Hold productive meetings and events with help from Dummies It's a whole new world out there. With so many companies, big and small, electing to move to virtual or hybrid operating models, meetings have arguably become more important than ever as the primary way teams communicate day-to-day. But how do you maximize engagement when a screen sits between you and your coworkers? In Business Meeting & Event Planning For Dummies, expert author Susan Friedmann shares her tips and insider tricks for navigating virtual and hybrid gatherings without missing a beat. Armed with top-notch guidance and insider tips from Dummies, you'll be able to streamline meetings to maximize efficiency and save money - on or offline. Create effective and exciting business events and presentations Keep on time and on budget, maintain group engagement, and use social media to your advantage Discover best practices, proven tips, and technical advice If you're a professional who wants to make the most of business meetings, this is the Dummies guide for you. It's also a valuable resource for anyone who needs to plan a large-scale event (seminar, convention, etc.).

The first section of the book includes information about how tourism-related infrastructure and activities promote biological invasions, including key pathways for non-native invasive species introductions. This section provides case studies of different organisms that are known to be introduced and/or promoted by tourism in different ecosystems or regions. The second section elaborates on known and potential impacts of invasive species on tourism and recreation, including how they may affect, positively or negatively, the economic revenue from tourism, tourist access, recreation, aesthetic values and tourists' perceptions. The last section focuses on management and policy, covering aspects of how visitors perceive invasive species and their willingness to manage them, biosecurity measures to prevent invasion related to tourism, as well as potential policy options moving forward. The book draws on a number of examples across multiple taxa, landscapes and regions of the world.

How to start, grow, and succeed in the food truck business.

Food trucks have become a wildly popular and important part of the hospitality industry. Consumers are flocking to these mobile food businesses in droves, inspiring national food truck competitions and even a show dedicated to the topic on The Food Network. The relatively low cost of entry as compared to starting a restaurant, combined with free and low-cost ways to market them to the masses via platforms like social media, are just two of the reasons that food truck business are drawing in budding entrepreneurs.

Author David Weber, a food truck advocate and entrepreneur himself, is here to offer his practical, step-by-step advice to achieving your mobile food mogul dreams in "The Food Truck Handbook. " This book cuts through all of the hype to give both hopeful entrepreneurs and already established truck owners an accurate portrayal of life on the streets. From concept to gaining a loyal following to preventative maintenance on your equipment this book covers it all.Includes profiles of successful food trucks, detailing their operations, profitability, and scalability.Establish best practices for operating your truck using one-of-a-kind templates for choosing vending locations, opening checklist, closing checklist, and more.Create a sound business plan complete with a reasonable budget and finding vendors you can trust; consider daily operations in detail from start to finish, and ultimately expand your business.Stay lean and profitable by avoiding the most common operating mistakes. Author David Weber is Founder and President of the NYC Food Truck Association (NYCFTA), which brings together small businesses that own and operate premium food trucks in NYC focused on innovation in hospitality, high quality food, and community development.

Addressing the entire care chain, this book presents the outcomes of advanced research on healthcare operations management based on real-world data and practices in China. It includes hands-on methods and applications in this interdisciplinary research field, which combines healthcare service, operations management, industrial engineering and information technology. The content is divided into three parts, reflecting the entire care chain. The first part discusses the pre-hospital service stage and explores resource deployment problems in emergency medical service, such as ambulance allocation. The second part focuses on inpatient care services, including staffing and task allocation among nurses and doctors based on multi-project management under uncertainties. In addition, a highly promising diagnosis approach is proposed and a specific algorithm is derived on the basis of real-world datasets which can improve the diagnosis accuracy remarkably. In turn, the third part considers the post-hospital service stage, which most often takes place at community hospitals, and provides a quantitative evaluation and optimization of scheduling for tasks and team members for home care services. The book is intended for a broad audience, including students, researchers and practitioners working in various areas of healthcare management, service management, and operations management.

