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A practical guide to effective business model testing 7 out of 10 new products fail to deliver on expectations. Testing Business Ideas aims to reverse that statistic. In the tradition of Alex Osterwalder's global bestseller Business Model Generation, this practical guide contains a library of hands-on techniques for rapidly testing new business ideas. Testing Business Ideas explains how systematically testing business ideas dramatically reduces the risk and increases the likelihood of success for any new venture or business project. It builds on the internationally popular Business Model Canvas and Value Proposition Canvas by integrating Assumptions Mapping and other powerful lean startup-style experiments. Testing Business Ideas uses an engaging 4-color format to: Increase the success of any venture and decrease the risk of wasting time, money, and resources on bad ideas Close the knowledge gap between strategy and experimentation/validation Identify and test your key business assumptions with the Business Model Canvas and Value Proposition Canvas A definitive field guide to business model testing, this book features practical tips for making major decisions that are not based on intuition and guesses. Testing Business Ideas shows leaders how to encourage an experimentation mindset within their organization and make experimentation a continuous, repeatable process.

Integrate Agile methodology into your business with this stunning guide to the latest management techniques Corporate Agility is the must-have guide on adopting Agile methodology for businesses of all shapes and sizes. This visually stunning book delivers six key lessons that you must learn in order to effectively join the Agile world. You'll learn the ins and outs of the traditional approach, helping you answer the questions'Why Agile?'and'Why now?'You'll also discover new, more efficient Agile strategies that will help you lead your enterprise to increased collaboration, more flexibility, and better business results. Based on the latest practice and research, and drawing on years of experience at the author's own leading consultancy, Corporate Agility features a beautiful 4-color design that helps you visualize powerful strategic ideas, so you can understand and implement them right away. Unlike other books on the market, this title helps you reinterpret key Agile management concepts in a way that will work for your specific needs. Gain a clear understanding of traditional Agile methodology, the history of Agile, and the benefits to organizations of all shapes and sizes Discover cutting-edge Agile strategies that push Agile thinking forward and increase performance efficiency Learn the 6'Agilessons'that underpin all successful Agile transformations Follow real-world case studies from leading businesses that have successfully made the leap into Agile operations Organizational leaders will love this digestible, forward-thinking guide written by one of America's fastest rising strategic execution gurus.

Seize opportunity from uncertainty What if you could use strategy to turn market volatility to your competitive advantage? Rethinking Strategy shows you how to anticipate and benefit from emerging market shifts and free your organisation from a cycle of disruption and response. In this ground-breaking book, author and strategist Steve Tighe helps you use scenarios to envisage what your industry and organisation could look like in the future and prepare for what's to come. Through detailed case studies and practical tools, this guide reveals how to make strategy development your organisation's principal creative and learning activity. anticipate impending market shifts before they emerge slow down change by making the future familiar unlock the entrepreneurial talent that lies within your organisation mobilise an army of internal advocates to drive strategy execution embed foresight into your planning and innovation processes Have you ever wondered how some companies seem to always be ahead of the curve while others struggle to keep up in today's ever-changing competitive environment? With Rethinking Strategy, you'll learn how to make better decisions and thrive alongside increasing competition and uncertainty.

Future-proof your business today for stronger performance tomorrow The Stress Test Every Business Needs: A Capital Agenda for Confidently Facing Digital Disruption, Difficult Investors, Recessions and Geopolitical Threats provides a comprehensive approach to creating value and flexibility in an increasingly volatile business environment that presents both great risks and opportunities every day. The authors extend the banking “stress test” concept to a company's Capital Agenda — how executives manage capital, execute transactions and apply corporate finance tools to strategic and operational decisions. Having a static Capital Agenda, however appropriate for your current market position, is not enough in today's uncertain world. Long-term success comes from building resilience into each element and in the way those elements interact. The book uses a broader definition of business stress that includes traditional macroeconomic and geopolitical risks, as well as technological disruption, hostile takeovers and activist shareholders. Companies that make poor strategic decisions or underperform operationally will likely find themselves facing great stress. And that stress is symmetric; threats come from downside risks and from missed opportunities. The chapters address the how and why of essential issues such as: Formulating corporate strategy in a digital world Pre-empting activist shareholders Restoring distressed companies to operational and financial health Ensuring effective collaboration among strategy, finance and operations Getting the most out of your advisors Proactively managing intrinsic value Rigorously allocating capital across the enterprise Acquiring and divesting for optimum value Syncing financing decisions with business strategy and capital market conditions Incorporating tax planning throughout the Capital Agenda Liberating excess cash with leading working capital management practices Aligning strategic goals and metrics to reach your company's full potential Companies that develop strategy and set operational priorities with a balanced Capital Agenda are best positioned to control their own destiny. The Stress Test Every Business Needs provides a roadmap to future-proof your business today for stronger performance tomorrow.

