Eyes Wide Open: How to Make Smart Decisions in a Confusing World is Noreen Hertz's practical, cutting-edge guide to help you cut through the data deluge and make smarter and better choices, based on her highly popular TED talk.

In this eye-opening handbook, the internationally noted speaker, economics expert, and bestselling author of IOU: The Debt Threat and Silent Takeover reveals the extent to which the biggest decisions in our lives are often made on the basis of flawed information, weak assumptions, corrupted data, insufficient scrutiny of others, and a lack of self-knowledge.

To avert such disasters, Hertz persuasively argues, we need to become empowered decision-makers, capable of making high-stakes choices and holding accountable those who advise us.

In Eyes Wide Open, she weaves together scientific research with real-world examples from Hollywood to Harry Potter, NASA to World War Two spies, to construct a path to more astute and empowered decision-making in ten clear steps. With a razor-sharp intellect and an instinct for popular storytelling, she offers counter-intuitive, actionable guidance for making better choices--whether you are a business-person, a professional, a patient, or a parent.

A Business Week, New York Times Business, and USA Today Bestseller

"Ambitious and readable . . . an engaging introduction to the oddsmakers, whom Bernstein regards as true humanists helping to release mankind from the choke holds of superstition and fatalism." —The New York Times

"An extraordinarily entertaining and informative book." —The Wall Street Journal

"A lively panoramic book . . . Against the Gods sets up an ambitious premise and then delivers on it." —Business Week

"Deserves to be, and surely will be, widely read." —The Economist

"[A] challenging book, one that may change forever the way people think about the world." —Worth

"No one else could have written a book of such central importance with so much charm and excitement." —Robert Heilbroner author, The Worldly Philosophers

"With his wonderful knowledge of the history and current manifestations of risk, Peter Bernstein brings us Against the Gods. Nothing like it will come out of the financial world this year or ever. I speak carefully: no one should miss it." —John Kenneth Galbraith Professor of Economics Emeritus, Harvard University

In this unique exploration of the role of risk in our society, Peter Bernstein argues that the notion of bringing risk under control is one of the central ideas that distinguishes modern times from the distant past. Against the Gods chronicles the remarkable intellectual adventure that liberated humanity from oracles and soothsayers by means of the powerful tools of risk management that are available to us today.

"An extremely readable history of risk." —Barron's

"Fascinating . . . this challenging volume will help you understand the uncertainties that every investor must face." —Money

"A singular achievement." —Times Literary Supplement

"There's a growing market for savants who can render the recondite intelligibly—witness Stephen Jay Gould (natural history), Oliver Sacks (disease), Richard Dawkins (heredity), James Gleick (physics), Paul Krugman (economics)—and Bernstein would mingle well in their company." —The Australian

Business ideas and practices are constantly changing, but no manager has the time to read all the business books and articles that come out in a year. In this book, Ian Mann does all the work for you, trawling through recent business publications and distilling the most important new insights and developments.

Topics include:

• outsourcing
• mechanisation
• obligations to stakeholders other than shareholders
• the strange world of banking
• leadership

This is the ideal book for people who want an easy way to keep up with the latest developments in business and management as these ideas are explained in a clear, comprehensible way, and presented in easily digestible chapters.

Providing a comprehensive overview of various methods and applications in decision engineering, this book presents chapters written by a range experts in the field. It presents conceptual aspects of decision support applications in various areas including finance, vendor selection, construction, process management, water management and energy, agribusiness , production scheduling and control, and waste management. In addition to this, a special focus is given to methods of multi-criteria decision analysis. Decision making in organizations is a recurrent theme and is essential for business continuity. Managers from various fields including public, private, industrial, trading or service sectors are required to make decisions. Consequently managers need the support of these structured methods in order to engage in effective decision making. This book provides a valuable resource for graduate students, professors and researchers of decision analysis, multi-criteria decision analysis and group decision analysis. It is also intended for production engineers, civil engineers and engineering consultants.

