Too many new products fail. Mainly because new products are hard to differentiate from exisiting products and they don't capture the customer's imagination. The failure is due to a poor understanding of customers' needs. Companies need to take a radical approach to identifying customers' real needs, and this book demonstrates innovative ways to acheive this.

Strategic alliances are taking on an increasingly important role in international business. This collection of articles by leading scholars addresses fundamental questions on the governance and contractual mechanisms underlying alliances such as: When are alliances an effective governance structure? Which governance mechanisms underlie strategic alliances? How does alliance governance change over time? How do relational governance mechanisms operate and relate to formal governance? What are the main contractual elements of alliances?

Aimed at managers and executives wanting insight into how to better drive change at the micro and macro level, Ready for Change? Provides guidance in understanding the factors within different business disciplines that enable and disable lasting change through examples of good practice and 'not so good' practice within real organisations.

Around two-thirds of all change efforts fail to deliver the planned results. "Informal Coalitions" reveals that, by ignoring the hidden, messy and informal aspects of real-life organizations, formal change programs inevitably contain the seeds of their own downfall. This challenging new book shows how change arises instead from informal interactions, joint sense making and political accommodations made by people who are trying to make a difference in the complex, uncertain and ambiguous conditions of everyday organizational life.
Uniquely, "Informal Coalitions" places everyday talk and role-modelling interactions at the forefront of an alternative change-leadership agenda. It also introduces a number of practical approaches to help line managers and organizational specialists to deliver this agenda more successfully. Along the way, the book sets out new, thought- provoking perspectives on critical aspects of organizational change and performance. These include leadership communication, cultural change, power and politics, coalition building, paradox and ambiguity, and organizational vision. This is essential reading for organizational practitioners at all levels, as well as for those who are interested in exploring the underlying dynamics of change.

In Wisdom, Knowledge, and Management, the second volume of the series Churchman's Legacy and Related Works, the editors draw contributions from leading systems thinkers inspired by the works of C West Churchman. The Systems Approach and Its Enemies (C. West Churchman, 1979) is one of Churchman's most significant works. In this particular writing he displayed two main tendencies, that he was a Skeptic and that he showed Socratic Wisdom. In Wisdom, Knowledge, and Management, the editors seeks to follow up on these two themes and reveal how modern authors interpret Churchman's ideas, apply them to their own line of thinking and develop their own brand of Systemics. Several authors re-interpret Churchman's thinking and several others apply this holistic discourse to practical applications. It is very significant that the authors are a very cosmopolitan group: hailing from Sweden, Australia, Spain, South Korea, Argentina and USA. Interestingly, the contribution from the South Korean author, Yu Jae E, applies conceptual tools from the French contemporary writer, Deleuze. Additionally, Darek M. Eriksson's chapter applies the epistemology of Jean-Louis Le Moigne. modern authors, and in particular Churchman, to ideas spawned two thousands years ago among the Ancient Greeks. This effort should show the reach of Churchman's intellectual power and demonstrates cross-fertilization across borders and continents. It could not have happened without the Internet.

This book proposes a new framework to effectively manage both offensive and defensive marketing strategies. It reinterprets the competitive challenge as a circular journey, that is, an endless sequence of three competitive 'seasons'. The authors call them the games of movement, imitation, and position.

Business process reengineering (BPR) focuses on redesigning the strategic and value-added processes which transcend the organizational boundaries. It is a cross-functional approach that requires support from almost all the departments of the organization. Business Process Reengineering: Automation Decision Points in Process Reengineering offers a new framework based process reengineering and links it to organization life cycle, process life cycle, and process management. This volume describes the fundamental concepts behind business process reengineering and examines them through case studies, and should appeal to researchers and academics interested in business process reengineering, operations strategy, and organizational restructuring and design.

A follow-up to the international bestseller What Got You Here Won't Get You There that will empower women and inspire them to achieve in business.

Do you hesitate about putting forward ideas? Are you reluctant to claim credit for your achievements? Do you find it difficult to get the support you need from your boss or the recognition you deserve from your colleagues? If your answer to any of these is 'Yes', How Women Rise will help get you back on track.

Inspiring and practical by turns, it identifies 12 common habits that can prove an obstacle to future success and tells you how to overcome them. In the process, it points the way to a career that will satisfy your ambitions and help you make the difference you want to make in the world.

This book represents the findings of the first-ever major investigation into the ways in which individual and group perceptions of competition impact the development of strategy at individual, group and industry levels of analysis. It is based on a study undertaken in the residential estate agency industry, during a period of rapid change and instability and draws extensively on one of the largest and most sophisticated data sets ever gathered in this field to date. The book will be of interest to researchers and advanced students in the field of strategic management, organizational theory and behavior, organizational psychology and marketing.

