The Business Builder’s Toolkit is not just about the knowledge of business fundamentals but a step-by-step guide of how to implement them. This is the business guru in your pocket; the mentor you wish you had and the handbook that you will refer to again and again.

Including topics like:

• Busting business jargon and exposing business lies
• How to increase sales
• HR basics for when you can’t afford HR yet
• Customer retention tactics and community building
• Mental health management strategies
• Efficient and effective marketing tactics

You’ll never think of flying in South Africa in the same way again.

This is an insider’s tale of the South African airline industry over the past thirty years, as told by Glenn Orsmond, and particularly the story of the dramatic collapse of Comair in 2022.

Orsmond, who was twice the CEO of Comair and the founder CEO of 1time, takes the reader on a wild ride through the ultracompetitive sector of low-cost airlines that boomed in this country after South African Airways’ stranglehold on the skies was loosened in the 1990s. Comair – which operated both Kulula and British Airways – and 1time were at the forefront of this new wave of airlines that saw domestic flying and tourism take off.

But after some incredible highs and lows, Comair crashed under Orsmond’s watch despite the company’s 75-year unblemished profit history. The pandemic’s impact, the grounding of aeroplanes after a questionable regulator investigation and poor management decisions all contributed to its downfall.

You can expect tales of industry legends and innovation but also of competitors trying to gut each other, battles between pilots and accountants, unions and bosses at loggerheads, and warfare between shareholders and directors in boardrooms.

Winners find a way to win.

Who better to learn from, on how to be successful, than those who’ve reached the top of their game and stayed there. Using sport as a prism, this book is for people who want to make changes in their personal and professional lives in order to beat the opposition and take home the gold.

Competitive Edge is a book about competition, struggle and hard work, but, ultimately, it is about success and the routes you can take to get to your own promised land. Jam-packed with lessons, observations and tips taken from the very best sportspeople around the globe, on how they found ways to win in their various disciplines, discover how you can be successful too.

Business is, by its very nature, competitive and the world is a tough place right now. There is a lot to be learnt from those who’ve triumphed in the ultra-competitive realm of professional sports, and their lessons are distilled in this book; a resource for individuals and business people who are looking to reach the next level.

Competitive Edge will serve as a guide to determine where you need to improve in the different aspects of your life, or business. It will give you an insight into how the very best adapted in order to rise to another level, and it will teach you how to get ahead and have sustained success in whatever endeavour you face.

Competitive Edge is a winner’s guide to success and how anyone can achieve that gold medal, and also stay ahead of the chasing pack.

The time for "different" is now. Tap into the insights of our leading business minds and thought leaders and equip your business for a successful new way of doing business.

The world of business is tough, especially today. We know that now is the time for exponential acceleration, adaptability, agility and adjusting; a time for resilience, perseverance and courage; where the frames of reference that so many of us have held onto for so long are simply no longer relevant. But you may be stuck. You may be frozen and fearful, and feeling panicked. You may be worried, and feel weary. Your vision may be blurred, and you may feel unsure of yourself, yet you have a business to run, and staff to look after. If you are feeling some, or perhaps all of these things, take a deep breath – help is at hand. With over forty chapters of wisdom, insights, experience, suggestions and advice from some of South Africa’s leading business minds and thought leaders, you will find pure gems of information, ideas and solutions on each page of The Book Every Business Owner Must Read.

Adapt, respond, and define your new ways of thinking to help you succeed. Get your pen and notebook ready, start reading and make notes and lists of what you can do, today, to not only survive, but thrive as a business.

This book uses differences in firm and market regulation and organization to explain differences in national economic performance. These differences affect the way in which firms process information, which is crucial to performance. Applying game theory, contract theory, and information theory, Aoki describes the rules and conventions in Japan, the USA, and the transitional economies. He shows how firms can achieveDSand in the case of Japan, maintainDScompetitive advantage in international markets.

