Description: How deep learning--from Google Translate to driverless cars to personal cognitive assistants--is changing our lives and transforming every sector of the economy. The deep learning revolution has brought us driverless cars, the greatly improved Google Translate, fluent conversations with Siri and Alexa, and enormous profits from automated trading on the New York Stock Exchange. Deep learning networks can play poker better than professional poker players and defeat a world champion at Go. In this book, Terry Sejnowski explains how deep learning went from being an arcane academic field to a disruptive technology in the information economy. Sejnowski played an important role in the founding of deep learning, as one of a small group of researchers in the 1980s who challenged the prevailing logic-and-symbol based version of AI. The new version of AI Sejnowski and others developed, which became deep learning, is fueled instead by data. Deep networks learn from data in the same way that babies experience the world, starting with fresh eyes and gradually acquiring the skills needed to navigate novel environments. Learning algorithms extract information from raw data; information can be used to create knowledge; knowledge underlies understanding; understanding leads to wisdom. Someday a driverless car will know the road better than you do and drive with more skill; a deep learning network will diagnose your illness; a personal cognitive assistant will augment your puny human brain. It took nature many millions of years to evolve human intelligence; AI is on a trajectory measured in decades. Sejnowski prepares us for a deep learning future.
Description: Imad Moosa's thought-provoking book explores the contemporary doctrine that plagues the academic sphere: the principle of publish or perish. This book identifies the pressures placed upon academics to either publish their work regularly, or suffer the consequences, including lack of promotion, or even redundancy.Imad Moosa argues that this concept is a result of globalisation and the neo-liberal idea of treating higher education as a private good. Providing one of the first extensive analyses of this doctrine, the author identifies the overwhelmingly negative unintended consequences stemming from the pressure to publish research. He explores the detrimental effects of this burden, which includes the impact of drawing away the focus from educating students, to the declining quality of published research. The hazardous activity of journal ranking and resource-wasting research evaluation programmes are also considered, with the author ultimately proposing that the solution to this controversial issue is to go back to days gone by, prior to the dominance of the free market ideology.Innovative, provocative, and timely, this book will be a stimulating read for academics worldwide, as well as non-university researchers, university administrators, policymakers and government officials operating within the fields of higher education, science, and technology.
Description: Can we really teach leadership? Yes, we can, and this book provides innovative ways of doing so. It is designed to help educators contribute to their learners' leadership development by expanding and enhancing their knowledge and competencies through a study of theory, practice and experiential learning. We need effective leaders at all levels of society. The more educators do to prepare leaders to make a positive difference, the better off the world will be. Educators can adjust, adopt, and adapt concrete examples provided in this book to fit their own organizations' needs. The authors explore time-tested efforts at linking leadership theory and practice in ways that promote meaningful leadership development for our learners. Starting from "why" and "what" about leadership, the book progresses to "how" to organize teaching leadership. It emphasizes lessons learned as a result of decades of experience in the design, implementation, and evaluation of nationally recognized leadership programs. Each chapter includes reflection questions that allow educators to consider how the content is relevant or can be applied to their own institutional context.Teaching Leadership is written for educators and practitioners in undergraduate and graduate-level leadership programs, in professional schools, in technical institutes, and in government institutions, as well as for those working in for-profit and not-for-profit organizations.
Description: This revised and expanded edition of the bestselling book, The Personal MBA by Josh Kaufman, gives you everything you need to transform your business, your career or your working life forever.
An MBA at a top school is an enormous investment in time, effort and cold, hard cash. And if you don't want to work for a consulting firm or an investment bank, the chances are it simply isn't worth it.
Josh Kaufman is the rogue professor of modern business education. Feted by everyone from the business media to Seth Godin and David Allen, he's torn up the rulebook and given thousands of people worldwide the tools to teach themselves everything they need to know.
The Personal MBA teaches simple mental models for every subject that's key to commercial success. From the basics of products, sales & marketing and finance to the nuances of human psychology, teamwork and creating systems, this book distils everything you need to know to take on the MBA graduates and win.
'File this book under: NO EXCUSES' Seth Godin, author of Purple Cow and Linchpin
'Well on its way to becoming a business classic. You're pretty much guaranteed to get your money's worth - if not much, much more' Jason Hesse, Real Business
'Josh Kaufman has synthesized the most important topics in business into a book that truly lives up to its title. It's rare to find complicated concepts explained with such clarity. Highly recommended' Ben Casnocha, author of My Start-Up Life
Josh Kaufman is an acclaimed blogger and consultant who helps people improve their business skills. He previously worked at Proctor & Gamble. Since 2005 Josh has been helping people learn about business without remortgaging their lives through his website, www.PersonalMBA.com
Description: Building a route to market is fundamental to sales and survival. This book demystifies marketing channel strategy by focusing on how to do channel design and management. We provide practical tools and frameworks for key decisions and highlight the critical tradeoffs and pitfalls.Many channel strategies are built like the wood towers used in popular stacking games. You hope your tower is sturdy and strong. But over time, you may replace or add partners, add or subtract routes to market, and change your product lines - so your channel strategy must adapt in order to prevent your tower from collapsing or breaking apart.This Field Guide introduces you to the channels landscape, helps you understand your building block options, and unpacks the physics of adding and subtracting channel components, to give you the tools you need to keep your go-to-market strategy resilient, responsive, and a source of competitive advantage.
