Search results for ""author rath"

“Leveraged Learning is a tour de force of education - how it evolved, what it delivered and where it is going”—Srikumar Rao In a world where education is broken, everyone loses. But big disruption (and transformation) is coming to higher education, and there will be many winners. This is the book that explores a model of education that’s not only robust enough for the modern world, it’s also affordable for students. It’s viable for businesses who long to finally hire the skills that are hard to find. And it’s distributed to the experts who are at the cutting edge of their fields rather than being confined to the purely intellectual and theoretical realms of the ivory tower. Gone are the days when education was something that only happened at the start of your career. The name of today's game, both personally and professionally, is to be CONSTANTLY LEARNING: just enough, just in time, and never stopping. But where can knowledge workers, professionals, and lifelong learners go to find the training and education they need to stay current and thrive? It's no secret that universities and colleges are struggling to keep pace and stay current. Often OUT OF TOUCH, exorbitantly overpriced, and slowed by unwieldy infrastructures, bureaucracies and tenure, these institutions are fundamentally designed to deliver a mode of education that still serves an important purpose, but leaves many of our individual and collective needs for learning and growth sorely unmet. This crisis is an OPPORTUNITY FOR THE EXPERTS AND PROFESSIONALS who possess the knowledge and skills that are so sorely needed by so many. The solution is to package their expertise into leveraged learning programs. These online courses will create transformation for the lifelong learners who need them, and profit for the experts who create them. Danny Iny, a successful educator and entrepreneur, has been leading the charge in the growing movement of course building and online education. And in Leveraged Learning, he lays out the guidebook for navigating and thriving in this new world – both as a lifelong learner, and as an expert with something to teach. As a lifelong learner, you'll gain the skills and acquire the tools that you need to grow and thrive: How education has changed and the implications for knowledge workers and professionals. Why the education system is failing you and what alternatives to consider. How to hack your patterns of behavior to support and accelerate your learning. The three layers of learning that you must stack together to achieve mastery. Which mental habits are critical to achieving ongoing, sustained success. How to tell which online courses are worth taking, and which to avoid. Why most online courses have single-digit completion rates, and how to transcend the statistics. And as an expert with something to teach, you'll learn how to package your expertise for others' benefit, and your profit: What it really takes to develop a lucrative revenue stream from your expertise. The piloting methodology that has worked for thousands of successful online course creators. How to design a curriculum that engages students and leads to mastery. What to test, measure, and iterate as your course grows and evolves. Research-based techniques to help every student perform at the 98th percentile of success. Methodologies for peer-based feedback that cost-effectively support student learning. How to engineer student success with accountability, gamification, and artificial intelligence. All this and much, much more is yours for the taking. Leveraged Learning is your indispensable guide to staying current, growing, and thriving in the modern world. Whether you will be one of the course creators or one of the lifelong learners (or both), you’ll benefit when you come along for the journey. Scroll up and buy the book today.