The hospitality industry is one of the most significant drivers of economic growth and socioeconomic advances in both developed and developing countries. This industry contributes directly to gross domestic product, job creation, income level, destination expansion, and economic development. Forecasts for 2020 indicated a promising year was ahead for this industry, but the COVID-19 pandemic had a catastrophic impact. Hospitality companies are experiencing one of the biggest, unprecedented crises to date, and experts must now rethink strategies to ensure these businesses' recovery. Sustainability and Competitiveness in the Hospitality Industry focuses on complex issues from a hotel industry perspective. It surveys existing research by reflecting on the pandemic's impacts and generates scenarios for how to strengthen business structures. Covering a wide range of topics such as digital hospitality and tourism products, this reference work is ideal for managers, business professionals, entrepreneurs, practitioners, researchers, academicians, instructors, and students.

This book provides a novel theoretical framework to explain the real source of competitive advantage of Chinese manufacturing. More importantly, such a framework can be generalized to analyze the potential of catch-up for large emerging economies in the globalization era. The book also provides insights for policy makers to rethink their design of policies.The rise of Made-in-China products has been widely attributed to low labour cost advantage and imitation advantage. However, as these two advantages are nearly innate to all late-developing countries, they cannot be regarded as the key factors that drive the rapid growth of China's manufacturing industry, or China's economy, over the past few decades. In this book, the author proposed a theory — 'the catch-up ladders theory', to explain the rise of China's manufacturing industry. The manufacturing advancement of any country is in essence a process of catching-up in both market and technology, during which enterprises will form a ladder-like holistic structure due to their differences in capabilities, technology and market positioning. In light of this, the continuity of the catch-up ladder will greatly determine the catch-up efficiency of an industry and even a country at large. Such a perspective is more applicable to large emerging economies, especially those with over one hundred million population and thus huge potential domestic market demand.

Business models are regarded as a main emerging topic in the management area for opportune science-driven practical conceptions and applications. They represent how organizations are proposed and planned, as well as how they establish a market and social relations, manage strategic resources, and make decisions. However, companies must produce new solutions for strategic sustainability, performance measurement, and overall managerial conditions for these business models to be implemented effectively. The Handbook of Research on Business Models in Modern Competitive Scenarios depicts how business models contribute to strategic competition in this new era of technological and social changes as well as how they are conceptualized, studied, designed, implemented, and in the end, how they can be improved. Featuring research on topics such as creating shared value, global scenarios, and organizational intelligence, this book provides pivotal information for scientific researchers, business decision makers, strategic planners, consultants, managers, and academicians.

Strategic Alliances for SME Development is a volume in the book series Research in Strategic Alliances that focuses on providing a robust and comprehensive forum for new scholarship in the field of strategic alliances. In particular, the books in the series cover new views of interdisciplinary theoretical frameworks and models, significant practical problems of alliance organization and management, and emerging areas of inquiry. The series also includes comprehensive empirical studies of selected segments of business, economic, industrial, government, and non-profit activities with wide prevalence of strategic alliances. Through the ongoing release of focused topical titles, this book series seeks to disseminate theoretical insights and practical management information that should enable interested professionals to gain a rigorous and comprehensive understanding of the field of strategic alliances. Strategic Alliances for SME Development contains contributions by leading scholars in the field of strategic alliance research. The 12 chapters in this volume deal with the increasingly significant role of strategic alliances in the development of SMEs, covering such diverse topics as management capability and internationalization of alliance portfolios, building alliances, development drivers, founder ties, competitive edge, strategic alignment, technology and innovative firms, and temporary project alliances. The chapters contain empirical as well as conceptual treatments of the selected topics, and collectively present a wide-ranging review of the noteworthy research perspectives on the role of strategic alliances for the development of small and medium-sized enterprises.

In recent years there has been an enormous amount of research into the way companies raise finance from stock markets. There are many reasons for this interest in 'initial public offerings' (IPOs). "Going Public" is the first book to investigate the issues in a non-technical manner, drawing upon international evidence from private sector companies and privatizations. Building on the success of the first edition, this second edition of "Going Public" has been comprehensively revised and updated throughout.

A popular account of the early evolution of markets. The book features a large number of cases - including the development of the Internet, the early evolution of the car market, semi-conductors, television, mobile phones and personal computers, and the failure of genetically modified food and quadrophonic sounds. These cases are woven into a general narrative which highlights the unusual features of how very young markets evolve, and provides a straightforward and non-technical explanation of why things typically happen this way.