The plain English guide to growing your business with purpose. Avoiding corporate jargon and overly-academic theorising in favor of a commonsense analysis of modern business behaviour, Truth, Growth, Repeat is like a user manual for company growth in a new world of commercial transparency. By mapping the way business works today at a very honest and human level, this street-smart book is a must-read for any business owner who wants to achieve growth and success without compromising their personal values. The book introduces The Circle of True Purpose, a virtuous sequence of knock-on effects that proves that enduring commercial growth is the result when a business owner's authentic motive is placed at the core of everything the business does. Author and brand expert Mike Edmonds explains the correct sequence to follow to acquire both financial return and personal fulfilment, and why going the other way leads to a never-ending cycle of inconsistent sales and consumer distrust. To illustrate these two key paths in life, the book contains many stories of actual businesses who've experienced these effects. This practical guide takes business owners through a series of exercises to help surface their own True Purpose and implement it in their sector of industry. Get tips on growing your business authentically from an expert in translating complex theory into usable advice Find out why truth is not only an admirable moral quality but is increasingly the key to lasting business success Discover ways to surface your True Purpose and learn the actual steps you can take to implement them in our always-on, super-connected world Bust the corporate myths that might be holding you back and obtain simple, usable tools that will help your higher ideal deliver higher returns If you feel there's a powerful truth inside your business that the world isn't seeing, Truth, Growth, Repeat could be the most important book you ever read.

Disruption is changing the playing field – keep your successful business on top Thriving businesses on top of their game are targets for disruption. But for savvy business owners and managers who understand the coming changes, the time to future-proof their successful companies is now. Following over a decade of research into future trends, business reinvention and disruptive innovation, author Michael McQueen presents How to Prepare Now for What's Next, a blueprint for top companies to thrive in turbulent times. McQueen brings rare insight to the topic of business disruption. The book first explores the notion of disruption itself, and confirms that the term is much more than just guru-speak. The book outlines the four primary forms of disruption that McQueen sees playing out over the next 5-10 years, and quickly moves on to the in-depth tools, tips and techniques that healthy businesses will need to stay on top. Use a simple tool to assess just how vulnerable to disruption your company is Read case studies, research and trend reports that highlight real-world examples to complement the book's concepts Understand the four forms of disruption, namely widescale automation, empowered consumers, unconventional competition and emerging generations Apply the 9 keys to future-proof your business against disruption and make it impervious to change The time to act is now for the businesses who want to keep their edge, and How to Prepare Now for What's Next is the guide to continue thriving.

Beat the odds with a bold strategy from McKinsey & Company'Every once in a while, a genuinely fresh approach to business strategy appears'—legendary business professor Richard Rumelt, UCLA McKinsey & Company's newest, most definitive, and most irreverent book on strategy—which thousands of executives are already using—is a must-read for all C-suite executives looking to create winning corporate strategies. Strategy Beyond the Hockey Stick is spearheading an empirical revolution in the field of strategy. Based on an extensive analysis of the key factors that drove the long-term performance of thousands of global companies, the book offers a ground-breaking formula that enables you to objectively assess your strategy's real odds of future success.'This book is fundamental. The principles laid out here, with compelling data, are a great way around the social pitfalls in strategy development.'—Frans Van Houten, CEO, Royal Philips N.V. The authors have discovered that over a 10-year period, just 1 in 12 companies manage to jump from the middle tier of corporate performance—where 60% of companies reside, making very little economic profit—to the top quintile where 90% of global economic profit is made. This movement does not happen by magic—it depends on your company's current position, the trends it faces, and the big moves you make to give it the strongest chance of vaulting over the competition. This is not another strategy framework. Rather, Strategy Beyond the Hockey Stick shows, through empirical analysis and the experiences of dozens of companies that have successfully made multiple big moves, that to dramatically improve performance, you have to overcome incrementalism and corporate inertia.'A different kind of book—I couldn't put it down. Inspiring new insights on the facts of what it takes to move a company's performance, combined with practical advice on how to deal with real-life dynamics in management teams.'—Jane Fraser, CEO, Citigroup Latin America

