The rapid pace and increasing convergence of internet, phone and other communications technologies has created extraordinary opportunities for business but the complexity of these new service mixes creates parallel opportunities for fraud and revenue leakage. Companies seeking to use communications technology as a delivery or payment platform for digital services are particularly at risk. They need to understand both their strategic and operational risks as well as those affecting their stakeholders - partners and customers. Effective risk management is as much about awareness, culture, training and organization as it is about technology. Mark Johnson's practical guide, Demystifying Communications Risk, highlights cases from a wide range of geographies and cultures and is designed to raise awareness of the multi-faceted and often complex forms that operational revenue risks take in the communications sector. It provides managers with an understanding of the nature and implications of the risks they face and the human, organizational and technological approaches that can help avoid or mitigate them.

Behavior Space proposes that corporations do not design products or services anymore: they design behavior spaces. Facebook is not a product, not a technology, but a behavior space. Innovation is the creation of a new behaviour space. The product or service is simply the catalyst that enables a new behavior space to emerge. The size of the behaviour space footprint, represents the potential value a product or service offers; the greater the value potential, the greater the monetization potential. Alexander Manu illustrates how these new concepts are transforming design and product development so that the process changes from a static and product-centred approach to one that is entirely centred on the user and their behaviours that emerge as they interact with what they have bought. He provides a new language to describe the way in which the physical, intellectual and emotional features of products and services achieve a relationship between the user and the brand. And he explains the concept of Play Value, which underpins the attraction for customers and depends on compelling experiences that are challenging, rewarding and absorbing; that never frustrate and that encourage repeated use. Designers and brand managers seeking to understand and exploit commercially the fundamental changes in consumers that are driven by technology, experience and social interaction will find Behavior Space a wonderful place to start.

With a growing market currently in excess of $150 billion, outsourcing hasbecome a critical boardroom agenda. Meeting this challenge, Andrew and Nada Kakabadse answer key boardroom questions. As one of the largest international surveys on outsourcing, Smart Sourcing highlights what it takes to be "outsource ready" and thus become a high performing company.

Recent decades have seen substantial growth in the range of assistance programmes for SMEs and entrepreneurs across the world. Once regarded as peripheral to the economy and public policy, the role of small firms and of entrepreneurship is now recognized as of key importance in the economic growth and development strategies of many nations. The range of interventions and support focused on promoting SMEs and entrepreneurship is substantial and expanding, so Government, SMEs and Entrepreneurship Development asks 'what are some of the main policy instruments being used, and how effective are they?' It considers policies in different countries, examines key interventions and tools used to promote entrepreneurship and SME development and concludes with contributions on how to best evaluate their effectiveness. The contributor chapters by academics and practitioners from businesses, enterprise development agencies and governments, are empirical or evidence-based and use both quantitative and qualitative approaches. Drawing on experience from a wide range of both developed and emerging countries and economies, the contributions focus on the broad strategies that different governments and communities have adopted to foster entrepreneurship and SMEs; the policy tools and instruments that can be used to promote small business and entrepreneurship; and on the outcomes of policy instruments and the methods used to evaluate interventions. Their findings will help researchers, policy-makers, economic development officers, civil servants, elected officials, and business associations to better understand the issues in this important field.

Proceedings of the First European Congress on Industrial Property Rights and Innovation

Product and service innovations are the result of mutually interacting creative and coordination tasks within a system that has to balance technical decisions, marketplace taste, personnel management, and stakeholder commitment. The constituent elements of such systems are often scattered across multiple firms and across the globe and constitute a complex system consisting of many interacting parts.

In the spirit of the "butterfly effect," metaphorically describing the sensitivity to initials conditions of chaotic systems, this book builds an argument that "innovation butterflies" can, in the short term, take up significant amounts of effort and sap efficiencies within individual innovation projects. Such "innovation butterflies" can be prompted by external forces such as government legislation or unexpected spikes in the price of basic goods (such as oil), unexpected shifts in market tastes, or from a company manager's decisions or those of its competitors. Even the smallest change, the smallest disruption, to this system can steer a firm down an unpredictable and irreversibly different path in terms of technology and market evolution.

In the long term, they can shift the balance of the entire innovation portfolio into unplanned directions. More importantly, we describe how innovation leaders can influence the emergent behavior of the system for good or ill.

The first half of the book draws parallels from physics, economics, and sociology as well as evidence from multiple industries to describe the structural and behavioral causes of emergent phenomena in innovation settings as well as their often negative impacts. In the second half of the book, we turn to distributed management of innovation under emergence. We show that innovation butterflies, if improperly managed, most often lead to negative outcomes. On the other hand, it is also argued that while the complexity of the innovation system and the desire to experiment and try new and emergent alternatives precludes precise planning, innovation leaders can actually tame innovation butterflies through the design and implementation of appropriate processes, strategies, tools and leadership choices.