Radical Decision Making offers a controversial new framework to the conventional strategic change management conversation. While many approaches provide a discussion on a singular level, Dr. Hruska blends theory and research of decision making and social interaction to develop a consistent framework of strategic change.

The study of complex systems attracts the attention of many researchers in diverse fields. Complex systems are characterized by a high number of entities and a high degree of interactions. One of the most important features is that they do not involve a central organizing authority, but the various elements that make up the systems are self-organized. Moreover, some complex systems possess an emergency priority: climate change and sustainable development research, studies of public health, ecosystem habitats, epidemiology, and medicine, among others. Unfortunately, a great number of today's overlapping approaches fail to meet the needs of decision makers when managing complex domains. Indeed, the design of complex systems often requires the integration of a number of artificial intelligence tools and techniques. The problem can be viewed in terms of goals, states, and actions, choosing the best action to move the system toward its desired state or behavior. This is why agent-based approaches are used to model complex systems. The main objective of this book is to bring together existing methods for decision support systems creation within a coherent agent-based framework and to provide an interdisciplinary and flexible methodology for modeling complex and systemic domains.

This research study attempts to provide a comprehensive CSR literature review, analyze corporate social responsibility (CSR) issues from the strategic decision-making (SDM) perspective, and investigate the process of managers' CSR- related SDM in China. In particular, it utilizes content analysis to examine selected CSR articles from published studies, in order to evaluate the trends in CSR theory development as well as to identify the variables, constructs, and relationships within CSR theory. The review indicates that CSR should be involved in organizational strategies. Therefore, this study reviews the relevant theoretical and empirical literature in the SDM area. Firstly, it summarizes the broader context of strategic decisions and points out factors in the external environment and organizational characteristics that influence the SDM process of managers. Secondly, it articulates the influences of individual characteristics on the SDM. Thirdly, it examines the process of SDM using the rational and bounded rationality theory of decision making. Finally, on the basis of the SDM model, the author generates a research model which proposes the links between vital and influential factors from an integrated perspective. This book also provides a detailed description of how to choose a proper method for the CSR-related SDM research, the process of survey design, sampling methods, and survey administration. In particular, the author utilized a policy-capturing method to develop a series of scenarios concerning CSR activities and an explanation of this method is provided. It reports research findings of this study and provides an extensive and thorough discussion and compares it with previous empirical studies. The conclusion summarizes the research findings and their theoretical and practical implications.

Managing the Football World Cup explores areas often overlooked by project management and business studies researchers. Therefore considering the global impact of the Football World Cup it is time for a detailed examination of the planning, organization, management, implementation and related commercial features of this mega-sport event.

This book is about how models can be developed to represent demand and supply on markets, where the emphasis is on demand models. Its primary focus is on models that can be used by managers to support marketing decisions. Modeling Markets presents a comprehensive overview of the tools and methodologies that managers can use in decision making. It has long been known that even simple models outperform judgments in predicting outcomes in a wide variety of contexts. More complex models potentially provide insights about structural relations not available from casual observations. In this book, the authors present a wealth of insights developed at the forefront of the field, covering all key aspects of specification, estimation, validation and use of models. The most current insights and innovations in quantitative marketing are presented, including in-depth discussion of Bayesian estimation methods. Throughout the book, the authors provide examples and illustrations. This book will be of interest to researchers, analysts, managers and students who want to understand, develop or use models of marketing phenomena.