Meet the twelve people that can accelerate your success – in business and in life It's Who You Know is the long-awaited handbook to effective, productive and influential networking. Having the right relationships is more important than ever before, but digital connectivity and social media has changed the landscape. Social media has made networking easy, but has it made it better? In an age of digital disconnect, having the right relationships is more important than ever before with more and more of us reporting we feel disconnected from social media. Networking is no longer about collecting business cards and meeting thousands of people online or offline; it's about knowing the right people, and nurturing those relationships. You only need 12 – or even just four. Approached strategically, this comparatively small network will provide the strength, diversity and opportunities to help you achieve your personal and professional goals. This book shows you who you need to know, how to get to know them and how to make value a two-way street. Action plans, checklists and an online diagnostic tool help you start taking steps right away, and the emphasis on'doing'over endless planning gives you the motivation you need to get up and go. The old adage'It's not what you know; it's who you know'has never been more applicable than it is today. The problem is that many of us'know'thousands of people across social networks, but how many of those people truly know you and how many of them are truly connected to you? It's time to clear out the network clutter and identify those who actually add value to your professional and personal development. Master the art of real and influential strategic networking in a noisy and disconnected online world Learn who you need in your circle, and how to find them Nurture and maintain your professional relationships Leverage your power network to accelerate your career Today, jobs are filled before they're advertised and previously unthought-of collaborations appear out of nowhere. Networking has become a critical factor for success. It's Who You Know brings networking into the modern era, and shows you a strategic approach to making it work for you.

‘This book is straightforward, factual and to the point. Any Leader responsible for business growth should read it! A blueprint full of practical ideas and tools to inspire you into action'—Craig Donaldson - Chief Executive Officer, Metro Bank (RANKED NUMBER ONE IN GLASSDOOR'S HIGHEST RATED CEO 2016) If you asked a cross-section of business leaders, business owners and entrepreneurs what their biggest business challenge is, you would probably hear the same recurring thought: growing their business in a sustainable, predictable, yet profitable way – quickly. It's a reality that most businesses and individuals never reach their full potential, always yearning for the ‘thing'that will catapult them into significance, but never really finding it. Whether you're an entrepreneur starting out, or a director, executive or business leader climbing the corporate ladder, the building blocks of Built to Grow are universally applicable. Developed in the real world laboratory of thousands of businesses in twenty-seven countries spanning over two decades, Built to Grow is a proven, time-tested model to unlock the real potential in your business. Avoid the common pitfalls of a trial and error approach to business growth. Built to Grow is full of practical strategies, tools and ideas, backed up with real world case studies to illustrate what can be achieved - leaving you equipped to transform your businesses performance and drive tangible results. Built to Grow is destined to become your handbook, your ‘go to'guide, your roadmap to accelerated, sustained and profitable business growth.

Move past the obstacles and implement your new strategy Move is your guide to mobilizing your whole organization to take your business forward. Whatever your needed transformation may be: a new initiative, a new market, a new product, your fresh strategy is up against a powerful foe: an organization's tendency to stay very busy and completely engaged what it's already doing. This book shows you how to cut through resistance and get your team engaged and proactively doing the new thing! Author Patty Azzarello draws on over twenty-five years of international business management experience to identify the chronic challenges that keep organizations from decisively executing strategy, and to give you a practical game plan for breaking through. Leaders tend to assume that stalls in execution are inevitable, unchanging parts of the workplace—but things can change. At the heart of every execution problem is the fact that there simply are not enough people doing what the business needs. This guide shows you how to get your entire organization on board—remove the fear, excuses, and hurdles—and uphold the new pursuit against distractions and dissent. No transformation can succeed without suitable engagement from the whole organization, but building engagement can be difficult, uncomfortable, and tentative. This book shows you how to get it done. Get your organization to embrace and personally commit to the new work Remove obstacles and passive aggressive attacks that block progress Defend new strategic initiatives against short term pressures to revert to'business as usual'Sustain momentum and the desire to move forward Make sure no one is ever asking,'Are we still doing this?'Inertia isn't just a law of the universe, it's a law in the workplace that can be a major obstacle to making things happen. The great thing about inertia is that it cuts two ways: a body at rest remains at rest, but a body in motion remains in motion. People love to finish things. Move shows you how to make successful execution the new norm—starting today.

The best-selling author of Big Data is back, this time with a unique and in-depth insight into how specific companies use big data. Big data is on the tip of everyone's tongue. Everyone understands its power and importance, but many fail to grasp the actionable steps and resources required to utilise it effectively. This book fills the knowledge gap by showing how major companies are using big data every day, from an up-close, on-the-ground perspective. From technology, media and retail, to sport teams, government agencies and financial institutions, learn the actual strategies and processes being used to learn about customers, improve manufacturing, spur innovation, improve safety and so much more. Organised for easy dip-in navigation, each chapter follows the same structure to give you the information you need quickly. For each company profiled, learn what data was used, what problem it solved and the processes put it place to make it practical, as well as the technical details, challenges and lessons learned from each unique scenario. Learn how predictive analytics helps Amazon, Target, John Deere and Apple understand their customers Discover how big data is behind the success of Walmart, LinkedIn, Microsoft and more Learn how big data is changing medicine, law enforcement, hospitality, fashion, science and banking Develop your own big data strategy by accessing additional reading materials at the end of each chapter

