Proven and practical strategies for leading IT teams and departments In Fostering Innovation: How to Build an Amazing IT Team, accomplished technology strategist, executive, and leader Andrew Laudato delivers an eye-opening exploration of how to design, build, staff, and run a high-performing IT department. The book is filled with universally applicable strategies and techniques that can transform any IT team into an all-star cast perfectly aligned with your organization's objectives. Incorporating proven and practical processes throughout the narrative, the book offers useful continuous improvement concepts the reader can apply to their team, company, and professional development. Readers will also find: Foolproof ways to put people before technology Detailed discussions of perennially important topics, like the importance of uptime, how to deploy redundancy, and creating the perfect organization chart Strategies for managing and motivating the wonderfully unique individuals we refer to as "technologists." The perfect resource for newly minted Chief Information Officers and Chief Technology Officers, Fostering Innovation will also earn a place in the libraries of non-technical professionals who work closely with IT, and business leaders seeking a better understanding of how to lead an IT team.

A 21st-century business strategy for succeeding in a tough global economy

To succeed in today’s turbulent business environment operating in a "business as usual" mode will no longer work. Conflict and competition can come from anywhere. Kenneth Allard–a well-known military strategist and management expert–knows that in business, just as in the war on terrorism–losing cannot be an option in your playbook.

Business as War draws numerous parallels between the strategies and tactics used by the United States military and the challenges businesses face in the no-holds-barred competition of the global economy. Allard believes that success in this new competitive climate can be achieved by applying cutting-edge military perspectives to the everyday world of business. These tools include the traditional military arts–leadership and strategy–as well as information age techniques such as business intelligence, enterprise security and streamlined information-sharing. Using first-person examples from his media, military, and business experiences, Allard demonstrates how the military learned their lessons–and how businesses can profit by meeting similar challenges.

In tough economic times, survival is a matter of waging war, and people are looking for proven strategies to solve all types of problems. Business as War adapts the effective tools of war to a business environment where new competitors and difficult challenges are constant threats.

Kenneth Allard (Washington, DC), a former army colonel, is a well-known commentator on international security issues, strategy, and military matters, regularly appearing on NBC News, MSNBC, CNBC, and the Imus in the Morning radio show. As one of the star attractions of Leading Authorities, a major speakers bureau, Colonel Allard appears before a wide range of business audiences around the country.
Colonel Allard served overseas as an operational intelligence officer and as a peace-keeper in Bosnia, and also played key roles in two of the most significant reform efforts in Pentagon history: helping to draft the landmark 1986 Goldwater-Nichols Act that changed the way the military operates and directing the study that produced the sweeping "reinventing government" reforms of the 1994 Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act. He is an adjunct professor in the National Security Studies Program at Georgetown University. Dr. Allard holds a PhD from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and an MPA from Harvard University.

Globalization and technological innovation have greatly enhanced the free mobility of currencies, commodities, services, information, jobs and people; yet this can also cause gaps in regional development and create uneven wealth in minority economies. Social Innovation and Business in Taiwan links the ultimate goal of the common good by connecting people not just through technology, but through new forms of organization. Based on five major research cases observed in Taiwan, this book introduces the core concept of a social innovation system to show how the common good can be established, adapted and diffused across communities, societies and national boundaries. By identifying effective and sustainable ways to create social value, this innovation system shows a universally true way to lead to a more humane global society.

Liberal capitalism harbours two dangerous seeds of self-destruction; growing inequality and, as recent events have demonstrated, a tendency for markets to spiral out of control. This book attributes both of them to fundamental flaws in capitalism's main economic agent, the large, CEO-led, limited liability joint stock company. It explains why the flaws developed, describes how they threaten the liberal capitalist consensus and suggests some steps companies could take to reform themselves and improve their adaptation to today's environment.