Elgar Advanced Introductions are stimulating and thoughtful introductions to major fields in the social sciences and law, expertly written by the world's leading scholars. Designed to be accessible yet rigorous, they offer concise and lucid surveys of the substantive and policy issues associated with discrete subject areas. Over the past 25 years, the regional innovation system (RIS) approach has become a powerful framework for explaining the uneven geographical distribution of innovation, as well as for developing policies geared towards boosting the innovation capability of regional economies. This Advanced Introduction provides a critical review and discussion of research on RIS to answer a set of core questions covering the origins of the concept and its theoretical underpinnings, conceptual advances, empirical applications in different spatial contexts, the policy relevance of RIS and the challenges for future scholarly work. Key features include: ? a comprehensive introduction to the RIS approach and its development? a critical review of the development of research on RIS? an analysis of empirical varieties of RIS? in-depth discussion linking RIS to other important concepts in studies of regional economic development, including industrial districts, regional clusters, knowledge bases and regional industrial path development. Ideal as an introductory textbook at both bachelor and master levels in economic geography, regional economic development and innovation studies, this concise Advanced Introduction will be a vital tool for understanding regional innovation studies.

Organisational complexity is an unavoidable aspect of all businesses, even larger ones, which can hinder their ability to react to sudden or disruptive change. However, with the implementation of enterprise architecture (EA), businesses are able to provide their leaders with the resources needed to address any arising challenges. A Systemic Perspective to Managing Complexity with Enterprise Architecture highlights the current advances in utilising enterprise architecture for managing organisational complexity. By demonstrating the value and usefulness of EA, this book serves as a reference for business leaders, managers, engineers, enterprise architects, and many others interested in new research and approaches to business complexity.

Corporate venturing is of great strategic importance in today's world of accelerated change in business and technology. In one of the best and most current books on the subject, Van den Bosch and Duysters guide readers through carefully-selected case studies that will enlighten the practitioner and academic alike.' - Dana T. Redford, Portuguese Catholic University and President, Platform for Entrepreneurship Education in Portugal'Before an innovation gets the green light in large corporations, it needs to be proved that the innovation will be successful: successful and lucrative. And that's exactly what you can't ever know in advance for a true innovation. Corporate Venturing: Organizing for Innovation shows how corporate oil tankers can take full advantage of innovative speedboats.' - Danny Mekic, Entrepreneur Large organizations can struggle to keep up with today's fast-changing market and technological developments. However, an increasing number of businesses now engage in corporate venturing as a way to enhance their innovation process. This book fills the gap in management literature by providing a detailed account of best practices in the organization and management of such corporate ventures. The authors highlight eight main cases of organizations that employ corporate venturing within their firms. The cases illustrate how leading corporations organize their corporate venturing process and highlight the best practices that can be distilled from their experience. Jessica van den Bosch and Geert Duysters explain how the ideal corporation is one that is able to combine the scale and pure power of a large organization with the creativity, flexibility and resilience of a small one. With a compendium of useful case studies, and practical guidelines on corporate venturing, this book will appeal to managers, consultants and all leaders involved in the process of creating new ventures within large organizations. Contents: 1. Corporate Venturing in Health Care: A Cbusinez Case 2. Corporate Venturing in the Chemical Industry: A Colourful Case 3. BAC BV: The Successful Exit of a Unilever Spin-Out 4. Document Services Valley: A Lifeline for the Printing Industry? 5. Innovation Projects and Venturing at Rabobank: Creating a New Dynamic 6. Eindhoven University of Technology's Innovationlab: Commercializing Scientific Research for Scientific Research Itself 7. Sanomaventures: Innovating by Attracting Entrepreneurial Talent 8. Nrc.Next: Reinventing Printed News 9. Discussion and Conclusions 10. Top 10 Best Practices for Managing Corporate Ventures Index

Volume 3 of the "Research Methodology in Strategy and Management" title offers twelve chapters of discussion surrounding various tools and methods utilized by scholars and academics. A wide range of approaches are covered that will prove to be an important reference and inspiration for strategists, managers, and researchers. It is a resource containing recent research by some of the field's most respected scholars.