Develop the qualities of strategic leadership and become an active contributor to the short- and long-term success of your organization Today's organizations face two daunting challenges: 1. How to create new sources of competitive advantage to sustain long-term growth, and 2. How to engage leaders at every level of the organization so that they are more proactive and forward-looking in their area of responsibility. The Art of Strategic Leadership uses a unique approach to examine what it means to be a strategic leader. Instead of focusing on the skills, behaviors, and tools found in typical books on strategic leadership, the authors shed light on the attributes and qualities necessary to lead strategic change and help transform a business. Strategic leadership is what modern leadership is all about. Organizations expect leaders to anticipate and be proactive more than ever before. In this book, the authors draw on their vast experience working directly with leaders at all levels and use an intriguing narrative to explain this inside-out approach to understanding strategic leadership. The narrative follows the journey of how one manager discovered these critically important qualities. You will experience first-hand how these values and attributes manifest in the lives of realistic leaders; how they orchestrate long-term strategic change needed for the organization to compete and survive and actively shape the future while delivering short-term results. The Art of Strategic Leadership provides the content that will help you informally assess and reflect on your own strategic leadership qualities—those that are strengths and those that indicate areas you need to develop. It will guide you as you incorporate these values and qualities into your own leadership style and become a more effective catalyst for change. This book will help you in the following ways: Develop a more proactive, forward-thinking approach to leadership Approach strategy from both short- and long-term perspectives Adopt the core values and principles of a strategic leader Model the qualities exhibited by powerful leaders Strategic leaders serve as powerful examples to others in the organization. Their qualities and traits spread rapidly to those around them, empowering people at every level to take a more active role in meeting the demands of the future. The Art of Strategic Leadership will help you deepen and broaden your understanding of the core qualities of strategic leadership, leaving you better equipped to lead yourself and your team to a better place and create greater value for customers, owners, and employees.

Get out of the office and dream! To keep your brand innovative you need to feed your creative spirit and the office is not the place to do that. So get out, disrupt and reimagine the status quo, get into a café and dream. Recreating the convivial, collaborative, creative world of the avant-garde the guys at The Dream Café have developed a fresh, new approach which is being used by major brands and businesses to great success. They create actual Dream Café locations – settings which encourage freedom of thought and collaboration. Explaining how space and process can be harnessed to produce the kind of unanticipated multicultural and interdisciplinary encounters that lead to unpredictable outcomes. Now, for the first time, the innovation consultants at The Dream Café have made their model and methods available to us all in this exciting new book. Focuses on the urgent need to enable major brand businesses to formulate, refine, and deliver the big brand idea that will disrupt and redefine the market Shows how to innovate and stand out by embracing risk and innovation Equal parts inspiration and practical implementation The concept covered is currently being used extensively by major global brands and companies

A visual and interactive guide to building and communicating strategies that actually work YOUR STRATEGY HAS SEVEN SECONDS TO CAPTIVATE ITS AUDIENCE… So how are you going to present it? A big wordy document? A lengthy address? Slides full of bullet points? The best way to engage and involve people is through pictures. Strategy Builder shows you how to creatively combine the best strategy frameworks to orient and animate strategy discussion and development in your team. This visual, interactive guide, with illustrations by Visory, uses real world examples and practical tips to help you: Discover the five key foundations that every strategy should be built upon Draw compelling and unique pictures that capture your organization's distinct strategies Develop your skills as a leader of strategy discussions Understand how to use interactive drawing to engage others and achieve ‘buy in'Additional online resources available including Strategy Drawing Templates, plus Builder Slides and case studies materials for instructors. Locate the'Companion Website'link towards the bottom of this page to access these materials. Test your strategic vision or develop a new strategic plan based on the best elements of key strategic frameworks by trying the FREE interactive Strategy Builder app, developed in association with StrategyBlocks, at www.strategicplan.com Praise for Strategy Builder: Cummings & Angwin are pioneers in introducing novel approaches in teaching and applying the principles of strategy --Robert M. Grant, Bocconi University, author of Contemporary Strategy Analysis In a complex, fast changing world, where we are bombarded by words, numbers and reports, the visual-first approach to strategy provided by Strategy Builder is immensely helpful for inspiring and communicating a clearer vision of how to move forward. -- Rachna Bhasin, VP Strategy, SiriusXM At last someone has grasped this idea and come up with a way to help us demonstrate strategic plans and ambitions in a creative new way. --Vikki Heywood CBE, Chair of The Royal Society for the Arts This wonderful book is the first to solve a near-universal problem: communicating strategic ideas is just as hard and just as important as coming up with them in the first place, and both are visual activities. The question is not “Do you understand?” but “Do you see?” --William Duggan, Professor, Columbia University, author Strategic Intuition This book shows how to draw an organization's strategy so you see what's been considered, what's not been considered, and how things are related,. Strategy building is presented as a fun and involving learning process.The approach is revolutionary in that it enables not only the development but also the easy sharing of strategic understanding. --Roger L.M. Dunbar, Emeritus Professor, Stern School of Business, New York University What a great idea! They layout is also really thoughtful; it makes you immediately want to get out a pencil and start doodling. --Adam Martin, Customer Solutions Director, The Brakes Group As a time pressed executive it was a delight to find a book that I can dip into to find the best strategic frameworks - those that have proved the test of time and academic scrutiny as being truly useful in the workplace. Even better for an inveterate scribbler: endorsement that a picture and ‘permission to play'with ideas visually really does say a thousand words and more! --Sarah Mitson, Global Business Director, TNSGlobal This is an invaluable resource for any executive wanting to improve engagement in strategy development and communication. The accessible layout means that the book itself can play an active and inspiring role in strategy discussions. --Matt Thomas, Director, Brax