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This chapter is a monography concerning the possible role of tissue stiffness in the human carcinogenesis as well as its possible impact in the diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment of the malignancies. Cancer is a very serious health problem in mankind, with an increasing prevalence and incidence worldwide. Although in the last years, several diagnostic and therapeutic approaches were suggested and made available for managing human malignancies, the outcome of patients and their quality of life are still poor for most of these different forms of neoplasms (Torre LA, Siegel RL, Ward EM, Jemal A., Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev. 2016;25(1):16-27. doi: 10.1158/1055-9965.EPI-15-0578). Several reasons may explain this dismal prognosis: the aggressive biological behavior of some histological subtypes, the acute-, intermediate- or late- side effects of systemic chemotherapy and radiotherapy, including toxicity of organs, diarrhea, skin irritation, nausea, mucositis, alopecia, vomiting, intestinal discomfort, asthenia, the arising of immunosuppression with neutropenia, the increased risk of infections as well as the occurrence of secondary cancers, at variable time intervals, either within a few weeks or months/years after the end of anticancerous treatments. From chemotherapy to biological therapy: A review of novel concepts to reduce the side effects of systemic cancer treatment (Review). Int J Oncol.] 2019;54(2):407-419. doi: 10.3892/ijo.2018.4661). 1) Novel strategies and methodological approaches are strongly required to determine an effective improvement in the management of these diseases. It is conceivable to suppose that not only the genetic alterations, but also further important factors may be involved in determining the prognosis of patients, suffering from malignancies. 2) Extracellular matrix (ECM) represents a crucial and key component of tissue structure contributing to the initiation, growth, and progression of human carcinoma. This last consists of a three-dimensional and highly dynamic macromolecular network, supporting the structure of all mammalian cells and modulating their function. ECM is characterized by well-defined physical, biochemical and biomechanical properties and plays multiple functions, such as: a) the maintenance of cellular, tissue and organ homeostasis, b) the regulation of both the amounts and the activities of growth factors and receptors c) the preservation of an adequate hydration status and pH level in the tissue microenvironment. It undergoes a continuous but tightly regulated remodeling and several mechanisms participate in the control of its adequate composition and structural organization. Therefore, ECM regulates a wide series of distinct cell activities, such as differentiation, apoptosis, proliferation and migration as well as energy production and availability. In normal conditions, a dynamic interplay is established among mammalian cells and ECM, surrounding them. The result of this cooperation is the maintenance of a proper ECM composition, morphology, disposition and activity in all tissues and a correct intracellular structure and function, both in the cytoplasm and in micro-organelles, such as nucleus. In the last years, a large series of studies are focusing on a better understanding of ECM alterations and abnormalities, that emerge in its structure, shape and spatial organization, during the occurrence of different pathological conditions, such as inflammation and cancer. 3) ECM contributes to regulate and modulate a wide series of distinct cell activities, such as differentiation, apoptosis, proliferation, and migration as well as energy production and availability. In normal conditions, a dynamic interplay is established among mammalian cells and ECM, surrounding them. It involves soluble factors, such as chemokines, cytokines, costimulatory molecules, additional biological mediators (oxidants and prostaglandins) and physical stimuli (microenvironment stiffness and tensional/compression forces). The result of this cooperation is the maintenance of a proper ECM composition, morphology, disposition and activity in all tissues and a correct intracellular structure and function, both in the cytoplasm and in micro-organelles, such as nucleus. In the last years, a large series of studies are focusing on a better understanding of ECM alterations and abnormalities, that emerge in its structure, shape and spatial organization, during the occurrence of different pathological conditions, such as inflammation and cancer. To date, some studies are investigating the mutual interactions among the cells, that are progressively acquiring a cancerous phenotype, and the stroma surrounding them as well as the changes in physical properties of nucleus- and cytoplasmic- microenvironment. It has been shown that the ability of malignant cells to grow and to metastasize depends on several factors, such as the relationship occurring between the stroma stiffness as well as the nucleus and cytoplasm rigidity. Since 2003, Professor Donald Ingber published some interesting papers about tensegrity and tissue stiffness as a possible risk factor for cancer development (Ingber DE. Tensegrity I. Cell structure and hierarchical systems biology. ] J Cell Sci. 2003;116(Pt 7):1157-73; Ingber DE. Tensegrity II. How structural networks influence cellular information processing networks] J Cell Sci. 2003;116(Pt 8):1397-408). He has shed new light on this topic. Taking advantage from these experimental evidences, this paper describes the state of the art concerning this topic and the diagnostic, therapeutic and prognostic use in clinical practice in the last years as well as the possible future application of these evidences. We performed this chapter to identify the available studies, assessing: 1) the possible association between tissue stiffness and risk of cancer development; up to now a rather high number of malignant tumoralhistotypes have been identified in the different human organs and have been included in our anatomopathological classifications. Therefore, we decided to consider in our review only the following organs: brain, breast, colon, esophagus, kidney. liver, lung, prostate, stomach, thyroid and uterus and for each of them we have analyzed the most frequent, aggressive and lethal malignancies as paradigm; 2) the "state of art" for this topic with clinical (diagnostic and therapeutic management) purpose; 3) the potential relationship between the values of tissue stiffness and prognosis in patients with cancers involving the above reported organs and the current use as well as their potential future application in clinical practice.

