Product Backlog 315 Refine Minimum Releasable Features (MRFs) 316 Sprint Mapping (PBI Slotting) 316 Fixed-Date Release Planning 318 Fixed-Scope Release Planning 323 Calculating Cost 325 Communicating 326 Closing 330 Part IV: Sprinting 333 Chapter 19: Sprint Planning 335 Overview 335 Approaches to Sprint Planning 338 Determining Capacity 340 Selecting Product Backlog Items 343 Acquiring Confidence 344 Refine the Sprint Goal 346 Finalize the Commitment 346 Closing 346 Chapter 20: Sprint Execution 347 Overview 347 Sprint Execution Planning 349 Flow Management 349 Daily Scrum 354 Task Performance—Technical Practices 355 Communicating 356 Closing 360 Chapter 21: Sprint Review 363 Overview 363 Participants 364 Prework 365 Approach 368 Sprint Review Issues 372 Closing 373 Chapter 22: Sprint Retrospective 375 Overview 375 Participants 377 Prework 378 Approach 380 Follow Through 391 Sprint Retrospective Issues 392 Closing 393 Chapter 23: The Path Forward 395 There Is No End State 395 Discover Your Own Path 396 Sharing Best Practices 396 Using Scrum to Discover the Path Forward 397 Get Going! 398 Glossary 401 References 423 Index 427

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Book SynopsisDavid M. Levine and David F. Stephan are part of a writing team known for their series of business statistics textbooks that include Basic Business Statistics, Business Statistics: A First Course, and Statistics for Managers Using Microsoft Excel. In long teaching careers at Baruch College, both were known for their classroom innovations, with Levine being honored with a Presidential Excellence Award for Distinguished Teaching Award and Stephan granted the privilege to design and develop the College's first computer-based classroom. Both are active members of the Data, Analytics and Statistics Instruction SIG of the Decision Sciences Institute. Levine is Professor Emeritus of Information Systems at Baruch College. He is nationally recognized innovator in business statistics education and is also the coauthor of Applied Statistics for Engineers and Scientists Using Microsoft Excel and Minitab. Levine is also the authorTable of ContentsIntroduction The Even You Can Learn Statistics and Analytics Owner's Manual. xiii Chapter 1 Fundamentals of Statistics. 1 1.1 The First Three Words of Statistics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 1.2 The Fourth and Fifth Words. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 1.3 The Branches of Statistics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 1.4 Sources of Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 1.5 Sampling Concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 1.6 Sample Selection Methods. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Chapter 2 Presenting Data in Tables and Charts . 15 2.1 Presenting Categorical Variables. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 2.2 Presenting Numerical Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 2.3 “Bad” Charts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Chapter 3 Descriptive Statistics. 45 3.1 Measures of Central Tendency. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 3.2 Measures of Position. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 3.3 Measures of Variation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 3.4 Shape of Distributions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 Chapter 4 Probability. 75 4.1 Events. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 4.2 More Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 4.3 Some Rules of Probability. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 4.4 Assigning Probabilities. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 Chapter 5 Probability Distributions. 87 5.1 Probability Distributions for Discrete Variables. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 5.2 The Binomial and Poisson Probability Distributions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 5.3 Continuous Probability Distributions and the Normal Distribution . . . . . . . 100 5.4 The Normal Probability Plot. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108 Chapter 6 Sampling Distributions and Confidence Intervals. 121 6.1 Foundational Concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122 6.2 Sampling Error and Confidence Intervals. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125 6.3 Confidence Interval Estimate for the Mean Using the t Distribution (? Unknown). . . 128 6.4 Confidence Interval Estimation for Categorical Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131 6.5 Confidence Interval Estimation When Normality Cannot Be Assumed. . . . . 134 Chapter 7 Fundamentals of Hypothesis Testing. 145 7.1 The Null and Alternative Hypotheses. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145 7.2 Hypothesis Testing Issues. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147 7.3 Decision-Making Risks. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149 7.4 Performing Hypothesis Testing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150 7.5 Types of Hypothesis Tests. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152 Chapter 8 Hypothesis Testing: Z and t Tests. 157 8.1 Test for the Difference Between Two Proportions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157 8.2 Test for the Difference Between the Means of Two Independent Groups . . . . 163 8.3 The Paired t Test. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168 Chapter 9 Hypothesis Testing: Chi-Square Tests and the One-Way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). 183 9.1 Chi-Square Test for Two-Way Tables. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183 9.2 One-Way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA): Testing for the Differences Among the Means of More Than Two Groups. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191 Chapter 10 Simple Linear Regression. 211 10.1 Basics of Regression Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211 10.2 Developing a Simple Linear Regression Model. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214 10.3 Measures of Variation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221 10.4 Inferences About the Slope. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226 10.5 Common Mistakes When Using Regression Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229 Chapter 11 Multiple Regression. 243 11.1 The Multiple Regression Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243 11.2 Coefficient of Multiple Determination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246 11.3 The Overall F Test . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246 11.4 Residual Analysis for the Multiple Regression Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247 11.5 Inferences Concerning the Population Regression Coefficients. . . . . . . . . . 248 Chapter 12 Introduction to Analytics. 259 12.1 Basic Concepts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259 12.2 Descriptive Analytics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265 12.3 Typical Descriptive Analytics Visualizations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269 Chapter 13 Predictive Analytics. 279 13.1 Predictive Analytics Methods. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279 13.2 More About Predictive Models. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281 13.3 Tree Induction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 284 13.4 Clustering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287 13.5 Association Analysis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 290 Appendix A Microsoft Excel Operation and Configuration . 299 Appendix B Review of Arithmetic and Algebra. 301 Appendix C Statistical Tables. 311 Appendix D Spreadsheet Tips . 339 Appendix E Advanced Techniques. 343 Appendix F Documentation for Downloadable Files. 353 9780137654765, TOC, 4/25/2022

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Book SynopsisIndividuals become design thinkers by experiencing design. Drawing on decades of researching and teaching design thinking to people not trained in design, Jeanne Liedtka, Karen Hold, and Jessica Eldridge offer a guide for how to create these deep experiences at each stage of the design thinking journey.Trade ReviewJust when the world needs to up the innovation ante, here is the code to transform yourself, your team, or your whole organization. A true landmark book rooted in design thinking—meticulously evidenced, easy to read, and, above all, actionable for frontline change agents, CEOs, and everyone in between. I guarantee much nodding and many an aha moment. Better still, you’ll finish with your own personal profile and plan! -- David Kester, managing director, managing director, DK&A, and former chief executive, UK Design CouncilThis is an amazing book. It is not just another design thinking “how-to” guide. Experiencing Design is about you—how embracing design thinking as a way of being will transform the way you see, approach, and navigate the digital age. Experiencing Design is a liberating journey: it will enhance your cognitive, emotional, and behavioral abilities to think, explore, discover, create, listen, and collaborate in order to experience the joy and wonder of life more often. -- Edward D. Hess, professor emeritus of business administration, Darden School of Business, and author of thirteen books including Hyper-Learning: How to Adapt to the Speed of ChangeAs Design Thinking gains in popularity, it risks being reduced to a set of rote steps that users naively assume if followed will magically produce a fabulous solution. In Experiencing Design, long-time design theorist Jeanne Liedtka and her co-authors argue persuasively that the design thinker, not a particular set of steps, is the key to design thinking effectiveness. With thoroughness and clarity, they lead the reader through the experiential journey a design thinker must take to achieve the desired breakthrough solutions. -- Roger L. Martin, Founder and President, Roger L. Martin Inc.Experiencing Design is a must-read for anyone seeking to build more change-ready and adaptive organizations. Jeanne Liedtka and her team have effectively unlocked the secret to not only developing, but also assessing the behaviors and mindsets that are essential for success in a fast-changing world. -- Adam Billing, founder of Treehouse Innovation and SprintbaseLooking for a practical guide on how to cultivate and integrate an enterprising spirit into any enterprise? Experiencing Design will show you step-by-step how to unleash the innate creativity that resides in all of us and channel it toward a purpose-led outcome. It is a marvelous read based on sound research. I’m recommending Experiencing Design to everyone in my company to read and relish. -- Maureen Thurston, chief experience officer, AURECONLiedtka, Hold, and Eldridge make the case for how the transformation of individuals through design thinking is actually how it changes individuals and allows them to make greater innovations. The focus on how the process transforms those who use it is a unique and needed contribution to the broader literature. -- Mathew D. Duerden, associate professor of experience design and management, Brigham Young University, and coauthor of Designing ExperiencesGoing beyond tools and processes, the inner evolution of a design thinker is well captured in the compelling new book spearheaded by design thinking guru Jeanne Liedtka. This must-read book charts the abilities and emotional evolution of design thinkers in their quest for innovation. * Your Story, Year in Review 2021: The top 10 books of 2021 for entrepeneurs *Table of ContentsPart I: Introduction1. How Design Shapes Us as We Shape Designs2. Why Design Thinking WorksPart II: The Discovery Process3. Immersion4. Sensemaking5. Alignment6. EmergencePart III: The Testing Process7. Imagining8. Learning in Action9. Putting It All TogetherPart IV: Different Strokes for Different Folks10. The Driver11. The Influencer12. The Analyst13. The SupporterPart V: The Destination14. Personal Development Planning15. Organizational Development PlanningAppendicesNotesAcknowledgmentsIndex