The transformation of emerging markets in recent decades has generated a new, growing, and very large middle class market, also known as the middle of the pyramid. This market segment, which is middle by the standards of emerging markets yet low by the standards of advanced economies, is extremely attractive for firms, but still understood and underserved. This volume presents detailed analyses of exemplary firms that have innovated products, services, and business models to fulfil the needs and desires of these new middle classes. It provides useful insights for managers, consultants, researchers, and students interested in emerging economies, and actionable lessons on how to innovate for a new and expanding market segment.

The current crisis has rocked the financial system worldwide and has cast doubt on the effectiveness of the existing regulatory regime. Thousands of firms have gone bankrupt and many financial institutions were bailed out by governments. The effects of the crisis have shaken emerging and developing markets alike and have not spared neither small nor large businesses.

Many scholars and practitioners attribute the roots of the crisis to failures and weaknesses in the way corporate governance has been practiced since the mid-1990s. Lax board oversight of top management, short-termism and self-interested behavior have been fingered as the culprits behind recent financial turmoil.

This book highlights the recent developments and new trends in corporate governance. The eighteen chapters, written by leading academics and experts, can assist corporate executives, governance bodies, investors, market regulators, and policymakers in having a global picture of major corporate governance issues.

This book highlights the recent developments and new trends in corporate governance. The eighteen chapters, written by leading academics and experts, can assist corporate executives, governance bodies, investors, market regulators, and policymakers in having a global picture of major corporate governance issues.

The Entrepreneurial Rise in Southeast Asia examines the start-up scene environments in Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, and Indonesia. The contributors to this volume explore government strategies to support start-up communities, local challenges, and unique strengths of each country. They answer key questions framing policy and strategic decision-making at the firm, industry, national, and regional levels, such as: How does technological advance occur, and what are the process and institutions involved? Which cultural characteristics serve to promote or impede innovation? And, in what ways is wealth distributed or concentrated?

"Information produced and disseminated by an interlocking ecology of computer-based systems and artifacts currently provides the essential means for planning organizational operations and controlling organizational performances. This book describes the vital importance-that digital information acquires in restructuring organizations"--

Across industries, firms vary broadly on how they operate with respect to their Research & Development (R&D) activities. This volume presents a holistic approach to evaluating the critical elements of R&D management, including planning, organization, portfolio management, project management, and knowledge transfer-by assessing R&D management from different sectors. Featuring empirical research and in-depth case studies from industries as diverse as medical imaging, electric vehicles, and cyber security, the authors identify common features of successful R&D management, despite fundamental differences, such as company size, number of employees, industry sector, and the R&D budget. In particular, they consider the implications for decision making with respect to resource allocation and investments, such as site selection, purchasing, and cross-departmental communication.

Innovation in Business and Enterprise: Technologies and Frameworks focuses on managing innovation through bridging gaps created from theories, relative advantages or competitiveness, social differences, and innovation capability and performance.

This book provides specialists and executives with a clear, yet practical set of recommendations to meet the challenges of digital transformation and ensure long-term success as a leader in a primarily digital business world. The authors describe the fundamental principles of digitization and its economic opportunities and risks, integrating them into a framework of classic and new management methods. The book also explores how increasing digitization - not only of communication, but of complete value chains - has led to a need to establish a digital business leadership. Digitization is changing people and markets: it causes the upheaval of entire industries, creates new digital-centric companies, and forces established companies to cope with the transformation activities associated with these digitization processes. New approaches and methods have to be learned, tried and tested patterns of thinking have to be explored, and last but not least, innovation activities have to be understood as continuous necessities. At the same time, digital business offers considerable opportunities for renewing competitive advantages, improving existing process structures and realigning products, services and business models.

In an era that has brought new and unexpected challenges for virtually every company, one would be hard-pressed to find any responsible manager who is not thinking about what the future will bring. In the wake of these challenges, strategic planning has moved from being the reserve of large corporations to becoming an essential need for even small and medium-sized enterprises. But what good is even the most convincing strategic concept if the company s people are unwilling or unable to put it into practice? The key is to develop people, and to develop them not only for the work of today, but also for the challenges that the future holds. Strategic HR development has become a decisive force for the success of any business. This book, edited by Matthias T. Meifert, shows us which basic considerations we need to remember and what strategic HR development means in practice. Its interesting and vivid approach takes the reader on a tour of the eight stages of HR development, introduces the critical factors, and highlights many practical recommendations for strategic HR development practice in business."