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Record your grandfather’s life story in this beautiful keepsake journal with 200 guided exercises and prompts that take him back through each stage of his life and its accompanying adventures. Whether called Papa, Grampie, Grandpa, or something else, grandfathers are a family’s most-prized treasure and whose patriarchal wisdom, love, and support are needed and appreciated by every member. Grandfathers have lived full lives that show that, even though times may change, most of life’s truths are timeless. With a compassionate ear always at the ready, their experiences have also gifted them with profound insight to share. In this second edition of My Grandfather’s Life featuring a new cover design, both thought-provoking and lighthearted writing prompts and guided exercises are organized into chapters based on your grandfather’s life stages to help him record his life’s memoir. Beginning with early childhood, questions like What are some family holiday traditions you remember? followed by early adulthood prompts such as Did a particular person inspire you in pursuing a job or career? and then moving to the wisdom he has learned and would like to share such as If you could change one thing about the world, what would it be and why?, the My Grandfather’s Life journal jump starts the reflective writing process to open your grandfather’s mind to dig deeper into who he is, where he started, and, most importantly, what he has learned. Complemented with poignant quotes about grandfathers throughout history, this beautifully designed journal will give your grandfather everything he needs to record his life’s experiences to not only shed light on the events that shaped him into the man he is today, but also to preserve his life’s memories and stories for you and your family to learn from, become inspired by, and cherish for future generations. With so much of our lives and contact going digital, the Creative Keepsakes journals offer an intimate way to nurture your connection with yourself and the people around you. An entertaining way to get off your screen, these guided and free-form journals are great for writers and artists alike. Each journal offers content around a different theme, including silly prompts for a laugh, random yet thoughtful questions, inspiration for art and composition, interactive prompts to learn about your heritage, and blank interiors on high-quality paper stock to use as your creative canvas. Beautifully designed and full of mindful prompts, channel your inspiration as you put pen (or pencil, or marker, or crayon!) to paper to learn more about yourself, your talents, and the people you love. Also in this Series: 3,001 Questions All About Me, 3,001 Would You Rather Questions, 3,001 This or That Questions, 301 Things to Draw, 301 Writing Ideas, Anti-Anxiety Journal, Complete the Drawing, Create a Poem, Create a Story, Create Comics: A Sketchbook, Design & Destroy, Forever Friends, Gratitude Journal, Inner Me, Inspired by Prayer, Internet Password Book, Mom & Me, My Family Story, My Father's Life, My Grandmother's Life, My Life Story, My Mother's Life, Our Love Story, Sermon Notes, Sketch - Large Black, Sketch - Large Kraft, Sketch - Medium Black, Sketch - Medium Kraft, This is Me, Write - Medium Black, Write - Medium Black

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With Little Savage, Emily Fragos delivers a magnificent collection in the American tradition of Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Bishop. With clean, strongly wrought lines she builds poems that are elegant and powerful. Marie Ponsot calls the collection “remarkable. What separates Fragos from her contemporaries is her amazing ability to empathize with the characters she creates—the misfits, the artists, the children kept in a fifteenth century school, the composer going mad. She convincingly becomes a young girl in the Venetian conservatory for the abandoned: “Sofia del violino. Once