Optimizing Corporate Portfolio Management: Aligning Investment Proposals with Organizational Strategy

Optimizing Corporate Portfolio Management: Aligning Investment Proposals with Organizational Strategy Review

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If where an organization allocates its resources determines its strategy, why is it that so few companies actively manage the resource allocation process? "Optimizing Corporate Portfolio Management: Aligning Investment Proposals with Organizational Strategy" goes beyond platitudes about why you should use corporate portfolio management (CPM) by offering a practical methodology to bring this powerful discipline to your organization.

"Optimizing Corporate Portfolio Management" takes an expansive view of where CPM can be utilized by demonstrating that it can be used across any business line, product group or functional area, e.g., IT, R&D, innovation, marketing, salesforce, capital expenditure, etc. CPM is appropriate anywhere discretionary investments are being selected and executed. As a result, other terms used to describe portfolio management such as IT portfolio management, enterprise portfolio management, and project portfolio management are all merely subsets or slices of CPM.

The book is written by Anand Sanwal, an expert on CPM, who has led American Express' CPM discipline (referred to as American Express Investment Optimization). American Express' CPM efforts are widely recognized as the most extensive, substantial and progressive deployment of CPM across any organization. Sanwal avoids academic theories and consultant jargon to ultimately deliver pragmatic and proven recommendations on how to make CPM a reality. The book features a foreword by Gary Crittenden, former CFO and EVP of American Express, and several case studies from leading financial services, technology, and government organizations utilizing CPM. Additionally, the book has received significant praise from thought leaders at Google, HP, American Express, The CFO Executive Board, Gartner, Accenture Marketing Sciences, The Wharton School of Business and many others.

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Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century

Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century Review

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A military expert reveals how science fiction is fast becoming reality on the battlefield, changing not just how wars are fought, but also the politics, economics, laws, and ethics that surround war itself

P. W. Singer’s previous two books foretold the rise of private military contractors and the advent of child soldiers— predictions that proved all too accurate. Now, he explores the greatest revolution in military affairs since the atom bomb—the advent of robotic warfare.

We are just beginning to see a massive shift in military technology that threatens to make the stuff of I,Robot and the Terminator all too real. More than seven- thousand robotic systems are now in Iraq. Pilots in Nevada are remotely killing terrorists in Afghanistan. Scientists are debating just how smart—and how lethal—to make their current robotic prototypes. And many of the most renowned science fiction authors are secretly consulting for the Pentagon on the next generation.

Blending historic evidence with interviews from the field, Singer vividly shows that as these technologies multiply, they will have profound effects on the front lines as well as on the politics back home. Moving humans off the battlefield makes wars easier to start, but more complex to fight. Replacing men with machines may save some lives, but will lower the morale and psychological barriers to killing. The “warrior ethos,” which has long defined soldiers’ identity, will erode, as will the laws of war that have governed military conflict for generations.

Paradoxically, these new technologies will also bring war to our doorstep. As other nations and even terrorist organizations start to build or buy their own robotic weapons, the robot revolution could undermine America’s military preeminence. While his analysis is unnerving, there’s an irresistible gee-whiz quality to the innovations Singer uncovers. Wired for War travels from Iraq to see these robots in combat to the latter-day “skunk works” in America’s suburbia, where tomorrow’s technologies of war are quietly being designed. In Singer’s hands, the future of war is as fascinating as it is frightening.

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The Democracy Index: Why Our Election System Is Failing and How to Fix It

The Democracy Index: Why Our Election System Is Failing and How to Fix It Review

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Despite howls for reform, the only thing separating us from another election disaster of the kind that hit Florida in 2000, and that almost struck again in Ohio in 2004, may simply be another close vote. In this lucid and lively book, Heather Gerken diagnoses what is wrong with our elections and proposes a radically new and simple solution: a Democracy Index that would rate the performance of state and local election systems. A rough equivalent to the U.S. News and World Report ranking of colleges and universities, the Index would focus on problems that matter to all voters: How long does it take to vote? How many ballots get discarded? How often do voting machines break down? And it should work for a simple reason: no one wants to be at the bottom of the list.