If you don't offer great customer experience, your main competitors will take away 50% of your business. Period. Gone are the days in which businesses could simply offer an "OK" experience and get away with it. In today's hypercompetitive environment, companies can no longer be just B2C or B2B. They must become B2Me - more personal, more relevant. With customers having higher expectations and access to more information than ever before, companies must create stellar, frictionless, personalized, and memorable customer experiences, if they plan to stay in the game. In this book, you will learn: * What customer experience truly is. * How emotions can increase customer loyalty...or make customers ditch a brand. * Which behaviors and attitudes lose customers. * Ten easy, practical, and proven ways to immediately improve your customer experience. * What renowned companies do to offer the best customer experience. This book is for anyone who works serving customers in a B2C company or other businesses in a B2B environment. Everyone has an important role to play in creating a good customer experience, whether it be managers, associates, sales reps, marketing professionals, web strategists, accountants, customer service reps, delivery people, or installers. No matter what role you play, this book offers easy tips, recommendations, and examples to help improve customer experience, realistically, sustainably, and affordably.

The Fundamentals of Event Design aims to rethink current approaches to event design and production. The textbook explores the relationship between event design and multiple visitor experiences, as well as interactivity, motivation, sensory stimuli and co-creative participation. Structured around the key phases of event design, the book covers all the critical dimensions of event concepting, atmospherics, the application of interactive technologies, project management, team leadership, creative marketing and sustainable production. The concepts of authenticity, creativity, co-creation, imagineering and storytelling are discussed throughout, and practical step-by-step guidance is provided on how to create and deliver unique and memorable events. The chapters include industry voices offering real-life insight from leading international event practitioners and individual and/or team assignments to stimulate learners' creativity, visualisation and problem solving. This is the first textbook in event design that integrates areas of anthropology, social psychology, management, marketing, graphic design and interactivity. Focusing on bringing theory into practice, this is essential reading for all Events Management students.

Struggling to apply Lean effectively in your office environment? Office Lean is a book for anyone who wants to apply Lean better in contexts where the work is both intangible and complex. it explains in simple terms, what Lean is -- and what Lean isn't -- enabling office professionals to understand how it can be successfully applied to their complex office-based work environments. Contrary to popular opinion, Lean is not only for mass manufacturing or healthcare. It applies just as much to the digital world of "knowledge work" industries such as banking and financial services, software development, and government. But the fundamental concepts, straight from the factory floor, need a fair amount of translation to be effectively applied in cube farms. Overturning the common perception that Lean is about imposing rigid rules, or simply eliminating waste in the name of "efficiency", Eakin presents Lean as a dynamic, flexible, people-centric philosophy that delivers outstanding business results by improving employee engagement and customer experience. Office Lean helps Lean practitioners (leaders/managers and coaches/consultants) working in professional office environments access the amazing, transformative results Lean can bring to their specific domains. It combines clear explanations of the core concepts of the Lean philosophy with relevant, practical examples from the fields of accounting, finance, insurance, IT and government.

The Practical Guide to Understanding and Raising Hotel Profitability offers a comprehensive, easy-to-follow breakdown of how to understand profit and loss accounts for hotels. It offers practical advice on how to maximise the profits of this customer-facing business and improve performance results. Chapters cover every aspect of the profit and loss account including marketing, accommodation, food and beverage sales, quality, budgeting, event sales, and all the corresponding costs involved. It explains all the relevant KPIs and industry quirks within the profit and loss document as well as industry benchmarks to equip the reader with the skills to attend high level meetings, complete finance-based assignments and ultimately run their own business. Valuable tips from leading professionals within the industry are included throughout, giving advice on how to improve hotels' financial results and positively influence net profit through everyday actions. Packed full of practical case studies and written in an easy-to-read-style, this book is essential reading for hospitality students and current hospitality and hotel managers.