I saw myself / in a clear puddle of rain / water. My teeth are very crooked, I / know. We are none of us / startled by the other. We are all / the same. To Heaven.” These moments ache with honesty, humility, and make us wish that every sentiment expressed by Fragos could be true. Deceptively simple poems written by an unostentatiously skilled poet, Little Savage is permeated with a reverence for nature, music, myth and dance—a veritable treasure trove of compassion and grace. Richard Howard's Foreword You are alone in the room, reading her poems. Nothing is happening, nothing wrong, but all at once, say around page 17 or 18, you hear – remember, no one is with you, no one else is there—a sigh. Or a whispered word: someone. You are not alarmed, but you had thought you were alone. Perhaps not. The sensation is what Freud used to call unheimlich, uncanny. That is the effect of the poems of Emily Fragos. Like their maker, her readers are accompanied, and not to their ulterior knowledge. It is not disagreeable to be thus escorted, attended, joined, but we had not expected it. And as Robert Frost used to tell us (“no surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader”), Fragos too has not expected such visitations, as she will call them. This poet—these poems—endure otherness, they are haunted: “I remain, with one of everything.” Even as one is being saved…conjure the army of others” “What would happen to my life when all along there has been nothing but me?” “Did you not see how I was made to feel when you put me among others” “And my body—uninhabited—suffers and wonders: whose hands are these? whose hair?” The poems will reveal whose, though I do not think Emily Fragos herself ever finds out. Inevitably, we recall that old surrealist shibboleth, “Tell me by what you are haunted and I will tell you who you are;” it can be the password to indentity. But this poet has what she calls “luxurious mind” and her ghosts are legion: Alone in my odd-shaped room, I practice Blindness and the world floats close and away. I am uncertain of everything. I must walk slowly, carefully. She is acknowledging, with some uneasiness (“will you please tidy up?”), that it is not only the beloved dead, the proximate departed who are with her, who possess her, but others, any others. The remarkable thing about this poetic consciousness is that the woman’s body is inhabited—sometimes with mere habitude, sometimes joyously, more often with astonishing pain—by the prolixity of the real (and of the ‘unreal’); the poems are instinct with others: How dare you Care for me when all my life I have had this voltage to ignite me, this rhythm to drive me, when something inside your body dares me to touch my hands to yours… And quite as remarkable, of course, is the even tonality of such possession; there is nothing hysterical or even driven about the voice of the poems as it records, as it laments or exults in these unsought attendants. There is merely—merely!—a loving consistency of heedfulness; and one remembers Blake’s beautiful aphorism: unmixed attention is prayer. Of course such poetic staffage is not peculiar to Emily Fragos; like Maeterlinck, like Rilke, she exults in her discovered awareness: “I need the other/the way a virus/needs a host.” Rather, she imbues, she infects all of us with the consciousness that there are no single souls: we are not alone.

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David Shama’s first monograph Do Not Feed Alligators takes us on an existential journey into the decayed post-capitalist topography of a largely forgotten America– one where he presents youth engaged in achingly commonplace activities. There is an overarching sense in all of these pictures that his subjects are the angel-headed hipsters of a generation that has somehow been left behind, traversing what is left of a tragic, broken landscape–their thousand-yard stares seeking Elysian fields glinting seductively in the setting sun of their minds, far beyond the