Download or read book Good to Great written by Jim Collins and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2001-10-16 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Challenge Built to Last, the defining management study of the nineties, showed how great companies triumph over time and how long-term sustained performance can be engineered into the DNA of an enterprise from the verybeginning. But what about the company that is not born with great DNA? How can good companies, mediocre companies, even bad companies achieve enduring greatness? The Study For years, this question preyed on the mind of Jim Collins. Are there companies that defy gravity and convert long-term mediocrity or worse into long-term superiority? And if so, what are the universal distinguishing characteristics that cause a company to go from good to great? The Standards Using tough benchmarks, Collins and his research team identified a set of elite companies that made the leap to great results and sustained those results for at least fifteen years. How great? After the leap, the good-to-great companies generated cumulative stock returns that beat the general stock market by an average of seven times in fifteen years, better than twice the results delivered by a composite index of the world's greatest companies, including Coca-Cola, Intel, General Electric, and Merck. The Comparisons The research team contrasted the good-to-great companies with a carefully selected set of comparison companies that failed to make the leap from good to great. What was different? Why did one set of companies become truly great performers while the other set remained only good? Over five years, the team analyzed the histories of all twenty-eight companies in the study. After sifting through mountains of data and thousands of pages of interviews, Collins and his crew discovered the key determinants of greatness -- why some companies make the leap and others don't. The Findings The findings of the Good to Great study will surprise many readers and shed light on virtually every area of management strategy and practice. The findings include: Level 5 Leaders: The research team was shocked to discover the type of leadership required to achieve greatness. The Hedgehog Concept (Simplicity within the Three Circles): To go from good to great requires transcending the curse of competence. A Culture of Discipline: When you combine a culture of discipline with an ethic of entrepreneurship, you get the magical alchemy of great results. Technology Accelerators: Good-to-great companies think differently about the role of technology. The Flywheel and the Doom Loop: Those who launch radical change programs and wrenching restructurings will almost certainly fail to make the leap. “Some of the key concepts discerned in the study,” comments Jim Collins, "fly in the face of our modern business culture and will, quite frankly, upset some people.” Perhaps, but who can afford to ignore these findings?
Download or read book Why Startups Fail written by Tom Eisenmann and published by Currency. This book was released on 2021-03-30 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If you want your startup to succeed, you need to understand why startups fail. “Whether you’re a first-time founder or looking to bring innovation into a corporate environment, Why Startups Fail is essential reading.”—Eric Ries, founder and CEO, LTSE, and New York Times bestselling author of The Lean Startup and The Startup Way Why do startups fail? That question caught Harvard Business School professor Tom Eisenmann by surprise when he realized he couldn’t answer it. So he launched a multiyear research project to find out. In Why Startups Fail, Eisenmann reveals his findings: six distinct patterns that account for the vast majority of startup failures. • Bad Bedfellows. Startup success is thought to rest largely on the founder’s talents and instincts. But the wrong team, investors, or partners can sink a venture just as quickly. • False Starts. In following the oft-cited advice to “fail fast” and to “launch before you’re ready,” founders risk wasting time and capital on the wrong solutions. • False Promises. Success with early adopters can be misleading and give founders unwarranted confidence to expand. • Speed Traps. Despite the pressure to “get big fast,” hypergrowth can spell disaster for even the most promising ventures. • Help Wanted. Rapidly scaling startups need lots of capital and talent, but they can make mistakes that leave them suddenly in short supply of both. • Cascading Miracles. Silicon Valley exhorts entrepreneurs to dream big. But the bigger the vision, the more things that can go wrong. Drawing on fascinating stories of ventures that failed to fulfill their early promise—from a home-furnishings retailer to a concierge dog-walking service, from a dating app to the inventor of a sophisticated social robot, from a fashion brand to a startup deploying a vast network of charging stations for electric vehicles—Eisenmann offers frameworks for detecting when a venture is vulnerable to these patterns, along with a wealth of strategies and tactics for avoiding them. A must-read for founders at any stage of their entrepreneurial journey, Why Startups Fail is not merely a guide to preventing failure but also a roadmap charting the path to startup success.
