Just making a decision can be hard enough, but how do you begin to judge whether it's the right one? Chip and Dan Heath, authors of #1 New York Times best-seller Switch, show you how to overcome your brain's natural shortcomings. In Decisive, Chip and Dan Heath draw on decades of psychological research to explain why we so often get it very badly wrong - why our supposedly rational brains are frequently tripped up by powerful biases and wishful thinking. At the same time they demonstrate how relatively easy it is to avoid the pitfalls and find the best answers, offering four simple principles that we can all learn and follow. In the process, they show why it is that experts frequently make mistakes. They demonstrate the perils of getting trapped in a narrow decision frame. And they explore people's tendency to be over-confident about how their choices will unfold. Drawing on case studies as diverse as the downfall of Kodak and the inspiring account of a cancer survivor, they offer both a fascinating tour through the workings of our minds and an invaluable guide to making smarter decisions. Winner in the Practical Manager category of the CMI Management Book of the Year awards 2014.

Whether you need to understand other people's calculations to make confident business decisions, or formulate investment choices based on your own numbers, this book will give you the tools you need.

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Banks and financial institutions, businesses and politicians often spin their statistics as they know they can rely on customers or constituents not to understand or check maths and formulas.

This book introduces you to the basic tools of maths, statistics and business calculations so that that you can understand the numbers, work out your own calculations and make better investing, saving and business decisions.

Using a wide range of operational research (OR) optimization examples, Applied Operational Research with SAS demonstrates how the OR procedures in SAS work. The book is one of the first to extensively cover the application of SAS procedures to OR problems, such as single criterion optimization, project management decisions, printed circuit board assembly, and multiple criteria decision making. The text begins with the algorithms and methods for linear programming, integer linear programming, and goal programming models. It then describes the principles of several OR procedures in SAS. Subsequent chapters explain how to use these procedures to solve various types of OR problems. Each of these chapters describes the concept of an OR problem, presents an example of the problem, and discusses the specific procedure and its macros for the optimal solution of the problem. The macros include data handling, model building, and report writing. While primarily designed for SAS users in OR and marketing analytics, the book can also be used by readers interested in mathematical modeling techniques. By formulating the OR problems as mathematical models, the authors show how SAS can solve a variety of optimization problems.

Your Company Isn't Fast Enough. Here's How to Change That. The traditional hierarchical organization is dead, but what replaces it? Numerous new models--the agile organization, the networked organization, and holacracy, to name a few--have emerged, but leaders need to know what really works. How do you build an organization that is responsive to fast-changing markets? What kind of organization delivers both speed and scale, and how do you lead it? Arthur Yeung and Dave Ulrich provide leaders with a much-needed blueprint for reinventing the organization. Based on their in-depth research at leading Chinese, US, and European firms such as Alibaba, Amazon, DiDi, Facebook, Google, Huawei, Supercell, and Tencent, and drawing from their synthesis of the latest organization research and practice, Yeung and Ulrich explain how to build a new kind of organization (a "market-oriented ecosystem") that responds to changing market opportunities with speed and scale. While other books address individual pieces of the puzzle, Reinventing the Organization offers a practical, integrated, six-step framework and looks at all the decisions leaders need to make--choosing the right strategies, capabilities, structure, culture, management tools, and leadership--to deliver radically greater value in fast-moving markets. For any leader eager to build a stronger, more responsive organization and for all those in HR, organizational development, and consulting who will shape and deliver it, this book provides a much-needed roadmap for reinvention.

This volume introduces a new concept - strategic entrepreneurship - which integrates the insights of entrepreneurship and strategic management.
This volume describes a new concept - strategic entrepreneurship - which fuses the insights of entrepreneurship and strategic management.
The editors have invited the world's finest entrepreneurship and strategic management scholars to contribute chapters on key issues that are influencing research in both fields, and to integrate findings across the two.
Investigates the overlap between entrepreneurship and strategic management in the context of six distinct domains: resources and organizational learning, innovation, alliances and networks, internationalization, strategic leadership, and growth.
The contributors use both traditional and new theoretical approaches in order to further the reader's understanding of wealth creation in the current business environment.

