An illuminating insight into the Metaverse - what it is, how it works, and and why it will soon be playing a major role in business, technology and society.

In Into the Metaverse, Cathy Hackl, a globally recognized futurist and one of the world's first Chief Metaverse Officers, shares her insights on what companies need to do to harness the next iteration of the internet - the metaverse. In this book you'll find a wealth of information on issues such as:

- What is the metaverse and what it means for your brand, organization or company
- How to make money in the metaverse through understanding the underlying concepts behind it such as gaming, synthetic media, spatial computing and artificial intelligence.
- How to lead in the metaverse through industries that are already forging ahead, such as fashion and marketing.
- Who should manage the metaverse function within your organization and why some companies should consider creating a role for a Chief Metaverse Officer.
- Finally, how to protect the metaverse and action steps you can take towards the future.

Essential reading for any executive, Into the Metaverse, will reshape how you think about the internet and its place for those who want to lead successful businesses, today and into the future. If the internet was first used to connect us to information, and then developed into a social media forum to connect people, then Web3, which connects people, places and things, will help enable the successor state to today's mobile internet - the Metaverse. It will bring together and merge our physical and digital lives, and - in the same way that social media upended our lives and our businesses - the Metaverse will shake things up even more. Into the Metaverse is the essential business guide to understanding the ground-breaking technologies that enable this monumental shift and the opportunities it presents from a business and societal perspective.

Many cloud computing initiatives flat-out fail; others limp along, functioning tolerably without ever delivering what they promised. An Insider's Guide to Cloud Computing reveals why and shows how to do better. Cloud pioneer and long-time CTO David Linthicum explodes the industry's secrets and presents practical ways to optimize cloud for value and performance. Linthicum takes a hard look at aggressively marketed technologies such as cloud-based AI, containers, no-code, serverless computing, and multicloud. He illuminates what works, what absolutely does not work, and how to manage the difficult cost-complexity tradeoffs presented by many offerings. You'll learn why some workloads and datasets still don't belong on the cloud, and even discover "game changer" technology that has actually been undersold. Linthicum's seen it all: the tricks providers play to make their numbers at customers' expense…realities whispered about in conference rooms and spilled over drinks at conferences…facts and techniques you simply must know to deliver value-optimized solutions. An Insider's Guide to Cloud Computing is for every technical and business decision-maker responsible for evaluating, planning, implementing, operating, or optimizing cloud systems. It offers exceptional value to professionals ranging from solution architects to cloud engineers, CTOs to enterprise consultants, or those just getting started on their cloud computing journey. What cloud providers don't tell you about their storage and compute services Cloud-based artificial intelligence and machine learning: What are you actually paying for? Containers, Kubernetes, and cloud-native development: truth versus hype Multicloud: Which approaches actually save you money? Real-world cloud security: beyond silos, black boxes, and out-of-control complexity Cloud computing, carbon footprints, and sustainability: reality versus fiction The crucial role of talent: how to identify, find, and keep the skills you need How cloud computing is changing—and how to prepare for what's coming

Whether responding to tender from a potential client or pitching a new IT project to the Board, a well-written proposal can be the difference between success and failure. IT Project Proposals: Writing to Win can help you to create high quality, persuasive proposals that will stand out from the crowd. The author explains how to determine the reader's basis of decision and the writer's unique selling points. It discusses the structuring of documents, the secrets behind persuasive writing, and the basic grammar and punctuation rules that will prevent writers from destroying a good argument through bad presentation. Case studies and numerous examples show how the techniques described can be used in real-life situations. The book also introduces an automated questionnaire allowing any IT proposal to be reviewed and rated. Written for IT managers, consultants and anyone else producing internal or commercial proposals promoting software products or services.

The decision to outsource software development to an overseas firm (offshoring) is frequently looked at in simple economic terms - it's cheaper and skilled labour is easier to find. In practice, however, offshoring is fraught with difficulties. As well as the considerable challenge of controlling projects at a distance, there are differences in culture, language, business methods, politics and many other issues to contend with. Nevertheless, as many firms have discovered, the benefits of getting it right are too great to ignore. This book explains everything you need to know to put offshoring into practice, avoid the pitfalls and develop effective working relationships. Split into three parts: offshoring fundamentals; management competencies; and a section on broader issues including a unique look at the viewpoint of an outsourcing provider. Written for CTOs, CIOs, consultants and other IT executives, this book is also an excellent introduction to outsourcing for business and MIS students.

