Is Your Company Getting the Most from Its Investment in Change?

Many companies have already invested heavily in infrastructure change, some are making that investment now, and all are contemplating the costs of becoming or evolving as an e-business. Is your company a "greenfield" organization with no back-end systems, or one whose infrastructure support systems are integrated across the enterprise? Are you just beginning to think about e-business capabilities, or are you on the leading edge of convergence? Whatever your company’s position on the ERP/E-Business Matrix, E-Business and ERP: Transforming the Enterprise provides the proven techniques you need to know to meld enterprise resource planning capabilities with the communications power of the Internet.

Is Your Company Positioned for E-Business Success?

The Internet has revolutionized twenty-first century business. Organizations today can communicate with customers, suppliers, and sellers at e-speed with the click of a mouse. Yet, with all of the excitement about the external possibilities of the Internet, companies still need efficient internal processes to make and move products, manage finances, recruit and motivate employees, and excel.

E-Business and ERP: Transforming the Enterprise covers the skills and tools you will need to combine existing ERP software and capabilities with emerging Web-based technologies. In this forward-thinking outline for a new business structure, executives and managers will discover:

• Strategies for established companies to penetrate the Internet marketplace
• Procedures that lower costs across the supply and demand chain
• Techniques that help you meet–and master–the dot.com challenge

The companies best positioned to succeed in the near future are those that can balance existing ERP-based infrastructures and capabilities with exciting new e-business innovations. E-Business and ERP: Transforming the Enterprise examines the changing but essential role of ERP, places it in the context of the Web-based technologies defining today’s e-business environment, and reveals how to blend the best aspects of both to create a strong and flexible twenty-first century business enterprise.

Addressing the issues that will be central to Africa's various attempts to effectively manage knowledge and innovation for sustainable business management, this edited book makes a timely contribution to research on business in Africa. Coinciding with the recently launched Science, Technology and Innovation Strategy for Africa 2024 (STISA-2024) by the African Union (AU), which emphasises the critical role of science, technology and innovation for Africa's socio-economic development and growth, the book echoes these themes with a multi-disciplinary and multi-sectoral approach to knowledge and innovation management in Africa. Also containing case studies relating to various growing collaborations between education and research institutions, private and public entities as well as commercialisation of research and innovation outputs, Managing Knowledge and Innovation for Business Sustainability in Africa covers the key themes to provide an enabling environment for STI development in the African content.

This book is an outcome of the 33rd International Conference EnviroInfo 2019, held at the University of Kassel, Germany. It presents a selection of papers that describe innovative scientific approaches and ongoing research in environmental informatics and the emerging field of computational sustainability. The respective articles cover a broad range of scientific aspects including advances in core technologies such as earth observation, environmental modelling, big data and machine learning, as well as applications of ICT solutions intended to support societal transformation processes toward the more sustainable management of resource use, transportation and the energy supply. Given its scope, the book is essential reading for scientists, experts and students in these fields of research.

This book takes a fresh look at understanding how financial markets behave. Using recent ideas from the highly-topical science of complexity and complex systems, the book provides the basis for a unified theoretical description of how today's markets really work. Since financial markets are an excellent example of a complex system, the book also doubles as a science textbook.

This book investigates the relationship between the firm and the territory, emphasizing the micro-organizational dimension and the interactions between actors at territorial levels. First, the book examines the particular features of the firm considering three key factors - structural design, power configuration and organizational culture - and the characteristics of the surrounding territory as a specific spatial ecosystem with its own institutions, agents, history and objectives. Second, it analyses organizational tenets at the micro- and meso levels with a view to explaining various relational models and their implications at the level of the firm and the territory. Although previous studies have focused on the territory as a geographical space in which firms procure resources and promote development, this book presents an innovative approach and makes a key contribution to the literature by dealing with the firm and the territory from an organizational perspective. The relationship is analysed as bidirectional: a key question concerns how the territory can impact the organizational dimension of the firm, and how the firm can characterize the territory. This will be considered in connection with various effects. The positive effects of the relationship with the territory are investigated in terms of territorial identity, territorial resilience and territorial sustainability. The negative effects include the role of criminal networks rooted in the territory, with firms acting as key agents.