Open Innovation Through Strategic Alliances demonstrates the vital role and applications of strategic alliances between firms and research organizations in creating and applying knowledge for the development of new products, technologies, or business models.

The need for enterprise flexibility in an era of rapidly advancing technology, increasing competition, and globalization, is apparent. Flexibility can be thought of as an ability of the enterprise to quickly and efficiently respond to market changes and to bring new products and services quickly to the market place. Beyond this definition, a truly flexible enterprise should proactively change the market through its ability to create new and innovative products and services. The proposed book is intended to provide a conceptual framework of Flexible Enterprise supported by researches/case applications in various types of flexibilities exhibited by a flexible enterprise. The selected papers from a variety of issues concerning the planning and operation of a flexible enterprise are organized into following four parts:

I Enterprise and Strategic Flexibility

II Organizational Flexibility

III Business Process and Information Systems Flexibility

IV Operations Flexibility "

Based on over 200 interviews, this new book provides rich insights and practices on the toughest challenges facing offshore client/supplier relationships. While many client organizations found benefits to be gained from the offshoring of IT work, others struggled to realize any cost savings or other improvements. How can these mixed experiences be reconciled? The research reveals that offshore outsourcing can deliver on its promises, but only if both clients and suppliers diligently manage the details. In this book, the authors provide specific practices that managers can use, and detailed case studies which illustrate how these practices are embedded and enacted within client and supplier firms.

Current thinking about how to improve strategic planning (now upgraded to strategic thinking) and decision making by managers at all levels is to employ some aspect of information systems technology. Although this approach has worked well for most organizations, chief executives are now asking their managers to do what they do best but to do it better. But how? Future thinking about improving strategic thinking and decision making involves integrating creativity with the latest in information systems. Hence, the power of the computer can be an important means to assist managers in doing what they do better when employing a creative computer software approach.

Initially, the text looks at a number of areas that are impacted by creativity, with special emphasis on creative computer software. Management decision making is examined from a problem-finding or a forward-looking viewpoint that can benefit from utilizing creative computer software. Not only is this software useful for organizing ideas, but also for getting managers involved in networking ideas in different locations of a company. But more importantly, this software centers on the generation of new ideas. To demonstrate the generation of these ideas, the final part of the text gives a number of real-world applications of creative computer software. Particular emphasis is placed on Idea Fisher 4.0, an effective software package for generating new products and services.

Even though it can be argued that affiliate marketing is an old phenomenon, in a rapidly changing online business environment, it is still a new and developing business area. This highly topical book contains a thorough analysis of affiliate marketing, including theoretical and practical considerations. Strategic Affiliate Marketing acts as a unique guide for both practitioners and academics on how to approach affiliate marketing. The authors explain the core values as well as challenging and combining established marketing theories in the light of new online marketing activities, taking into account the characteristics of the Internet and interactions among various participants and agents. Rather than arguing the rights and wrongs in absolute terms, this book presents a strategy for engaging in affiliate marketing. The authors also examine what considerations should be taken into account before doing so, as well as investigating how to optimise resources once fully active in this area. This fascinating book focuses on how to build long term relationships with online partners, while gaining value and optimising resources. As such, it will be of special interest to academics and students of management, marketing and business. Online advertisers and online media will also find this a valuable tool with which to understand the potential of their online return of investment.

Economic Behavior and Distributional Choice brings together, for the first time, Harold M. Hochman's key papers on income redistribution and policy in one accessible volume.The introduction describes the genesis and development of a new direction in thinking, and the papers that follow cover the evolutions of an idea: the alliance between distribution policy and distributional preference as developed through public choice theory. This fine collection illustrates Harold M. Hochman's major contributions to the discussion of the relationship between distributional preference, income transfer policy and economic justice, including the concept of Pareto Optimal Distribution. These contributions have significantly advanced our understanding of the ways in which economic analysis can inform income distribution policy. This pathbreaking selection of writings, including a set of innovative papers on fiscal design, urban policy and addictive behavior, will be of great interest to academics, students and researchers concerned with macroeconomics and economic behavior.

In the turbulence of recent times, it is clear that the need for SMART government could not be starker. Recently, how we run corporations has been examined from every angle. Corporations have proved adept at change while governments have stuck to established rules. The challenge is to put in place machinery to provide services in a way that resists the growth of bureaucracy. The authors provide powerful insights into what it takes for leaders to create efficient, successful governments.

The key aim of the volume of original papers on the theory and practice of ODE featured in Organization Design and Engineering is to contribute towards overcoming the academic challenges stated above. A secondary aim is to launch the debate about ODE, including whether or not the debate itself is warranted.