Download or read book Automate This written by Christopher Steiner and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2012-08-30 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The rousing story of the last gasp of human agency and how today’s best and brightest minds are endeavoring to put an end to it. It used to be that to diagnose an illness, interpret legal documents, analyze foreign policy, or write a newspaper article you needed a human being with specific skills—and maybe an advanced degree or two. These days, high-level tasks are increasingly being handled by algorithms that can do precise work not only with speed but also with nuance. These “bots” started with human programming and logic, but now their reach extends beyond what their creators ever expected. In this fascinating, frightening book, Christopher Steiner tells the story of how algorithms took over—and shows why the “bot revolution” is about to spill into every aspect of our lives, often silently, without our knowledge. The May 2010 “Flash Crash” exposed Wall Street’s reliance on trading bots to the tune of a 998-point market drop and $1 trillion in vanished market value. But that was just the beginning. In Automate This, we meet bots that are driving cars, penning haiku, and writing music mistaken for Bach’s. They listen in on our customer service calls and figure out what Iran would do in the event of a nuclear standoff. There are algorithms that can pick out the most cohesive crew of astronauts for a space mission or identify the next Jeremy Lin. Some can even ingest statistics from baseball games and spit out pitch-perfect sports journalism indistinguishable from that produced by humans. The interaction of man and machine can make our lives easier. But what will the world look like when algorithms control our hospitals, our roads, our culture, and our national security? What happens to businesses when we automate judgment and eliminate human instinct? And what role will be left for doctors, lawyers, writers, truck drivers, and many others? Who knows—maybe there’s a bot learning to do your job this minute.
Download or read book Essentials of Business Communication written by Mary Ellen Guffey and published by South Western Educational Publishing. This book was released on 2004 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This text-workbook is a streamlined, no-nonsense approach to business communication. It takes a three-in-one approach: (1) text, (2) practical workbook, and (3) self-teaching grammar/mechanics handbook. The chapters reinforce basic writing skills, then apply these skills to a variety of memos, letters, reports, and resumes. This new edition features increased coverage of contemporary business communication issues including oral communication, electronic forms of communication, diversity and ethics.
Download or read book Mean Baby written by Selma Blair and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2023-05-09 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Selma Blair has played many roles: Ingenue in Cruel Intentions. Preppy ice queen in Legally Blonde. Muse to Karl Lagerfeld. Advocate for the multiple sclerosis community. But before all of that, Selma was known best as … a mean baby. In a memoir that is as wildly funny as it is emotionally shattering, Blair tells the captivating story of growing up and finding her truth. "Blair is a rebel, an artist, and it turns out: a writer."—Glennon Doyle, Author of the #1 New York Times Bestseller Untamed and Founder of Together Rising The first story Selma Blair Beitner ever heard about herself is that she was a mean, mean baby. With her mouth pulled in a perpetual snarl and a head so furry it had to be rubbed to make way for her forehead, Selma spent years living up to her terrible reputation: biting her sisters, lying spontaneously, getting drunk from Passover wine at the age of seven, and behaving dramatically so that she would be the center of attention. Although Selma went on to become a celebrated Hollywood actress and model, she could never quite shake the periods of darkness that overtook her, the certainty that there was a great mystery at the heart of her life. She often felt like her arms might be on fire, a sensation not unlike electric shocks, and she secretly drank to escape. Over the course of this beautiful and, at times, devasting memoir, Selma lays bare her addiction to alcohol, her devotion to her brilliant and complicated mother, and the moments she flirted with death. There is brutal violence, passionate love, true friendship, the gift of motherhood, and, finally, the surprising salvation of a multiple sclerosis diagnosis. In a voice that is powerfully original, fiercely intelligent, and full of hard-won wisdom, Selma Blair’s Mean Baby is a deeply human memoir and a true literary achievement.