This first edition of Strategic Innovation Management is an exciting new addition to the established bestselling texts Managing Innovation and Innovation and Entrepreneurship written by Joe Tidd and John Bessant. Aimed at students taking courses in business studies and management, as well as non-specialist courses in other disciplines, this book provides a practical and accessible evidence-based approach to managing innovation in a wide range of contexts, including: manufacturing, services, small to large organizations and the private, public and third sectors. The text has been designed to be fully integrated with the Innovation Portal at www.innovation-portal.info, which contains an extensive collection of additional resources for both lecturers and students including teaching resources, case studies, media clips, innovation tools, seminar and assessment activities and over 300 test-bank questions.

Creating Business Agility: How Convergence of Cloud, Social, Mobile, Video, and Big Data Enables Competitive Advantage provides a game plan for integrating technology to build a smarter, more customer-centric business. Using a series of case studies as examples throughout, the book describes the agility that comes from collaborative commerce, and provides key decision makers the implementation roadmap they need to build a successful business ecosystem. The focus is on Business Agility Readiness in terms of the five major changes affecting the information technology landscape, and how data-driven delivery platforms and decision-making processes are being reinvented using digital relationships with a social business model as the consumer world of technology drives innovation and collaboration. Cloud computing, social media, next-gen mobility, streaming video, and big data with predictive analytics are major forces now for a competitive advantage, and Creating Business Agility provides leaders with a roadmap for readiness. Business leaders tasked with innovation and strategy will find that Creating Business Agility provides important insight from an informed perspective.

A practical guide to leveraging your data to spur innovation and growth Your business generates reams of data, but what do you do with it? Reporting is only the beginning. Your data holds the key to innovation and growth – you just need the proper analytics. In Big Data, Big Innovation: Enabling Competitive Differentiation Through Business Analytics, author Evan Stubbs explores the potential gold hiding in your un-mined data. As Chief Analytics Officer for SAS Australia/New Zealand, Stubbs brings an industry insider's perspective to guide you through pattern recognition, analysis, and implementation. Big Data, Big Innovation: Enabling Competitive Differentiation Through Business Analytics details a groundbreaking approach to ensuring your company's upward trajectory. Use this guide to leverage your customer information, financial reports, performance metrics, and more to build a rock-solid foundation for future growth. Build an effective analytics team, and empower them with the right tools Learn how big data drives both evolutionary and revolutionary innovation, and who should be responsible Identify data collection and analysis opportunities and implement action plans Design the platform that suits your company's current and future needs Quantify performance with statistics, programming, and research for a more complete picture of operations Effective management means combining data, people, and analytics to create a synergistic force for innovation and growth. If you want your company to move forward with confidence, Big Data, Big Innovation: Enabling Competitive Differentiation Through Business Analytics can show you how to use what you already have and acquire what you need to succeed.