For a process that is supposed to be all about counting, U.S. elections yield few reliable numbers about anything--least of all how well the voting system is managed. The Democracy Index would change this with a blueprint for quantifying election performance and reform results, replacing anecdotes and rhetoric with hard data and verifiable outcomes. A fresh vision of reform, this book shows how to drive improvements by creating incentives for politicians, parties, and election officials to join the cause of change and to come up with creative solutions--all without Congress issuing a single regulation.

In clear and energetic terms, The Democracy Index explains how to realize the full potential of the Index while avoiding potential pitfalls. Election reform will never be the same again.

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Valuation and Dealmaking of Technology-Based Intellectual Property: Principles, Methods and Tools

Valuation and Dealmaking of Technology-Based Intellectual Property: Principles, Methods and Tools Review

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This indispensable tool provides readers with complete coverage of the issues, methods, and art of valuing and pricing of early-stage technologies including backgrounds in the core concepts, sources of value, methods of valuation, equity realizations, and negotiation strategies.

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Behavioural Investing: A Practitioners Guide to Applying Behavioural Finance (The Wiley Finance Series)

Behavioural Investing: A Practitioners Guide to Applying Behavioural Finance (The Wiley Finance Series) Review

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Behavioural Investing: A Practitioners Guide to Applying Behavioural Finance (The Wiley Finance Series) Feature

Behavioural investing seeks to bridge the gap between psychology and investing. All too many investors are unaware of the mental pitfalls that await them. Even once we are aware of our biases, we must recognise that knowledge does not equal behaviour. The solution lies is designing and adopting an investment process that is at least partially robust to behavioural decision-making errors.

Behavioural Investing: A Practitioner’s Guide to Applying Behavioural Finance explores the biases we face, the way in which they show up in the investment process, and urges readers to adopt an empirically based sceptical approach to investing. This book is unique in combining insights from the field of applied psychology with a through understanding of the investment problem. The content is practitioner focused throughout and will be essential reading for any investment professional looking to improve their investing behaviour to maximise returns. Key features include: 

• The only book to cover the applications of behavioural finance
• An executive summary for every chapter with key points highlighted at the chapter start
• Information on the key behavioural biases of professional investors, including The seven sins of fund management, Investment myth busting, and The Tao of investing
• Practical examples showing how using a psychologically inspired model can improve on standard, common practice valuation tools
• Written by an internationally renowned expert in the field of behavioural finance

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Get There Early: Sensing the Future to Compete in the Present

Get There Early: Sensing the Future to Compete in the Present Review

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Nobody can predict the future, but you still have to make sense of it to be successful. Leaders are facing a world of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity--a world laced with dilemmas. "Get There Early" shows how to sense the future to provoke new ways of understanding the present. Institute for the Future's Distinguished Fellow Bob Johansen uses 35 years of 10-year forecasting to unpack complex dilemmas and help leaders seed innovation and strategy. "Get There Early" helps leaders resolve the constant tension between judging too soon (the classic mistake of the problem solver) and deciding too late (the classic mistake of the academic).

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WIKIBRANDS: Reinventing Your Company in a Customer-Driven Marketplace

WIKIBRANDS: Reinventing Your Company in a Customer-Driven Marketplace Review

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REINVENTING YOUR COMPANY IN A CUSTOMER-DRIVEN MARKETPLACE

FOREWORD BY DON TAPSCOTT, Bestselling author of Wikinomics

"A must-read for business leaders, managers, and just about anyone who wants to recognize and tap into the incredible creative energy of customers and stakeholders." -- Richard Florida, bestselling author of The Rise of the Creative Class

"Marketers should follow the course laid out by Sean Moffitt and Mike Dover, which leads us into a new brand future of pull, not push, and of conversation, not control." -- B. Josep h Pine II, bestselling author, The Experience Economy

