Can a small business really compete with the biggest business giants? The typical argument is that they wouldn't have the budget, skills or experience. But CATCHING GIANTS demonstrates that this simply isn't true and shows how, even in the toughest of circumstances and competitive environments, it is possible for the small player to win big. When Kevin Gaskell and his small, inexperienced crew took on the 'World's Toughest Row' and set out to cross the Atlantic Ocean in a tiny rowing boat, they knew it would take a single-minded determination, focus, some innovative approaches and smart thinking to beat their Olympic level competition and become world champions. But that's exactly what they did! Through this thrilling, motivating and inspiring story of triumph over seemingly impossible odds, Kevin shares the 80 world-beating lessons that he and his team used to beat the best at their own game. Whatever the challenge and whether it's clarity, strategy, finances or team alignment that appear to stand in your way, these game-changing lessons have the power to help any team leader, manager or business owner overcome barriers and drive their team to reach for, catch and pass their own giants.

True leadership is about character - this is the key to winning 'the right way'. In a world where we're bombarded by messages of 'winning at any cost', dishonest politicians, CEOs committing fraud, disgraced military commanders and cheating athletes, integrity matters more than ever. The Character Edge explains the powerful role character plays in trust, culture and leadership, and offers readers tools to exercise and strengthen their own. Reaching from the battlefield to the classroom and beyond, former superintendent of West Point Robert Caslen and professor of psychology Dr Michael Matthews explore the vital link between strong character and strong leadership, and explain why the latter cannot exist without the former. 'Caslen and Matthews show how and why this fundamental inner architecture of leadership can - and must - be built' - Jim Collins, bestselling author of Good to Great.

This book focuses mainly on strategic decision making at a global level, which is rarely considered in approaches to sustainability. This book makes a unique contribution as the work looks at global consequences of mineral exhaustion and steps that can be taken to alleviate the impending problems. This book highlights how sustainability has become one of the most important issues for businesses, governments and society at large. This book explores the topic of sustainability as one that is under much debate as to what it actually is and how it can be achieved, but it is completely evident that the resources of the planet are fixed in quantity, and once used, cannot be reused except through being reused in one form or another. This is particularly true of the mineral resources of the planet. These are finite in quantity, and once fully extracted, extra quantities are no longer available for future use. This book argues and presents evidence that the remaining mineral resources are diminishing significantly and heading towards exhaustion. Once mined and consumed, they are no longer available for future use other than what can be recycled and reused. This book demonstrates that future scarcity means that best use must be made of what exists, as sustainability depends upon this, and best use is defined as utility rather than economic value, which must be considered at a global level rather than a national level. Moreover, sustainability depends upon both availability in the present and in the future, so the use of resources requires attention to the future as well as to the present. This book investigates the alternative methods of achieving the global distribution of these mineral resources and proposes an optimum solution. This book adds to the discourse through the understanding of the importance of the depletion and finiteness of raw materials and their use for the present and the future, in order to achieve and maintain sustainability.

In today's ever-changing world, leaders must create anew every day-new solutions, new ideas for action, new strategies - and then comfortably lead their organizations into an unpredictable future. In her handbook for leaders, author Jacqueline Throop-Robinson provides tools and techniques that can help any CEO or manager ignite passion, productivity and performance by connecting, collaborating and creating with their team. Throop-Robinson relies on her extensive experience as a successful entrepreneur, corporate manager, and consultant to help empower leaders and their teams to achieve their full potential. While combining theory with real-life stories and activities, Throop-Robinson offers time-tested advice that helps leaders change their mindset to build trust; collaborate and play with their team to accelerate performance; explore the importance and impact of inspiration; use feedback and feedforward to improve leadership practices and overall productivity; and lead fearlessly to help teams overcome obstacles and see progress. Fire Up Your Team shares fifty ways to lead fearlessly, strengthen skills, improve creativity, and motivate a team to effectively move forward and achieve goals, one step at a time.

This graduate-level textbook covers modelling, programming and analysis of stochastic computer simulation experiments, including the mathematical and statistical foundations of simulation and why it works. The book is rigorous and complete, but concise and accessible, providing all necessary background material. Object-oriented programming of simulations is illustrated in Python, while the majority of the book is programming language independent. In addition to covering the foundations of simulation and simulation programming for applications, the text prepares readers to use simulation in their research. A solutions manual for end-of-chapter exercises is available for instructors.