The Economics of Information Technology is a concise and accessible review of some of the important economic factors affecting information technology industries. These industries are characterized by high fixed costs and low marginal costs of production, large switching costs for users, and strong network effects. These factors combine to produce some unique behavior. The book consists of two parts. In the first part, Professor Varian outlines the basic economics of these industries. In the second part, Professors Farrell and Shapiro describe the impact of these factors on competition policy. The clarity of the analysis and exposition makes this an ideal introduction for undergraduate and graduate students in economics, business strategy, law and related areas.

The Economics of Information Technology is a concise and accessible review of some of the important economic factors affecting information technology industries. These industries are characterized by high fixed costs and low marginal costs of production, large switching costs for users, and strong network effects. These factors combine to produce some unique behavior. The book consists of two parts. In the first part, Professor Varian outlines the basic economics of these industries. In the second part, Professors Farrell and Shapiro describe the impact of these factors on competition policy. The clarity of the analysis and exposition makes this an ideal introduction for undergraduate and graduate students in economics, business strategy, law and related areas.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Software Business, ICSOB 2021, which was held during December 2-3, 2021. The conference was originally planned to take place in Drammen, Norway, but changed to an online format due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The special theme of ICSOB 2021 was software sustainability. The 13 full papers and 5 short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 39 submissions. They deal with a range of topics including software sustainability, Agile development, DevOps, software startups, prototyping, software ecosystems, crowdsourcing platforms, technical debts, and risk management.

The essential, intermediate and advanced topics of Simulink are covered in the book. The concept of multi-domain physical modeling concept and tools in Simulink are illustrated with examples for engineering systems and multimedia information. The combination of Simulink and numerical optimization methods provides new approaches for solving problems, where solutions are not known otherwise.

The contributions to this study of the origins of centers of industrial and technological innovation (such as Silicon Valley) reveal that these concentrated "clusters" of entrepreneurial high tech firms are characterized by rapid economic growth. No other analysts have examined how such clusters start, although many earlier works have studied Silicon Valley. The study's contributors conclude that the key public and business policy elements of starting a cluster are common to many regions, countries, and time periods.

In the weird glow of the dying millennium, Michael Lewis set out on a safari through Silicon Valley to find the world s most important technology entrepreneur. He found this in Jim Clark, a man whose achievements include the founding of three separate billion-dollar companies. Lewis also found much more, and the result the best-selling book The New New Thing is an ingeniously conceived history of the Internet revolution."

In Blockchain Democracy, William Magnuson provides a breathtaking tour of the world of blockchain and bitcoin, from their origins in the online scribblings of a shadowy figure named Satoshi Nakamoto, to their furious rise and dramatic crash in the 2010s, to their ignominious connections to the dark web and online crime. Magnuson argues that blockchain's popularity stands as a testament both to the depth of distrust of government today, and also to the fervent and undying belief that technology and the world of cyberspace can provide an answer. He demonstrates how blockchain's failings provide broader lessons about what happens when technology runs up against the stubborn realities of law, markets, and human nature. This book should be read by anyone interested in understanding how technology is changing our democracy, and how democracy is changing our technology.

This book describes basic concepts of workflow automation in the graphic industry. There are three main chapters: Scope of Workflows in the Printing Industry, Production Models, and Metadata Formats. The book does not describe the individual business and production steps for manufacturing a print product. Rather, it describes what kinds of data exchanges are required between management software and devices to make the automatic execution of processes possible. Primary audience is students studying graphic arts technology, practitioners at printing and manufacturing companies, and computer scientists who are interested in workflow-related matters. It is presupposed that the reader is familiar with the basic procedures in the printing industry as well with the fundamental concepts of IT technology.

With emerging technology transforming customer expectations, it's important to keep a laser focus on the experience companies provide their customers. Tomorrow's customers need to be targeted today! Customer experience futurist Blake Morgan outlines ten easy-to-follow customer experience guidelines that integrate emerging technologies with effective strategies to combat disconnected processes, silo mentalities, and a lack of buyer perspective. The Customer of the Future explains how today's customers are already demanding frictionless, personalized, on-demand experiences from their products and services, and companies that don't adapt to these new expectations won't last. This book prepares your organization for these increas ing demands by helping you do the following: Learn the ten defining strategies for a customer experience-focused company. Implement new techniques to shift the entire company from being product-focused to being customer-focused. Gain insights through case studies and examples on how the world's most innovative companies are offering new and compelling customer experiences. Tomorrow's customers will insist on experiences that make their lives significantly easier and better. Craft a leadership development and culture plan to create lasting change at your organization!