The rise of game theory has made bargaining one of the core issues in economic theory. Written at a theoretical and conceptual level, the book develops a framework for the analysis of bargaining processes. The framework focuses on the dynamic of the bargaining process, which is in contrast to much previous theoretical work on the subject, and most notably to the approaches stemming from game theory. Chapters include: * Decision-Making and Expectations in Theories of Bargaining * Decision-Making and Expectations in a Game Theory Model * Limitations of the Environment Concept * Game Theory as a Basis for a Theory of Bargaining * The Decision/Expectation/adjustment Approach * The Adjustment Process * Direct Interdependence and the Consistency of Decisions

Flashes of insight-the "Eureka!" moments that produce new and useful ideas in a single thought-are behind some of the world's most creative and practical innovations. This book shows how to cultivate more and better flashes of insight by harnessing the science and practice of the "seventh sense." Drawing from psychology, neuroscience, Asian philosophy, and military strategy, William Duggan illustrates the power of the seventh sense to help readers aspire to and achieve more in their personal and professional lives. His examples include Gandhi, Joan of Arc, Starbucks founder Howard Shultz, and executives and students he has taught in his classes. His book presents specific steps in the form of three practical tools to help prepare the mind, see and seize opportunity, and follow through on one's resolution. Based on Duggan's perennially popular Columbia Business School course, this book teaches the mental skills and discipline that power the seventh sense.

This book mainly introduces some techniques of decision-making, uncertain reasoning and regression analysis under the hesitant fuzzy environment and expands the applications of hesitant fuzzy sets in solving practical problems. The book pursues three major objectives: (1) to introduce some techniques about decision-making, uncertain reasoning and regression analysis under the hesitant fuzzy environment, (2) to prove these techniques theoretically and (3) to apply the involved techniques to practical problems. The book is especially valuable for readers to understand how hesitant fuzzy set could be employed in decision-making, uncertain reasoning and regression analysis and motivates researchers to expand more application fields of hesitant fuzzy set.

Our grasp of numbers and uncertainty is one of humankind's most distinctive and important traits. It is pivotal to our exceptional ability to control the world around us as we make short-term choices and forecast far into the future. But very smart people can struggle with numbers in ways that pose negative consequences for their decision making. Numeric ability equips individuals with vital tools that allow them to take charge of various aspects of their life. The more numerate enjoy superior health, wealth, and employment outcomes, while the innumerate remain more vulnerable. This book presents the logic, rules, and habits that highly numerate people use in decision making. Innumeracy in the Wild also introduces two additional ways of knowing numbers that complement and compensate for lower numeric ability and explores how numeric abilities develop and where mistakes are made. It offers a state-of-the-art review of the now sizeable body of psychological and applied findings that demonstrate the critical importance of numeracy in our world. With more than two decades of experience in the decision sciences, Ellen Peters demonstrates how intervention can foster adult numeric capacity, propel people to use numeric facts in decision making, and empower those with lower numeracy to reason better.

The world is increasingly turbulent and complex, awash with disruptions, tipping points and knock-on effects exemplified by the implosion of financial markets and economies around the globe. This book is for business and organizational leaders who want and need to think through how best to deal with increasing turbulence, and with the complexity and uncertainty that come with it. The authors explain in clear language how future orientation and, specifically, modern scenario techniques help to address these conditions. They draw on examples from a wide variety of international settings and circumstances including large corporations, inter-governmental organizations, small firms and municipalities. Readers will be inspired to try out scenario approaches themselves to better address the turbulence that affects them and others with whom they work, live and do business. This second edition extends the use of scenarios planning and methods to tackle the risk and uncertainty of financial markets and the potentially massive impacts on businesses of all kinds, providing powerful tools to give far thinking executives an advantage in these turbulent times.

A step-by-step, real-world guide to the use of Value at Risk (VaR) models, this text applies the VaR approach to the measurement of market risk, credit risk, and operational risk. The book describes and critiques proprietary models, illustrating them with practical examples drawn from actual case studies. Explaining the logic behind the economics and statistics, this technically sophisticated yet intuitive text should be an essential resource for all readers operating in a world of risk.