Service business accounts for more than 75 per cent of the wealth and employment created in most developed market economies. This interdisciplinary Handbook provides a critical and multi-disciplinary review of current service business processes and practices. Broadening our understanding of services in the world economy, the editors push back the frontiers of current critical thinking by bringing together eminent scholars from economics, management, sociology, public policy, planning and geography. Chapters contribute to ongoing debates about the nature and management of service business and the characteristics of service-led economies. Disciplinary perspectives on services, services and core business processes, and the management of service business are explored. Included is a series of case studies from the EU, USA, UK and Australia. Designed as an additional text for undergraduates and postgraduate studies, this book will appeal to students and scholars seeking a multi-disciplinary understanding of this increasingly mainstream field. Contributors: L. Andres, U. Apte, J.R. Bryson, C. Chapain, A. Coad, P.W. Daniels, F. Djellal, M. Ehret, J. Frankish, F. Gallouj, R. Greenwood, C. M. Hall, S. Hollis, A. Jones, U. Karmarkar, C.A. Kieliszewski, P.P Maglio, R. Mason, T. Morris, H. Nath, M. O'Mahony, A. Potter, J. Roberts, R. Roberts, L. Rubalcaba, M. Smets, D.J. Storey, P. Strom, J. Sundbo, D.J. Teece, M. Toivonen, R.H. Tsiotsou, J. Wirtz, F.F. Yang, A.G.O. Yeh

Illuminating the conditions for global governance to have precipitated the devastating decline of one of the ocean's most majestic creatures The International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) is the world's foremost organization for managing and conserving tunas, seabirds, turtles, and sharks traversing international waters. Founded by treaty in 1969, ICCAT stewards what has become under its tenure one of the planet's most prominent endangered fish: the Atlantic bluefin tuna. Called "red gold" by industry insiders for the exorbitant price her ruby-colored flesh commands in the sushi economy, the giant bluefin tuna has crashed in size and number under ICCAT's custodianship. With regulations to conserve these sea creatures in place for half a century, why have so many big bluefin tuna vanished from the Atlantic? In Red Gold, Jennifer E. Telesca offers unparalleled access to ICCAT to show that the institution has faithfully executed the task assigned it by international law: to fish as hard as possible to grow national economies. ICCAT manages the bluefin not to protect them but to secure export markets for commodity empires-and, as a result, has become complicit in their extermination. The decades of regulating fish as commodities have had disastrous consequences. Amid the mass extinction of all kinds of life today, Red Gold reacquaints the reader with the splendors of the giant bluefin tuna through vignettes that defy technoscientific and market rationales. Ultimately, this book shows, changing the way people value marine life must come not only from reforming ICCAT but from transforming the dominant culture that consents to this slaughter.

This Practical Guide to Event Promotion offers the reader a short and succinct overview of the range of marketing communication materials from print to social marketing that can be used to promote an event successfully to the correct target markets. It includes invaluable advice on how to identify the type of communication tools most applicable to the type of event that is being promoted and its target market; how to effectively use and implement these; useful tips on things to avoid; as well as suggested time frames to use before, during and after the event. Examples of best practice and insights from events marketers are integrated throughout. Although full of practical information, a strong theoretical base underpins the advice included on how event managers can apply communication and persuasion theory to key audiences. This book will be a useful resource for Events Management students putting on an event as part of their course and for assessments, and those wanting to convert general theory into practical skills they will use in the workplace.

Recent Developments in the Economics of Education collects together the most important contributions in this rapidly developing field. Themes covered in this book include: efficiency and equity, externalities and the role of the government in providing education, the relationship between the markets for labour and education, cost functions in the education sector, the market for educators, and the economics of school choice. This volume complements an earlier volume in the series, The Economic Value of Education, edited by Mark Blaug.