"Thoughtful, innovative, and most of all practical. If your organization wants to deploy technology to build better client relationships, Wikibrands will show you how." -- Keith Ferrazzi, bestselling author, Never Eat Alone

"Your brand can share control to create value. With the changing role of consumers, every brand is a lie, not a promise. But Wikibrands offers marketers a rich understanding of how social media can drive engagement for brands that make them true." -- Ross Mayfield , Chairman, President, and co-founder, Socialtext

"A must-read for the hungry marketer!” -- Julie Roehm, Backslash Meta, LLC

"The path forward presented in Wikibrands is brightly illuminated, helping change the landscape in an area ready for consumer-driven, open innovation." -- David Smith, Global Managing Director, Accenture, and Co-Author of Workforce of One : Revolutionizing Talent Management Through Customization

“"A behind-the-curtain look at how you should be engaging your customer directly in the branding process. Ignore this important book at your own peril." -- Saul Kaplan, Founder and Chief Catalyst, Business Innovation Factory

What is a Wikibrand?

It's the next generation of business building that taps into the true power of social networks, brand connections, and customer participation to build real value. It's a status update on Facebook, a rave on Twitter, a review on YouTube, and so much more. It's the herald of a new golden age in customer freedom and individualized customer service.

It's the future of business--and this book is your wake-up call, strategy guide, and road map to what's ahead.

In Wikibrands, acclaimed media marketing experts Sean Moffitt and Mike Dover show you how to take advantage of the exciting new models of business and technologies--and enthusiastic online communities--one click at a time.

Built on continuing research from Don Tapscott's trailblazing $10 million research project, which formed the basis of bestselling books such as Wikinomics and Grown Up Digital, this book delivers hundreds of the best examples from today's most successful businesses. You'll learn how to:

• ENGAGE THE CUSTOMER through social influence, word of mouth, and user-generated content
• CREATE AN EXPERIENCE affected by customer-driven ratings, reviews, and online culture
• BUILD A COMMUNITY through microblogging, prosumerism, and crowdsourcing
• MAKE A CONNECTION that is truly authentic, collaborative, and value enhancing

Whether you work with an established business and are looking to make it relevant to today's "wikiconsumers" or are launching a start-up from scratch, Wikibrands offers countless creative ideas for defining and reaching out to your target audience.

You'll find refreshing new ways and a FLIRT model to help you open up an honest dialogue with your customers, attract a ready-made fan base through shared interests, and even work with other businesses toward a mutually rewarding goal. These are the latest tricks of the trade, used by hot brand names such as Mozilla Firefox, lululemon, and Zappos; industry giants Starbucks, Dell, and Harley-Davidson; and other less well-known organizations.

This is how you turn merely buzzworthy brands into full-fledged wikibrands. Sean Moffitt is President of Agent Wildfire Strategy & Communications, a leading social influence, word-of-mouth, and customer engagement firm. An internationally known speaker and Web expert, he has reinvented brands as a client and partner for Molson, Guinness, Procter & Gamble, and numerous Fortune 500 companies and start-ups. Mike Dover is Managing Partner of Socialstruct Advisory Group. As Vice President, Research Operations, for New Paradigm (formerly nGenera Insight), he oversaw the research programs for the bestselling books Wikinomics and Grown Up Digital. He also has provided review support for more than a dozen other books. Continue the reinvention of your business at wiki -brands .com

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Persuasive Advertising: Evidence-based Principles Review

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Persuasive Advertising: Evidence-based Principles Feature

This book translates knowledge about persuasion into evidence-based principles. Useful knowledge about persuasion has been obtained over the last 100 years from the experience of advertising experts and from empirical studies in advertising and other fields including psychology, consumer behavior, law, mass communication, politics, and propaganda.

The principles in Persuasive Advertising provide understandable and easy-to-access guidance for all types of advertising. Including still media such as print and Internet, and motion media such as TV, streaming video, Internet, and radio. They also apply to other types of persuasive communications such as management reports, speeches, and press releases.