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Book SynopsisThis book is a hands-on manual for crafting and conducting useful experiments in real-life settings.Trade ReviewThis is one of those rare books that everyone should read. We are in the era of smart technology that will require every person and organization to learn, unlearn, and relearn at the pace of technological change. This book will help you become a faster, better learner. -- Edward D. Hess, professor emeritus of business administration, Darden School of Business, and author of fifteen books including Own Your Own Work Journey! The Path to Meaningful Work and Happiness in the Age of Smart Technology and Radical ChangeLiedtka, Chen, Foley, and Kester present the most detailed and structured articulation of the experimentation process I've seen outside of the sciences. The Experimentation Field Book allows those skilled in the art to put these methods to practice immediately. -- Graham Henshaw, director of the Alan B. Miller Entrepreneurship Center, William and MaryIt used to be that we would tinker, try things out, prototype, and ask around and see how our vision of a new service formed. Forget how it used to be. Experimentation has grown up. The ideas and templates in this practical and accessible field book are the most clear and concise I’ve ever seen on using intelligent experimentation to surge through to success, collaboratively and cost-effectively. -- Eddie Obeng, professor of innovation and entrepreneurship, Henley Business School, and innovation lead and educator, Pentacle: The Virtual Business SchoolExperiments are conducted every day in business to test if new ideas work before investing heavily in them. But many companies lack the right skills to experiment effectively. This book provides an indispensable guide all the way through, from framing the experiment and gathering the evidence for it to building the prototype, analyzing the results, and making the right adaptations. It’s sharp, succinct, and actionable, with four great case studies driving the narrative. And you won’t need to go near a science lab to learn the process! -- Jeremy Myerson, director, WORKTECH Academy, and professor emeritus, Royal College of ArtWith software and AI consuming more and more economic value, it's not an exaggeration to say experiments are the future of business. Without the creative confidence this book offers, you're playing at a disadvantage. -- Alex Cowan, author of Hypothesis-Driven Development: A Guide to Smarter Project ManagementIn an ever-evolving world filled with challenges, the power to leverage innovation is paramount for individuals, teams, and organizations alike. Yet, navigating the practicalities of adopting new technologies and facilitating successful change can be a daunting endeavor. Enter The Experimentation Field Book – a refreshingly pragmatic guide that offers actionable insights for tackling transformational goals, whether they are small-scale initiatives or larger endeavors. With this invaluable resource at your disposal, you'll not only embrace change but also lead it with exceptional effectiveness. -- Stephen Jamieson, Global Head of Circular Economy Solutions, SAPThe Experimentation Field Book covers the end-to-end process of experimentation in a very accessible way. An excellent and logical work. -- Jeremy Hutchison-Krupat, University of Cambridge Judge Business SchoolTable of ContentsIntroduction to the Experimentation ProcessStep 1: Framing Testable IdeasStep 2: Defining EvidenceStep 3: Selecting Your TestStep 4: Building the PrototypeStep 5: Executing. Analyzing. Iterating.PostscriptAcknowledgmentsTemplates

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Book SynopsisHow legacy firms can combine their traditional strengths with the power of data and digital ecosystems to forge a new competitive strategy for the digital era.How can legacy firms remain relevant in the digital era? In The Future of Competitive Strategy, strategic management expert Mohan Subramaniam explains how firms can leverage both their traditional strengths and the modern-day power of data and digital ecosystems to forge a new competitive strategy. Drawing on the experiences of a range of companies, including Caterpillar, Sleep Number, and Whirlpool, he explains how firms can benefit from data’s enlarged role in modern business, develop digital ecosystems tailored to their unique business needs, and use new frameworks to harness the power of data for competitive advantage. Subramaniam presents digital ecosystems as a combination of production and consumption ecosystems, which can be used by legacy firms to unlock the value of

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Book SynopsisHow tech companies like Google, Airbnb, StubHub, and Facebook learn from experiments in our data-driven world—an excellent primer on experimental and behavioral economics   Have you logged into Facebook recently? Searched for something on Google? Chosen a movie on Netflix? If so, you've probably been an unwitting participant in a variety of experiments—also known as randomized controlled trials—designed to test the impact of different online experiences. Once an esoteric tool for academic research, the randomized controlled trial has gone mainstream. No tech company worth its salt (or its share price) would dare make major changes to its platform without first running experiments to understand how they would influence user behavior. In this book, Michael Luca and Max Bazerman explain the importance of experiments for decision making in a data-driven world. Luca and Bazerman describe the central role experiments play in the tech sector, draw

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Book SynopsisAn engaging, solutions-oriented look at how cities and nations can better foster innovation and equality. From San Francisco to Shanghai, many of the world's most innovative places are highly unequal, with the benefits going to a small few. Rather than simply asking how we can create more high-tech cities and nations, Innovation for the Masses focuses on what we can learn from places that foster innovation while also delivering the benefits more widely and equally. In this book, economist Neil Lee draws on case studies of Taiwan, Sweden, Austria, and Switzerland to set out how innovation can be successfully balanced toward equity. As high-tech economies around the world suffer from polarized labor markets and political realities that lock in these problems, this book looks beyond the United States to other models of distributing a leading-edge economy. Lee emphasizes the active role of the state in creating frameworks to ensure that benefits are broadly shared, revealing that strong policies for innovation and mutual prosperity reinforce each other. Ultimately, Innovation for the Masses provides a vital window into alternative models that prioritize equity, the roadblocks these models present, and what other countries can learn from them going forward.Trade Review"In a departure from the usual discourse, which is often about creating more high-tech nations, Lee (economic geography, London Sch. of Economics) looks at how to harness innovation, especially in the tech sector, to improve the lives of a broad swath of society . . . Effectively shows the importance of innovation in modern economies while also making clear that innovation alone does not guarantee good outcomes." * Library Journal *"The book brings much-needed nuance to the debate about how to foster an entrepreneurial culture that lifts broader society as well as industry." * Financial Times *Table of ContentsContents Acknowledgments Preface Introduction: Why Innovation Matters 1. The Economics of Innovation 2. Innovation and Living Standards 3. Switzerland: The Diffusion of Innovation 4. Austria: Innovating from Irrelevance 5. Taiwan: The Race between Education and Technological Development 6. Sweden: Disruption and the (Welfare) State Conclusion: Innovation and Shared Prosperity Notes References Index

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Book SynopsisTap Dancing to Work compiles six decades of writing on legendary investor Warren Buffett, from Carol Loomis, the reporter who knows him best.Warren Buffett built Berkshire Hathaway into something remarkable - and Fortune had a front-row seatWhen Fortune writer Carole Loomis first mentioned a little-known Omaha hedge fund manager in a 1966 article, she didn''t dream that Warren Buffett would become the world''s greatest investor. Nor did she imagine that she and Buffett would be close friends.As Buffett''s fortune and reputation grew, Loomis used her unique insight into his thinking to chronicle his work, writing scores of stories that tracked his many accomplishments - and his occasional mistakes.Now Loomis has collected and updated the best Buffett articles from Fortune, including cover stories and pieces by Buffett himself. Readers will gain fresh insights into Buffett''s investment strategies and his thinking on management, philanthropy, public policy, and even parenting.Scores of Buffett books have been written, but none can claim this combination of trust, deep understanding of Buffett''s world, and a long-term perspective.''The clearest picture of life according to the world''s fourth-richest man'' Evening Standard''Stuffed with nuggets and insights - a Christmas fruitcake for the investor'' Financial TimesTrade ReviewThe clearest picture of life according to the world's fourth-richest man. * Evening Standard *Stuffed with nuggets and insights - a Christmas fruitcake for the investor. * Financial Times *

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Book SynopsisDoes globalization help everyone or just the rich? Is it the enemy of sustainability or the only hope against climate change? Rival camps are dug in, but Anthea Roberts and Nicolas Lamp find points of agreement. Isolating the value conflicts that drive the globalization debate, they show where consensus lies and argue for achievable policy change.Trade ReviewSix Faces of Globalization is a very smart book, and not just for people interested in globalization. The authors manage to help readers understand the many faces of globalization by identifying multiple narratives that fuel different political movements and perspectives of the punditocracy. Ultimately, however, this is a book not just about globalization, but also about the power and importance of narrative: how it is constructed and how it can contribute to a far more nuanced and complex understanding of the forces of change. Highly recommended. -- Anne-Marie Slaughter, CEO, New AmericaAt a time when many of us have only one view of the world, so much so that we only read the books and watch the media that support our vision, Roberts and Lamp present us with a real challenge: they lay out convincingly and comprehensively many different narratives of globalization and its political and economic effects. The book thus implicitly challenges the narrative that each of us finds most compelling. Like in a movie by Kurosawa, our view of events depends on our position. This book compels us to change our position, move out of our comfort zone, and see the world differently and more broadly. -- Branko Milanovic, author of Capitalism, AloneAnthea Roberts and Nicolas Lamp have written a brilliant and extremely valuable book. They process an enormous amount of information but also, crucially, narratives and storylines about economic globalization and offer us a new way to sort and evaluate the various claims that circulate. The debates about ‘winners and losers’ explored in Six Faces of Globalization will be with us for years and will be the stuff of headlines for the foreseeable future. -- Quinn Slobodian, author of Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of NeoliberalismAs in the proverbial story of five blind men trying to make sense of an elephant, globalization presents itself in different forms to its proponents and opponents. This immensely useful book clarifies the debates around globalization by developing six narratives rooted in contending values and perceptions of reality. It helps us not only understand the best version of other sides’ narratives, but also move beyond our own conceptual straitjackets. -- Dani Rodrik, Harvard UniversitySix Faces of Globalization is not one more big-think, grand-vision book on the world’s problems and how to solve them. Instead, it is an indispensable guide to how and why many people have abandoned the old, time-tested ways of thinking about politics and the economy. This is the book the world needs to read now. It deserves a spot on every shelf of books about globalization. -- Richard Baldwin, Graduate Institute, GenevaRoberts and Lamp give their readers a useful framing to understand today’s—and tomorrow’s—fights about the world economy. * Fortune *Policymakers and business leaders will appreciate this levelheaded and wide-ranging look at a hot-button issue. * Publishers Weekly *Roberts and Lamp set out to disrupt our intellectual inertia, first by mapping out the six major Western narratives of globalization, then exploring how those narratives drive policies, for better or worse. -- James Herndon * Asian Review of Books *This book is highly informative and will certainly appeal to a wide audience interested in identifying the main themes driving the US attitude towards free trade and confrontation with China. -- Enrico Colombatto * Journal of Economics *