Description: We need finance - but when finance grows too big it becomes a curse. The City of London is the single biggest drain on our resources; it sucks talent out of every sphere, it siphons wealth and hoovers up government time. Yet to be 'competitive', we're told we must turn a blind eye to money-laundering and appease big business with tax cuts. We are told global finance is about wealth creation; the reality is wealth extraction.
Tracing the curse back through economic history, Shaxson uncovers how we got to this point. He exposes offshore tax havens; the uncontrolled growth of monopolies; the myths around the Celtic Tiger and its low corporate tax rate; the bizarre industry of wealth management; the destructive horrors of private equity; and the sinister 'Competitiveness Agenda'.
Nicholas Shaxson revealed the dark heart of tax havens long before the Panama and Paradise Papers. Now he tells the explosive story of how finance established a stranglehold on society and points us towards a way out.
This is a book that none of us can afford to ignore.
Description: Despite spending enormous sums on technology and improvement methods, most businesses are under siege. The inability to drive adaptation to an increasingly more volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous ("VUCA") set of circumstances has resulted in an unprecedented rate of failure across organizations of all shapes and sizes. Worse yet, the necessary component to break the cycle is being distorted by antiquated models, methods, rules, and tools held over from decades past. Industry is stuck in a rut, and that rut is getting deeper and deeper.Where does common sense turn into common nonsense in organizations? Today, companies lack an effective framework to consistently apply and integrate common sense principles at ALL levels (strategic, tactical, and operational).
Description: Customer Lifetime Value - The Path to Profitability reviews the CLV metric in particular. Approaches to computing CLV and the concept of customer equity are discussed in detail. Specifically, this monograph provides the methods of measuring CLV, the strategies for developing customer-centric strategies, the implementation of CLV strategies in a B2B and B2C setting, and the challenges faced by an organization in implementing a CLV-based framework. The author details the importance of CLV as a metric in a marketer's toolkit and how it is relevant to managing customers. Customer Lifetime Value - The Path to Profitability answers the following questions: What is the value of a customer? Can customers be evaluated based only on their past contribution to the firm? Which metric is better in identifying the future worth of the customer? These are the questions a firm has to deal with before assessing the value of its customers. The author shows that the value of a customer is the value the customer brings to the firm over their lifetime. Therefore, we need a metric that can objectively measure future profitability of the customer to the firm. Customer lifetime value (CLV) helps managers make informed business decisions.
Description:
Discussing various ethnonational movements in India, including the Northeast, Punjab, and the Kashmir movements, the volume covers their initiation, subsequent trajectory, and the role of the State. The first part provides the context discussing democracy, diversity, and devolution and thecontainment of social and political power. The second and third parts focus on Kashmir as a legacy of Partition, and the Northeast respectively. Both parts discuss the nature of contest among various forms of legitimate and not-legitimate power in these conflicts. Dealing with the nature of federaldesign, the fourth part discusses conflict-negotiation between a democratic nation and prospective breakaway units, with an emphasis on how such situations are controlled. The fifth part explores the theory of fragmented nationalisms and relates it to the specifics of the situation in India. Theconcluding part charts the rise and fall of self-determination movements across the country
Description: Digital transformation is not about technology--it's about change. In the rapidly changing digital economy, you can't succeed by merely tweaking management practices that led to past success. And yet, while many leaders and managers recognize the threat from digital--and the potential opportunity--they lack a common language and compelling framework to help them assess it and guide them in responding. They don't know how to think about their digital business model. In this concise, practical book, MIT digital research leaders Peter Weill and Stephanie Woerner provide a powerful yet straightforward framework that has been field-tested globally with dozens of senior management teams. Based on years of study at the MIT Center for Information Systems Research (CISR), the authors find that digitization is moving companies' business models on two dimensions: from value chains to digital ecosystems, and from a fuzzy understanding of the needs of end customers to a sharper one. Looking at these dimensions in combination results in four distinct business models, each with different capabilities. The book then sets out six driving questions, in separate chapters, that help managers and executives clarify where they are currently in an increasingly digital business landscape and highlight what's needed to move toward a higher-value digital business model. Filled with straightforward self-assessments, motivating examples, and sharp financial analyses of where profits are made, this smart book will help you tackle the threats, leverage the opportunities, and create winning digital strategies.