Apply statistics in business to achieve performance improvement Statistical Thinking: Improving Business Performance, 3rd Edition helps managers understand the role of statistics in implementing business improvements. It guides professionals who are learning statistics in order to improve performance in business and industry. It also helps graduate and undergraduate students understand the strategic value of data and statistics in arriving at real business solutions. Instruction in the book is based on principles of effective learning, established by educational and behavioral research. The authors cover both practical examples and underlying theory, both the big picture and necessary details. Readers gain a conceptual understanding and the ability to perform actionable analyses. They are introduced to data skills to improve business processes, including collecting the appropriate data, identifying existing data limitations, and analyzing data graphically. The authors also provide an in-depth look at JMP software, including its purpose, capabilities, and techniques for use. Updates to this edition include: A new chapter on data, assessing data pedigree (quality), and acquisition tools Discussion of the relationship between statistical thinking and data science Explanation of the proper role and interpretation of p-values (understanding of the dangers of "p-hacking") Differentiation between practical and statistical significance Introduction of the emerging discipline of statistical engineering Explanation of the proper role of subject matter theory in order to identify causal relationships A holistic framework for variation that includes outliers, in addition to systematic and random variation Revised chapters based on significant teaching experience Content enhancements based on student input This book helps readers understand the role of statistics in business before they embark on learning statistical techniques.

Don Lamberton was one of the first scholars to recognise the need for information to be taken seriously, he has spent much of his career persuading others. Focusing on his contribution, this volume explores the struggle for recognition of a way of thinking which is fundamental to our understanding of the social and economic role of information.

Each of the thirty authors, prominent in information economics and related fields have written a contribution especially for this volume. Vital issues, central to Lamberton's concerns and often ignored in euphoric approaches to information - the plight of the information poor, the poverty of information policy, the future of universal service, quality of employment, organisational and market failure to effect information transactions, the role of information in economic development, problems of codifying, classifying and managing information, the limitations of information systems - are emphasised throughout.

The whole encapsulates the vast progress which has been made, not just in academic thinking about information, but in the part this thinking now plays in corporate strategy and government policy. The volume is both an affectionate account of Don Lamberton's contribution to the understanding of information, and also the most comprehensive and authoritative of collections on the social and economic significance of information.

Performing Governance sets out a new framework to assess the performance of partnerships and examines what these actually deliver. This is applied to three areas of New Labour's welfare policy; child safeguarding, urban regeneration and the modernisation of health and social care. This book contributes to understanding governance under New Labour.

Economic players must often choose between several strategic options in a fierce competitive environment where interactions with competitors make decisions particularly complex. Game theory offers useful insights to choose an optimal decision or at least a basis for making rational decision given the constraints of the stakeholders' environment. In presenting the concepts and the logical structure of the reasoning offered by game theory and their applications, the book explains the rational process of decision making in the framework of firm management and market competition. By avoiding the usual complexity of presentation often due to mathematical formalism, the book proposes a reflection and practical insights of game theory for practitioners (managers, strategists) and social, managerial and economic researchers. The book will expose both general teachings and a comprehensive analysis applied to specific case studies of various sectors of the economy.

The Chief Information Officer's influence in the business organization has been waning for years. The rest of the C-suite has come to regard Information Technology as slow, costly, error-prone, boring, and unresponsive to business needs. This perception blinds company leaders to the critical value IT can deliver and threatens the competitive health and long-term survival of their enterprise. The modern CIO must reassert the operational and strategic importance of technology to the enterprise and reintegrate it with every department and level of the business from boardroom to mailroom. IT leaders must design, sell, and implement a vigorous culture of IT competence and innovation that pervades the enterprise. The culture must be rooted in bidirectional exchange across organizations and C-level policies that drive technology innovation as the engine of business innovation. The authors, international IT strategists and innovators, quantify the benefits and risks of IT innovation, survey and rank the myriad innovation opportunities from mature, new, and emerging technologies, and identify the organizational structures and processes that have been proven to deliver ongoing innovation.Buttressing their brief with dozens of case studies and specific examples, The Innovative CIO shows you how to: * Take advantage of the IT and business innovation opportunities created by new and emerging technologies * Shift IT innovation from afterthought to prime mover in strategic business planning * Inject IT into the dynamic core of your organization's culture, training, structure, practice, and policy What you'll learn * Grasp the business basics of new information technologies: * Virtualization * Cloud Computing * Consumer-Driven IT * Bring-Your-Own-Device * Personalization * Process Automation * Mobile Computing * E-Commerce * Big Data and Analytics * Social Networking * E-Collaboration * Judge the business opportunities presented by new and emerging technologies. * Deploy new technologies to create and release new products. * Use new technologies to penetrate and capture new markets. * Harness new technologies to accelerate M&A time-to-value and add shareholder value. * Apply new technologies to improve staff retention and productivity.Who this book is for The Innovative CIO targets all IT leaders--not only CIOs, but also VPs and directors of IT and IT operations, datacenter managers, and all other IT leaders who aspire to advance their careers as IT-providers to business leaders. This book serves secondarily as a guide to non-IT business leaders who are alert to the ways that IT can boost their abilities to innovate, to turbocharge their products, services, and processes, and to compete nimbly in fast-changing markets. Table of Contents * Innovation Matters * Stories from the Trenches * Innovation Is Not the Only I * Business Innovation vs. IT Innovation * Pull and Push * Opportunities to Innovate Today * Innovating with Consumer-Driven IT * Opportunities to Innovate Tomorrow * Making Innovation Intentional * Connecting IT Innovation with Business Value * The Dirty Little Secrets of IT Innovation * What's Next for Me? * Summar

