Download or read book Profiting From Uncertainty written by Paul Schoemaker and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-12-25 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What manager is not anxious about the future? We live in a white-knuckled age of rapid technological change and global instability. But uncertainty is not the enemy, says management expert Paul J. H. Schoemaker. It is where the greatest opportunities are. To unlock these opportunities, however, requires a very different approach to strategy and implementation. In this pioneering book, Dr. Schoemaker presents a systematic approach that combines concepts such as scenario planning, options thinking, and dynamic monitoring to create novel strategies for profiting from ambiguity. Building on his experience with more than one hundred consulting projects in fields ranging from health care to manufacturing, from utilities to financial services, Schoemaker shows how major corporations throughout the world have used his pathbreaking methodology to prepare for an uncertain future and profit from it. In this first comprehensive approach to the subject, Schoemaker shows the reader (1) how to develop and analyze multiple industry scenarios, (2) craft nimble strategies with just the right amount of flexibility, (3) implement them using an options approach, and (4) make real-time adjustments through dynamic monitoring. As a leading academic thinker and practitioner, the author draws on the frontiers of decision science, organization theory, strategy, and cognitive psychology to integrate the most practical contributions these various fields have made to navigating uncertainty. More than any other capability, skill in seizing initiatives in shifting, unpredictable circumstances is the key to success. Profiting from Uncertainty provides a road map to do just that. This book was first published in 2002, well ahead of the mega turmoil that befell the world in 2008 and beyond. The methods and tools described here have been used by many companies and are even more relevant today than when originally published. You can’t do without them.
Download or read book Managing Project Uncertainty written by David Cleden and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-03-02 with total page 131 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dealing effectively with uncertainty requires today's project manager to be familiar with a broad spectrum of strategies, encompassing both 'hard' and 'soft' methods. This theme of unified thinking (i.e. the need to selectively draw upon a wide range of strategies in any given situation) will differentiate the book from its contemporaries. By picking up where traditional risk management techniques begin to fail, it brings together leading-edge thinking from a variety of disciplines and shows how these techniques can be used to conquer uncertainty in projects. The ability to make good decisions when faced with uncertainty is the real challenge. It is a universal truth that a decision is only as good as the information it is based on. But good information is often hard to come by, and all projects are vulnerable to the unknown and the unknowable. Thus, uncertainty becomes the sworn enemy of the project manager. Wherever we try to analyse, quantify, plan and act, uncertainty lies in wait to surprise us with its ambiguity and unpredictability. It lurks in every stage of the project lifecycle: in the planning (how long will this really take?), the initiation (this isn't the situation I expected!), the execution (who could have foreseen that happening?), and even the completion of a project (where are the expected benefits?). But managing uncertainty is a lot more than just applying risk management techniques. It requires a deep appreciation of how uncertainty arises and, by recognising its different guises, the appropriate strategies can be formulated. If we can learn how to reduce uncertainty, we can make better management decisions and increase the chances of the project succeeding. This book addresses five key questions: ¢ Why is there uncertainty in projects? ¢ How do you spot the symptoms of uncertainty, preferably at an early stage? ¢ What can be done to avoid uncertainty? ¢ What strategies can be used to deal with project uncertainty? ¢ How can both the individual and the organisation learn to cope more effectively in the future? The reader is assumed to be a either a project management professional, or a senior manager looking for ways to improve project management strategy within their organisation. As such, a foundation in project management basics is assumed, although not essential. The book then builds on this by exposing new ideas and concepts, and shows how these can be harnessed to tackle uncertainty in its many guises.
Download or read book Strategy and Defence Planning written by Colin S. Gray and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2014 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This title explores and examines why and how security communities prepare purposefully for their future defence. Professor Gray argues that our understanding of human nature, of politics, and of strategic history, does allow us to make prudent choices in defence planning.
Download or read book Business Strategy written by J.-C. Spender and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Emphasising that firms face uncertainties and unknowns, this book argues that the core of strategic thinking and processes rests on the organization and its leaders developing newly imagined solutions to the opportunities that these uncertainties open up. It presents new approaches for managers, consultants, strategy teachers and students.