Grasp how mobile, big data, and analytics are combining to change business processes Right Experience, Right Results: Improving Profits, Margin, and Engagement with Mobile and Big Data illustrates how businesses can use mobility, big data, and analytics to enhance or change business processes, improve margins through better insight, transform customer experiences, empower employees with real-time, actionable insight, and more. The book depicts how companies can create competitive differentiation using mobile, cloud computing big data, and analytics to improve commerce, customer service, and communications with employees and consumers. In the past, the technologies used to deliver personalized and contextual services were either unavailable, unaffordable, or reserved solely for the consumer market. Today, however, the next wave of computing—mobile, cloud computing. big data, and analytics—has provided the foundation for businesses to create adaptive, personalized applications and services. Delivered point-of-need, these smarter services allow enterprise products and services to meet the burgeoning demand for always-connected, accurate, and real-time information. Right Experience, Right Results: Improving Profits, Margin, and Engagement with Mobile and Big Data is your guide to the new way of doing things. The book includes: Real world examples that illustrate how companies across various industries are creating better business processes by integrating new technologies A three step action plan for getting started and overcoming obstacles An electronic checklist with numerous actions that help get you up and running with incorporating mobile, big data, and analytics A guide to drawing insight from mobile, social, and other sources to create richer experiences If you're a CEO, chief marketing officer, marketing director, or business manager, Right Experience, Right Results gives you everything you need to harness technology to breathe new life into your business.

The authors of the international bestseller Business Model Generation explain how to create value propositions customers can't resist Value Proposition Design helps you tackle the core challenge of every business — creating compelling products and services customers want to buy. This highly practical book, paired with its online companion, will teach you the processes and tools you need to create products that sell.Using the same stunning visual format as the authors'global bestseller, Business Model Generation, this sequel explains how to use the “Value Proposition Canvas” to design, test, create, and manage products and services customers actually want.Value Proposition Design is for anyone who has been frustrated by new product meetings based on hunches and intuitions; it's for anyone who has watched an expensive new product launch fail in the market. The book will help you understand the patterns of great value propositions, get closer to customers, and avoid wasting time with ideas that won't work. You'll learn the simple process of designing and testing value propositions, that perfectly match customers'needs and desires.In addition the book gives you exclusive access to an online companion on Strategyzer.com. You will be able to assess your work, learn from peers, and download pdfs, checklists, and more.Value Proposition Design is an essential companion to the ”Business Model Canvas” from Business Model Generation, a tool embraced globally by startups and large corporations such as MasterCard, 3M, Coca Cola, GE, Fujitsu, LEGO, Colgate-Palmolive, and many more.Value Proposition Design gives you a proven methodology for success, with value propositions that sell, embedded in profitable business models.'

Dozens of lively international case studies that help readers put core marketing principles in a real-world context From market research to positioning and brand management to customer relations, marketing is the engine that drives innovation and growth in the modern business organization. This latest addition to the acclaimed Pathfinder series, like its popular predecessor, The Strategy Pathfinder, features a unique blend of core concepts and brief, international case studies. A refreshing contrast to traditional marketing texts and references, which tend to be prescriptive and directive, The Marketing Pathfinder offers professionals and marketing students alike an effective way to contextualize the marketing decisions they'll make in the real world of business. Not another one-size-fits-all marketing toolkit, The Marketing Pathfinder functions as a dynamic, interactive resource Each chapter presents a set of core concepts, frameworks, and tools, followed by five or more short, lively international case studies illustrating how the concepts and tools can be applied in the real world The case studies are specifically designed to encourage readers to pursue additional independent research and to encourage them to articulate and defend their decisions Throughout, the emphasis is on the reader as a marketing professional in the thick of it and responsible for the decisions they make

What do winners of major sales do differently than the sellers who almost won, but ultimately came in second place? Mike Schultz and John Doerr, bestselling authors and world-renowned sales experts, set out to find the answer. They studied more than 700 business-to-business purchases made by buyers who represented a total of $3.1 billion in annual purchasing power. When they compared the winners to the second-place finishers, they found surprising results. Not only do sales winners sell differently, they sell radically differently, than the second-place finishers. In recent years, buyers have increasingly seen products and services as replaceable. You might think this would mean that the sale goes to the lowest bidder. Not true! A new breed of seller—the insight seller—is winning the sale with strong prices and margins even in the face of increasing competition and commoditization. In Insight Selling, Schultz and Doerr share the surprising results of their research on what sales winners do differently, and outline exactly what you need to do to transform yourself and your team into insight sellers. They introduce a simple three-level model based on what buyers say tip the scales in favor of the winners: Level 1'Connect.'Winners connect the dots between customer needs and company solutions, while also connecting with buyers as people. Level 2'Convince.'Winners convince buyers that they can achieve maximum return, that the risks are acceptable, and that the seller is the best choice among all options. Level 3'Collaborate.'Winners collaborate with buyers by bringing new ideas to the table, delivering new ideas and insights, and working with buyers as a team. They also found that much of the popular and current advice given to sellers can damage sales results. Insight Selling is both a strategic and tactical guide that will separate the good advice from the bad, and teach you how to put the three levels of selling to work to inspire buyers, influence their agendas, and maximize value. If you want to find yourself and your team in the winner's circle more often, this book is a must-read.