Multinationals are increasingly taking internationalised approaches to the ways in which they generate new knowledge and develop innovative new products from it in the pursuit of global competitiveness. These new perspectives in MNEs' technological behaviour open up important additional possibilities for those countries that play host to operations of these companies. This book analyses in detail the new dimensions in MNEs' approach to global competitiveness and the role played in this by overseas R & D units, and discusses the implications of this for host countries' growth and welfare.

Pepsi-Cola and Coca-Cola are widely recognized as being two of the premier marketing companies in the world. They have introduced a great variety of new products and package types. They have raised celebrity advertising to a new level. Coca-Cola even changed the formula for Coke. These and other developments in the carbonated soft drink industry came about from major strategy changes by Pepsi-Cola and Coca-Cola. Rather than simply reacting to a changing competitive environment, PepsiCo and The Coca-Cola Company have created and implemented strategies that turned the new environment to their advantage. Although Pepsi-Cola attacked Coca-Cola's dominance and achieved near-parity with Coke in bottled soft drinks, both Coke and Pepsi have benefitted from fighting the Cola Wars. The battle between them has stimulated continuing growth in an industry regularly pronounced by the experts for many years to be on the verge of maturity.

One widely ignored aspect of the Cola Wars is the ongoing transformation of the soft drink distribution systems of Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola from systems of independent bottlers to captive bottling subsidiaries. Chandler advanced the hypothesis that successful firms develop strategies to take advantage of new opportunities, and that those strategies then determine the organizational structure required for effective implementation. We find that changes in the organization of the two leading carbonated soft drink firms' distribution systems provide support for Chandler's hypothesis. The independent bottling systems were a unique and effective organization for many decades. Changes in the external environment, however, raised the costs of transacting between the parent concentrate manufacturers and their independent bottlers. In particular, the new competitive environment required rapidly changing product and marketing strategies, and the implementation of these strategies required the close cooperation of the distribution systems. In effect, Coke and Pepsi needed to change the organization of their distribution systems to implement effectively the strategies that stimulated the new competitive environment, because the relative transaction costs of the independent bottling systems in the new environment were too high. The book presents a strategic analysis of the history of the industry.

Cooperative activities, or joint ventures, are becoming increasingly popular as instruments of strategic action. But although more and more companies are entering into these alliances full of hope and enthusiasm, past experience shows that most will likely experience the disillusionment of having their ventures fall apart. William Murphy contends that our understanding of the strategic management of collective action needs improvement if the hoped for benefits of cooperation are to be realized. In this work, he examines the management of a specific type of cooperative action that has become critically important to company and national competitiveness: the cooperative research venture.

Murphy thoroughly details this new class of inter-firm cooperation to produce knowledge, which has only recently been made possible by changes in the competitive and legal environments. He begins with an introduction and review of the prior literature on cooperative ventures, followed by an extensive survey of competition and cooperation. The management challenges of cooperative research, particularly the need to forge a consensus among participants, are examined in a brief chapter, which precedes four studies of specific cooperative ventures: the Chemical Industry Institute of Toxicology, the Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation, Sematech, and U.S. Memories. A final chapter draws conclusions and lessons from the examples, and three appendixes detail antitrust laws applicable to cooperative ventures, Japanese and European microelectronic and computer ventures, and cooperative ventures under NCRA. This work will be an important resource for executives and managers in companies involved in research and development, as well as for college courses in business and economics. Public and academic libraries will also find it to be a valuable addition to their collections.

This book provides an introduction to the concept of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial business management. It covers many elements of the entrepreneurial management discipline including choosing a business, organizing, financing, marketing, developing an offering that the market will value, and growing the business in all its dimensions.

Martin Starr addresses two of the most important concerns in business today: the globalization of commerce and the problem that U.S. business is having competing with other companies worldwide. Starr approaches these problems from the standpoint of how American corporations can develop business alliances with corporations elsewhere, rather than competing with them, and how they can build on their own strengths by incorporating the strengths of others. He fully analyzes the massive changes that are creating a new global-based economy, and offers strategies and tactics that can help corporate America to improve its global standing.

Following a brief introductory essay, the work is divided into four main sections. Part I looks at the causes of economic turmoil, focusing on the long-wave cycles of technological change that have placed the industrialized United States at a disadvantage. Part II examines the effects of technological change, in particular the increasing need for flexible manufacturing systems and new methods of management. The reorganization of established firms, and the use of global corporate alliances, is the focus of Part III, while Part IV explores timing, the new competitive variable of the 1990s, and the strategies of time-based management. Also included are two research reports that describe how Japanese firms employ alliances and how foreign firms view the effect of alliances. This book will be an essential resource for managers and executives in all types of corporations, as well as for students in business and related fields.