Download or read book Strategy Beyond the Hockey Stick written by Chris Bradley and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2018-02-06 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beat the odds with a bold strategy from McKinsey & Company "Every once in a while, a genuinely fresh approach to business strategy appears" —legendary business professor Richard Rumelt, UCLA McKinsey & Company's newest, most definitive, and most irreverent book on strategy—which thousands of executives are already using—is a must-read for all C-suite executives looking to create winning corporate strategies. Strategy Beyond the Hockey Stick is spearheading an empirical revolution in the field of strategy. Based on an extensive analysis of the key factors that drove the long-term performance of thousands of global companies, the book offers a ground-breaking formula that enables you to objectively assess your strategy's real odds of future success. "This book is fundamental. The principles laid out here, with compelling data, are a great way around the social pitfalls in strategy development." —Frans Van Houten, CEO, Royal Philips N.V. The authors have discovered that over a 10-year period, just 1 in 12 companies manage to jump from the middle tier of corporate performance—where 60% of companies reside, making very little economic profit—to the top quintile where 90% of global economic profit is made. This movement does not happen by magic—it depends on your company's current position, the trends it faces, and the big moves you make to give it the strongest chance of vaulting over the competition. This is not another strategy framework. Rather, Strategy Beyond the Hockey Stick shows, through empirical analysis and the experiences of dozens of companies that have successfully made multiple big moves, that to dramatically improve performance, you have to overcome incrementalism and corporate inertia. "A different kind of book—I couldn't put it down. Inspiring new insights on the facts of what it takes to move a company's performance, combined with practical advice on how to deal with real-life dynamics in management teams." —Jane Fraser, CEO, Citigroup Latin America
Download or read book Planning on Uncertainty written by Ruth Prince Mack and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 1971 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Management of Uncertainty written by Gudela Grote and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2009-09-17 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As I write, the financial systems of the world are collapsing with still no clear indication of what the consequences will be and which measures should be taken to avoid such a crisis in the future. There seems to be agreement though, that the financial instruments introduced in the past few decades entailed far too much complexity and uncertainty and that there was too little regulatory control over the use of these instruments. Management of uncertainty with the aim of achieving self-control is the core concern of this book. It was not written with a focus on financial systems, but many concepts developed in this book are applicable to this field as well. The - neric principles of reducing, maintaining or increasing uncertainties in view of the different contingencies an organization is faced with, the fundamental issue of how much control is possible and who should be in control, and the question of how much and what kind of regulation is necessary with the overall aim of finding an appropriate balance between system stability and flexibility are at the centre of heated debates on the future of finance.
Download or read book Uncertainty by Design written by Limor Samimian-Darash and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2022-04-15 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Uncertainty by Design Limor Samimian-Darash presents cases of the use of scenario technology in the fields of security and emergency preparedness, energy, and health by analyzing scenario narratives and practices at the National Emergency Management Authority in Israel, the World Health Organization's Regional Office for Europe, and the World Energy Council. Humankind has long struggled with the uncertainty of the future, with how to foresee the future, imagine alternatives, or prepare for and guard against undesirable eventualities. Scenario—or scenario planning—emerged in recent decades to become a widespread means through which states, large corporations, and local organizations imagine and prepare for the future. The scenario technology cases examined in Uncertainty by Design provide a useful lens through which to view contemporary efforts to engage in an overall journey of discovering the future, along with the modality of governing involved in these endeavors to face future uncertainties. Collectively, they enable us to understand in depth how scenarios express a new governing modality.