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Book SynopsisDoes class determine economic options, or is class in our headsa matter of interpreting symbols and meanings? Cultural theorists have made the second claim, sidelining materialism. Now, amid deepening inequality, Vivek Chibber defends materialist analysis of class power, while arguing that we still have something to learn from cultural frameworks.Trade ReviewA quite thorough and impressive work, not only a compelling defense of materialism but also a fair-minded if highly critical engagement with cultural theory. It isn’t clear how culturalists—especially the anti-Marxist ones—can effectively respond to this broadside, tightly and cogently argued as it is. -- Chris Wright * CounterPunch *Chibber has accomplished something quite astounding in The Class Matrix—he has developed a sophisticated, elegant, and readable defense of the sociological significance of class structure in understanding and addressing the key problems inherent in capitalism. * Choice *The Class Matrix is a clear, compelling, and systematic statement of the view that class is an objective reality that predictably and rationally shapes human thought and action, one we need to grapple with seriously if we’re to comprehend contemporary society and its morbid symptoms. * Jacobin *Concisely and systematically argues the case for the continued importance of class for the radical left today. Vivek Chibber rigorously debunks various long held understandings that characterise radical left thought since the cultural turn. -- Chris James Newlove * Marx & Philosophy Review of Books *The Class Matrix is an important theoretical contribution to a wide and lively discussion in the humanities and social sciences about structural and cultural explanation. Chibber’s profound reassessment of the Marxist theory of class in the light of the new culturalist arguments shows in a sophisticated and convincing way that the capitalist economic system and its class structure of capital and wage labor have a special force in constraining the choices of action open to capitalists and wage-workers. -- Goran Therborn, University of CambridgeVivek Chibber’s magnificent new book carves a path forward for structuralist and materialist analysis in a post–cultural turn academic era. Chibber reformulates Marxist theory to recognize the fundamental role of class structure in shaping human well-being while allowing a place for contingency in the generation of collective action. He adroitly uses this framework to shed light on the trajectory of modern capitalism and class formation in the twenty-first century. The Class Matrix is the response to the cultural turn that structuralists like me have been waiting for, and the book does not disappoint. -- James Mahoney, Northwestern UniversityAlong with a materialist critique of the cultural turn, Chibber restores the centrality of class. Lucid theory from a brilliant mind. Sure to generate vigorous debate. -- Michael Burawoy, author of The Politics of Production

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Book SynopsisNelson and Winter focus their critique on the basic question of how firms and industries change overtime. They marshal significant objections to the fundamental neoclassical assumptions of profit maximization and market equilibrium, which they find ineffective in the analysis of technological innovation and the dynamics of competition among firms.Trade ReviewThe book ranges from subtle theoretical analyses of the nature of choice to highly explicit mathematical modeling, from the theory of the firm to the theory of bureaucratic agencies. It is very engagingly written, and conveys extremely well the dilemma that must haunt any social scientist worth his salt: the necessity of choosing between realism and simplicity as guides to theory construction. -- Jon Elster * London Review of Books *[An] extremely interesting book… This volume increases one’s confidence that, after all these years, Schumpeter’s intuition can be stated in a formally respectable way, and therefore that the field of industrial organization can begin solving its most important problems. * Journal of Comparative Economics *An important and interesting book. * Journal of Political Economy *The book spans an enormous literature—dealing with economics as a process, evolutionary modeling, Schumpeterian competition, organization form, and the like—and performs important interpretive and integrative functions. Mainly, however, the book represents a significant original research contribution in both methodological and substantive respects. It will influence teaching, research, and public policy relating to complex economic systems for years to come. While the book is written by and primarily for economists, it is broadly conceived and should impact social science research quite generally. -- Oliver Williamson, University of PennsylvaniaTable of ContentsI. OVERVIEW AND MOTIVATION 1. Introduction 2. The Need for an Evolutionary Theory II. ORGANIZATION-THEORETIC FOUNDATIONS OF ECONOMIC EVOLUTIONARY THEORY 3. The Foundations of Contemporary Orthodoxy 4. Skills 5. Organizational Capabilities and Behavior III. TEXTBOOK ECONOMICS REVISITED 6. Static Selection Equilibrium 7. Firm and Industry Response to Changed Market Conditions IV. GROWTH THEORY 8. Neoclassical Growth Theory: A Critique 9. An Evolutionary Model of Economic Growth 10. Economic Growth as a Pure Selection Process 11. Further Analysis of Search and Selection V. SCHUMPETERIAN COMPETITION 12. Dynamic Competition and Technical Progress 13. Forces Generating and Limiting Concentration under Schumpeterian Competition 14. The Schumpeterian Tradeoff Revisited VI. ECONOMIC WELFARE AND POLICY 15. Normative Economics from an Evolutionary Perspective 16. The Evolution of Public Policies and the Role of Analysis VII. CONCLUSION 17. Retrospect and Prospect References Index

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Book SynopsisZongyuan Zoe Liu provides the first in-depth examination of sovereign funds in China. Under President Xi, the state has become an aggressive financier, using sovereign funds at home and abroad to secure allies and influence, boost strategic industries like semiconductors and fintech, and pick winners among domestic businesses and multinationals.Trade Review[Sovereign Funds] takes up a particular aspect of China’s economic statecraft, showing how it employs its financial resources to promote its interests abroad…Give[s] us a much better understanding of what needs to be done to restrain China abroad. -- Edward Chancellor * Wall Street Journal *Revealing…It describes the personalities, facts and figures that undergird the labyrinthine and often secret world of Chinese state money and the strategies that Beijing deploys to secure strategic assets around the world. -- James Kynge * Financial Times *Liu, an expert on international political economy at the Council on Foreign Relations, shows how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) uses ‘sovereign leverage funds’ to promote fiscal security at home and geopolitical influence abroad. -- Francis P. Sempa * New York Journal of Books *Sovereign Funds raises broader questions about the presence of such funds in the financial system and the role that can be played by state finance in the global marketplace…It offers an insightful look into the permutations of the Chinese state in response to privatisation. -- Seth O'Farrell * fDi Intelligence *A fascinating insight into the evolution of China’s financial policy and its strategic investments using leveraged foreign exchange reserves. -- Diane Coyle * Enlightened Economist *[Liu] shows that Chinese sovereign funds are so different from better-known sovereign wealth funds, such as those of the governments of Abu Dhabi and Norway, that she prefers to call them ‘sovereign leveraged funds’…These various exotic workarounds, which Liu skillfully traces, produce ‘shadow reserves.’ -- Andrew J. Nathan * Foreign Affairs *Follow the money, find the politics…Liu shows how China pioneered a whole new class of sovereign wealth funds. * Times of India *A novel and fascinating history of China’s rich and powerful sovereign wealth funds, which play an outsize role in the country’s strategy for both international development and external influence. -- Kenneth Rogoff, Maurits C. Boas Chair of International Economics at Harvard University and former Chief Economist of the IMFZoe Liu’s pathbreaking book uncovers how and why the Chinese Communist Party employs sovereign leveraged funds to further state interests at home and abroad. This is a must-read for anyone interested in the causes and consequences of China’s rise. -- Thomas J. Christensen, author of The China Challenge: Shaping the Choices of a Rising PowerSovereign wealth funds were once considered anomalies but are now becoming the trend. China’s sovereign wealth funds have grown rapidly and become increasingly important in the face of deglobalization; their unique model and widespread impact are worth exploring and assessing. Liu’s book is a fascinating account of and reflection on what she calls ‘sovereign leveraged funds.’ Whether you agree with its conclusions or not, you should read it. -- Jin Xu, author of Empire of Silver: A New Monetary History of ChinaSovereign Funds is a revealing account of the origins and evolution of China’s sovereign leveraged funds. This book is a must-read for any serious observer of China’s global economic and financial strategy. -- Edwin M. Truman, Senior Fellow, Harvard Kennedy School, and former Assistant Secretary of the US TreasuryZoe Liu provides deep insight into China's sovereign leveraged funds, fascinating institutions that play a crucial role in the often fraught relationship between state and market, with implications and lessons for many other countries. This is essential reading for those interested in China's development and its economic engagement with the world. -- Martin Chorzempa, author of The Cashless RevolutionLiu provides the definitive account of how wide and how deep China’s sovereign wealth funds have penetrated global capital markets. Her identification of ‘sovereign leveraged funds’ amounts to a major conceptual breakthrough in the study of global financial flows, bringing to light how any state with the political will and financial engineering prowess can launch a fund to further its strategic interests. In a moment of fraught financial tensions between the United States and China, Sovereign Funds will prove an indispensable book for policymakers and academics alike. -- John Yasuda, author of On Feeding the Masses: An Anatomy of Regulatory Failure in China

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Book SynopsisThis book promises to be the definitive guide to the field. It provides a highly sophisticated yet exceptionally clear explanation of game theory, with a host of applications to legal issues.Trade ReviewGame Theory and the Law promises to be the definitive guide to the field. It provides a highly sophisticated yet exceptionally clear explanation of game theory, with a host of applications to legal issues. The authors have not only synthesized the existing scholarship, but also created the foundation for the next generation of research in law and economics. -- Daniel A. Farber, University of Minnesota Law SchoolThe most comprehensive and encompassing treatment of this approach… [This] is the first nontechnical, modern introduction to how (noncooperative) game theory can be applied specifically to legal analysis… Game Theory and the Law is a user-friendly analysis of concrete, numerical examples, rather than a theoretical presentation of abstract concepts. The authors introduce and explain, with actual legal cases or hypotheticals, the salient issues of modern game theory. This breadth of coverage is remarkable. This is not just a textbook; it is also something of a research monograph, introducing many new models attributable to the authors alone. -- Peter H. Huang * Jurimetrics Journal *Game Theory and the Law is an important book. It is important in the sense that it will serve as a catalyst for an expanded use of game-theoretic models in the study of law. It will be a book that people will one day recognize as having had a considerable influence on its field. And it will receive the praise that accompanies such influence. Happily, such influence will be beneficial to the field of law and such praise will be richly deserved, because Game Theory and the Law is an extremely intelligent and thoughtful text… One of the features of the book that is most striking (and, for my part, most welcome) is the thoughtful and sensible manner in which they approach the use of game theory. Unlike many proponents of game-theoretic analysis, they do not present it as the only legitimate approach to social-scientific analysis. The authors present game theory as a powerful tool that can be used along with other approaches to enhance our understanding of the role of law in social life… The persuasiveness of their general argument for the utility of game theory derives from a combination of the power of their insights along with the sensibility of their analysis. The book is written in a clear, concise and interesting manner. Its bibliographic references render it a source book for additional research in both game theory and law. This is a book that should be read by scholars of law in particular and scholars of political behavior in particular. -- Jack Knight * Law and Politics Book Review *Table of ContentsPreface Introduction: Understanding Strategic Behavior Bibliographic Notes Simultaneous Decisionmaking and the Normal Form Game The Normal Form Game Using Different Games to Compare Legal Regimes The Nash Equilibrium Civil Liability, Accident Law, and Strategic Behavior Legal Rules and the Idea of Strict Dominance Collective Action Problems and the Two-by-Two Game The Problem of Multiple Nash Equilibria Summary Bibliographic Notes Dynamic Interaction and the Extensive Form Game The Extensive Form Game and Backwards Induction A Dynamic Model of Preemption and Strategic Commitment Subgame Perfection Summary Bibliographic Notes Information Revelation, Disclosure Laws, and Renegotiation Incorporating Beliefs into the Solution Concept The Perfect Bayesian Equilibrium Solution Concept Verifiable Information, Voluntary Disclosure, and the Unraveling Result Disclosure Laws and the Limits of Unraveling Observable Information, Norms, and the Problem of Renegotiation Optimal Incentives and the Need for Renegotiation Limiting the Ability of Parties to Renegotiate Summary Bibliographic Notes Signaling, Screening, and Nonverifiable Information Signaling and Screening Modeling Nonverifiable Information Signals and the Effects of Legal Rules Information Revelation and Contract Default Rules Screening and the Role of Legal Rules Summary Bibliographic Notes Reputation and Repeated Games Backwards Induction and Its Limits Infinitely Repeated Games, Tacit Collusion, and Folk Theorems Reputation, Predation, and Cooperation Summary Bibliographic Notes Collective Action, Embedded Games, and the Limits of Simple Models Collective Action and the Role of Law Embedded Games Understanding the Structure of Large Games Collective Action and Private Information Collective Action Problems in Sequential Decisionmaking Herd Behavior Summary Bibliographic Notes Noncooperative Bargaining Modeling the Division of Gains from Trade Legal Rules as Exit Options Bargaining and Corporate Reorganizations Collective Bargaining and Exit Options Summary Bibliographic Notes Bargaining and Information Basic Models of the Litigation Process Modeling Separate Trials for Liability and Damages Information and Selection Bias Discovery Rules and Verifiable Information Summary Bibliographic Notes Conclusion: Information and the Limits of Law Notes References Glossary Index