This new approach argues that many practices and postures in strategy, marketing and branding, and organisational management are neither appropriate nor efficient. Based upon their studies of extremely successful firms, the authors distinguish two main paths to success. One followed by "proactive markers" like Club Med, Ikea and Royal Canin consists of designing and creating new economic and societal "territories," not just market shares or brands, that fill societal voids. The other, followed by "reactive markers" like First Direct, Tesco, Wal-Mart and Dyson consists of addressing with great talents existing social values and ways of living. But this book does not only deliver a groundbreaking new analytical framework: it also gives practical clues to business practitioners on both avoiding pitfalls and taking adequate decisions while elaborating their marking discipline.

Focusing on the structure, processes, and behaviors for a board of directors to ensure good governance, this book examines the behavioral aspects of governance such as how to evaluate and process information provided to the board, how to critically question without de-motivating and how to provide guidance without interfering with management.

This book explores leadership and management in social sector organizations, which include, NGOs, non-profits, social enterprises, social businesses, and cross-sector collaborations focusing on advancing human dignity and social justice. It provides social sector leaders with an overview of current trends, issues, and challenges in the field as well as best practices to foster effective programs, sustain organizations and meet the growing demands of the sector. The enclosed chapters cover topics such as cross-sector organizational design, innovation for client services, gender management dynamics, policy advocacy, and the growing social entrepreneurship movement. The social sector is currently in a vibrant, dynamic, and exciting stage. The sector's role and relevance to advancing human dignity and social justice is greater than ever. The number and types of social sector organizations have increased exponentially around the world and are offering extraordinary and much needed contributions toward an array of social issues. The traditional NGOs and non-profit organizations continue to be an integral part of the global civil society. At the same time, the emerging organizational forms under the social entrepreneurship umbrella are providing new momentum and excitement within and outside of the social sector. The interest in social entrepreneurship is encouraging existing social sector entities to actively embrace and encourage innovation. This interest is also inspiring a new breed of professionals and organizations to contribute to the social sector. This trend falls under the larger social sector dynamic promoting the creation of "hybrid" and emergent organizational forms, which cross and combine the traditional non-profit and for-profit domains. Despite the increased interest, the social sector still faces challenges around the world. CIVICUS - an international group promoting civil society organizations and groups-- recently reported a rise in the restrictions on civil society activities in a number of countries through worsening policy and legal environments. Funding challenges for the social sector are thus becoming more significant. At the same time, the calls for social sector accountability and emphasis on results and impact are growing. This book aims to offer approaches and tools which allow for the bridging of demands between creativity and accountability, between inspiration and results, and between gaining individual commitment and shared ownership of agendas and achievements, all of which are needed to effectively operate in the changing social sector.

"An essential guide for any professional interested in understanding how to implement and influence change"Prof. Adam Boddison, - Chief Executive, Association for Project Management Leading change in organizations is always hard, but this original, game-based handbook will at least make it much more fun! Based on real-life case studies and reflecting the most common challenges facing any change ninja, this is a story where you get to make the decisions at each stage, and discover the impact of your choices. This interactive approach will appeal particularly to non-linear thinkers and those who learn best through action and application. It's pragmatic, focusing on tips for getting people on board and on identifying small, doable 'ninja moves' that gain traction and build momentum by stealth. After lots of training in things like project management, agile change and leadership, Dr Tammy Watchorn discovered none of this really helped as the focus was always on process rather than people. By understanding how people work instead, she soon found she could deliver successful change by stealth with ninja moves.

The book explores various aspects of cognitive and motivational psychology as they impact entrepreneurial behavior. Building upon the 2009 volume, Understanding the Entrepreneurial Mind, the editors and contributors explore the cognitions, motivations, passions, intentions, perceptions, and emotions associated with entrepreneurial behaviors, in each case preserving their original chapters and enhancing them with thoughtful and targeted updates, reflecting on the most recent developments in theory and practice, telling the story of what has transpired in the last decade in the field of entrepreneurial psychology. The volume addresses such questions as: Why do some people start business and others do not? Is entrepreneurship a natural quality or can it be taught? Do entrepreneurs think differently from others? While there is a great deal of literature exploring the dynamics of new firm creation, policies to promote innovation and technology transfer, and the psychology of creativity; research on entrepreneurial mindset or cognition is relatively new, and draws largely from such related fields as organizational behavior, cognitive and social psychology, career development, and consumer research. In this book, editors Brannback and Carsrud have reassembled the contributors to Understanding the Entrepreneurial Mind to discuss new research paradigms given their vantage point years after the original volume was published. Featuring the most current literature references, Revisiting the Entrepreneurial Mind continues to challenge conventional approaches to entrepreneurship and articulate an agenda for future research.

The authors have conducted extensive research into the role of business in public life, and this book developes the themes of that work. It takes a practice-oriented look at corporate citizenship, and uses real, behind the scenes examples from well-known companies to show that for many firms social responsibility is becoming more integrated into corporate strategy.