The internationalisation of information and communication has accelerated since the 1990s in Europe and worldwide. Taking a close look at the empirical analysis of competitive trade positions, trends in foreign direct investment and the internationalisation of research and development in ICT brings many new insights about the expansion in the EU's most dynamic sector. Moreover, the analysis discusses case studies on key players in ICT and suggests major policy

This book presents unique insights and advice on defining and managing the innovation transformation journey. Using novel ideas, examples and best practices, it empowers management executives at all levels to drive cultural, technological and organizational changes toward innovation. Covering modern innovation techniques, tools, programs and strategies, it focuses on the role of the latest technologies (e.g., artificial intelligence to discover, handle and manage ideas), methodologies (including Agile Engineering and Rapid Prototyping) and combinations of these (like hackathons or gamification). At the same time, it highlights the importance of culture and provides suggestions on how to build it. In the era of AI and the unprecedented pace of technology evolution, companies need to become truly innovative in order to survive. The transformation toward an innovation-led company is difficult - it requires a strong leadership and culture, advanced technologies and well-designed programs. The book is based on the author's long-term experience and novel ideas, and reflects two decades of startup, consulting and corporate leadership experience. It is intended for business, technology, and innovation leaders.

A New York Times bestseller! In this motivational handbook-both a business how-to and self-help guide-the New York Times bestselling author of Dot Complicated takes on the fallacy of the "well-balanced" life, arguing that the key to success is learning to be well-lopsided. Work. Sleep. Fitness. Family. Friends. Pick Three. In an increasingly demanding world, we've been told that we can do everything-maintain friendships, devote ourselves to work, spend time with family, stay fit, and get enough sleep. We just need to learn to balance it all. Randi Zuckerberg doesn't believe in being well-balanced. We can't do it all every day, she contends, and trying to do so only leaves us frustrated and feeling inadequate. But we can succeed if we Pick Three. Randi first introduced the concept of Pick Three in a tweet-"The Entrepreneur's Dilemma"-that went viral. Now, in this book, she expands on her philosophy and inspires others to follow her lead. From entrepreneurs to professionals, busy parents to students, Randi can help everyone learn to reject the unrealistic burden of balance and enjoy success in their own lives-by picking the most important areas to focus on in any given day. This practical handbook includes stories from Randi's career learning that there's no such thing as a perfect balance-as well as insights and examples from other professionals at the top of the biggest businesses in Silicon Valley, new moms searching for permission to focus on family, and recent graduates convinced they should have it all under control, including Arianna Huffington, Reshma Saujani, Laurie Hernandez, and Brad Takei. We can't have it all every day, and that's okay, Randi reminds us. Pick Three is her much-needed guide to learning to embrace the well-lopsided life.

Two world-renowned strategists detail the seven leadership imperatives for transforming companies in the new digital era. Digital transformation is critical. But winning in today's world requires more than digitization. It requires understanding that the nature of competitive advantage has shifted-and that being digital is not enough. In Beyond Digital, Paul Leinwand and Matt Mani from Strategy&, PwC's global strategy consulting business, take readers inside twelve companies and how they have navigated through this monumental shift: from Philips's reinvention from a broad conglomerate to a focused health technology player, to Cleveland Clinic's engagement with its broader ecosystem to improve and expand its leading patient care to more locations around the world, to Microsoft's overhaul of its global commercial business to drive customer outcomes. Other case studies include Adobe, Citigroup, Eli Lilly, Hitachi, Honeywell, Inditex, Komatsu, STC Pay, and Titan. Building on a major new body of research, the authors identify the seven imperatives that leaders must follow as the digital age continues to evolve: Reimagine your company's place in the world Embrace and create value via ecosystems Build a system of privileged insights with your customers Make your organization outcome-oriented Invert the focus of your leadership team Reinvent the social contract with your people Disrupt your own leadership approach Together, these seven imperatives comprise a playbook for how leaders can define a bolder purpose and transform their organizations.