edge of the world. Shama employs Americana to map a narrative of existence among the flotsam and jetsam of society, where abandoned cars, vacated diners and dive motels act as the leitmotif of a journey into being and nothingness. While there are flashes of naturalistic beauty in the way in which his young muses are caught in the eye of his lens, there is no sentimentality, rather every frame contains a haunted, limbo-esque atmosphere. These figures, we are always aware, count their number among the beautiful and the damned. Ultimately, Do Not Feed Alligators seeks to suggest that we are all on a metaphorical road to nowhere– an apocalyptic landscape of the soul that is both beautiful in its mundane temporality, and boundless in its potential for quietly enticing mythology. Frecnh: La première monographie de David Shama, Do Not Feed Alligators, nous entraîne dans un voyage existentiel à travers la topographie post-capitaliste délabrée d'une Amérique largement oubliée - une Amérique où il présente de jeunes gens engagés dans des activités extrêmement banales. Il y a un sentiment général dans toutes ces images que ses sujets sont les anges branchés d'une génération qui a été en quelque sorte laissée pour compte, traversant ce qui reste d'un paysage tragique et brisé - leurs regards lointains scrutent les champs élyséens qui scintillent séduisants dans le soleil couchant de leurs esprit, bien au-delà des frontières du monde. Shama utilise l'Americana pour cartographier un récit sur l'existence au sein d’une société perdue, où les voitures délaissés, les restaurants abandonnés et les motels bon marchés sont le leitmotiv d'un voyage dans l'existence et le néant. S'il y a des éclairs de beauté naturaliste dans la façon dont ses jeunes muses sont prises dans l'œil de son objectif, il n'y a pas de sentimentalité, mais plutôt une atmosphère hantée et limbesque. Ces personnages, nous en sommes toujours conscients, comptent parmi les beaux et les damnés. En fin de compte, Do Not Feed Alligators cherche à suggérer que nous sommes tous sur un chemin métaphorique vers nulle part - un paysage apocalyptique de l'âme qui est à la fois beau dans sa temporalité mondaine et illimité dans son potentiel pour séduire tranquillement par sa mythologie. Spanish: Spanish: Un viaje hacia la América olvidada es la nueva propuesta de David Shama, un fotógrafo suizo que se entrega de lleno a cada trabajo que realiza. Do Not Feed Alligators es el primer libro monográfico que publica, una verdadera experiencia emocional para el espectador. Coches abandonados, restaurantes sin comensales y moteles destartalados constituyen el paisaje decadente de una sociedad postcapitalista. En medio de una rutina gris, jóvenes que conservan aún la belleza de los que creen en sus sueños. La temporalidad nos atrapa en un camino hacia la nada y Shama presenta esta realidad embrujada para transportarnos al espacio sin límites de la mente humana. David Shama es más conocido por su trabajo en el mundo de la moda, pero des del 2005 no ha parado de fotografiar la vida en su expresión más espontánea y natural. El artista parece tener una capacidad innata para hallar belleza en lo ordinario, en lo raído, y cargar de emoción cada una de sus fotografías; quizá por ello se ha hecho un nombre en el mundo del fotoperiodismo, ha expuesto en varias galerías y publicado en distintas revistas. Uno de sus particulares proyectos en busca de la espontaneidad ha consistido en crear series fotográficas a partir de rutas de una semana con chicas a las que acababa de conocer. En ellas, el viaje y el descubrimiento de nuevos paisajes iba acompañado del viaje simultáneo hacia el mundo interior de las modelos.Cada una de las imágenes de Shama es el reflejo de su propia fascinación por lo auténtico, un lenguaje visual sin pretensiones capaz de conmover a cualquiera. Ahora, el fotógrafo nos seduce con Do Not Feed Alligators, un relato acerca la existencia humana desde una veracidad y una cotidianidad estremecedoras.