Download or read book Site Matters written by Andrea Kahn and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-12-21 with total page 391 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the era of the Anthropocene, site matters are more pressing than ever. Building on the concepts, theories, and multi-disciplinary approaches raised in the first edition, this publication strives to address the changes that have taken place over the last 15 years with new material to complement and re-position the initial volume. Reaching across design disciplines, this highly illustrated anthology assembles essays from architects, landscape architects, urban designers, planners, historians, and artists to explore ways to physically and conceptually engage site. Thoughtful discourse and empirically grounded pieces combine to provide the language and theory to contextualize the meanings of site in the built environment. The increasingly complex hybridity of constructed environments today demands new tools for thinking about and working with site. Drawing contributions from outside and within the traditional design disciplines, this edition will trace important developments in site thinking with new essays on topics such as climate change, landscape as infrastructure, shifts from global to planetary urbanization debates, and the proliferation of participatory site transformation practices. Edited by two leading practitioners and academics, Site Matters juxtaposes timeless contributions from individuals including Elizabeth Meyer, Robert Beauregard, and Robin Dripps with original new writings from Peter Marcuse, Jane Wolff, Neil Brenner, and Thaisa Way, amongst others, to recontextualize and reignite the debate around site. An ideal text for students, academics, and researchers interested in site and design theory.
Download or read book Decision Making Under Uncertainty written by Mykel J. Kochenderfer and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2015-07-24 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An introduction to decision making under uncertainty from a computational perspective, covering both theory and applications ranging from speech recognition to airborne collision avoidance. Many important problems involve decision making under uncertainty—that is, choosing actions based on often imperfect observations, with unknown outcomes. Designers of automated decision support systems must take into account the various sources of uncertainty while balancing the multiple objectives of the system. This book provides an introduction to the challenges of decision making under uncertainty from a computational perspective. It presents both the theory behind decision making models and algorithms and a collection of example applications that range from speech recognition to aircraft collision avoidance. Focusing on two methods for designing decision agents, planning and reinforcement learning, the book covers probabilistic models, introducing Bayesian networks as a graphical model that captures probabilistic relationships between variables; utility theory as a framework for understanding optimal decision making under uncertainty; Markov decision processes as a method for modeling sequential problems; model uncertainty; state uncertainty; and cooperative decision making involving multiple interacting agents. A series of applications shows how the theoretical concepts can be applied to systems for attribute-based person search, speech applications, collision avoidance, and unmanned aircraft persistent surveillance. Decision Making Under Uncertainty unifies research from different communities using consistent notation, and is accessible to students and researchers across engineering disciplines who have some prior exposure to probability theory and calculus. It can be used as a text for advanced undergraduate and graduate students in fields including computer science, aerospace and electrical engineering, and management science. It will also be a valuable professional reference for researchers in a variety of disciplines.
Download or read book The Fog of Peace and War Planning written by Talbot C. Imlay and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do we plan under conditions of uncertainty? The perspective of military planners is a key organizing framework: do they see themselves as preparing to administer a peace, or preparing to fight a future war? Most interwar volumes examine only the 1920s and the 1930s. This new volume goes back, and forward in time, to draw on a greater expanse of history in order to tease out lessons for contemporary planners. These chapters are grouped into four periods: 1815-1856, 1871-1914, 1918-1938, and post-Second World War. They progress from low-tech to high-tech concerns, for example, the first period examines armies, while the second period examines navies, the third asseses navies combined with air forces, and finally for the Kaiser chapter explores nuclear issues and decision-making.
Download or read book Models of Scenario Building and Planning written by A. Martelli and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-10-01 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Models of Scenario Building and Planning offers a unique and innovative exploration of the scenario approach. The book focuses on the analysis of the competitors' behavior; the analysis of risk and uncertainty; and the link between scenarios and strategies.
Download or read book Enlightened Planning written by Christopher Chapman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-06-26 with total page 849 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Strategy, risk management and project management are often considered separately by those applying their principles—but at their most effective, all are dependent upon each other for success. Enlightened Planning teaches this holistic perspective and demonstrates how a synthesis of these approaches yields far greater opportunities. A strategic, calculated risk, for example, can be less inherently risky than chronic risk aversion over time. Here, a respected specialist and teacher demonstrates how to become an 'enlightened planner', one that is aware of project, strategy and risk concerns, and their potential interplay. Following the core principle of Keep It Simple Systematically, he shows how organised, systematic thought processes can demystify the complexities of decision-making when considering a huge variety of concerns at once. Supported throughout with real-life cases from the author’s considerable experiences with commercial organisations, it is also supported by a website containing even more cases, learning and teaching materials. This book is essential reading for any practitioner specialising in risk management, project management or strategy; as well as those teachers or participants in executive programmes.