The cultural sector plays an important role in sustainable economic development and creates economic activities, opportunities for entrepreneurship and jobs, adding to the attractiveness of cities and contributing to the development of tourism. The Cultural Sector and Sustainable Economic Development: Innovation and the Creative Economy in European Cities offers both a theoretical and practical analysis of the contemporary approach to culture and innovation, with special emphasis on the relationships among culture, innovation and the economy. Sustainable development, itself, balances environmental protection, culture, social progress, the economy and stability today and for the future. The book's key theme is the role and possibility of culture as a laboratory, with a strong supporting subtext on innovative practice. The text provides an eclectic mix of possibilities that reinforce and underscore the full innovative and complex potentials of culture. It is a cross-disciplinary volume presenting case studies that cover the main theme of cultural ecosystem in a very broad sense, highlighting the relationships that could lead to a sustainable system where economy and culture are the main players. It proposes and maps the European perspective of urban cultural development and suggests that the successes and challenges of European cities under consideration may offer guidance on best practices for urban development in other distant cultural contexts. This book is written in such a way that it can be used as a summary for a cultural professional, a reference text for an academic or for actors in local development and cultural policy at European, national and local levels.

Trail-blazing social entrepreneurs are tackling the world's most pressing problems that government, business, or charity have failed to solve. They are creating businesses with a primary mission of social change. Scott Boyer is one such social entrepreneur. This 28-year veteran of Big Pharma left a six-figure salary to start OWP Pharmaceuticals and the ROW Foundation. This commercial business and non-profit organization exist in a symbiotic relationship we call a "tandem hybrid social enterprise." This model combines a multimillion dollar business with a foundation that's on track to become the largest funder of projects serving people with epilepsy and associated psychiatric disorders in the world. The tandem hybrid incorporates the principles learned by Scott and others for building a truly unique social enterprise from the ground up; one that is: Driven by a compelling social mission Financed by commercial success Structured to retain control Scalable and sustainable for the long haul Powering Social Enterprises With Profit And Purpose offers a detailed blueprint that has proven commercially and philanthropically successful and that can be replicated in most business sectors.

This book focuses on virtual teams, which are fraught with cooperation problems. It offers novel insights into how team members experience and overcome these problems by empirically studying hybrid virtual teams in Shared Services Organizations. It firstly enhances the reader's understanding of contextual challenges relating to cooperation and shows how members of such teams experience faultlines through distance, disconnection through reliance on communication technology and discontinuity through temporality of team composition. Secondly, it explores how they use 22 practices to overcome the cooperation problem, which can be categorized as strategies of identity constructing, trusting and virtual peer monitoring. Lastly, the study analyzes the role of technology, demonstrating that state-of-the-art media can facilitate, but not ensure the use of these strategies and practices. As such, the book has implications for both researchers and practitioners.

Digital entrepreneurship refers to business activities in the digital media and information and information and communication technologies. It encompasses entrepreneurial pursuits in areas such as artificial intelligence, blockchain, internet of things, and augmented reality among many more. The digital economy is expected to bring about $60 Trillion in revenue by 2025. With the rise and proliferation of emerging technologies globally, entrepreneurs have pursued opportunities to leverage skills, abilities, and resources to find innovative revenue streams. Companies such as Facebook, Uber, and Twitter are examples of highly successful digital firms that have become giants in the industry. Entrepreneurs and executives from all over the world are looking to follow in their footsteps. The book will outline and discuss ideas and approaches for companies of all sizes to benefit from the digital economy. This edited book brings together chapter contributions from leading practice experts and academics from all over the world. It advances contemporary thinking on digital entrepreneurship and aims to become the ultimate reference guide on the subject, making it especially valuable to researchers, academics, students, and professionals in the fields of entrepreneurship, international business, and the management of technology and innovation.