Description: The forest sector in India is currently going through an unprecedented churning. Every dimension of forest-related decision-making, including rights of local communities, conversion of forests to non-forest uses and setting aside forests for wildlife conservation, has become the subject ofintense scrutiny, debate and change. The involvement of multiple actors, from local communities to the Supreme Court, marks a shift in the discourse from forest management to forest governance. Questions of forest rights, responsibilities, regulatory structures, transparency and accountability haveincreasingly become central to the discourse. The need to democratize all these components of forest governance is being repeatedly articulated. This book highlights this shift in the discourse and analyses the complex issues involved in bringing about democratic governance of forests in India.The essays in this book review developments over the last two decades along four dimensions: forests for local management, forests for wildlife conservation, conversion to non-forest purposes, and the wider socio-economic context and how it poses challenges to the idea of democratic governance. Thethemes range from the relevance of the Joint Forest Management programme, the contribution of the Forest Rights Act, the complexities of the Godavarman case and the changes in the Wildlife Act to challenges posed by shifting cultivation, scientific versus traditional knowledge, and the effect ofeconomic growth on forest dependence.
Description: This innovative textbook covers the most important challenges facing family businesses. Practice-inspired and research-based, it emphasizes both practice and theory along with concepts, cases and reflection questions to illustrate key topics.This text discusses the relevance of family firms across the globe, their unique strengths and weaknesses, their governance, strategic management, the succession process, drivers of long-term success and interpersonal dynamics. Taking a holistic and international perspective, the book combines management concepts, research findings, practical examples and case studies to provide a unique source of insight and inspiration for students and practitioners in the most prominent type of business organization in the world.This textbook's comprehensive coverage of topics and combination of didactical formats makes it ideal for students studying family firms, and a useful reference for professors, advisors, and practitioners as well.
Description: Join the global movement that's making corporations more people-centric to achieve great results. The world is facing a global leadership crisis. Seventy-seven percent of leaders think they do a good job of engaging their people, yet 88 percent of employees say their leaders don't engage enough. There is also a high level of suffering in the workplace: 35 percent of employees would forgo a pay raise to see their leaders fired. This is an enormous waste of human talent--despite the fact that $46 billion is spent each year on leadership development. Based on extensive research, including assessments of more than 35,000 leaders and interviews with 250 C-level executives, The Mind of the Leader concludes that organizations and leaders aren't meeting employees' basic human needs of finding meaning, purpose, connection, and genuine happiness in their work. But more than a description of the problem, The Mind of the Leader offers a radical, yet practical, solution. To solve the leadership crisis, organizations need to put people at the center of their strategy. They need to develop managers and executives who lead with three core mental qualities: mindfulness, selflessness, and compassion. Using real-world inspirational examples from Marriott, Accenture, McKinsey & Company, LinkedIn, and many more, The Mind of the Leader shows how this new kind of leadership turns conventional leadership thinking upside down. It represents a radical redefinition of what it takes to be an effective leader--and a practical, hard-nosed solution to every organization's engagement and execution problems.
Description: This volume studies natural resources through the lens of cultural politics. It emphasizes the role of cultural politics and adds to the existing environmental debates. The essays allow us to think anew the taken-for-granted aspects of natural resources. Each article highlights a differentfacet of the natural resources debate. The term natural resources when examined along with such keywords as waste, scarcity, security, territory, sovereignty, conflict, expertise, and community opens up a distinctive world of meanings. These related keywords chart out the terrain of the culturalpolitics of natural resources.
Description: A Washington Post Bestseller Three Principles for Managing--and Avoiding--the Problems of Growth Why is profitable growth so hard to achieve and sustain? Most executives manage their companies as if the solution to that problem lies in the external environment: find an attractive market, formulate the right strategy, win new customers. But when Bain & Company's Chris Zook and James Allen, authors of the bestselling Profit from the Core, researched this question, they found that when companies fail to achieve their growth targets, 90 percent of the time the root causes are internal, not external--increasing distance from the front lines, loss of accountability, proliferating processes and bureaucracy, to name only a few. What's more, companies experience a set of predictable internal crises, at predictable stages, as they grow. Even for healthy companies, these crises, if not managed properly, stifle the ability to grow further--and can actively lead to decline. The key insight from Zook and Allen's research is that managing these choke points requires a "founder's mentality"--behaviors typically embodied by a bold, ambitious founder--to restore speed, focus, and connection to customers: * An insurgent's clear mission and purpose * An unambiguous owner mindset * A relentless obsession with the front line Based on the authors' decade-long study of companies in more than forty countries, The Founder's Mentality demonstrates the strong relationship between these three traits in companies of all kinds--not just start-ups--and their ability to sustain performance. Through rich analysis and inspiring examples, this book shows how any leader--not only a founder--can instill and leverage a founder's mentality throughout their organization and find lasting, profitable growth.