'The digital age provide tremendous opportunities for organizations who adapt new technologies, implement disruptive business models, introduce new ways of working and who drive on innovation. There is no doubt that one of the most important capabilities for 21st century organizations is ''mastering creativity''. Andres Hatum has done a fabulous job in taking readers of his latest book on a journey where they learn how to build and include creativity in the DNA of their organizations. A must-read for every business and talent profession.' -Nick van Dam, Global Chief Learning Officer, McKinsey & Company, Nyenrode Business University, the Netherlands and the University of Pennsylvania, US 'This book is a welcome addition to the steadily growing literature on creativity and organization. The author achieves the twin hurdles of rigorous analysis for the academics and practice-based relevance for practitioners. The book provides ample frameworks and case examples to identify key factors which influence and enhance creativity in organizations. These factors range from individual characteristics through organizational factors such as structure and culture to more contextual and environmental conditions. The author then shows how developing creativity, as a key organizational competence, can positively influence strategic decision making to enhance exploration rather than exploitation, to increase agility and to facilitate proactive change.' - David Wilson, Open University, UK 'Mastering Creativity in Organizations offers a comprehensive and pedagogical treatise of the forces and factors that facilitate creativity in organizations and the numerous challenges that this involves. The book is richly illustrated with a variety of cases from a range of different sectors, including sports, advertising, manufacturing, consulting, primary education, the entertainment industry, and the culinary industry. Thanks to his fantastic access, Professor Hatum takes us behind the scenes and gives us an inside look into a number of iconic organizations such as Cirque de Soleil, FC Barcelona and Tetra Pak - exploring their leadership practices, HR strategies, office design and several other key issues. However, as the authors attests, creativity is not just for the exceptionally talented genius or for the people working in these extraordinary organizations. Everybody, and every organization, can learn to work in more creative ways from the unique cases in this book.' - Torkild Thanem, Stockholm University, Sweden This book identifies best practices, leadership styles, and organizational structures for the stimulation of organizational creativity. Andres Hatum first explains what creativity means in an organizational context. He then explores the ways in which an organization can foster it, with an aim to help any company - not just companies in creative fields or industries - become an organization in which new ideas flow, new processes are developed, and new products are brought to market. In doing so, he provides scholars with a solid framework for studying and understanding the deeper meaning of creativity. Andres Hatum's new framework for understanding organizational creativity offers examples from a rich variety of companies and situations. The book balances theory and practice for a multifaceted approach that brings its analysis into the real world. In-depth case studies include FC Barcelona, elBulli, Almodovar, and Cirque du Soleil. Managers will find case studies describing exceptional organizational creativity and practical takeaways that can be applied in their own firms. Students will find concrete analytical frameworks for thinking about creativity in organizations, and academics will find a different approach to the study of creativity, one that is grounded in practice.

Agility in business has become one of the most important management topics of recent times. The ability to create and respond to change in order to succeed in an uncertain and turbulent business environment is the essence of agile. But being agile starts with the leader, who has to make the shift from traditional "command and control" to "enabling people". This book is a practical workbook for leaders on their journey to achieving agility. It moves the conversation over agility into practice; exercising measures and techniques that will encourage leaders to adapt with changing times. To help and encourage leaders to make that personal shift, it offers ideas and tools to master agility in their organizations. Designed to be sensible and self-reflecting, the book also includes an appendix of over 20 exercises that have been tried and tested with executives all over the world in their successful pursuit of agile.

Communication between man and machine is vital to completing projects in the current day and age. Without this constant connectiveness as we enter an era of big data, project completion will result in utter failure. Agile Approaches for Successfully Managing and Executing Projects in the Fourth Industrial Revolution addresses changes wrought by Industry 4.0 and its effects on project management as well as adaptations and adjustments that will need to be made within project life cycles and project risk management. Highlighting such topics as agile planning, cloud projects, and organization structure, it is designed for project managers, executive management, students, and academicians.

The CIOB Code of Practice Programme Management for Construction & Development is intended to complement the popular CIOB Code of Practice for Project Management for Construction and Development, providing practical coverage of general processes and procedures to be followed when managing a construction programme or portfolio of projects. It sets out the necessary requirements for effective and efficient programme management, but is not intended to be a manual of operating procedures for the manager of such programmes.

Private Equity and Management Buy-outs provides a balanced view of the often polarized private equity debate. This careful and objective analysis of the presence of private equity in buy-out firms reviews the effects of this ownership transfer in terms of firm performance and survival, thus placing private equity in a broader context of implications for value creation. The analysis provides an overview of international trends in private equity and develops a conceptual framework for understanding the heterogeneity of private equity deals. Systematic evidence from large-scale studies of private equity and buy-outs are used to shed light on short- and longer-term economic and social effects. For the first time the broader scope of the key issues now facing private equity and buy-outs are brought together in the contributions herein. The book includes highlights such as: * empirical evidence on a special organizational form of private equity; * examination of backed buy-outs (perspectives from strategy, finance, HRM and management accounting); * discussion on the level of PE involvement; * challenging further debate on economic and social key issues regarding policy implications and a future research agenda. Academics and researchers - postgraduate and above - in business schools and schools of economics will find this book enlightening. It will also hold great interest for practitioners in the fields of mergers and acquisitions, general, strategic and financial management, and corporate entrepreneurship and corporate governance.