This book analyses the historical context and progression of "significant innovations" beginning with the industrial revolution, starting around 1750 to the present. It explores the interrelationship, causes, and evolutionary process of contemporary "disruptive" inventions and the role played by global finance and international commerce to support these. First, the authors examine the environment and circumstances surrounding the inventors and explore their backgrounds to determine, why at a specific time, they identified a need that became the seed for invention and, what was their method of successfully commercializing their innovation. Secondly, they focus on the financing of the inventor, the innovation, and the commercialization of the invention(s). They analyze the changes in finance during the shift from a labor-based production process to a more capital-intensive production process, and what new financial products or financial markets were created to facilitate this transition. Third, they explore the impact of global commerce on the inventor country's innovation environment and international competition impacting the innovation's production, distribution, and sales, as well as, investigating any financial impact from the demand side and whether that impact was domestic or global in character. Furthermore, they consider if and how global finance and international commerce including the migration of people, together play a role in helping the disruptive invention satisfy a need in society, whether from a production or consumption perspective. Finally, they search for common elements that repeatedly inspired inventors and their disruptive innovations over time. This book will appeal to global government officials, business leadership, early career professionals, and students across a number of disciplines including finance, economics, business, engineering, and technology.

The book focuses on the real-world case-based crisis management in digital product development. This includes forecasting, responding, and agile engineering/management methods, patterns, and practices for sustainable development. This book introduces a set of case studies for sustainability in management as a blend, the components of which have been carefully selected from a few domains adjacent to digital production such as IT-intensive operation, human resource management, and knowledge engineering, to name a few. The key ingredients of this crisis management framework include information management, tradeoff optimization, agile product development, and knowledge transfer. The case studies this book features will help the stakeholders in understanding and identifying the key technology, business, and human factors that may likely result in a digital production crisis, i.e., critically affect the organization outcomes in terms of successful digitalization and sustainable development. These factors are particularly important for the large-scale applications, typically considered very complex in managerial and technological aspects, and, therefore, specifically addressed by the discipline of IT crisisology.

This book attempts to reflect the project reality as closely as possible, covering the ISO 21500:2012 standard that has just been introduced and the benefits from the best contributions worldwide and also providing the concise yet powerful tool box. It shall be easy to use and intuitively supportive of project managers. So far, evidence indicates that these targets are successfully met. One of its key recognitions, and in consequence a distinctive feature of this book, is the impact that the project manager's personality has on the fate of the project. The project manager's successful self-management in work & life and in leadership processes should be considered as important in any endeavor as all other project management processes, covered by the new standards and guidelines.

Social entrepreneurship and impact investing contribute to a more inclusive capitalism and bring innovative solutions to global challenges, such as fighting poverty and protecting planet earth. This book offers practical advice on how to best integrate entrepreneurship and capital for impact and innovation by using elea's philanthropic investing approach to fight absolute poverty with entrepreneurial means as an example. Written by two leading experts, the book summarizes insights from elea's 15-year pioneering journey, from creating an investment organization, choosing purposeful themes, and sourcing opportunities, to partnering with entrepreneurs for impact creation. This includes suggestions on how to lead impact enterprises in such areas as developing strategies, plans, and models; building effective teams and organizations; managing resources; and handling crises. Using real-life examples, this is valuable reading for entrepreneurs, investors, executives, philanthropists, policymakers, and anyone curious about entrepreneurship and inclusive capitalism.

Essentials of Time Series for Financial Applications serves as an agile reference for upper level students and practitioners who desire a formal, easy-to-follow introduction to the most important time series methods applied in financial applications (pricing, asset management, quant strategies, and risk management). Real-life data and examples developed with EViews illustrate the links between the formal apparatus and the applications. The examples either directly exploit the tools that EViews makes available or use programs that by employing EViews implement specific topics or techniques. The book balances a formal framework with as few proofs as possible against many examples that support its central ideas. Boxes are used throughout to remind readers of technical aspects and definitions and to present examples in a compact fashion, with full details (workout files) available in an on-line appendix. The more advanced chapters provide discussion sections that refer to more advanced textbooks or detailed proofs.