Communication is key to success in every aspect of life and ever so in a competitive business environment. This book examines managerial communication from seminal theoretical and demonstrative vantage points through interdisciplinary amalgamation of sciences and the liberal arts. It presents new paradigms of managerial communication in the form of manoeuvres that can act as game changers in tug-of-war business situations, including difficult negotiations, conflicts and interpersonal dissonance that characterise the day-to-day corporate workplace tenor. This volume: Develops persuasion strategies based on argumentation tactics derived, for example, from legal cross-examination. Introduces 'problematisation' and 'deconstruction' as effective communication tools into mainstream managerial discourse. Employs Harvard Business School cases to demonstrate problem-solving skills, which will further serve as guide to writing business reports, plans and proposals. Positions business writing methods as taxonomical tenets that can help tackle complex business scenarios. Draws business diagnostic procedures from diverse fields such as Sherlock Holmes from popular culture, and Jared M. Diamond from ecology. This book will be a significant resource for business communication practitioners, especially corporate managers and leaders, sales and marketing professionals, and policymakers. It will be of interest to teachers and students alike, in business communication, organization behaviour, human resource management and marketing communications. It will act as a useful aid for classroom efficacy for teachers and academics.

For too long the prevalent view has been that the public and private sectors differ dramatically when it comes to innovation. This book takes a radically different tack, not as a rhetorical stance, but as the basis for fruitful empirical analysis. The studies here show that public service organizations and their leaders can be innovative in their own right. The contributions made here provide insights that will productively inform future research and practice.' - Ian Miles, University of Manchester, UKThis book is devoted to the study of public-private innovation networks in services (ServPPINs). These are a new type of innovation network which have rapidly developed in service economies. ServPPINs are collaborations between public and private service organizations, their objective being the development of new and improved services which encompass both technological and non-technological innovations. The book presents in-depth empirical research from different service sectors across Europe in order to explore the nature of these public-private collaborations. It elucidates the processes of formation, entrepreneurship and management, the types of innovations ServPPINs generate, and the nature of the public policies required to support them. This multidisciplinary book will appeal to academics and students in economics, management, and the sociology of services and innovation. Managers in the public and private service sector and public authorities will also find much to interest them. Contributors: M. Bu ar, B. Dachs, G. Di Meglio, F. Djellal, L. Fuglsang, J. Gallego, F. Gallouj, L. Green, B. Heller-Schuh, A. Jakli , P. Labarthe, F. Lissoni, C. Merlin-Brogniart, O. Montes Pineda, A.-C. Moursli-Provost, A. Pyka, L. Rubalcaba, D. Schartinger, B. Schoen, M. Stare, J. Sundbo, I. Wanzenboeck, K.M. Weber, P. Windrum

Selling and delivering a project to a satisfied client, and making a profit, is a complex task. Project manager and author Robin Hornby believes this has been neglected by current standards and is poorly understood by professionals in the field. Commercial Project Management aims to rectify this deficiency. As a unique 'how-to' guide for project and business managers, it offers practical guidance, and a wealth of explanatory illustrations, useful techniques, proven checklists, real life examples, and case stories. It will give project managers a needed confidence boost and a head start in their demanding role as they go 'on contract'. At the heart of Robin's approach is a vendor sales and delivery lifecycle that provides a framework for business control of projects. Unique elements include the integration of buyer and vendor project lifecycles, the recasting of project management as a cyclic set of functions to lead the work of the project, and the elevation of risk assessment from a project toolkit to a fundamental control process. Beyond project management, the book proposes a comprehensive template for the firm whose business is delivering projects. This is a how-to book for project and business managers working in a commercial environment looking for practical guidance on conducting their projects and organizing their firm.

A striking aspect of India's recent growth has been the dynamism of its services sector. In 2010, it accounted for 57 percent of the country's GDP and 25 percent of its total employment. The results do not conform to the growth experience of currently industrialized countries or other developing economies. Is the increasing share of the service sector in India's total output simply notional, as several activities that were earlier classified in the industrial sector are now subsumed in services' value added, or because the relative price of services has increased over time? No. The sector's growth is real - it is linked to household final demand, policy reforms and increased service exports. Is this service-led growth process sustainable? That remains an open question because the service sector is highly heterogeneous, ranging from software services and business process outsourcing to wholesale and retail trade and personal services. These subsectors vary considerably in the context of different economic characteristics that are important for development.