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Book SynopsisDrawing on a dozen years of research among managers, officers, and politicians in the public realm and the private sector, among the nonprofits, and in teaching, Heifetz presents clear, concrete prescriptions for anyone who needs to take the lead in almost any situation, under almost any organizational conditions, no matter who is in charge.Trade ReviewLeadership Without Easy Answers is a masterwork of great subtlety, and of punch and practicality. Leadership is not value-free, Mr. Heifetz writes… [The author puts] soul and values squarely back into a vital topic, leadership. -- Tom Peters * New York Times Book Review *Ronald Heifetz brings knowledge of an astonishingly wide range of disciplines to this study of leadership… As a musician, a cellist, he understands that the quality of a performance depends on the audience as well as on the instrumentalist… As a psychiatrist, Heifetz understands that communities cannot be pushed beyond their capacity to adapt… These insights give to Heifetz’s book an originality and vivacity one rarely associates with studies on leadership. He illustrates his theses with an extraordinary range of cases and examples… Leadership Without Easy Answers reminds us of democracy’s rich potential. It is a bold book and an encouraging one. I hope some of our leaders are out there learning. -- Shirley Williams * Times Higher Education Supplement *Ronald Heifetz has written an interesting and timely book, in which he moves away from the idea of leaders as visionaries and saviors to stressing leadership as an activity as opposed to a position of authority or a set of personal characteristics. -- Robert Hooijberg * Journal of Leadership Studies *This pioneering study constitutes one of the most insightful and innovative approaches to leadership studies in over a decade… Heifetz masterfully presents his new leadership model by intertwining general theory and prescriptive practical guidance through fertile historical and workplace case studies. Heifetz’s goal is nothing less than a summoning for a new social contract that seeks to revitalize America’s civic ethos by adopting leadership strategies to empower the citizenry rather than to merely enhance the authority of the leader… The upshot of this study should place it in the front line in leadership historiography for years to come. -- R. J. Lettieri * Choice *Heifetz presents a new theory of leadership for both public and private leaders in tackling complex contemporary problems. Central to his theory is the distinction between routine technical problems, which can be solved through expertise, and adaptive problems, such as crime, poverty, and educational reform, which require innovative approaches, including consideration of values. Four major strategies of leadership are identified: to approach problems as adaptive challenges by diagnosing the situation in light of the values involved and avoiding authoritative solutions, to regulate the level of stress caused by confronting issues, and to shift responsibility for problems from the leader to all the primary stakeholders. The theory is applied to an analysis of historical accounts of local, national, and international events. An innovative and thoroughgoing work; highly recommended. * Library Journal *A superb book for any age, but particularly for our current one, where society is so desperately in need of its wisdom and expertise. Leadership Without Easy Answers should be required reading for top managers in all sectors—private, public, and nonprofit. I hope it will also be widely read by the citizenry that is so much in need of an attitude shift on the nature of authority. This book is also very much about citizenship. -- M. Scott Peck, author of The Road Less TraveledAlive with insights, concepts, new ideas, just teeming with the kind of creative approach to the study of leadership that I and of course many others esteem. In a field in which there has been a great deal of repetitious work, Heifetz strikes out in ground-breaking directions. -- James MacGregor Burns, author of LeadershipRemarkably thoughtful, provocative, and useful. This book will be seen as a major contribution that provides a rare interdisciplinary view of leadership in context. Leaders as well as serious students of the process of leadership and the development of leaders need to have this book on their shelves. -- General Walter Ulmer, U.S. Army (Ret.), President and CEO, Center for Creative Leadership, Greensboro, North CarolinaHeifetz turns out to be one of the most thoughtful scholars on leadership. His direct and relevant concepts are pathbreaking. -- James David Barber, author of Presidential CharacterOriginal and penetrating in its analysis of leadership. This is an excellent book. Important and valuable. -- John Gardner, former Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare and founder of Common CauseLeadership Without Easy Answers should go a long way toward clearing up many confusions about leadership. Long a master teacher of leaders, Heifetz’s courses and Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government have been standing-room only for years. Read this book and see why. -- Peter Senge, author of The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning OrganizationTable of Contents* Foreword by Richard L. Neustadt * Introduction Part I. Setting the Frame * Values in Leadership * To Lead or Mislead? * The Roots of Authority Part II. Leading with Authority * Mobilizing Adaptive Work S Applying Power * On a Razor's Edge * Failing Off the Edge Part III. Leading Without Authority * Creative Deviance on the Frontline * Modulating the Provocation Part IV. Staying Alive * Assassination * The Personal Challenge * Notes * Acknowledgments * Index

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Book SynopsisHow should firms decide whether and when to invest in new capital equipment, additions to their workforce, or the development of new products? This book provides an exposition of a theoretical approach to the capital investment decisions of firms, stressing the irreversibility of most investment decisions.Trade Review"[The authors'] approach has powerful implications for investors in marketable assets as well. No investment professional or CFO can afford to ignore this brilliant new book."—Peter L. Bernstein, author of Capital Ideas: The Improbable Origins of Modern Wall Street"Avinash Dixit and Robert Pindyck have successfully applied to capital budgeting the ideas and techniques of option pricing that have so enriched our understanding of financial markets."—Merton H. Miller, Nobel Laureate in EconomicsTable of ContentsPreface1A New View of Investment32Developing the Concepts Through Simple Examples263Stochastic Processes and Ito's Lemma594Dynamic Optimization under Uncertainty935Investment Opportunities and Investment Timing1356The Value of a Project and the Decision to Invest1757Entry, Exit, Lay-Up, and Scrapping2138Dynamic Equilibrium in a Competitive Industry2479Policy Intervention and Imperfect Competition28210Sequential Investment31911Incremental Investment and Capacity Choice35712Applications and Empirical Research394References429Symbol Glossary445Author Index449Subject Index455

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Book SynopsisFollowing a brief historical overview showing how the problem of incentives has come to the fore in the past two centuries, the authors their work to exploring principal-agent models and various extensions thereof in light of three types of information problems: adverse selection, moral hazard, and non-verifiability.Trade Review"Incentive theory is at the very core of economics. This text is a masterly exposition of the modern theory by one of the pioneers of the field, Jean-Jacques Laffont, together with one of its rising stars, David Martimort." - Eric Maskin, Institute for Advanced Study "This book will surely be the standard technical reference in an important field for a number of years - possibly for many if the field ceases to develop so rapidly. It is indeed a fine contribution to the economics literature." - Sir James Mirrlees, Cambridge University, 1996 Nobel Laureate in Economic Sciences "The most important development in economics in the last forty years has been the study of incentives to achieve potential mutual gains when the parties have different degrees of knowledge. The time is ripe for a synthesis and systematization. Jean-Jacques Laffont has been one of the most important contributors to the field over the years, and David Martimort has shown his capacity for highly original work. This book combines clarity, thoroughness, and great respect for historical development." - Kenneth J. Arrow, Stanford University, 1972 Nobel Laureate in Economic SciencesTable of Contentsxi Foreword Introduction 1 1 Incentives in Economic Thought 7 1.1 Adam Smith and Incentive Contracts in Agriculture 8 1.2 Chester Barnard and Incentives in Management 11 1.3 Hume, Wicksell, Groves: The Free-Rider Problem 14 1.4 Borda, Bowen, Vickrey: Incentives in Voting 15 1.5 Leon Walras and the Regulation of Natural Monopolies 18 1.6 Knight, Arrow, Pauly: Incentives in Insurance 18 1.7 Sidgwick, Vickrey, Mirrlees: Redistribution and Incentives 20 1.8 Dupuit, Edgeworth, Pigou: Price Discrimination 22 1.9 Incentives in Planned Economies 23 1.10 Leonid Hurwicz and Mechanism Design 25 1.11 Auctions 27 2 The Rent Extraction-Efficiency Trade-Off 28 2.1 The Basic Model 32 2.2 The Complete Information Optimal Contract 33 2.3 Incentive Feasible Menu of Contracts 36 2.4 Information Rents 39 2.5 The Optimization Program of the Principal 40 2.6 The Rent Extraction-Efficiency Trade-Off 41 2.7 The Theory of the Firm Under Asymmetric Information 46 2.8 Asymmetric Information and Marginal Cost Pricing 48 2.9 The Revelation Principle 48 2.10 A More General Utility Function for the Agent 51 2.11 Ex Ante versus Ex Post Participation Constraints 57 2.12 Commitment 63 2.13 Stochastic Mechanisms 65 2.14 Informative Signals to Improve Contracting 68 2.15 Contract Theory at Work 72 Appendix 81 3 Incentive and Participation Constraints with Adverse Selection 82 3.1 More than Two Types 86 3.2 Multidimensional Asymmetric Information 93 3.3 Type-Dependent Participation Constraint and Countervailing Incentives 101 3.4 Random Participation Constraint 115 3.5 Limited Liability 118 3.6 Audit Mechanisms and Costly State Verification 121 3.7 Redistributive Concerns and the Efficiency-Equity Trade-Off 134 Appendices 130 4 Moral Hazard: The Basic Trade-Offs 145 4.1 The Model 148 4.2 Risk Neutrality and First-Best Implementation 153 4.3 The Trade-Off Between Limited Liability Rent Extraction and Efficiency 155 4.4 The Trade-Off Between Insurance and Efficiency 158 4.5 More than Two Levels of Performance 163 4.6 Informative Signals to Improve Contracting 167 4.7 Moral Hazard and the Theory of the Firm 172 4.8 Contract Theory at Work 174 4.9 Commitment Under Moral Hazard 184 Appendices 185 5 Incentive and Participation Constraints with Moral Hazard 187 5.1 More than Two Levels of Effort 191 5.2 The Multitask Incentive Problem 203 5.3 Nonseparability of the Utility Function 226 5.4 Redistribution and Moral Hazard 232 Appendices 235 6 Nonverifiability 260 6.1 No Contract at Date 0 and Ex Post Bargaining 242 6.2 Incentive Compatible Contract 244 6.3 Nash Implementation 246 6.4 Subgame-Perfect Implementation 256 6.5 Risk Aversion 261 6.6 Concluding Remarks 264 7 Mixed Models 265 7.1 Adverse Selection Followed by Moral Hazard 269 7.2 Moral Hazard Followed by Adverse Selection 294 7.3 Moral Hazard Followed by Nonverifiability 298 8 Dynamics Under Full Commitment 303 8.1 Repeated Adverse Selection 307 8.2 Repeated Moral Hazard 319 8.3 Constraints on Transfers: The Role of Implicit Incentives 342 9 Limits and Extensions 347 9.1 Informed Principal 351 9.2 Limits to Enforcement 360 9.3 Dynamics and Limited Commitment 364 9.4 The Hold-Up Problem 370 9.5 Limits to the Complexity of Contracts 375 9.6 Limits in the Action Space 387 9.7 Limits to Rational Behavior 391 9.8 Endogenous Information Structures 395 References 399 Author Index 413 Subject Index 417