This is the first book to address the real issues and problems confronting the competitive intelligence industry today. It pinpoints the reason why competitive intelligence is on hold in corporate America and offers practical advice and solutions to position competitive intelligence systems as the systems of choice for intelligence users. The key is to stimulate demand and the author tells us why and how. A must read for intelligence providers, for managers and intelligence users, and for management program faculty and students in our colleges and universities. The author identifies missing links in the system--purpose, domain, terminology, and research. He identifies value-added opportunities for strengthening competitive intelligence programs by focusing on user needs and benefits. How to define and measure the benefits of a Competitive Intelligence program, as the primary source of competitive advantage, the key question plaguing intelligence providers, is addressed and answered.

Changing social values, skepticism of corporate behavior, and regulation are forcing firms to recognize the impact of these issues on potential success. Political and social action can impact dramatically on individual firms and industry-wide competitiveness by changing the rules by which competition occurs. In addition, policies that restrict trade in the international arena, regulatory interventions that impose additional costs, and public interest group activities that challenge the legitimacy of the firm and industry product and service offerings also alter the rules of competition. Firms and industries that learn to play by the new rules of engagement can significantly improve their competitive positioning within the economy. There has been almost nothing written on the topic of industry political strategy. As competition moves increasingly to a global scene, the businesses will have to deal with more complex social and political interactions.

Business academicians and business managers have become more interested in the impact of social and political issues on success. Until this work, there has been a lack of models of how to deal with the general issue. In addition, formulations of strategies and tactics have been lacking before this work along with the means of their implementation.

Global Solutions for Teams is a strategy-packed resource essential for multinational organizations or any company that is considering going global. The book's cultural guidelines and case examples of leading multinational corporations demonstrate how cross-cultural teams can overcome a disjointed state of cultural collision...and progress to the more productive stages of coexistence and finally, collaboration. As workplace borders expand and the mobility of the workforce increases, new techniques are needed to manage transnational teams. Global Solutions for Teams shares these concepts, as well as the approaches that can position a company more competitively now - and well into the 21st century.

"Dogfight "examines the intense rivalry of the past two decades between the European Airbus consortium and the major U.S. aircraft manufacturers, Boeing and McDonnell Douglas. From the Americans' point of view, Airbus has been heavily subsidized by its supporting governments--indeed nearly nationalized--and not exposed to the risks and disciplines of the market place. From the European perspective, Airbus has been a standard-bearer for European technological, manufacturing, and marketing prowess in the face of historical American industrial domination. This dispute has spilled over the bounds of the purely commercial and become a serious transatlantic trade issue.

Although there has been a certain amount of admiring writing about Airbus in Europe, there has been no previous attempt to weigh the issues even-handedly by exploring them on both sides of the Atlantic. Dogfight examines the roots of the conflict in the middle sixties and carries the story forward to the tentative agreement on some of the outstanding issues reached by the U.S. administration and the European Commission in the spring of 1992. In placing the controversy in its political and international context, the author has had access to many of the key players in the industry in both Europe and the United States and has interviewed a large number of politicians, officials, and senior airline and aircraft executives.

Business intelligence has always been considered an essential ingredient for success. However, it is not until recently that the technology has enabled organizations to generate and deploy intelligence for global competition. These technologies can be leveraged to create the intelligent enterprises of the 21st century that will not only provide excellent and customized services to their customers, but will also create business efficiency for building relationships with suppliers and other business partners on a long term basis. Creating such intelligent enterprises requires the understanding and integration of diverse enterprise components into cohesive intelligent systems. Anticipating that future enterprises need to become intelligent, Intelligent Enterprises of the 21st Century brings together the experiences and knowledge from many parts of the world to provide a compendium of high quality theoretical and applied concepts, methodologies, and techniques that help diffuse knowledge and skills required to create and manage intelligent enterprises of the 21st century for gaining sustainable competitive advantage in a global environment. This book is a comprehensive compilation of the state of the art vision and thought processes needed to design and manage globally competitive business organizations.