The text uses VaR techniques to analyze loans, derivatives, equity prices, foreign currencies and other financial instruments. Featuring comprehensive coverage of the BIS bank capital requirements, and including the latest proposals for the New Capital Accord, the book also describes the newest application of VaR techniques to operational risk measurement. The text examines the promise and the pitfalls of these risk measurement models, and makes recommendations for future research into this important area.

Security Metrics Management, Measuring the Effectiveness and Efficiency of a Security Program, Second Edition details the application of quantitative, statistical, and/or mathematical analyses to measure security functional trends and workload, tracking what each function is doing in terms of level of effort (LOE), costs, and productivity. This fully updated guide is the go-to reference for managing an asset protection program and related security functions through the use of metrics. It supports the security professional's position on budget matters, helping to justify the cost-effectiveness of security-related decisions to senior management and other key decision-makers. The book is designed to provide easy-to-follow guidance, allowing security professionals to confidently measure the costs of their assets protection program - their security program - as well as its successes and failures. It includes a discussion of how to use the metrics to brief management, build budgets, and provide trend analyses to develop a more efficient and effective asset protection program.

This book describes the organizational and managerial ways in which firms can overtake and pass other firms. Ackoff stresses the concept of "quality of life" within an organization, and outlines three major ways this can be achieved.

The world is spinning so fast it’s difficult to keep up. Two hundred and fifty years ago the Industrial Revolution replaced our arms and legs at work. The fourth Industrial Revolution is now replacing our brains. This technological shift is engulfing organisations and people. It’s challenging the very essence of what it means to be human.

Daily news headlines pose existential questions that used to belong in the pages of science fiction: Will a machine take my job? Are we becoming cyborgs? What happens when supercomputers become self-aware? If we can’t compete with artificial intelligence, what’s left?
 
Innovation guru Greg Orme provides a helpful, funny and supportive shove in the right direction. He explores the skills you need to survive and thrive in a world of artificial intelligence. He urges you to stop competing, and instead do things machines can’t. To become a more human, human.
 
This is a practical toolkit to master three intrinsically human ‘super powers’:

1. To ignite your innate CURIOSITY in a world of accelerating change…
2. To rediscover your CREATIVITY to produce an avalanche of game-changing ideas…
3. To develop CONNECTIVITY to kindle the passion, persistence and insights to successfully engage fellow humans to turn human creativity into business innovation.

This book aims to provide a general overview of heuristic search, to present the basic steps of the most popular heuristics, and to stress their hidden difficulties as well as their opportunities. It provides a comprehensive understanding of Heuristic search, the applications of which are now widely used in a variety of industries including engineering, finance, sport, management and medicine. It intends to aid researchers and practitioners in solving complex combinatorial and global optimisation problems, and spark interest in this exciting decision science-based subject. It will provide the reader with challenging and lively methodologies through which they will be able to design and analyse their own techniques

Information is not taken seriously. Much is said about the information age, the information economy, the information society, and particularly about information technology, but little about information itself. If these are important, then so is information. But information is not as other goods: it has some peculiar characteristics. It cannot be displayed for sale without giving it away in the process. Sold, it goes to the buyer but still remains with the seller. Buying entails expressing demand in ignorance for buyers who do not know just what it is that they do not know. Such characteristics have long been recognised by economists, but it is not generally economists who have most to say about the importance of information. This privilege is exercised by senior managers, who speak passionately about knowledge-based, learning organizations; by politicians and public servants, anxious to compensate with policy and programme for the information failure of organization and market; and by specialists in telecommunications and information technology, bent on adding value to what they treat as just a commodity. Information usually requires new information. Finding, acquiring, and mixing

Bring strategy into your daily work. It's your responsibility as a manager to ensure that your work--and the work of your team--aligns with the overarching objectives of your organization. But when you're faced with competing projects and limited time, it's difficult to keep strategy front of mind. How do you keep your eye on the long term amid a sea of short-term demands? The HBR Guide to Thinking Strategically provides practical advice and tips to help you see the big-picture perspective in every aspect of your daily work, from making decisions to setting team priorities to attacking your own to-do list. You'll learn how to: Understand your organization's strategy Align your team around key objectives Focus on the priorities that matter most Spot trends in your company and in your industry Consider future outcomes when making decisions Manage trade-offs Embrace a leadership mindset