The systems movement, now 40 years old, is made up of many associations of systems thinkers from different disciplines all over the world. The United Kingdom Systems Society (UKSS) was formed in 1978. Today it has over 300 members and is committed to the development and promotion of "systems" philosophy, theory, concepts and methodolo gies for improving decision making for the benefit of organizations and wider society. The first UKSS International Conference was held at the University of Hull in July ofHuddersfield 1989. Since then we have held International Conferences at the Universities (1991) and Paisley (1993). The UKSS International Conferences are now an established biannual event and this, our fourth international conference, will be jointly hosted by the Universities of Hull and Humberside. Systems science is considered to be a trans-discipline which promotes critical and effective intervention in complex organisational and social problem situations. As such it traverses "hard," through "soft" to "critical" systems thinking and methodologies. Yet, despite the currently robust state of the UKSS the systems movement cannot be described as an international movement: different subdisciplines are at different stages of development and are often engaged in pursuing their own particular interests and themes with little "conversation" between the subdisciplines despite their common interest in systems."

Avoiding Corporate Breakdowns focuses on prescribing a preventative strategy for managerial actors who face economic, social and environmental disasters. Prevention is basically simple, but it will require a considerable broadening in both the nature and the extent of managerial responsibility.

Providing the necessary background information and hands-on tools to build compelling business cases, this book will increase the reader's capability to champion new business development ideas, take them to senior management, and facilitate the decision process by understanding the key theories and practices of finance and corporate investments.

This highly practical book explains how executive teams in global companies can work together to successfully drive change, enable fast growth or restructure the business. It demonstrates a clear correlation between team development and business results and even deals with special issues for teams in the not-for-profit sector and emerging markets.

Resilient people are happier, healthier, and more productive. Psychologist and business writer Adrian Furnham takes a sideways and entertaining look at the challenges of being a leader, demonstrating how resilience can be honed, developed, and used as a personal life raft to keep afloat in the face of adversity.

As the world's resources are running out, sustainability issues will drive large strategy shifts for many organizations in the near future. Businesses need to explore how profit and value can be generated from sustainable innovations in their commercial offerings. This is both an ethical and an essential strategy in a global economy still reliant on increasingly limited resources.
Sustainable Innovation Strategy is a thought-provoking and timely book which examines the links between sustainable development, innovation strategy and the business model. Through insightful case studies from mature and developing markets, the authors show how sustainability needs to be at the core of every organization's strategy and innovation. They reveal the three ways in which sustainable strategies can be incorporated into business models - eco-efficiency, circularity and functional economy.
Rigorous and practical, this book shows how other organizations have successfully made the transition from resource reliant to generating profit and value through sustainable models. From the innovative strides being taken in the electric car industry in Europe to the management of agricultural waste in Brazil for profit and clean energy, they show how sustainable business models can add value to an organization.