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Book SynopsisThe global financial crisis has made it clear that powerful psychological forces are imperiling the wealth of nations. This title challenges the economic wisdom that got us into this mess, and puts forward a vision that transforms economics and restores prosperity. It asserts the necessity of an active government role in economic policymaking.Trade Review* Robert J. Shiller, Co-Winner of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Economics* George A. Akerlof, Co-Winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Economics * Winner of the 2009 International Book Award, getAbstract * Co-Winner of the 2010 Silver Medal Book Award in Entrepreneurship, Axiom Business * Co-Winner of the 2010 Robert Lane Award for the Best Book in Political Psychology, American Political Science Association * Winner of the 2009 Paul A. Samuelson Award for Outstanding Scholarly Writing on Lifelong Financial Security, TIAA-CREF * Winner of the 2009 Finance Book of the Year, CBN (China Business News) Financial Value Ranking * Shortlisted for the 2009 Business Book of the Year Award, Financial Times and Goldman Sachs * Featured on the Books of the Year list, Financial Times (FT.com)* Listed on Bloomberg.com in a review by James Pressley as two of "our favorite financial-crisis books this year" "Akerlof and Shiller are the first to try to rework economic theory for our times. The effort itself makes their book a milestone."--Louis Uchitelle, New York Times Book Review "There is barely a page of Animal Spirits without a fascinating fact or insight."--John Lanchester, New Yorker "Akerlof and Shiller succeed, too, in demonstrating that conventional macroeconomic analyses often fail because they omit not just readily observable facts like unemployment and institutions such as credit markets but also harder-to-document behavioral patterns that fall within the authors' notion of 'animal spirits.' Confidence plainly matters, and so does the absence of it. When the public mood swings from exuberance to anxiety, or even fear, the effect on asset prices as well as on economic activity outside the financial sector can be large."--Benjamin M. Friedman, New York Review of Books "Two of the most creative and respected economic thinkers currently at work, George Akerlof and Robert Shiller, ... [have written] a fine book at exactly the right time."--Clive Crook, Financial Times "A truly innovative and bold work... At a time when plummeting confidence is dragging down the market and the economy, the authors' focus on the psychological aspect of economics is incredibly important."--Michael Mandel, BusinessWeek "Animal Spirits [is] ... the new must-read in Obamaworld."--Michael Grunwald, Time "[Animal Spirits] really applies to all the big areas where we need change."--Peter Orszag, Obama budget director (quoted from Time magazine article) "White House Budget Director Peter Orszag is a numbers guy, a propeller head as President Obama would say. But as David Von Drehle and I write in this week's print version of Time, Orszag has been spending his time recently reading not about spreadsheets, but about psychology. In particular, he has been reading a new book by the economists George Akerlof and Robert Shiller called Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives The Economy, and Why It Matters For Global Capitalism... We are, it turns out, slaves to the Animal Spirits. They have brought us to our knees. And now they are the only things that can save us."--Michael Scherer, Time.com's Swampland "In their new book, two of the most creative and respected economic thinkers currently at work, George Akerlof and Robert Shiller, argue that the key is to recover Keynes's insight about 'animal spirits'--the attitudes and ideas that guide economic action. The orthodoxy needs to be rebuilt, and bringing these psychological factors into the core of economics is the way to do it... The connections between their thinking on the limits to conventional economics and the issues thrown up by the breakdown are plain, even if they were unable to make every link explicit. Even more than Akerlof and Shiller could have hoped, therefore, it is a fine book at exactly the right time... Animal Spirits carries its ambition lightly--but is ambitious nonetheless. Economists will see it as a kind of manifesto."--Clive Crook, Financial Times "An influential Democrat who was also one of the world's top-ten, highest-paid hedge fund managers last year thinks he knows which book is at the top of the White House reading list this spring: Animal Spirits, the powerful new blast of behavioural economics from Nobel prize-winner George Akerlof and Yale economist Robert Shiller."--Financial Times "Akerlof and Shiller remind us that emotional and intangible factors--such as confidence in institutions, illusions about the nature of money or a sense of being treated unfairly--can affect how people make decisions about borrowing, spending, saving and investing. Animal Spirits is an affectionate tribute to the man [John Maynard Keynes] whose ideas, unfashionable for the past 30 years, have resurged."--Nature "Animal Spirits is a welcome addition to our Hannitized national economic debate, in which anyone who advocates government spending risks being labeled a socialist... Animal Spirits is most compelling when the authors summon all the key behavioral patterns to explain vast, complex phenomena such as the Great Depression... Animal Spirits ... [is] aimed squarely at the general reader, and rightly so: Macroeconomics is now everybody's business--the banks are playing with our money."--Andrew Rosenblum, New York Observer "[A] lively new financial crisis book."--James Pressley, Bloomberg News "The two superstars have produced a truly innovative and bold work that attempts to show how psychological factors explain the origins of the current mess and offer clues for possible solutions. At a time when plummeting confidence is dragging down the market and the economy, the authors' focus on the psychological aspect of economics is incredibly important."--Michael Mandel, BusinessWeek "What Sigmund Freud did for the study of the mind, George Akerlof and Robert Shiller are doing for economics. Freud, healer or fake--take your pick--built a career and a field of medicine on the idea that people are driven by irrational forces. Akerlof, professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley and winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in economics, and Shiller, the Yale economist who is the eminence grise of the housing meltdown, argue that massive government market intervention programs are the only way to turn fear into enthusiasm for spending and investing--the 'animal spirits' that are an essential part of recovery... Akerlof and Shiller pick up on the idea of the emotional impetus to investment. With elegant reasoning and lovely prose, they demonstrate that we'll all be wallowing in misery unless governments around world, especially the in the G7 nations, help to return markets to optimism... Animal Spirits is a fine discussion of the last few decades of development of economic theory, especially monetary economics."--Andrew Allentuck, The Globe & Mail "[T]his book is rather more than the usual lament about the failings of economics. Its authors are two of the discipline's leading lights... Most of the time, the unrealistic assumption of rationality serves economists fairly well. They should, however, be more prepared to depart from it, especially in times like these--even if that makes behaviour more difficult to describe in elegant equations. Messrs Akerlof and Shiller have therefore done their profession a service."--The Economist "With Animal Spirits we hone in on how incentives and narratives can be created to channel the human psychological factor into collectively healthy directions, and how to be aware of the fictions we tell ourselves about how we wish the world and greed and financial security worked. [Animal Spirits] sheds light on complex issues and leaves readers with a better grasp of undercurrents and--most importantly--a rediscovered belief in principles of common sense and caution."--Daily Kos "The new book from George Akerlof and Robert Shiller, Animal Spirits, has been getting a lot of press of late, and quite rightly: it's really good. It's not only very readable; it also offers a compelling vision of a very different type of macroeconomics--one where behavioral considerations are front and center, rather than simply providing what Clive Crook calls 'ad hoc modifications' to the standard, ridiculously oversimplified and unrealistic, model... [I]f you read only one book on this subject, make it Animal Spirits."--Felix Salmon, Portfolio.com "As George Akerlof and Robert Shiller show in a new book Animal Spirits, this is no freak storm. It may mark the long-awaited encounter between psychology and economics... Akerlof and Shiller's book is probably the first macroeconomic exploration of the subject that is accessible to those interested in the subject but who don't have the academic training to understand the detailed argument."--Mint "My book of the week is an easy one this time around: it's Animal Spirits, by Robert Shiller and George Akerlof... Admittedly, I'm biased as a fan of both Shiller's and Akerlof's. Believe me, however, when I say the blessedly brief Animal Spirits is a thoughtful and well-written look at how economics discarded psychology and lost its way on the trip from Adam Smith, through Keynesianism, to laissez-faire. The book puts the current crisis in a useful economic context, with consistent and practical selections from behavioral finance illuminating everything along the way... Highly recommended."--Paul Kedrosky, SeekingAlpha "Another contribution to the human-nature-ensures-economics-is-irrational school of thought. But, unlike many of the rants against people trying to make an honest profit, this is a measured examination of how the present crisis is explained in economic terms. And so it should be. George Akerlof is a Nobel prizewinner, Robert Shiller teaches at Yale and is the author of Irrational Exuberance, which should give you an idea of this one's approach. This fascinating work uses economics to explain real-life issues, such as real estate price cycles, to key policy problems, such as the relationship between inflation and employment."--Stephen Matchett, The Australian "George Akerlof and Rober Shiller's Animal Spirits is a plea to start believing our lying eyes rather than the model. Rather than try to explain away the apparent irrationality in human behaviour, Akerlof and Shiller say we need to try to understand it and shape policies that take it into account... The core message of Animal Spirits is that we should stop trying to cage the spirits and instead admit their central importance. Specifically, this means that world governments will need to intervene forcefully in the current economic crisis with both fiscal stimulus and direct measures to stimulate lending--to restore some of the confidence that the crash has sapped."--Matthew Yglesias, The National "In saluting Keynes' quip, Akerlof and Shiller argue that much of the story is in the unreliability and incompleteness of supposedly rational behavior--the micro-foundation of the free-market model. They contend that modern economics, even self-described Keynesian economics, has given short shrift to this core behavioral insight... Their best chapter is on the limited capacity of central banks to prevent or cure calamities."--Robert Kuttner, The American Prospect "Akerlof and Shiller take psychological research seriously, and it's refreshing to see that they're not trying to reinvent the wheel... The book is an interesting read and would probably be very useful for an undergrad class that needs an introduction to behavioral economics. A & S do a nice job of moving between the theoretical and the practical, the empirical and the implied. The writing is accessible and the topic is more than relevant to our current economic situation."--Orgtheory.net "Animal Spirits is succinct, clear and lively."--Brad Willis, Edmonton Journal "In an intriguing new book, Animal Spirits, US economists George Akerlof and Robert Shiller argue that psychology plays a far bigger role in determining economic outcomes than economists realize--and that, broadly speaking, people get what they expect. If we think good times are ahead, we act confidently in a way that creates them. And if we expect a downturn ahead, we act defensively and unwittingly ensure that's what we get."--Tim Colebatch, The Age "The authors are right in pointing out the inadequacy of conventional economics in understanding, not to say addressing, today's economic woes, because they fail to take into account these animal spirits."--Wan Lixin, Shanghai Daily "[Animal Spirits] is a short, thoughtful and sometimes simplistic book that calls for a different vision of economics... Animal Spirits may well be a GPS system for a changing economic future."--Gene Rebeck, Delta Sky "Animal Spirits presents a rigorous case for the importance of 'confidence multipliers' and 'stories' in explaining recent market behaviour and of 'fairness' and 'money illusion' in preventing wages from falling in recessions to the market-clearing rate. Written in an accessible style, the book provides a very useful practical primer for policy-makers, practitioners and academics on many aspects of the current crisis. The authors also make a compelling theoretical case for macroeconomists taking more account of the role of non-economic motives and irrational responses."--Richard Bronk, The Business Economist "[T]he authors do a superb job of conveying the importance of bevaioural economics to a non-specialist audience. They increase our understanding of recent economic events and they show that animal spirits affect how governments should manage the economy."--Natalie Gold, Times Higher Education "Animal Spirits offers a road map for reversing the financial misfortunes besetting us today. Read it and learn how leaders can channel animal spirits--the powerful forces of human psychology that are afoot in the world economy today."--Money Science "[T]his very book seems to be one of the 'must-reads' in the Obama administration."--Andreas Ernst, JASSS "Ideologists are likely to dismiss this volume. However, for other readers--whether their perspectives are quantitative or qualitative--Animal Spirits may fill a troubling gap in existing investigations of the causes of booms and busts."--Thomas H. Wilkins, Investment Professional "Akerlof and Shiller's book is an interesting and thought-provoking attempt to understand how underlying human psychology drives the economy. The questions they pose and the examples they provide should be read by any economist seeking to better understand the differences between what economics predict will occur, and how people actually behave as individuals and within larger groups."--Dmitri Leybman, Midway Review "Animal Spirits, which attempts to leverage the insights of behavioral economics to reanimate the vision of John Maynard Keynes, is perfectly timed for the present moment."--Nick Schulz, Wilson Quarterly "Animal Spirits is exceptional in showing how economics can be accessible and relevant in dealing with this awesome challenge."--Irish Times "George Akerlof and Robert Shiller have offered an attractive road map for a macroeconomics that might be inspired by the recent financial crisis."--Romar Correa, Economic & Political Weekly "I believe this book to be best suited for those individuals who come from different fields but have a keen interest in economics and finance."--Kristina Vasileva, Journal of General Management "It is perhaps the ultimate compliment to suggest that Russia's greatest writer would very much have agreed with Barany's depiction of the Russian military--and that his approach is a superior one for understanding Russian military politics."--John P. Moran, Perspectives on Politics "More important than the timeliness of the book was the legacy that it leaves behind. This book helps us to understand as never before how macroeconomics really works."--Stan C. Weeber, Journal of Global Analysis "Akerlof and Shiller deserve at least two cheers--one for providing a more solid psychological foundation for our understanding of confidence and another for re-introducing such an important concept into mainstream macroeconomics."--Martin Rapetti, Eastern Economic JournalTable of ContentsPreface to the Paperback Edition vii Preface xxi Acknowledgments xxvii Introduction 1 Part One: Animal Spirits ONE Confidence and Its Multipliers 11 TWO Fairness 19 THREE Corruption and Bad Faith 26 FOUR Money Illusion 41 FIVE Stories 51 Part Two: Eight Questions and Their Answers SIX Why Do Economies Fall into Depression? 59 SEVEN Why Do Central Bankers Have Power over the Economy (Insofar as They Do)? 74 POSTSCRIPT TO CHAPTER SEVEN The Current Financial Crisis: What Is to Be Done? 86 EIGHT Why Are There People Who Cannot Find a Job? 97 NINE Why Is There a Trade-off between Inflation and Unemployment in the Long Run? 107 TEN Why Is Saving for the Future So Arbitrary? 116 ELEVEN Why Are Financial Prices and Corporate Investments So Volatile? 131 TWELVE Why Do Real Estate Markets Go through Cycles? 149 THIRTEEN Why Is There Special Poverty among Minorities? 157 FOURTEEN Conclusion 167 Notes 177 References 199 Index 219