Historical research on the Olympic Movement is highly valuable as it displays processes of continuity and transformation by which knowledge building processes on the Olympic Movement, its structure and on Olympic sport can be expanded. The Olympic Movement can be addressed from multidisciplinary perspectives, including management, sociology, education, philosophy and history. This comprehensive collection examines the multifaceted profile of the Olympic and Paralympic Movement and presents new insights drawn from a variety of research projects. Historical and political dimensions of the Olympic and Paralympic Movement are addressed, along with educational, ethical, commercial and sociological perspectives. This book was originally published as a special issue of The International Journal of the History of Sport.

Professional services are increasingly seen as an important foundation for future economic growth and prosperity. Yet research on innovative and entrepreneurial processes in professional services has been surprisingly scarce. This Handbook provides a collection of original contributions from leading scholars outlining the current stock of knowledge in the area as well as providing directions for further research. The expert contributors discuss entrepreneurship and innovation from a number of different perspectives, including the entrepreneurial professional team, the entrepreneurial firm and the institutional environment. The first part of the book looks at the challenges of entrepreneurship specific to the professional service firm while the second explores the creation and exploitation of entrepreneurial opportunities in the professional service team. Part III turns to the organization and Part IV to the management and growth of the entrepreneurial professional service firm. The final part discusses the interplay between professions, firms and the institutional environment. Researchers, scholars and PhD students in the areas of entrepreneurship and professional service firms along with advanced students of management will find this volume of great value. Contributors: J. Benders, D.M. Brock, T. Clark, L. Empson, R. Fincham, J. Flood, J. Gluckler, H. Gruber, A. Halinen, K. Handley, S. Heusinkveld, E. Jaakkola, K. Laursen, L. Lefsrud, B.R. Lowendahl, V. Mahnke, N. Malhotra, M. Mohe, M. Mone, T. Morris, D. Muzio, N. Nikolova, M. Reihlen, S. Segal-Horn, J. Sieweke, M. Smets, M. Stollfub, L. Strannegard, A. Sturdy, R. Suddaby, R.-J. van den Berg, P. Vejrup-Hansen, A. Werr, M. Woywode

All organizations are becoming service organizations. But most weren't built to deliver services successfully end-to-end, and the human, operational and financial impacts are abundantly clear. In the digital era the stakes are even higher, given how rapidly services change. Yet default working practices (governance, planning, funding, leadership, reporting, programme and team structures) inside large organizations haven't changed. Rather than modernize just one service at a time, it's the underlying organizational conditions that need to be transformed - anything less is futile. The Service Organization is the result of years of research and consulting, as well as dozens of interviews with executives. It explores significant challenges that leaders will recognize, and turns them into solvable puzzles by providing practical advice and tools that reimagine what the organization does from the perspective of its customers - and it organizes the activity needed to deliver the best outcomes. This book is for everyone involved, from designers to technologists and from operational staff to policymakers and leaders. It includes surprisingly simple and doable, but non-obvious, steps that don't depend on seniority or pay band and that are typically overlooked by even the most progressive professions, teams and companies. Kate Tarling sets a bold, ambitious and practical agenda for all service organizations. Her book is full of behind-the-scenes examples from the global companies, public sector bodies and non-profits that are now delivering and leading successful services. It shows how to reinvent organizations so they rely not just on 'transforming technology' but on putting the success of their services at the heart of how they operate.

Though their primary concern, organizations in the creative industries don't only succeed or fail based on the exercise of their creative resources. Their fortunes also depend on their understanding and approach to the problem of competition. In Strategic Analysis: A creative and cultural industries perspective, Jonathan Gander offers a much needed introduction to how the practice of strategic thinking and analysis can be applied to this diverse and dynamic field. The book employs a range of competitive scenarios and case studies in which to practically apply a recommended set of analytical frameworks and examine the strategic challenge facing the enterprise and the wider sector. This concise and practical text focuses on providing a clear series of steps through which to identify and tackle strategic issues facing an enterprise, making it perfect reading for students and practitioners in the creative sector who seek a strategic understanding of the competition they are involved in.