In this groundbreaking book, two acknowledged experts explore the underlying principles of systems integration, and, with the help of numerous case studies show IT managers, systems analysts, and project managers how to apply those principles to solving complex business problems. The authors reveal the linkages between business processes and how they can be supported in enterprise-wide integrated systems. Rather than review specific products and tools, the authors use real-life examples to provides readers with a practical understanding of integrated system architectures and how they function within the framework of an Enterprise Planning System.

The International Conference on Informatics and Management Science (IMS) 2012 will be held on November 16-19, 2012, in Chongqing, China, which is organized by Chongqing Normal University, Chongqing University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Nanyang Technological University, University of Michigan, Chongqing University of Arts and Sciences, and sponsored by National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC). The objective of IMS 2012 is to facilitate an exchange of information on best practices for the latest research advances in a range of areas. Informatics and Management Science contains over 600 contributions to suggest and inspire solutions and methods drawing from multiple disciplines including: * Computer Science * Communications and Electrical Engineering * Management Science * Service Science * Business Intelligence

This book focusses on various options of taking up ventures for starting entrepreneurship in small/large scale in the field of renewable energy technologies. The book covers the fundamentals of entrepreneurship, renewable energy resources, their technologies involved and applications along with financial evaluations. The book will cater to the needs of students, researchers, various stakeholders, entrepreneurs etc. by providing valuable information on renewable energy technologies and their applications in developing entrepreneurship and establishing enterprise at individual level, specifically focusing on low carbon technology for sustenance of environment which is becoming increasingly important.

Includes global case studies of organizations in the cultural sector to facilitate translation of theory into practice Author team combines academic and practitioner expertise Unique combination of fundraising and creative/cultural industries

Israeli national neoliberalism has promoted innovation policies leading to an ostensible paradox: At the center is a startup nation with a vibrant and successful high-tech entrepreneurial ecosystem, accumulating resources and enabling constant growth. At the geographical and social periphery, there has emerged a parallel society with often-marginalized groups not able to keep up. In one of the most unequal countries with a high rate of poverty, entrepreneurial heroes are celebrated at the center, promoting a myth that all could be self-made successes. At the periphery, entrepreneurs are struggling to survive, often pushed into precarious working and living conditions. Applying critical theory discourse, this book illustrates how neoliberalism and entrepreneurship are intertwined and how the startup nation has evolved in Israel. It explores how national neoliberal state policies have targeted technological innovation as a tool to obtain a competitive advantage in the international arena rather than aiming at increasing economic achievements and well-being for all. It will demonstrate that the Israeli entrepreneurship scene exemplifies the existence of parallel entrepreneurial societal spaces, analyze the positionality of entrepreneurs belonging to a variety of groups that characterize Israeli society, and uncover structural disadvantages and related levels of precarity as well as existing links between entrepreneurial advantages and disadvantages, mobility and varying degrees of social marginality. Dark Sides of the Startup Nation sheds light onto the problematic and sometimes contradictory myth that entrepreneurship is meritocratic and that neoliberal capitalism provides everyone with equal opportunities to succeed. The book will be of interest to researchers, academics, policy makers and students in the fields of entrepreneurship and small business management, responsibility and business ethics, and technology and innovation.

Sustainable development is based on the idea that societies should advance without compromising their future development requirements. This book explores how the application of data analytics and digital technologies can ensure that development changes are executed on the basis of factual data and information. It addresses how innovations that rely on digital technologies can support sustainable development across all sectors and all social, economic, and environmental aspects and help us achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The book also highlights techniques, processes, models, tools, and practices used to achieve sustainable development through data analysis. The various topics covered in this book are critically evaluated, not only theoretically, but also from an application perspective. It will be of interest to researchers and students, especially those in the fields of applied data analytics, business intelligence and knowledge management.