Academic discoveries account for some of the most successful products in the marketplace, from pharmaceutical blockbusters like Lyrica (R) to household names like Gatorade (TM). Yet few researchers understand the process of technology transfer or the various pathways for commercialization available to them. Beyond Discovery is the ultimate guide for researchers interested in moving their inventions from the laboratory to the marketplace. Focusing particularly on scientists and engineers, this volume demystifies the process of commercialization by offering clarity on key complex topics, including technology transfer, intellectual property, and the uneven landscape for inventors of different genders and ethnicities. The authors describe how academics must adapt their thinking and provide numerous best practices for advancing through this unfamiliar and demanding terrain, with profiles of current scientists and engineers to illustrate how academic inventions have translated to commercial success. Beyond Discovery also offers realistic recommendations to academic institutions for engaging their researchers in the commercialization enterprise. Comprehensive and pragmatic, Beyond Discovery illustrates how commercialization can deepen the impact of academic research and offers seasoned advice for each step in the technology transfer process.

The United States lost one third of its factory jobs in the past decade as jobs were outsourced offshore, mostly to Asia. Jobs that require a college degree are next to go. China will award six times as many degrees this year as they did ten years ago and any job that can be digitized will be 'tradable'. Estimates of the number of vulnerable jobs range from a low 11 million to a staggering 56 million 'middle class' jobs. The median United States household income has already dropped by seven percent since 2000 and without dramatic changes in the American workforce that trend will become a disaster for middle class Americans.

The Internet challenges many basic assumptions about the structure of business processes, channels of distribution, product marketing, competitiveness and resource management. It places new demands on organizations and those determining strategy and direction. There are tools and concepts that can enable managers to face these challenges and give them some appreciation of the consequences of this new technology. In this text, Dick Stroud looks at the business implications of the Internet at a strategic level. Without going into technical details, he looks at what is driving the development of the Internet and how it might impact on a number of aspects of an organization's operations. He then defines strategies that can be adopted and outlines the benefits and weaknesses of each, providing the diagnostic tools to enable managers to make decisions about their own businesses.

This book connects a buying psychology driven by American beliefs and values with a company's go-to market strategy, the goal being to sensitize readers to how the cultural values of a particular country or region can impact the business environment. The book also addresses the reasons behind these differences and therefore begins with a detailed cultural comparison of the United States and Europe, and assessments of how these characteristics impact their respective markets and customer behavior differently. Another aspect that sets this book apart is that it argues for sound decision-making processes as the first priority in any international business strategy. Readers are provided detailed insights into the variables a European company needs to understand before it makes its "go/no-go" decision, along with the tools needed to evaluate the probability of success and the risks of going to market. Once a company decides to enter the US market, the book then offers a highly customer-centric approach to developing and executing an effective market strategy.

This book investigates strategy formulation by comparing military & business practices. It assesses whether the strategy process in the business field also prevails in the military context. Based on interviews and case studies, the author uses a framework of influences including organization, leadership, risk, theory and context to consider the areas of similarity and difference. While significant parallels can be found, greater importance is placed on the formulation of aims and goals, and the identification and training of leaders in the military. This provides valuable lessons for business strategists.

Visual thinking and drawing are both becoming increasingly important in today's business settings. A picture really can tell a thousand words. Visualization is a crucial part of the journey for companies seeking to boost enterprise agility, break down silos and increase employee and customer engage ment. Visualizing thought processes can help break down complex problems. It empowers teams and staff to build on one another's ideas, fosters collaboration, jump-starts co-creation and boosts innovation. This book will help brush aside misconcepti ons that may have prevented you using these techniques in your workplace. You don't need Van Gogh's artistic talent or Einstein's intelli gence to harness the power of visual thinking and make your company more successful. With the right mindset and the simple skills this book provides you the skills to develop your own signature and style and start gene rating change by integrating visual communi cation into your business setting.

Written by a renowned international business scholar with particular expertise in Latin America Provides a broad, academic treatment of the region emphasizing both macro and micro level issues Demonstrates that the countries that make up Latin America have unique cultures and political economies, and discusses how these differences impact on business strategies for the region Second edition has been substantially revised and updated to include emerging political themes that impact upon business practices, along with fresh cases and examples Includes chapters not usually covered in other books, such as entrepreneurship, leadership, HRM, sustainability, income inequality, social responsibility, and transparency

This book proposes a revised theory of agency, drawing on ideas from behavioural economics and built on more robust assumptions about human behaviour than the standard principal-agent model. The book proposes new design principles for executive pay, but also explains the difficulties in changing current executive pay practices.

Many senior managers and company leaders are blissfully ignorant of what strategy really is. They use the word strategy constantly without ever clearly defining their own. They berate their staff for being task focused and working in silos, but are unable to articulate a strategy sufficiently clearly to change this. "The Business Strategy Toolkit" is a concise and highly practical guide designed to give managers the tools to: elicit their own strategy; communicate it in the most appropriate ways to their staff; and, look at practical ways to implement that strategy.