Multiple Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) is the study of methods and procedures by which concerns about multiple conflicting criteria can be formally incorporated into the management planning process. A key area of research in OR/MS, MCDM is now being applied in many new areas, including GIS systems, AI, and group decision making. This volume is in effect the third in a series of Springer books by these editors (all in the ISOR series), and it brings all the latest developments in MCDM into focus. Looking at developments in the applications, methodologies and foundations of MCDM, it presents research from leaders in the field on such topics as Problem Structuring Methodologies; Measurement Theory and MCDA; Recent Developments in Evolutionary Multiobjective Optimization; Habitual Domains and Dynamic MCDM in Changeable Spaces; Stochastic Multicriteria Acceptability Analysis; and many more chapters.

Clearly, concisely, and with many examples from public and private enterprise, Upgrading Leadership's Crystal Ball shows why predictions are usually wrong and presents a better way to look at the future-forecasting. This book is essential-reading for anyone who needs to make the best possible strategic decisions for moving an organization forward in today's rapidly changing environment. Dr. Bauer supplies an insightful comparison of the two mainstream approaches for looking ahead. Although predicting and forecasting are usually used as synonyms for a single process, they are conceptually and methodologically quite different. He explains why everyday failure to operationalize these differences robs us of power to envision and pursue good futures, especially when we are headed in the wrong direction. Readers will learn the real-world value of distinguishing between predicting (extrapolating historical trends) and forecasting (estimating the probabilities of possibilities). Following a description of predictive modeling and a discussion of five reasons why it fails so often in current applications, Dr. Bauer explains the superiority of forecasting and how to do it. To complete readers' understanding of the many compelling reasons for making the shift from predicting to forecasting, Upgrading Leadership's Crystal Ball presents a practical approach to strategic planning in unpredictable times. It concludes with an analysis of the future of big data and its likely impact on the future. Dr. Bauer is uniquely qualified to write this important book; he is trained in both predicting (economics) and forecasting (meteorology). Author of more than 250 publications, he is internationally recognized not only for long-term success in foretelling the future of medical science and health care, but also for successful innovations to create a better delivery system. This book distills the lessons garnered over his 40 year career as economist and futurist into a guide that other leaders can use to avoid problems and create better options in any realm. The book includes a foreword by Dr. Stan Gryskiewicz, author of Positive Turbulence.

Procrastination is a business's worst enemy, but it is most damaging when if affects the ability to lead...
Too many decisions are taken too slowly or not at all, because of the dithering behavior of our leaders, often leading to failure of the project, or worse, the organization. See how procrastination has led to major contemporary leadership failures and learn how to recognize and resolve the problem in yourself and others.

You'll get there faster if you just slow down Master Your Mind offers a bit of perspective and a lot of insight for anyone seeking long-term success. Success in business is spelled M-O-R-E: better results, faster growth, more revenue, greater efficiency. Do more. Make more. Achieve more. And do it now. Eventually, ambition turns to stress, then to frenzy, then to emptiness as once-ambitious workers endlessly trudge the hamster wheel chasing the next promotion. While top-level performance is the holy grail of business at all levels, there is another, much better way to achieve it: slow down. Yes, you read that right--S-L-O-W. This is your permission to jump off of the hamster wheel. Slowing down is not a luxury, it is a necessity. A frenetic brain simply doesn't perform at optimal levels. By maintaining a snail's pace, you actually achieve better results--at rocket speed--because you're firing on all cylinders. You'll think of new things, approach old problems from new perspectives, and breathe a breath of fresh air into everything you do. This book shows you how to achieve this state of steady, sustainable fire, and how to get further by crawling than you ever did while attempting to fly. Learn how slowing down can lead to better, faster results Achieve optimal performance thought patterns Enhance your creativity and effectiveness Build energy, revenue, and good health in a self-sustaining way You know you're capable of more, but the stress is eating away at your body, your brain, and your soul. Relax, take a deep breath, and buckle down. Clear your mind, and then put it to work. Stop juggling and start doing. Master Your Mind shows you how to supercharge your trajectory by taking it S-L-O-W.