This book examines returns on experience and managerial practices to generate deeper collaboration, intensify co-creation, support start-ups and established companies to explore, develop, and accelerate their projects thanks to open labs (living labs, fab labs, coworking spaces, "third spaces", etc.). Open labs are the beatbox to create a rhythm in ecosystems and make all stakeholders move forward, faster, together. This book proposes a framework to understand how open labs, innovation hubs, and collaborative spaces contribute to ecosystems. The book looks beyond the short-term effects of open labs and identifies four main dimensions: communities, physical spaces, events, and portfolios of services offered to private businesses, entrepreneurs, and start-ups, established companies, or public institutions. Drawing on extensive field research lasting over five years, with more than 40 cases and more than 200 interviews plus direct observation within different environments, this edited book investigates how managers run these labs, and how "users" or "clients" evolve when benefitting from their services. All chapters analyse how an actual management impacts the dynamics of communities, how it shapes the co-evolution between open labs and their ecosystems, and how the management of the physical space impacts the mission of the lab and its role in the ecosystem. Open Labs and Innovation Research is written for scholars and researchers in the fields of innovation studies and management science. This book can also inform teaching, public policymaking, and professional practice.

Electronic payment is the economic backbone of all e-commerce transactions. This book covers the major subjects related to e-payment such as, for example, public key infrastructure, smart cards, payment agents, digital cash, SET protocols, and micro-payment. Its first part covers the infrastructure for secure e-payment over the Internet, whereas in the second part a variety of e-payment methods and systems are described. This edited volume offers a well-written and sound technical overview of the state of the art in e-payment for e-business developers, graduate students, and consultants. It is also ideally suited for classes and training courses in e-commerce or e-payment.

How do companies use location intelligence to achieve competitive advantage and business success? We live in a digital, global economy, and businesses need to know where to source, operate, and market to grow their customer base. Through location analytics and location intelligence, a business can make better-informed decisions and ultimately add value to their organization, their customers, and society. But how do businesses integrate location analytics into their business development, marketing, and operations? Spatial Business: Competing and Leading with Location Analytics examines how location is a key factor in intelligent business decisions and achieving success. Through varied, in-depth, real-world examples, readers learn how location analytics solutions can be designed, deployed, and managed from strategic and operational perspectives. Each chapter of Spatial Business examines how real companies have integrated location into their business intelligence and decision-making. Some key concepts include: The fundamentals of spatial business and the technologies and methods by which businesses can understand the location value chain The creation of spatial business architecture to facilitate location analytics in meeting business goals and needs The themes of spatial business and implications for practice Written by experts in spatial business and designed for managers, professionals, and students at all levels, Spatial Business provides a road map for realizing the potential of geospatial data across the entire business value chain.

This book mainly focuses on the innovations in intelligent transportation infrastructure and management. The content of the book is selected in such a way that it will cover a wide range of areas to integrate advanced technologies and provide best and innovative solution to problems faced by the rapidly growing transportation sector. The topics of the book primarily address the needs of the students in civil, electrical, and mechanical engineering. It is equally useful as reference material for innovators, inventors, practitioners, and policymaker for an innovative and classified solution in the field of transportation and infrastructure management. Looking at the global electric and hybrid vehicles market, the book focuses on and discuss recent developments in electric mobility across the globe. In this edition, we try to feature toward an update on the performance and costs of batteries which is the current demand of the consumers. The book inspires researchers, innovators, industry experts, and policymakers to consider the solutions into the practice.

* Describes the principles of capitalism and how they can be used in the space industry to maximize creation of value for humanity. * Develops pragmatic criteria for readers to use in assessing value to humanity of initiatives and business decisions in the space industry. * Describes the world's greatest problems and how space systems may help address them with emphasis placed on how the space industry supports sustainability of humanity and the planet. * Provides all of the above in an integrated format that is accessible to readers, whether coming from technical, business, or policy backgrounds.