Written by the world's leading academics in the outsourcing field, this books gives the most recent overview of developments in research and practice. It focuses on new practices in innovation, offshoring, onshoring, capabilities, project management and cloud services, offering a distinctive theory of outsourcing.

As a follow-up to a 2010 volume on organizational change-related consulting, the book continues to push our thinking about the dynamics involved in consulting with change leaders and intervening in the change process. Consulting for organizational change is a special type of consultation, with its own complex set of conditions and needs for a broad range of skills and competencies, which include distinct needs for the client-consultant relationship, superior consulting/facilitation skills, an expertise in human and organizational systems, and, as emphasized in the volume, the masterful "use of self." As with our prior edited collection, this volume is a joint publication in the Research in Management Consulting and Contemporary Trends in Organization Development and Change book series. The dual focus is intended to reflect the importance of quality consulting for change across both the management consulting and Organization Development (OD) fields. It follows a long history of interest in how consulting affects organization change, what works, and, perhaps most importantly for generating theory and insight into the change process, why it works. The book contains fourteen chapters that frame the changing nature of the organizational change challenge, explore the use of self in intervening in organizations, and examine different change frameworks and perspectives, sharing various reflections and personal insights into the underlying challenges of consulting to bring about organizational change. Our underlying goal is to advance the theory and practice of effective organizational change consultation, stimulating thinking and discussion among change practitioners and researchers so that this work and profession continue to grow and evolve.

Whether you are thinking about becoming an independent retailer or are already running your own business, there are some tricks you need to know.

Big retailers like Macy's and Bloomingdale's use tricks of the trade to boost productivity, sales, and profits. You can learn and use these techniques to compete with them and to maximize your store's sales and profits.

Joanna Bradshaw, who has served at the highest executive levels with several of America's best known and most successful retailers, and has also enjoyed a career as an independent retailing entrepreneur, explains the challenges you will face as a shopkeeper today. She walks you through the process of creating the proper foundation for your store and helps you master invaluable skills for your success. You'll learn how to

- create a successful business plan;- develop and convey a mission statement;- harness your strengths to achieve a competitive advantage;- refine and differentiate your products and store; and- use innovative cost-effective ways to promote your business.

This easy-to-understand guide is filled with practical information and keen insights distilled from decades of experience in all types of retail venues: department stores, specialty stores, outlets, and big-box retailers--as well as with start-ups, turnarounds, and liquidations. Get the tools you need to "Be a Millionaire Shopkeeper."

Every business discipline has a unique vantage point on value creation and destruction, and while specialists have devised solutions, leaders rarely use them because of the inherent complexity in trying to understand which parts fit together to help them achieve goals. The result is a sort of business 'Tower of Babel' for practicing leaders and organizational scientists
alike.
"Leading Value Creation" fills this void as the first book to take organizational science and place it into one coherent and useful model. Barney integrates vastly different areas of organizational science into his Cue See Model, which builds upon his experience developing global leaders at companies like Motorola, Merck, and Infosys. The model is a way to help leaders better create value and mitigate risk. It highlights the flow of value across four perspectives--quality, cost, quantity, and cycle time, and also looks across levels of analysis for a holistic view on the bottlenecks to value creation as the best focal point for organizations to succeed. Barney provides numerous practical examples from pharmaceuticals to barbershops, and summarizes six empirical studies demonstrating the model's usefulness.