Download or read book Reforming Collateral Laws to Expand Access to Finance written by Heywood W. Fleisig and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2006 with total page 120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most readers, especially those with car loans or home mortgages, know about "collateral"--property that the lender can take away from the borrower in the event that the borrower defaults. In low/middle income countries, it is understood that conservative lenders exclude firms from credit markets with their excessive collateral requirements. Usually, this is because only some property is acceptable as collateral: large holdings of urban real estate and, sometimes, new motor vehicles. Microenterprises, SMEs, and the poor have little of this property but they do have an array of productive assets that could easily be harnessed to serve as collateral. It is only the legal framework which prevents firms from using these assets to secure loans. In countries with reformed laws governing collateral, property such as equipment, inventory, accounts receivable, livestock are considered excellent collateral. This book aims to better equip project managers to implement reforms to the legal and institutional framework for collateral (secured transactions). It discusses the importance of movable property as a source of collateral for firms, the relationship between the legal framework governing movable assets and the financial sector consequences for firms (better loan terms, increased access, more competitive financial sector), and how reforms can be put in place to change the lending environment.
Download or read book Microfinance Handbook written by Joanna Ledgerwood and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 1998-12-01 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The purpose of the 'Microfinance Handbook' is to bring together in a single source guiding principles and tools that will promote sustainable microfinance and create viable institutions.
Download or read book Business Communication written by Mary Ellen Guffey and published by Scarborough, Ont. : Nelson Thomson Learning. This book was released on 2001 with total page 567 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Organization Development and Change written by Thomas G. Cummings and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Managing Business Ethics written by Linda K. Trevino and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2016-09-13 with total page 491 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Revised edition of the authors' Managing business ethics, [2014]
Download or read book International Community Psychology written by Stephanie Reich and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2007-07-03 with total page 461 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first in-depth guide to global community psychology research and practice, history and development, theories and innovations, presented in one field-defining volume. This book will serve to promote international collaboration, enhance theory utilization and development, identify biases and barriers in the field, accrue critical mass for a discipline that is often marginalized, and to minimize the pervasive US-centric view of the field.
Download or read book Out of the Border Labyrinth written by Christian Volpe Martincus and published by Inter-American Development Bank. This book was released on 2016-12-12 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Real borders can be thick. They are not dimensionless lines as typically assumed in theoretical models and standard empirical analyses, but a zone populated by agencies that develop and administer regulations firms have to comply with when engaging in international trade, many of which have their own procedures. Borders can then easily become a labyrinth hard to get through. This is crucial because border agencies' procedures influence the time needed to ship goods from their origins to their destinations and can thereby affect trade, particularly in a context characterized by increasingly segmented production chains and rising lean retailing. Latin American and Caribbean countries have recently implemented various trade facilitation initiatives that aim to streamline the administrative processing of trade flows and accordingly reduce trading times. These initiatives include risk management, single windows, authorized economic operators, simplified postal exports, and expedited transit arrangements, all of which are cornerstones of the 2013 WTO Agreement on Trade Facilitation and have been subject of multiple international organizations' operations. Despite of being ubiquitous, evidence on the impact of these specific initiatives has been extremely limited. Lack of precise data has been a major obstacle. Out of the Border Labyrinth fills this gap and sheds entirely new light on the trade effects of such trade facilitation measures and the channels thereof. It presents the results of thorough impact evaluations, which have been carried out by applying rigorous methods on unprecedented transaction-level data for several countries in the region. These results reveal that trade actually expanded as a consequence of such facilitation measures and that the primary channel has been shipping frequency. Based on these econometric examinations and careful institutional case studies, Out of the Border Labyrinth systematizes a new line of trade policy research and informs policymaking and assistance activities by international organizations by providing tools that will help design and assess policies in an area that will be very active in upcoming years as countries work towards implementing the multilateral agreement reached in Bali.