Wharton School Professor J. Scott Armstrong spent over 16 years on this book. In recent years, he was assisted by Gerry Lukeman, Chairman Emeritus of Ipsos-ASI and Sandeep Patnaik, Research Director at Gallup and Robinson. Altogether, more than 80 people contributed to Persuasive Advertising by obtaining relevant studies, analyzing data, editing and reviewing, and surveying researchers to ensure that the book correctly summarizes their findings.

Persuasive Advertising summarizes findings from about 3,000 empirical studies and 50 books. It also presents new findings from previously unpublished studies. .

Along with the AdPrin Audit software on AdPrin.com, Persuasive Advertising enables advertisers as well as agencies to quickly and inexpensively identify ways to improve ads - or to determine which of a set of ads will be most effective. For example, it typically requires about an hour for an experienced user to obtain a persuasiveness index for a print ad along with a list of ways to improve the ad.,

By using these principles, advertisers can improve their creativity and effectiveness.

This book is supported by the AdPrin.com site: http://advertisingprinciples.com/

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More More Than You Know: Finding Financial Wisdom in Unconventional Places (Updated and Expanded) (Columbia Business School Publishing)

More More Than You Know: Finding Financial Wisdom in Unconventional Places (Updated and Expanded) (Columbia Business School Publishing) Review

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More More Than You Know: Finding Financial Wisdom in Unconventional Places (Updated and Expanded) (Columbia Business School Publishing) Feature

Since its first publication, Michael J. Mauboussin's popular guide to wise investing has been translated into eight languages and has been named best business book by BusinessWeek and best economics book by Strategy+Business. Now updated to reflect current research and expanded to include new chapters on investment philosophy, psychology, and strategy and science as they pertain to money management, this volume is more than ever the best chance to know more than the average investor.

Offering invaluable tools to better understand the concepts of choice and risk, More Than You Know is a unique blend of practical advice and sound theory, sampling from a wide variety of sources and disciplines. Mauboussin builds on the ideas of visionaries, including Warren Buffett and E. O. Wilson, but also finds wisdom in a broad and deep range of fields, such as casino gambling, horse racing, psychology, and evolutionary biology. He analyzes the strategies of poker experts David Sklansky and Puggy Pearson and pinpoints parallels between mate selection in guppies and stock market booms. For this edition, Mauboussin includes fresh thoughts on human cognition, management assessment, game theory, the role of intuition, and the mechanisms driving the market's mood swings, and explains what these topics tell us about smart investing.

More Than You Know is written with the professional investor in mind but extends far beyond the world of economics and finance. Mauboussin groups his essays into four parts-Investment Philosophy, Psychology of Investing, Innovation and Competitive Strategy, and Science and Complexity Theory-and he includes substantial references for further reading. A true eye-opener, More Than You Know shows how a multidisciplinary approach that pays close attention to process and the psychology of decision making offers the best chance for long-term financial results.

(1/05/08)

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The Baseball Uncyclopedia: A Highly Opinionated, Myth-Busting Guide to the Great American Game

The Baseball Uncyclopedia: A Highly Opinionated, Myth-Busting Guide to the Great American Game Review

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Michael Kun — Pulitzer Prize-nominated author — and Howard Bloom — former newspaper reporter and columnist — explain that, contrary to popular belief, a walk is not always as good as a hit. They argue that it’s not always wrong to root against the home team. They contend that the Houston Astros’ jerseys were not the ugliest jerseys ever worn in the major leagues. They rail against the common misconception that Tinkers-to-Evers-to-Chance was a great double play combination. They insist that Shoeless Joe Jackson did not bat right-handed, he did not go barefoot, and he did not refuse to accept money to throw the World Series. They heap scorn upon those who believe Joe DiMaggio was ever “The Greatest Living Baseball Player.” And they offer a sound rebuke to anyone who thinks a baseball book can’t be smart, funny and informative all at the same time.

The Baseball Uncyclopedia is a witty and irreverent guide that debunks some of the mythology, opinions and widely held beliefs about baseball that fans have clung to for generations.

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