This book is a part of the Blue Book series "Research on the Development of Electronic Information Engineering Technology in China", which explores the cutting edge of natural language processing (NLP) studies. The research objects of natural language processing are evolved from words, phrases, and sentences to text, and research directions are from language analysis, language understanding, language generation, knowledge graphs, machine translation, to deep semantic understanding, and beyond. This is in line with the development trend of applications. And for another typical NLP application machine translation, from text translation, to voice and image translation, now simultaneous interpretation, progress of technology makes the application of machine translation deeper and wider into diverse industries. This book is intended for researchers and industrial staffs who have been following the current situation and future trends of the natural language processing. Meanwhile, it also bears high value of reference for experts, scholars, and technical and engineering managers of different levels and different fields.

EU communications policy has massively changed due to both global competition on the ICT market and technological developments that led to the emergence of Internet technology. This book analyzes the structural and procedural transformation processes inside the EU legislative processes and concludes that EU communications policy struggles to reflect today's internet-enabled communications reality. It provides insights in the institutional conditions that maintained specific patterns of EU communications policy since the beginning of telecommunications regulation and concludes with an outlook on the technological and regulatory challenges ahead.

At a time when the practices of technology companies continue to attract fierce criticism, this book asks what it actually means to hold a 'monopoly' in the tech world and how it might affect the way in which an organization operates. Combining new and traditional Marxian perspectives, the authors offer an in-depth analysis of how these technology giants are produced, financialized, and regulated. As technology firms continue to shape our political and socio-economic landscape, this book will be an invaluable resource for scholars and students who seek to understand the function of technological monopolies in contemporary capitalism.

This book discusses important topics for engineering and managing software startups, such as how technical and business aspects are related, which complications may arise and how they can be dealt with. It also addresses the use of scientific, engineering, and managerial approaches to successfully develop software products in startup companies. The book covers a wide range of software startup phenomena, and includes the knowledge, skills, and capabilities required for startup product development; team capacity and team roles; technical debt; minimal viable products; startup metrics; common pitfalls and patterns observed; as well as lessons learned from startups in Finland, Norway, Brazil, Russia and USA. All results are based on empirical findings, and the claims are backed by evidence and concrete observations, measurements and experiments from qualitative and quantitative research, as is common in empirical software engineering. The book helps entrepreneurs and practitioners to become aware of various phenomena, challenges, and practices that occur in real-world startups, and provides insights based on sound research methodologies presented in a simple and easy-to-read manner. It also allows students in business and engineering programs to learn about the important engineering concepts and technical building blocks of a software startup. It is also suitable for researchers at different levels in areas such as software and systems engineering, or information systems who are studying advanced topics related to software business.

"An adulating biography of Apple's left-brained wunderkind, whose work continues to revolutionize modern technology." --"Kirkus Reviews"
In 1997, Steve Jobs discovered a scruffy British designer toiling away at Apple's headquarters, surrounded by hundreds of sketches and prototypes. Jony Ive's collaboration with Jobs would produce some of the world's most iconic technology products, including the iMac, iPod, iPad, and iPhone. Ive's work helped reverse Apple's long decline, overturned entire industries, and created a huge global fan base. Yet little is known about the shy, soft-spoken whiz whom Jobs referred to as his "spiritual partner."
Leander Kahney offers a detailed portrait of the English art school student with dyslexia who became the most acclaimed tech designer of his generation. Drawing on interviews with Ive's former colleagues and Apple insiders, Kahney "takes us inside the creation of these memorable objects." ("The Wall Street Journal")

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Software Business, ICSOB 2020, which was held during November 16-18, 2020. The conference was originally planned to take place in Karlskrona, Sweden, but changed to an online format due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The 13 full papers and 5 short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 39 submissions. They deal with a range of topics including practices for engineering and marketing software-intensive products, extracting business value from machine learning based software components, ethical considerations of the software business, software ecosystems, and pedagogy of teaching entrepreneurship and software business.

This book constitutes revised selected papers from the 14th International Global Sourcing Workshop 2019, held in Obergurgl, Austria, in December 2019. The 10 contributions included were carefully reviewed and selected from a total of 36 submissions.The book offers a review of the key topics in sourcing of services, populated with practical frameworks that serve as a tool kit to students and managers. The range of topics covered in this book is wide and diverse, offering various perspectives on the employment of digital technologies in the context of sourcing services. More specifically the book examines sourcing decisions and management practices around digital platforms, robotic process automation and blockchain, giving specific attention to digital aspects of innovation in sourcing.