When pro football players formed a union to stand up against the NFL for their own interests, they chose lawyer Ed Garvey as their Executive Director. The NFL Players Association (NFLPA), would take on the NFL over player contracts, collective bargaining agreements, and antitrust suits. It lobbied for players' free agency, contract rights, and impartial arbitration of disciplinary disputes. Garvey navigated strikes, lockouts, scabs, stooges, lies, as well as the sports media complex-to maintain players' dignity. According to the league, the players were to take what they were given and "never ask why." In Never Ask "Why," journalist Chuck Cascio presents the late Garvey's rich account of the early years of the NFLPA, taking readers among the players as they held the league accountable to play fair. Learning from their mistakes, the NFLPA would succeed in curbing commissioner Pete Rozelle's disciplinary power and striking down the Rozelle Rule's absolute control over free agency. Garvey tells the intimate stories of how pro football players, rivals on the field, rallied together to stand up for themselves. He worked tirelessly to change a system that exploited players and even controlled the media. In the end, Garvey shows how the NFLPA transformed the state of pro sports leagues today and how, even still, they work to keep down the players on whose backs they profit.

Since the 1930s, the Walt Disney Company has produced characters, images, and stories that have captivated audiences around the world. How can we understand the appeal of Disney products? What is it about the Disney phenomenon that attracts so many children, as well as adults? In this updated second edition, with new examples provided throughout, Janet Wasko examines the processes by which the Disney company - one of the largest media and entertainment corporations in the world - continues to manufacture the fantasies that enthrall millions. She analyses the historical expansion of the Disney empire into the twenty-first century, examines the content of Disney's classic and more recent films, cartoons and TV programs and discusses how they are produced, considering how some of the same techniques have been applied to the Disney theme parks. She also discusses the reception (and sometimes, reinterpretation) of Disney products by different kinds of audiences. By looking at the Disney phenomenon from a variety of perspectives, she provides an updated and comprehensive overview of one of the most significant media and cultural institutions of our time. This important book by a leading scholar of the entertainment industries will be of great interest to students in media and cultural studies, as well as a broader readership of Disney fans.

An engaging story of life and death, An Odd Undertaking features Bill Wood's memories of his career as an undertaker in London during the 1990s. From learning the trade, to the challenging work of body removal, to humorous tales about what happens when things don't go quite as planned, this is a thoroughly entertaining and thought provoking read. Follow Bill in the wake of the Grim Reaper as he meanders through topics as varied as funerals, exhumations and mortuary tales, while respecting the solemnity of death and quelling some of the myths and misunderstandings about undertakers and funerals along the way. An Odd Undertaking is a book that is as much about life as it is about death, a fascinating read on an unusual topic.

This book demonstrates pioneering work on user-based service innovation using an analytical framework. This approach involves understanding the needs of users, the service firms collaborating with them, and recognizing the fact that users are innovators and, as such, services develop while in use. As well as presenting case studies, the book discusses theoretically what user-based innovation means in the context of services. Three main fields are analyzed: user-based innovation in knowledge-intensive business service, user-based innovation in public services, and models and methods for structuring user-based innovation. Incorporating both an academic and analytical approach, this insightful book will be a source of inspiration for researchers in innovation and services. Graduate and postgraduate students in business administration and innovation, as well as administrators in public administrations and executive managers in service firms will also find plenty of important information in this invaluable resource. Contributors: D. Chadee, L. Fuglsang, M. Hasu, A. Helkkula, P. Helminen, M. Holopainen, M. Holzweber, H. Kostama, L.L. Langergaard, M. Lehtonen, O. Makela, T. Mattelmaki, J. Mattsson, H.W. Nicolajsen, R. Raman, E. Saari, A. Scupola, F. Sorensen, D. Sundbo, J. Sundbo, M. Toivonen, T. Tuominen, T. Turunen, K. Valminen