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During the last months of the war, Josef Pieper saw the realization of a long-cherished plan to escape from the “lethal chaos” that was the Germany of that time, “plucked,” he writes, “as was Habakkuk, by the hair of his head . . . to be planted into a realm of the most peaceful seclusion, whose borders and exists were, of course, controlled by armed sentries.” There he made contact with a friend close-by, who possessed an amazing library, and Pieper hit upon the idea of reading the letters of Goethe from that library. Soon, however, he decided to read the entire Weimar edition of fifty volumes, which were brought to him in sequence, two or three at a time.The richness of this life revealing itself over a period of more than sixty years appeared before my gaze in its truly overpowering magnificence, which almost shattered my powers of comprehension – confined, as they had been, to the most immediate and pressing concerns. What a passionate focus on reality in all its forms, what an undying quest to chase down all that is in the world, what strength to affirm life, what ability to take part in it, what vehemence in the way he showed his dedication to it! Of course, too, what ability to limit himself to what was appropriate; what firm control in inhibiting what was purely aimless; what religious respect for the truth of being! I could not overcome my astonishment; and the prisoner entered a world without borders, a world in which the fact of being in prison was of absolutely no significance. But no matter how many astonishing things I saw in these unforgettable weeks of undisturbed inner focus, nothing was more surprising or unexpected than this: to realize how much of what was peculiar to this life occurred in carefully preserved seclusion; how much the seemingly communicative man who carried on a world-wide correspondence still never wanted to expose in words the core of his existence. It was precisely in the seclusion, the limitation, the silence of Goethe that made the strongest impact on Pieper. Here was modern Germany’s quintessential conversationalist intellectual, but the strength of his words came from the restraint behind them, even to the point of purposeful forgetting:The culmination is when the eighty-year-old sees forgetting not as a convulsive refusal to think of things, but as what could almost be termed a physiological process of simple forgetting as a function of life. He praises as “a great gift of the gods” . . . “the ethereal stream of forgetfulness” which he “was always able to value, to use, and to heighten.” However manifold the forms of this silence and of their unconscious roots and conscious motives may have been, is it not always the possibility of hearing, the possibility of a purer perception of reality that is aimed at? And so, is not Goethe’s type of silence above all the silence of one who listens? . . . This listening silence is much deeper than the mere refraining from words and speech in human intercourse. It means a stillness, which, like a breath, has penetrated into the inmost chamber of one’s own soul. It is meant, in the Goethean “maxim,” to “deny myself as much as possible and to take up the object into myself as purely as it is possible to do.” . . . The meaning of being silent is hearing – a hearing in which the simplicity of the receptive gaze at things is like the naturalness, simplicity, and purity of one receiving a confidence, the reality of which is creatura, God’s creation. And insofar as Goethe’s silence is in this sense a hearing silence, to that extent it has the status of the model and paradigm – however much, in individual instances, reservations and criticism are justified. One could remain circumspectly silent about this exemplariness after the heroic nihilism of our age has proclaimed the attitude of the knower to be by no means that of a silent listener but rather as that of self-affirmation over against being: insight and knowledge are naked defiance, the severest endangering of existence in the midst of the superior strength of concrete being. The resistance of knowledge opposes the oppressive superior power. However, that the knower is not a defiant rebel against concrete being, but above all else a listener who stays silent and, on the basis of his silence, a hearer – it is here that Goethe represents what, since Pythagoras, may be considered the silence tradition of the West.Pieper concludes his remarkable find with this summation:When such talk, which one encounters absolutely everywhere in workshops and in the marketplace – and as a constant temptation – , when such deafening talk, literally out to thwart listening, is linked to hopelessness, we have to ask is there not in silence – listening silence – necessarily a shred of hope? For who could listen in silence to the language of things if he did not expect something to come of such awareness of the truth? And, in a newly founded discipline of silence, is there not a chance not merely to overcome the sterility of everyday talk but also to overcome its brother, hopelessness – possibly if only to the extent that we know the true face of this relationship? I know that here quite different forces come into play which are beyond human control, and perhaps the circulus has to be broken through in a different place. However, one may ask: could not the “quick, strict resolution” to remain silent at the same time serve as a kind of training in hope?