Description: Entrepreneurship is an academic discipline that, despite decades of growth in research and teaching activity lacks a traditionally distinct or common pedagogy. In this book, editors Thomas N. Duening and Matthew L. Metzger explore entrepreneurial identity as a new basis upon which curricula can be constructed for aspiring entrepreneurs. Critically, this perspective is based on the insight that there is a fundamental difference between venture development and entrepreneur development. Unfortunately, most current interventions for aspiring entrepreneurs focus on the former at the expense of the latter. The editors have collected work from an international team of authors with diverse views on how identity theory applies to entrepreneur development. Chapters focus primarily on macro-level identity issues (that is, how do these entrepreneurial archetypes form, persist, and sometimes change) or micro-level identity issues (that is, how can educators and resource providers identify, communicate, and incentivize identity construction among aspiring entrepreneurs). This book provides a general theoretical background and offers numerous suggestions for application and further research. One example of this is the 'For Further Reading' feature at the end of each chapter which is perfect for assisting those who want to delve deeper into various topics.This essential resource will be of interest to researchers, resource providers and students alike.
Description: The Evolution of a New Industry traces the emergence and growth of the Israeli hi-tech sector to provide a new understanding of industry evolution. In the case of Israel, the authors reveal how the hi-tech sector built an entrepreneurial culture with a capacity to disseminate intergenerational knowledge of how to found new ventures, as well as an intricate network of support for new firms. Following the evolution of this industry from embryonic to mature, Israel Drori, Shmuel Ellis, and Zur Shapira develop a genealogical approach that relies on looking at the sector in the way that one might consider a family tree. The principles of this genealogical analysis enable them to draw attention to the dynamics of industry evolution, while relating the effects of the parent companies' initial conditions to their respective corporate genealogies and imprinting potential. The text suggests that genealogical evolution is a key mechanism for understanding the rate and extent of founding new organizations, comparable to factors such as opportunity structures, capabilities, and geographic clusters.
Description: If you have good economic principles, then more than likely, you're making good business decisions. Although economics is sometimes dismissed as a discourse of practical relevance to only a relatively small circle of academicians and policy analysts who call themselves economists, sound economic reasoning benefits any manager of a business, whether they are involved with production and operations, marketing, finance, or corporate strategy. This highly respected text will help you and any business manager with managerial economics, which is the application of microeconomics to business decisions. Inside, you'll learn about the key relationships between price, quantity, cost, revenue, and profit, which are detailed for an individual firm in the form of simple conceptual models. The book includes key elements from the economics of consumer demand and the economics of production. It also discusses economic motivations for expanding a business and contributions from economics for improved organization of large firms, as well as market price-quantity equilibrium, competitive behavior, and the role of market structure on market equilibrium and competition. It concludes by considering market regulation in terms of the generic problems that create the need for regulation and possible remedies for those problems.
Description: The steps you need, for the results you want. There's no shortage of advice out there on how to perform better, and better than others, at work. The problem is knowing which methods are actually proven to work--and how you should act on them to get the best results. In 8 Steps to High Performance, talent expert and bestselling author Marc Effron cuts through the noise with his signature "science-based simplicity" approach to identify what matters most and show you how to optimally apply your time and effort to boost your performance. It turns out that higher performance comes from doing many things well--but some of those things are not in your power to change. Effron reveals the eight key factors you do control and practical steps for improving yourself on each one. You'll learn: How to set goals that create higher performance Which behaviors predict higher performance in different situations How to quickly develop the most important capabilities Who to connect with and why How to understand and adapt to your company's strategy Why you sometimes shouldn't be the "genuine" you How to best manage your body to sustain your performance How to avoid management fads that distract you from high performance Research-based, practical, and filled with self-assessments, tools, and templates to support your performance goals at work, this short, powerful book will help you and anyone on your team deliver outstanding results.
Description: For advanced undergraduate and/or graduate-level courses in Distribution Channels, Marketing Channels or Marketing Systems. Marketing Channel Strategy shows students how to design, develop, maintain and manage effective relationships among worldwide marketing channels to achieve sustainable competitive advantage by using strategic and managerial frames of reference. This program will provide a better teaching and learning experience--for you and your students. Here's how: Bring Concepts to Life with a Global Perspective: Varied topics are covered, bringing in findings, practice, and viewpoints from multiple disciplines. Teach Marketing Channels in a More Flexible Manner: Chapters are organized in a modular format, may be read in any order, and re-organized. Keep your Course Current and Relevant: New examples, exercises, and research findings appear throughout the text.