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Book SynopsisOften downplayed in the excitement of starting up a new business venture is one of the most important decisions entrepreneurs will face: should they go it alone, or bring in cofounders, hires, and investors to help build the business? More than just financial rewards are at stake. Friendships and relationships can suffer. Bad decisions at the incepTrade ReviewWinner of the 2014 Entrepreneurship Practice Award, Entrepreneurship Division of the Academy of Management Winner of the 2013 Silver Medal Book Award in Entrepreneurship, Axiom Business Finalist for the 2013 George R. Terry Book Award, Academy of Management "[A] seminal work... Sure to be required reading in business school curricula, this illuminating and captivating read will also appeal to aspiring entrepreneurs or founders who want to make better decisions in existing ventures."--Publishers Weekly "[A] first-aid manual to help resuscitate ailing start-ups."--Jessica Bruder, journalist, author, and adjunct professor at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, You're the Boss blog, New York Times "Wasserman illustrates his findings with real world examples that translate into immediately applicable advice. But rather than creating a prescriptive list of commandments that would be impossible to follow, he adopts a more holistic approach. Encouraging entrepreneurs to study how others have handled similar challenges in the past, his insights highlight the common ground found in seemingly unique situations."--ForeWord "Harvard Business School professor Noam Wasserman is one of the writers and teachers who best captures the high stakes decisions that entrepreneurs face every day."--Scott Kirsner, Boston Globe "There are plenty of books, lots with stories, anecdotes, and suggestions, but none that are particularly systematic about going through all of the issues. Noam's book is the first I've read--and he totally nails it."--Brad Feld, Feld Thoughts "[T]he definitive book on the topic... If you are a founder or thinking about becoming one, you should read this book."--Dharmesh Shah, OnStartups.com "This is a serious book for a serious endeavor: creating a company from scratch that can be a world-beater and life-changer... Wasserman's book is a towering guide to making these decisions thoughtfully and purposefully. Every founder should read it--and take the time to digest its rich data and lessons."--Jeff Bussgang, Seeing Both Sides blog "Wasserman's book is on track to take as lofty a position in the entrepreneurial literature as HBS's Clayton Christensen's The Innovator's Dilemma did in the field of technological change."--Peter Cohan, Forbes "Highly recommended for those who plan to embark or are already living the entrepreneurial lifestyle, it can serve as a guide to very tough situations for founders to evaluate the best possible way out."--Bernard Leong, SGEntrepreneurs "Ten years of extensive research combined with winning case studies make this a trustworthy source not only for the potential startup owner but also for the classroom."--Library Journal "[A] must-read for anyone thinking of creating a startup, who is currently involved with one or who is an investor/advisor in the startup ecosystem."--Dilip James, Business Standard (India) "This book, upon release, becomes the single-most indispensible guide for founders of startups. Comingling research, straight talk, and a human voice--so often lacking in books with an academic bent--Dilemmas totally rocks as a business school required read and a founder's gripping, absolute must-read. Turning the last page, anyone with an entrepreneurial femur in their body will be fully armed with a battery of knowledge that can make or break a passionate first or even fifteenth venture. Do not start a startup without this book."--Ted Sturtz, New York Journal of Books "[S]obering... Professor Wasserman provides a great deal of data and stories about high-potential technology and life-sciences startups. His book offers much more information than most entrepreneurs can handle at once, but it is probably essential for them to know."--Harvey Schachter, Globe & Mail "Wasserman presents a series of entrepreneurship vignettes and case studies, drawn from a massive 10,000-founder survey he created. Due to the size of this business start-up survey, several of the stories, including accounts from founders of Blogger, Sittercity, and SmarTix, should prove fresh to readers. Much of the advice in the book governs key decisions founders have to make and factors that can cause decisions to turn out well or badly... [T]his work includes valuable, unique content."--Choice "[A] uniquely valuable resource for any entrepreneur."--Terrence Murray, Financialist "The Founder's Dilemmas can't prevent entrepreneurs from repeating the mistakes of their predecessors; we all know how well human beings learn from history. But it's a worthwhile, prudent read for anyone considering or engaging in entrepreneurship. In pointing out the patterns, the common quandaries and routes, The Founder's Dilemmas can eliminate one headache along the path of business-building."--Tamara Micner, LSE Politics and Policy blog "The guru on this subject is Noam Wasserman, who wrote an insightful book called The Founder's Dilemmas."--Luke Johnson, BusinessDayTable of ContentsList of Illustrations vii Part I: Introduction and Pre-founding 1 Chapter One: Introduction 3 Chapter Two: Career Dilemmas 27 Part II: Founding Team Dilemmas 69 Chapter Three: The Solo-versus-Team Dilemma 73 Chapter Four: Relationship Dilemmas: Flocking Together and Playing with Fire 89 Chapter Five: Role Dilemmas: Positions and Decision Making 117 Chapter Six: Reward Dilemmas: Equity Splits and Cash Compensation 145 Chapter Seven: The Three RsSystem: Alignment and Equilibrium 186 Part III: Beyond the Founding Team: Hires and Investors 205 Chapter Eight: Hiring Dilemmas: The Right Hires at the Right Time 209 Chapter Nine: Investor Dilemmas: Adding Value, Adding Risks 249 Chapter Ten: Failure, Success, and Founder-CEO Succession 297 Part IV: Conclusion 329 Chapter Eleven: Wealth-versus-Control Dilemmas 331 Acknowledgments 387 Appendix A: Quantitative Data 391 Appendix B: Summary of Startups and People 403 Notes 425 Bibliography 451 Index 467