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Praise for MANAGING THE NEW CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP “Gordon delivers an impressive synthesis of the newest methods for engaging customers in relationships that last. No organization today can succeed without the mastery of customer relationship management strategy fundamentals. But to win in the decades ahead, you must also understand and capitalize on the rapidly evolving social computing, mobility and customer analytics technologies described in this book. Checklists, self-assessments and graphical frameworks deliver pragmatic value for the practicing manager.” — William Band, Vice-President, Principal Analyst, Forrester Research Inc., Cambridge, MA “A very comprehensive and practical book on managing relationships with existing customers in the age of social media! I particularly enjoyed reading chapters on teaching customers new behaviors, which were illustrated by excellent case studies.” — Jagdish N. Sheth, Ph.D. , Charles H. Kellstadt Professor of Marketing, Emory University, Atlanta, GA “The strategic breadth and depth of this book is impressive as Gordon explores the new customer and how to plan and manage the new customer relationship. I found his review of strategies, techniques and technologies for social, mobile, mass customization and customer analytics to be particularly insightful. Gordon urges marketers to live and breathe one-through-one marketing and to master social engagement techniques. The checklists, cases and examples make the content grounded and actionable. This is an important, current and detailed book to which every organization should pay close attention to improve customer relationships and create shareholder value.” — Marcus Ruebsam, Vice-President, Line-of-Business Marketing Solutions, SAP AG, Walldorf, Germany “There are many books on CRM, but I recommend this one because Gordon’s book does what others do not. He considers CRM strategy and evolves it to recognize a new customer, one who is always connected, socially available and influential. The book doesn’t just discuss many point solutions for specific marketing challenges; it integrates technology with strategy, people, process and customer analytics to develop relationships continuously. This book is a broad and deep exploration of CRM, providing practical, fact-based perspectives that every company can use to validate and rethink their customer and stakeholder relationships.” — Helmuth Cepeda, Small, Medium and Distribution Director, Microsoft Mexico, Mexico City, Mexico Marketing has changed fundamentally in the last few years and has become an entirely new discipline, one that focuses on a new customer and a new relationship, framed by new principles, strategies, processes, roles and tactics. Individual customers are economically targeted and served, and treated as segments of one rather than members of a target market. Word of mouth and recommendations are vital as customers influence one another more than a company can do within its own advertising or customer dialogs. Today’s customer is always online, accessible and connected. Now marketing is not only direct and customer-specific but a continuous process by which companies seek to engage customers and be progressively more relevant, attractive and valuable. This is the era of a new customer relationship—an individual relationship that is social, mobile and local, influenced by peers and shaped by cognitive, behavioural and social psychological principles. New techniques, processes and technologies transform what it means to implement marketing strategy and achieve improved business results. The new customer relationship requires that even those companies that have embraced customer relationship management ought to reassess their customer management. Now every marketing decision, whether online or in the physical world, whether of a technological nature, whether it affects customer experience, communications, dialogs, teaching or organizational memory, every decision should be seen through a single lens focused on the individual customers who matter most. Managing the New Customer Relationship provides a strategic and practical guide to help companies attract, develop, sustain and build more valuable relationships by: Expanding upon existing customer relationship management theories, concepts and methods to make these considerations more useful, strategic and contemporary Recognizing the profound importance of social media and how to plan customer engagement in the social context of each customer Exploring new technologies that offer new opportunities for engaging customers, including mobile, local, the cloud and customer analytics Demonstrating how to develop customer-specific understanding, predict what customers will want next, and how to manage each individual customer, and Offering perspectives to help the organization endure by focusing a chain of relationships on the end customer and creating meaning for stakeholders that can make relationships more intense and robust. Managing the New Customer Relationship is for organizations of all sizes in all industries, for private- and public-sector organizations and not-for-profits. In short, every organization can apply the new principles, strategies, techniques and technologies discussed here to recognize important marketplace changes, plan to improve relationship and financial results and capture new shareholder value from new customer relationships.