Download or read book Defense Resource Planning Under Uncertainty written by Robert J. Lempert and published by Rand Corporation. This book was released on 2016-01-29 with total page 108 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Defense planning faces significant uncertainties. This report applies robust decision making (RDM) to the air-delivered munitions mix challenge. RDM is quantitative, decision support methodology designed to inform decisions under conditions of deep uncertainty and complexity. This proof-of-concept demonstration suggests that RDM could help defense planners make plans more robust to a wide range of hard-to-predict futures.
Download or read book Uncertainty Advantage written by Gary S. Lynch and published by Archway Publishing. This book was released on 2017-01-12 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Risk and uncertainty may sound scary, but todays best business leaders are navigating both to gain strategic advantage over competitorsand you can, too. This guide for business leaders examines risk and opportunity through the lens of some of the worlds most respected visionaries, including Howard Schultz, Andy Grove, Peter Huntsman, John Krafcik, Peter Leibinger, Doug Hepper, and many more. These visionaries looked beyond financial performance to see opportunitiesand they did so by understanding uncertainty. Then, they decisively acted to create measurable results that coincided with the future they envisioned. Find out how they did it, and learn how to: identify, define, and convert uncertainty into value; become more opportunistic when facing uncertainty; develop the skill to spot where advantages are likely to emerge; and create an environment where managers and leaders complement each other. Filled with case studies on companies such as Hyundai, Starbucks, Roche, and Intel, this guide delivers proven ways to create value and leverage uncertainty. It is the culmination of a decade of research and interaction with dozens of companies and growth leaders who prove that pursuing a market driven strategy to navigating uncertainty will gain measurable market advantage.
Download or read book The Uncertainty Mindset written by Vaughn Tan and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2020-07-28 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Innovation is how businesses stay ahead of the competition and adapt to market conditions that change in unpredictable and uncertain ways. In the first decade of the twenty-first century, high-end cuisine underwent a profound transformation. Once an industry that prioritized consistency and reliability, it turned into one where constant change was a competitive necessity. A top restaurant’s reputation and success have become so closely bound up with its ability to innovate that a new organizational form, the culinary research and development team, has emerged. The best of these R&D teams continually expand the frontiers of food—they invent a constant stream of new dishes, new cooking processes and methods, and even new ways of experiencing food. How do they achieve this nonstop novelty? And what can culinary research and development teach us about how organizations innovate? Vaughn Tan opens up the black box of elite culinary R&D to provide essential insights. Drawing on years of unprecedented access to the best and most influential culinary R&D teams in the world, he reveals how they exemplify what he calls the uncertainty mindset. Such a mindset intentionally incorporates uncertainty into organization design rather than simply trying to reduce risk. It changes how organizations hire, set goals, and motivate team members and leads organizations to work in highly unconventional ways. A revelatory look at the R&D kitchen, The Uncertainty Mindset upends conventional wisdom about how to organize for innovation and offers practical insights for businesses trying to become innovative and adaptable.
Download or read book Defence Planning and Uncertainty written by Stephan Frühling and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-04-24 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How can countries decide what kind of military forces they need, if threats are uncertain and history is full of strategic surprises? This is a question that is more pertinent than ever, as countries across the Asia-Pacific are faced with the military and economic rise of China. Uncertainty is inherent in defence planning, but different types of uncertainty mean that countries need to approach decisions about military force structure in different ways. This book examines four different basic frameworks for defence planning, and demonstrates how states can make decisions coherently about the structure and posture of their defence forces despite strategic uncertainty. It draws on case studies from the United States, Australian and New Zealand, each of which developed key concepts for their particular circumstances and risk perception in Asia. Success as well as failure in developing coherent defence planning frameworks holds lessons for the United States and other countries as they consider how best to structure their military forces for the uncertain challenges of the future.