How national culture impacts organizational culture—and business success Using extensive case studies of successful global corporations, this book explores the impact of national culture on the corporate strategy and its execution, and through this ultimately business success—or failure. It does not argue that different cultures lead to different business results, but that all cultures impact organizations in ways both positive and negative, depending on the business cycle, the particular business, and the particular strategies being pursued. Depending on all of these factors, cultural dynamics can either enable or derail performance. But recognizing those cultural factors is difficult for business leaders; like everyone else, they too can be blind to the culture of which they are a part. The book offers managers and leaders eight recommendations for recognizing those cultural factors that negatively impact performance, as well as those that can be harnessed to encourage superior performance. With real case studies from companies in Asia, Europe, and the United States, this book offers a truly global approach to organizational culture. Offers a fresh approach to the effects of national culture on organizational culture that is applicable to any country in any region Based on case studies of such companies as Toyota, Samsung, General Motors, Nokia, Walmart, Kone and British Leyland It describes the origins and nature of the most common corporate crisis and how culture impacts the response to such a crisis Ideal for managers, business leaders, and board members, as well as business school students A welcome response to the flat-Earth fad that argues we're all alike, this book offers a nuanced and practical view of cultural differentiators and how they can enable or derail business performance.

Unique prospective on the big data analytics phenomenon for both business and IT professionals The availability of Big Data, low-cost commodity hardware and new information management and analytics software has produced a unique moment in the history of business. The convergence of these trends means that we have the capabilities required to analyze astonishing data sets quickly and cost-effectively for the first time in history. These capabilities are neither theoretical nor trivial. They represent a genuine leap forward and a clear opportunity to realize enormous gains in terms of efficiency, productivity, revenue and profitability. The Age of Big Data is here, and these are truly revolutionary times. This timely book looks at cutting-edge companies supporting an exciting new generation of business analytics. Learn more about the trends in big data and how they are impacting the business world (Risk, Marketing, Healthcare, Financial Services, etc.) Explains this new technology and how companies can use them effectively to gather the data that they need and glean critical insights Explores relevant topics such as data privacy, data visualization, unstructured data, crowd sourcing data scientists, cloud computing for big data, and much more.

Winners in business aren't the ones who do the most things; the winners are the ones who do the most important things Be the Best at What Matters Most is about the one essential strategy for business leaders, entrepreneurs, owners, managers and those who want to be one. Simplify, focus, and win by outperforming all your competition on those things that create real value for the customer. This is about substance, not flash, and the ultimate'wow'factors of high quality performance, consistency and relentless improvement. Thought provoking questions, activities, and action steps are built into every section of the book Author Joe Calloway, an International Speakers Hall of Fame inductee, has been a popular business speaker for thirty years and worked with hundreds of companies to help them create and sustain success Be the Best at What Matters Most will help you and your team focus on taking the actions that maximize results, growth, and profit.

After years as a consultant to some of the world's biggest brands and having owned ten companies himself, Troy Hazard has learned crucial lessons on predicting potential business issues before you experience them. Now Troy offers you the skills to prepare your business for a better future. Along with his stories of what works, he also shares his experiences of what doesn't work. With a mix of entertaining real life extracts, client case studies, and personal experiences, Future Proofing Your Business offers potent and refined tools that have been road tested in real-world situations and aren't taught in business school. Learn how to turn obstacles into opportunities Break down business barriers created by bad belief systems Develop powerful leadership skills through stronger personal awareness Know if you're driving your business into the future or into the ground Discover how to make change a consciousness not just an action. Understand your future through a greater understanding of yourself All through the author's extensive experience in his own companies and as a consultant for major world brands Troy's philosophy on how to future-proof your business is anchored in one core belief:'Business happens in cycles. Your ability to manage these cycles successfully lies in how you interpret information from the past and deal with it in the present, to be more resilient through cycles of the future.'Troy Hazard (San Diego CA.; www.troyhazard.com) has founded and nurtured ten businesses over two decades, turned around businesses that were experiencing enormous losses, and consulted to countless successful companies around the world. These business talents earned him international respect, so much so that he was elected by the world's foremost business leaders for the role of Global President of the Entrepreneurs'Organization. For over a decade Troy has been a host and regular guest on many national television and radio shows as a business commentator and a feature writer for magazines. More recently he has become a regular voice of authority on The Biz Television Network, the CBS Talk Radio Network, and the Business Talk Radio Network, and is a regular writer in publications across the country.