In the 5th edition of this successful book Martin Hilb presents an innovative and integrated approach to the theory and practice of corporate governance. Central to this approach is a set of instruments - developed and tested by the author - that can be used by boards to offer effective strategic direction and control to their organizations. The board instruments can be readily applied to the selection, review, remuneration and development of board members, and for conducting board self-evaluations. This new approach to corporate governance is based on four guiding principles: keep it situational, keep it strategic, keep it integrated, and keep it controlled. Together, these principles form the basis of an integrated approach to all key aspects of corporate governance. The main arguments in each section are supported by conceptual models, practical board tools and case studies, making the book ideally suited to board members, senior managers and post-graduate students. This new edition is updated throughout the book and includes a new chapter on mobile integrated board management and documentation information systems.

This text covers such topics as: pay and the changing business context; strategic pay issues; team pay; pay in the new business environments; merit pay; competency pay; and pay system evaluation.

Every year the US federal government will spend roughly 100 billion dollars through competitive IDIQ (Indefinite Duration Indefinite Quantity) contracts. When you add in contracts awarded by State governments and commercial organizations using very similar processes you're looking at 700 billion dollars' worth of business. Getting a slice of that pie depends on how well you manage the contracting project. This is because IDIQs are essentially empty contract structures which then require a second round of winning task orders. For contracts with the government, this two-step structure which is specified in law and regulation, has specific pitfalls and opportunities which are rarely the subject of contract and project management training. Salesky's coaching style talks you through the specific challenges in the startup, management, and closing of the IDIQ. This book gives a pragmatic and best-practice description of the entire life cycle of this type of contract offering you the "inside advisor" you need to help you through the pragmatics issues of clients', performers', and bosses' expectations.

Sustainable entrepreneurship focuses on how the environment is embedded within business practices. This book examines collaboration strategies and initiatives for sustainable entrepreneurs with a wide variety of partners, and demonstrates how they can be used to increase overall performance and achieve global competitiveness. Based on the latest empirical evidence from emerging economies, the book's respective chapters address sustainability issues in connection with knowledge creation and learning, outsourcing, and the roles of universities, consultants, and the public sector.

This book provides a set of integrated frameworks-capital, systems, and objects-that transcend managerial or technology hype by focusing on the long-term fundamentals that sustain organizational success, and it contains cases from South East Asia to elaborate this concept. Many organizations are currently addressing two important transformational issues: ecological sustainability and digitization. Sustainability is a goal, an end, and digitization is a process, a means to achieve a goal. This book introduces a flexible model that can be applied to current and future organizational challenges, including sustainability and digitization, because the fundamentals are constant. This book is designed to serve two purposes for the readers: first, to present three conceptual foundations for designing and operating organizations (capital, systems, and objects (section 1)); and second, to provide a reference source for implementing these ideas in your organization (sections 2 and 3). The first section of the book, chapters 1 through 7, sets forth the conceptual foundations. The chapters mix concepts and practical examples to give a new way of thinking about the setting in which one may work many days each year. The second section provides details and associated examples of every one of the thirty-six forms of capital conversion. It also illustrates how the five foundational systems support capital conversion in a variety of ways. Finally, the third section is about measuring capital and systems. The book covers measurement of all types of capital and systems performance and has been written for current and future organizational leaders to change the game and play it more effectively. The book will thus resonate with students of organizational behaviour and leadership strategy, organizational leaders, industry experts, and general readers.

This book explores how contemporary organisations are abandoning conventional tactics in order to survive and grow in an incessantly shifting business landscape, analysing fundamental aspects of management, marketing and strategy from an interdisciplinary perspective. Focusing on the paradigms of neuro-marketing, innovative change management, motivational creativity, and customer data management, to name a few, the authors provide practical learning outcomes which reflect how organisations are seeking to adopt innovative means to innovative ends, targeting capacity building in multiple ways. Ultimately, this edited collection implicitly defines an organisational philosophy that incorporates functionality, but also embraces business notions pertaining to wider contextual transformations and environmental developments. Theoretical and practical contributions highlight the importance of multidisciplinary research to practical business success, making this book an invaluable read to both scholars and business executives.