Download or read book Open Veins of Latin America written by Eduardo Galeano and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 1997-01-01 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since its U.S. debut a quarter-century ago, this brilliant text has set a new standard for historical scholarship of Latin America. It is also an outstanding political economy, a social and cultural narrative of the highest quality, and perhaps the finest description of primitive capital accumulation since Marx. Rather than chronology, geography, or political successions, Eduardo Galeano has organized the various facets of Latin American history according to the patterns of five centuries of exploitation. Thus he is concerned with gold and silver, cacao and cotton, rubber and coffee, fruit, hides and wool, petroleum, iron, nickel, manganese, copper, aluminum ore, nitrates, and tin. These are the veins which he traces through the body of the entire continent, up to the Rio Grande and throughout the Caribbean, and all the way to their open ends where they empty into the coffers of wealth in the United States and Europe. Weaving fact and imagery into a rich tapestry, Galeano fuses scientific analysis with the passions of a plundered and suffering people. An immense gathering of materials is framed with a vigorous style that never falters in its command of themes. All readers interested in great historical, economic, political, and social writing will find a singular analytical achievement, and an overwhelming narrative that makes history speak, unforgettably. This classic is now further honored by Isabel Allende's inspiring introduction. Universally recognized as one of the most important writers of our time, Allende once again contributes her talents to literature, to political principles, and to enlightenment.
Download or read book Improving Transparency Integrity and Accountability in Water Supply and Sanitation written by and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2009-01-01 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume will serve as a useful tool for those who wish to diagnose, analyze, and take action against systemic corruption in the water and sanitation sectors. On a global scale, more than 1 billion people live without access to safe, potable water, in part because of poor governance and corruption. Illegal connections and substantial losses caused by deferred maintenance have eroded the revenues of water utilities, leading to a downward spiral in performance. Embezzlement of funds, bribes for access to illegal water connections, manipulation of meter counters, and collusion in public contracts add to the litany of corrupt practices. This manual will serve as a practical guide for governments, civil society organizations, and citizens themselves in their quest for a model of service provision that responds to the pressing needs of people in the developing world.
Download or read book Building Capabilities for Productive Development written by Jorge Cornick and published by Inter-American Development Bank. This book was released on 2018-06-29 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Productive development policies (PDPs) are notoriously hard. They involve a daunting level of technical detail, require public-private collaboration, are in constant danger of capture, and demand time consistency hard to achieve in a politically volatile region. Nevertheless, the potential of PDPs to revitalize the regionâs economic performance and spur productivity growth cannot be ignored. This book takes an in-depth look at 17 cases involving productive development agencies from Argentina, Brazil, Costa Rica and Uruguay, identifying key features of institutional design and agency-level practices that make success more likely in this difficult policy arena. Careful study of these experiences might help successful productive development policies gain currency across the region. The cases in this book should not be seen as the exceptions that prove the rule of lackluster PDP performance, but rather as examples that demonstrate the rule can be broken.
Download or read book Two to Tango written by Eduardo Fernández-Arias and published by Inter-American Development Bank. This book was released on 2016-06-17 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It takes two to tango. Strong public-private collaboration is key for discovering and implementing effective productive development policies to bring out the best in existing economic activities and to foster economic transformation. The 25 Latin American cases analyzed in this volume show how and why many public and private partners are dancing smoothly while others stumble or follow different drummers. This book is a resource for designing institutions to make public-private interaction a win-win strategy.
Download or read book The Second Machine Age Work Progress and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies written by Erik Brynjolfsson and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2014-01-20 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The big stories -- The skills of the new machines : technology races ahead -- Moore's law and the second half of the chessboard -- The digitization of just about everything -- Innovation : declining or recombining? -- Artificial and human intelligence in the second machine age -- Computing bounty -- Beyond GDP -- The spread -- The biggest winners : stars and superstars -- Implications of the bounty and the spread -- Learning to race with machines : recommendations for individuals -- Policy recommendations -- Long-term recommendations -- Technology and the future (which is very different from "technology is the future").