TURN YOUR CHALLENGES INTO SUCCESSES – LEARN HOW AND WHY SOME TEAM STRUGGLE AND SOME SUCCEED This groundbreaking resource defines what business analytics is, the immense value it brings to an organization, and how to harness its power to gain a competitive edge in the marketplace. Author Evan Stubbs provides managers with the tools, knowledge, and strategies to get the organizational commitment you need to get business analytics up and running in your company. Drawing from numerous practical examples, The Value of Business Analytics provides an overview of how business analytics maps to organizational strategy and through examining the mistakes teams commonly make that prevent their success, author Evan Stubbs uncovers a four-step framework which helps improve the odds of success. Built on field-tested experience, The Value of Business Analytics explains the importance of and how to: Define the Value: Link analytics outcomes to business value, thereby helping build a sense of urgency and a need for change. Communicate the Value: Persuade the right people by understanding what motivates them. Deliver the Value: Link tactical outcomes to long-term strategic differentiation. Measure the Value: Validate wins and deliver continuous improvement to help drive ongoing transformation. Translating massive amounts of data into real insight is beyond magic—it's competitive advantage distilled. Nothing else offers an equivalent level of agility, productivity improvement, or renewable value. Whether you're looking to quantify the value of your work or generate organizational support, learn how to leverage advanced business analytics with the hands-on guidance found in The Value of Business Analytics. Drawing on the successes and failures of countless organizations, author Evan Stubbs provides a reference rich in content that spans everything from hiring the right people, understanding technical maturity, assessing culture, and structuring strategic planning. A must-read for any business analytics leader and an essential reference in shifting the perspective of business analytics away from algorithms towards outcomes. Learn how to increase the odds of successful value creation with The Value of Business Analytics.

Reinvent your company to deliver sustained profitable growth. As performance lags in the midst of economic cycles, many companies turn to magic bullets such as EVA, Kaizen, or Six Sigma. Unfortunately, these initiatives-along with how they're implemented-often deliver only short-term positive impact or cause more pain than the preexisting condition. Returning to competitive health and profitability in the face of economic downturns requires a dynamic realignment of business strategies, organizational design, and talent management. Based on timely research conducted by Axiom Consulting Partners, Shockproof empowers and enables business leaders, owners and managers to make and maintain the necessary connection between strategies and organization to achieve sustainable performance. Create an agile business that can rapidly reinvent itself as business conditions change Foster leadership that knows how to mobilize people to execute and deliver results Build a workforce that is adaptive, inherently innovative, and energized by the rewards of success As priorities change and challenges arise throughout the ebbs and flows of the economic cycle, let Shockproof guide you to reinvent your company and deliver sustained profitable growth in good times and bad.

Business Model Generation is a handbook for visionaries, game changers, and challengers striving to defy outmoded business models and design tomorrow's enterprises. If your organization needs to adapt to harsh new realities, but you don't yet have a strategy that will get you out in front of your competitors, you need Business Model Generation. Co-created by 470'Business Model Canvas'practitioners from 45 countries, the book features a beautiful, highly visual, 4-color design that takes powerful strategic ideas and tools, and makes them easy to implement in your organization. It explains the most common Business Model patterns, based on concepts from leading business thinkers, and helps you reinterpret them for your own context. You will learn how to systematically understand, design, and implement a game-changing business model--or analyze and renovate an old one. Along the way, you'll understand at a much deeper level your customers, distribution channels, partners, revenue streams, costs, and your core value proposition. Business Model Generation features practical innovation techniques used today by leading consultants and companies worldwide, including 3M, Ericsson, Capgemini, Deloitte, and others. Designed for doers, it is for those ready to abandon outmoded thinking and embrace new models of value creation: for executives, consultants, entrepreneurs, and leaders of all organizations. If you're ready to change the rules, you belong to'the business model generation!'

How to use Strategic Learning to rapidly respond to change and gain a sustainable advantage over your competitors What's even harder than creating a breakthrough strategy? Making it stick. As companies are fighting to survive in a tough economy, this new book by Willie Pietersen demonstrates the power of the Strategic Learning process, a four-step dynamic cycle guaranteed to create and sustain winning performance. Adopted by a wide range of corporations and not-for-profit organizations, the Strategic Learning process builds on eight years of practicing, adapting and honing the original concepts Pietersen first introduced in Reinventing Strategy to explain how organizations can generate superior insights about their customers and competitors, craft a Winning Proposition, focus on a vital few key priorities, create buy-in throughout the organization and achieve success – again and again. Teaches organizations to make smarter decisions that help them win customers and earn superior profits Explains how to instill a culture of openness, learning, and courage that can face and respond to the constantly changing business environment Is a tool that can benefit leaders at all levels, in organizations both large and small, global and domestic, for-profit and not-for-profit Author Willie Pietersen, a former president of Tropicana and Seagram USA, is a professor of management at Columbia Business School, and the author of Reinventing Strategy, from Wiley Strategic Learning shows you how your business or nonprofit organization can develop better, more effective strategies for long-term competitive advantage.