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A review of current (education) policy and practice endorses the view of an apparent paradox in policy implementation. Although tremendous investments (in terms of energy, time and financial resources) are made in enacting policies, there is ample evidence to suggest that policy actors are impervious to policy information. Change agents and implementers of policy are often seen as pursuing different agendas when it comes to the task policy implementation. As aptly asserted by Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith (1993, cited by Shulock, 1999, p. 228), âpolicymakers and implementers' core beliefs are unaffected by policy information, major policy change results rather from external factors such as inflation and elections'. This book re-conceptualizes this policy phenomenon for rumination. The book essentially unravels perspectives on the policy implementation paradox, and through that exemplifies the âbest' suited approach for demystifying the policy/practice gap to bring understanding to the messiness and contested nature of (education) policy processes. To help draw conceptual leverage on the phenomenon described as the âpolicy implementation paradox', this eight chapter book performs two major functions. First, Chapters 1 to 4 set the context for the book. Chapter 1 defines (education) policy, and in the process, the traditional problem-solving definition of policy is juxtaposed with the process model, and through that a third conception (i.e. the theoretical eclecticism approach) is gauged to help provide both practical and theoretical bases for understanding how policy and practice exist in dynamic and iterative relationships. Chapters 2 and 3 give insights into how education policy-making is made and implemented respectively to unravel some of the influences on policy processes. Chapter 4 explicates (from within relevant literature) the policy paradox to assist readers to understand perspectives that are advanced in latter chapters to unravel and/or explain the existence or occurrence of this policy phenomenon. Second, Chapters 5 to 7 draw on literature from disparate sources to unravel perspectives on the policy implementation paradox, whilst Chapter 8 presents the key messages that are tangential to achieving the objectives of the book. Overall, the Chapter 8 performs three functions, namely it: summarizes perspectives presented in the scholarly literature to demystify and unravel the policy implementation paradox illustrates the reasons for the choice of the post-modernist perspective as the most appropriate and/or best suited perspective for unravelling this policy phenomenon; and outlines the relevance (and/or justifications) of the post-modernist conception of policy as both âtext' and âdiscourse' as a framework for understanding the policy implementation paradox and the dynamism of policy processes at large. The contribution of this book is seen particularly in its ability to leverage the post-modernist conception of policy as both âtext' and âdiscourse' to stress the importance of recognizing the role of implementation in actually changing policy. Brought directly into the context of the policy implementation paradox, the book (drawing on the post-modernist conception of policy) clearly propels the dynamism of policy processes, and uses this to explain the reasons why policy implementation outcomes most often differ from policy-makers' intentions. First, the book makes the point aptly and forcefully that because policy processes are dynamic, there is usually conflicts among those who make policy as well as those who put policy provisions into practice, about what the important issues or problems for policy are and what the desired policy goals ought to be. Second, it puts down the issue of disconnect between policy intentions in theory and policy implementation outcomes in practice invariably to the active processes involved in interpreting policy. Policy statements, in the view of the book and in the post-modernist tradition, are almost always subject to multiple interpretations and re-interpretations depending upon the standpoint of the people doing the interpretive 'work'. Third, the policy/practice gap is explained as existing and/or occurring because the practice of policy on the ground is extremely complex, both that which is being 'described' by policy and those that are 'intended' to put policy into effect or practice. The point, according to the post-modernist thinking on which this book draws, is that simple policy descriptions of practice do not capture the multiplicity and complexity of the practice of policy on the ground, as such, the implementation of policy in practice almost always means outcomes differ from policy-makers' intentions. Against the backdrop of these three reasons alluded to, the book attributes the underlying causes of the policy implementation paradox to two interrelated factors. One, it is argued that the paradox in policy implementation occurs mainly because of what post-modernist thinkers call policy refraction. That is to say, because policies in practice tend to evolve through the interactions of a multiplicity of actors, they become distorted and less coherent as they are interpreted and put into practice by the 'ground-level' actors and implementers. Two, it is contended that the emergence of post-modern theory (with its contemporary understanding of the nature of reality and how to 'go on' in life) has undermined the 'modernist' philosophy to such an extent that older ideas of fixed structures conditioning behaviour and imposing regularity and predictability on social life have become considerably weakened, if not demolished completely. Essentially, the book argues that the post-modern theoretical movement has had tremendous effect of stressing the unpredictability of human behaviour in policy implementation processes, and by extension, the unpredictability of policy outcomes as against policy intentions.

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