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewOne of The Independent's Best Economics Books of the Year Bloomberg Businessweek's Best Books of the Year Financial Times Best Economics Books of of the Year One of Financial Times (FT.com) Best Economics Books of 2015, chosen by Martin Wolf One of the Strategy+Business Best Business Books 2016 in Economy One of The Independent's Best Economics Books 2015 One of Bloomberg Businessweek's Best Books of 2015, chosen by Vitor Constancio "[Between Debt and the Devil] represents an important challenge to economic orthodoxy, which, as [Turner] rightly notes, has already failed us once."--John Cassidy, New Yorker "Extensively researched and well-written."--Edward Chancellor, Wall Street Journal "[A] remarkable new book."--Will Hutton, Observer "Lucid and forcefully-argued."--Peter Thal Larsen, Reuters Breakingviews "Turner offers a convincing account of the debt-fuelled global economic cycle of the last 15 years or so. I found myself skimming over large sections and nodding in agreement."--Erik Britton, Management Today "Turner is more than just another thinker merrily seeking to provoke his audience; he is an experienced British policymaker accustomed to weighing up the angles... [Between Debt and the Devil] is as good as it can be, an overdue challenge to a taboo against monetary finance held sacred for too long."--Giles Wilkes, Financial Times "Adair Turner, the former chairman of Britain's Financial Services Authority and described by The Economist as a man for all policy crises, upends financial orthodoxy in Between Debt and the Devil. He argues that nothing regulators have done thus far has addressed the fundamental underlying cause of financial instability... Turner's book is tightly argued and is packed with insights about the financial markets as well as the real economy."--Brenda Jubin, Investing.com "If developed economies fall back into recession, people may hear quite a bit more about Lord Turner's ideas."--Economist "This is an important book because Turner thinks clearly where much analysis has been fuzzy ... [a] stimulating book."--Ben Chu, The Independent "Adair Turner's Between Debt and the Devil: Money, Credit and Fixing Global Finance--out this month--joins a select group of books that provide as clear an explanation of the financial crisis as one could hope for."--Diane Coyle, The Enlightened Economist "Some astonishingly original ideas."--Alex Brummer, Daily Mail "[A] brilliant new book... [The] prose crisply conveys analysis of real force."--Tom Clark, Guardian "[A] scintillating individual [contribution] to the debate not just on the future of finance but how we should run our economy."--Felix Martin, New Statesman "Adair Turner's new book Between Debt and the Devil is definitely worth your time."--Clive Crook, Bloomberg View "A challenging but relentlessly logical book about the flaws of the system that led us to the Great Recession: excess finance, excessive indebtedness. He adds to the literature that explains why more and more finance is not always good. The proposed cure requires going beyond the present financial regulatory reform. A bold and thought provoking book."--Vitor Constancio, Vice president, European Central Bank, one of Bloomberg's Best Books of 2015 "This book lays down a challenge which subsequent accounts of monetary policy will have to address."--David Willetts, Prospect "[An] excellent book."--Nick Butler, Financial Times "[H]is extensive work both at financial institutions and in academia, have given Turner an insider's view of the world of finance and economics. But his conclusions--that the banking system needs to be fundamentally restructured, and that periodically, instead of a government running up debt, the central bank should just print money for the government to spend--are far from conventional."--Matt Phillips, Quartz "This is a good book, well worth reading... It is well and clearly written and supported by good, non-technical analysis and empirical evidence."--Charles Goodhart, Financial World "These provocative and insightful arguments are particularly valuable at a time when austerity retains its intellectual luster despite its manifest failures."--Andrew Moravcsik, Foreign Affairs "Turner's book should make policymakers and commentators sit up and take notice."--TT Ram Mohan, Economic & Political Weekly "This seminal book details an important reality of today's economy: generating enough demand to absorb potential supply depends on explosive increases in indebtedness-private or public, or both."--Martin Wolf, Financial TimesTable of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Preface: The Crisis I Didn't See Coming xi Introduction: Too Important to Be Left to the Bankers 1 Part I Swollen Finance 17 1 The Utopia of Finance for All 19 2 Inefficient Financial Markets 34 Part II Dangerous Debt 49 3 Debt, Banks, and the Money They Create 51 4 Too Much of the Wrong Sort of Debt 61 5 Caught in the Debt Overhang Trap 74 6 Liberalization, Innovation, and the Credit Cycle on Steroids 88 7 Speculation, Inequality, and Unnecessary Credit 108 Part III Debt, Development, and Capital Flows 131 8 Debt and Development: The Merits and Dangers of Financial Repression 133 9 Too Much of the Wrong Sort of Capital Flow: Global and Eurozone Delusions 149 Part IV Fixing the System 161 10 Irrelevant Bankers in an Unstable System 163 11 Fixing Fundamentals 175 12 Abolishing Banks, Taxing Debt Pollution, and Encouraging Equity 186 13 Managing the Quantity and Mix of Debt 195 Part V Escaping the Debt Overhang 211 14 Monetary Finance-Breaking the Taboo 213 15 Between Debt and the Devil-A Choice of Dangers 231 Epilogue: The Queen's Question and the Fatal Conceit 241 Notes 253 Bibliography 277 Index 289

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Piecing together case studies from the Mediterranean and northern Europe, as well as looking at mining, metal production and alternative forms of currency, this is a rich account of early English numismatic history." * Spear’s *"Making Money in the Early Middle Ages provides a broad portrait of daily life through the lens of currency in the ninth century that makes the book a worthwhile read."---Ryne Clos, Spectrum Culture

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Book SynopsisTrade Review“Anderson explores a striking American contradiction. On the one hand, we are a freedom-obsessed society, wary of government intrusion into our private lives; on the other, we allow ourselves to be tyrannized by our bosses.”—Joshua Rothman, NewYorker.com“Private Government is a welcome and important call to bring workplace governance back into political theory and discourse, and should be taken seriously if we are to promote greater democracy in the workplace.”—David Cowan, Times Literary Supplement“Highlight[s] the dramatic and alarming changes that work has undergone over the past century—insisting that, in often unseen ways, the changing nature of work threatens the fundamental ideals of democracy.”—Miya Tokumitsu, New Republic“The extent of the arbitrary authority of owners and managers over employees is surprisingly neglected by political thinkers, given how much time we spend at work and how little in the polling booth. Elizabeth Anderson provides a much-needed, important, and compelling account of this overlooked subject. Private Government deserves to be widely read and discussed.”—Alan Ryan, professor emeritus, University of Oxford

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Book SynopsisLucid, accessible, and provocative, and now thoroughly updated to cover recent events that have shaken the global economy, Globalizing Capital is an indispensable account of the past 150 years of international monetary and financial history.Trade Review"One of the major books on the history of the International Monetary System."---Ivo Maes, Journal of European Integration History"An invaluable guide for anyone who wants to understand money." * The Economist *

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"A Financial Times Book to Read in 2023""This is a model of economic history, acute, profound and diverting."---Ferdinand Mount, London Review of Books"[Virtuous Bankers] is compelling and lively, and will please both academic and general readers. . . . Murphy’s thorough research sets a high standard for future work in this field."---Perry Gauci, Literary Review"Brilliant."---Jesse Norman, The Spectator"Fascinating. . . . [Murphy] makes the technicalities of financial history accessible and personal."---Martin Daunton, BBC History Magazine"Murphy turns what could have been a dry bureaucratic history into a fascinating and engaging read. Above all, her book highlights the value of approaching the big questions in economic history with a sensitivity to the routines and rhythms of everyday life."---James Taylor, History Today"The modus operandi of the Bank of England is described assiduously in [this] delightful new book." * Grant's Interest Rate Observer *"[Murphy] excels in putting this microhistory in the larger context of the bank's relationship with the British state and British economic history. . . . By situating the Bank of England in the contexts of London and Britain at large, Murphy paints it a lively, much-needed, and three-dimensional portrait that uncovers the unknown corners of this well-known bank."---Zhihui Zou, World History Encyclopedia"Well-researched. . . . Murphy’s history is unique."---Kofi Adjepong-Boateng, Financial Times"Murphy has produced an impressive historical study of the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street that makes a compelling case for why this particular period in its history is so important. Her book will be of interest not only to specialists, but also to anyone interested in how Britain’s financial system evolved."---Matthew Partridge, Money Week

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Book SynopsisDeftly navigating the tensions among globalization, national sovereignty, and democracy, Straight Talk on Trade presents an indispensable commentary on today's world economy and its dilemmas, and offers a visionary framework at a critical time when it is most needed.Trade Review"One of Financial Times (FT.com) Best Books of 2017: Economics""One of Bloomberg’s Best Books of 2017""One of Project Syndicate’s Best Reads in 2017 (chosen by Kermal Dervi )""Winner of the 2019 George S. Eccles Prize for Excellence in Economic Writing, Columbia Business School"

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Recommended and long overdue."---Tyler Cowen, Marginal Revolution"One of the most comprehensive accounts of opposition politics as carried by key individuals and organisations, their initiatives, and its impact. . . . Within economics, economic history and history of economic thought are two separate disciplines. [Toward a Free Economy] traverses both and goes beyond in its effort to tell the story of India’s opposition in its early days. The book lays down a fertile ground for future researchers to further explore."---Kumar Anand, The Hindu"Exhaustively researched."---Archis Mohan, Business Standard"An instant classic."---Sanjeet Kashyap, Australian Outlook

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Winner of the Silver Medal in Business Theory, Axiom Business Book Awards""The real argument of the book comes in the second half, namely that a set of radical but feasible policies holds the solution to inequality. And, if they were implemented, Sandbu eloquently argues, more globalisation would benefit all and defang populist polarisation."---Diane Coyle, Financial Times"[A] brilliant, if sometimes controversial, exposition of what ails our economies and political systems."---Chris Johns, Irish Times"The Economics of Belonging is a competent, confidently articulated survey of the academic economics literature on inequality."---Paul Collier, Prospect"This is a crisply written analysis of economic discontents and their political consequences. Though written in the pre-pandemic era, the conclusions and prescriptions of this book are very relevant to our current debates."---Paschal Donohoe, Irish Times"A wealth of analysis and insight [in] a few hundred pages."---Peter Thal Larsen, Reuters Breakingviews"Sophisticated and engaging. . . . Thorough and compelling."---Paolo Mauro, Finance & Development"The Economics of Belonging is an important contribution to the debate about the ‘left-behind’. Sandbu offers a highly readable and carefully argued narrative, which marshals evidence adroitly and proposes a range of policy prescriptions, many of which are persuasive and deserve serious attention."---John Tomaney, LSE Review of Books"One of Sandbu’s great strengths is his ability to combine analysis of microeconomic welfare policy with macroeconomic and financial policy. . . . An important achievement of this book is to show that many measures both reduce inequality and improve productivity and growth."---Paul Segal, Journal of Economic Inequality

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Kalman tells the story of the Bacris and the Busnachs with verve and a certain wry panache, liberally quoting from primary sources which can be entertainingly theatrical."---Peter Gordon, Asian Review of Books

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Provocative . . . and well timed for an age of big deficits and high inflation." * The Economist *"Having given the magic money tree a good shake, governments are now grappling with inflation and swollen debts. A more sombre age calls for a more serious approach to economics. John Cochrane’s fiscal theory fits the bill."---Edward Chancellor, Reuters"The culmination of years of careful research. . . . [The Fiscal Theory of the Price Level] is not just about predicting the behaviour of the price level, but rather opens a whole new dimension for studying the political and redistributive implications of fiscal policy as expressed through the channel of monetary policy and inflation."---Michael Ben-Gad, Economic Affairs"Fiscal Theory of the Price Level . . . provides an elegant theoretical framework for both explaining the experiences of the 2010s and why the change in policy regime in the 2020s has led to high inflation and interest rates – and what will be required to return inflation to ‘normal’."---Melissa Davies, Society of Professional Economists

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"A Financial Times Best Book of the Year: Economics""A Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year""[An] excellent new book . . . exploring everything from inequality to deaths of despair to the failures of the field in which he won the Nobel prize. It's all leavened with sardonic humor."---Nicholas Kristof"Deaton recounts his journey to understanding the political and economic dysfunctions of his adopted home. It's sort of like Alexis De Tocqueville's classic Democracy in America, but with more numbers, more economics, and more vitriol. . . . Rare for an economist, Deaton offers a lucid and unsparing critique of America's political system."---Greg Rosalsky, NPR’s Planet Money"Inviting and readable."---Jennifer Szalai, New York Times"Deaton’s prose is lucid and tartly down-to-earth (the U.S. government works 'to help rich predators make ordinary people poorer,' he writes), and he makes a convincing case that 'economics should be about understanding the reasons for and doing away with the sordidness and joylessness that come with poverty and deprivation.' The result is a refreshing take on America’s economic discontents." * Publishers Weekly *"This brilliant economics study will likely engage general readers and hold their attention to the end." * Library Journal (Starred review) *"The book is informative, given the wide range of subjects; compelling, given Deaton’s obvious authority and rich experience; and, given his flair for writing, enjoyable."---Vivek Arora, Finance & Development"Highly enjoyable. . . . Deaton emerges from the book as a decent human being who wants to make the world a better place."---Martin Wolf, Financial Times"The degree to which orthodox economics is complicit in this unequal, greed-ridden house of cards is honestly faced by Angus Deaton, one of the profession’s giants, in Economics in America. A powerful mea culpa, it is also a milestone in restoring the profession to the family of human sciences."---Paul Collier, Times Literary Supplement"Completely fascinating. . . . The book is a great read, thoughtfully and well written."---Bridget Rosewell, Society of Professional Economists ​​​​​​​"It is a good read. . . .Deaton also knows how to entertain while informing and there are some fascinating insights and anecdotes concerning some of the economists he most respects, from James Meade to Anthony Atkinson."---Paul Fisher, Financial World

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"The Price of Collapse is a little gem."---Rana Mitter, Literary Review

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Book SynopsisAs the climate crisis worsens, we must look to revolutionary strategy for justiceTrade Review'Guides us beyond the greenwashing of the arsonist state, towards the regenerative agency of local communities. Gelderloos demonstrates how we have the means at hand to extinguish the blaze and reset our wayward course towards a more livable and just planet for all' -- Simon Springer, author of 'The Anarchist Roots of Geography''Few books are as honest, inclusive and based on so much experience of committed social and ecological struggle. The Solutions Are Already Here opens doorways to a world so many young activists want to know and understand, and reminds so many more that now is the time to act' -- Dr. Alexander Dunlap, Centre for Development & the Environment, University of OsloTable of ContentsPreface Acknowledgments 1. A Wide-Angle View The Bare Bones: The Situation Now and Our Likely Futures In the Biosphere Everything Is Connected: The Ecological Crisis beyond Carbon Hoard the Profit, Share the Blame: The Anthropocene Reconsidered 2. Foxes Building Henhouses Government Promises and Market Solutions: The Profitable Failings of Paris, the NGOs, and Climate Capitalism Religions of Consumption: Ecocide and Entitlement Prison Cells and Death Squads: The Real First Response to Climate Change 3. The Solutions Are Already Here We Have Stopped Pipelines, Airports, Highways, and Mines: The Victories that Add Up Food Sovereignty and Ecological Healing: Finding Our Place in a Damaged Ecology Fighting Where We Live: From Cities to Habitats 4. Versatile Strategies A Thousand Worlds Struggling to Be Born: Ecosystems of Revolt False Pragmatisms: Strategies of Desperation Ecological Revolution: The Best Strategy in Success or Failure 5. A Truly Different Future Ecological Imaginations: Plotting a Total Transformation of Human Existence Justice and Reconciliation: Making Sure Mass Murder Doesn’t Pay Apocalyptic Utopias Now: Present Steps in the Networking of Local and Global Spaces Notes Index

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Book SynopsisA clear analysis of the about-turn in the modern financial sector towards free market authoritarianismTrade Review'Fascinating. Shows convincingly that Brexit was financed by hedge funds and alternative finance, and that their ultimate goal was to promote a new wave of financial deregulation and buy off our democratic institutions. A great piece of social sciences and a must-read' -- Thomas Piketty, author of 'Capital in the Twenty-First Century''A fresh and urgent agenda for social science research for years to come' -- Johan Heilbron, Professor in the Sociology of Education at Uppsala University'An unparalleled look into the class interests driving today's anti-democratic insurgency and its links with the authoritarian libertarianism of the hard right. Ground-breaking' -- Melinda Cooper is based at the Australian National University'A remarkable foray into the radicalisation of the political order inherent in our contemporary financial condition: an order for which remaining pockets of liberal democracy are no longer of use' -- Fabian Muniesa, Professor at the Ecole des Mines de Paris'Rare and empirically rich' -- Contretemps'A dark tale, announcing the new concept of an 'authoritarian libertarianism'' -- Mediapart'This provocative opus remarkably demonstrates how conflicts among different fractions of capital were the key drivers of UK's recent Eighteenth Brumaire: Brexit' -- Olivier Godechot, author of 'Wages, Bonuses and the Appropriation of Profit in the Financial Industry'Table of ContentsIntroduction 1. The Big Money Behind Brexit 2. Second-Wave Finance vs. the European Union 3. From European Neoliberalism to Authoritarian Libertarianism Epilogue: The Drumbeat of War List of Tables Notes

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Book SynopsisAn introduction to the groundbreaking ideas of the first woman to win the Nobel Prize for EconomicsTrade Review'Elinor Ostrom's Rules for Radicals has given me food for thought and action' -- John McDonnell'A fascinating insight into the only woman to win the Nobel Prize for economics. I thoroughly recommend this book to anyone interested in alternatives to the neoliberal consensus' -- Caroline Lucas, Co-Leader of the Green Party'An astute interpretative overview of Ostrom's far-ranging scholarship on the commons: inspiration and guidance for a new generation of commons thinkers and activists' -- David Bollier, author of Think Like a Commoner, and Director of the Reinventing the Commons Program at the Schumacher Center for a New Economics'The UK's vote to leave the EU and the election of Donald Trump as US President are both signs that working people are rejecting the global economy. This makes the work of Elinor Ostrom, with its focus on common ownership and political empowerment, very timely' -- Molly Scott Cato, Green MEP for South West EnglandTable of ContentsAcknowledgements Rules for Radicals 1. Elinor Ostrom's Radical Life 2. The Commons: From Tragedy to Triumph 3. Climate Change, Ecology and Green Politics 4. Beyond Markets and States 5. Deep Democracy 6. Feminism and Intersectionality 7. Trust and Cooperation 8. Science for the People 9. Transforming Institutions 10. Conflict and Contestation Bibliography Resources for Change Index

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Book SynopsisRobert B Miller of Miller Heiman, a global leader in sales training, brings almost 40 years' experience in sales, consulting and executive management to help clients succeed in the sales arena. Stephen E Heiman, the former President, CEO and Chairman of Miller Heiman, has worked in sales development for over 30 years.Tad Tuleja is Miller Heiman's staff writer. They are also the authors of the other Miller Heiman best-sellers, The New Strategic Selling and The New Conceptual Selling.Table of Contents Chapter - 00: Introduction: Back to growth; Section - ONE: Basic Principles; Chapter - 01: The new landscape of account management: eight lessons; Chapter - 02: Selecting the Large Account; Chapter - 03: A real-world example; Section - TWO: Situation Appraisal; Chapter - 04: The Buy-Sell Hierarchy; Chapter - 05: Preparing the ground; Chapter - 06: Strategic Players; Chapter - 07: The Account’s Trends and Opportunities; Chapter - 08: Your Strengths and Vulnerabilities; Chapter - 09: Situation Appraisal summary; Section - THREE: Strategic Analysis; Chapter - 10: Charter Statement; Chapter - 11: Goals; Chapter - 12: Focus Investments; Chapter - 13: Stop Investments; Chapter - 14: Revenue Targets; Chapter - 15: Pre-Action Overview; Section - FOUR: Execution; Chapter - 16: Actioning the strategy; Chapter - 17: Ninety-Day Review; Chapter - 18: The LAMP® advantage

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