Talent Force: A New Manifesto for the Human Side of Business

Talent Force: A New Manifesto for the Human Side of Business Review

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Only one thing really differentiates your business from your competitor: your people. Do you have the right talent in the right place at the right time? It's no longer enough to have a 'workforce': you need a high-impact Talent Force.  The authors first identify the massive social, cultural, and economic shifts that are transforming hiring as we know it.  We are a smaller, closer, and more competitive world, as Baby Boomers are retiring in the US, India is flourishing due to outsourcing and educational development, and China is a strong new economic force. Add to that the fact that today's best people have radically new expectations and approaches to work; this book reveals what they want and how to meet those needs while building your business. Learn how to develop and implement a worldclass talent plan that aligns with business objectives, and define metrics to track and optimize success. Discover how candidates are using technology to evaluate new opportunities, benchmark compensation, and create new back-channels of communication about worklife. Maximize these new technologies to grow Talent Force, tap into new sources of competitive intelligence and stay ahead of the pack.

 

Foreword  xi

Acknowledgments  xiii

About the Authors  xv

Preface  xvii

Introduction  xix

 

Chapter 1:  The Quality Talent Imperative  1

Chapter 2:  Talent Market Demands  11

Chapter 3:  Building a Competitive Talent Organization  35

Chapter 4:  The Cultural Obsession of Work  59

Chapter 5:  Building a Talent Community  77

Chapter 6:  Tangible Talent Measurement  93

Chapter 7:  Talent Goes on Offense  115

Chapter 8:  Relationship Recruiting (Still) Rules  133

Chapter 9:  Talent Forces of Tomorrow  151

 

Index  163

 

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Starstruck: The Business of Celebrity Review

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Starstruck: The Business of Celebrity Feature

How was Nike able to take a gamble on an unknown Michael Jordan and transform itself from a $900 million company to a $9.19 billion company in less than fifteen years? Why did the artist Jeff Koons’s Balloon Flower (Magenta) sell for a record $25.7 million in 2008? What does the high school football star have in common with the Hollywood headliner? And why should an actor never, ever go to Las Vegas?

Celebrity—our collective fascination with particular people—is everywhere and takes many forms, from the sports star, notorious Wall Street tycoon, or film icon, to the hometown quarterback, YouTube sensation, or friend who compulsively documents his life on the Internet. We follow with rapt attention all the minute details of stars’ lives: their romances, their spending habits, even how they drink their coffee. For those anointed, celebrity can translate into big business and top social status, but why do some attain stardom while millions of others do not? Why are we simply more interested in certain people?

In Starstruck, Elizabeth Currid-Halkett presents the first rigorous exploration of celebrity, arguing that our desire to “celebrate” some people and not others has profound implications, elevating social statuses, making or breaking careers and companies, and generating astronomical dividends. Tracing the phenomenon from the art world to tabletop gaming conventions to the film industry, Currid-Halkett looks at celebrity as an expression of economics, geography (both real and virtual), and networking strategies.

Starstruck brings together extensive statistical research and analysis, along with interviews with top agents and publicists, YouTube executives, major art dealers and gallery directors, Bollywood players, and sports experts. Laying out the enormous impact of the celebrity industry and identifying the patterns by which individuals become stars, Currid-Halkett successfully makes the argument that celebrity is an important social phenomenon and a driving force in the worldwide economy.   

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Baseball, Inc.: The National Pastime As Big Business

Baseball, Inc.: The National Pastime As Big Business Review

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During the second half of the twentieth century, Major League Baseball and its affiliated minor leagues evolved from local and regional entities governing the play of America’s favorite pastime to national business organizations. The relocation of teams, league expansion, the advent of free agency and an influx of international players has made baseball big business, on an increasingly global scale. Focusing on the last fifty years, this work examines the past and present commercial elements of organized baseball, emphasizing the dual roles—competitive sport and profitable business—which the sport must now fulfill. Twenty-five essays cover five areas integral to the economic side of baseball: business and finance, human resources, international relations, management and leadership and sports marketing. Detailed discussions of the redistribution of revenues, the history of player unionization, aggressive global marketing, strategies of franchise owners and an evaluation of fan costs, among other topics introduce the reader to the important issues and specific challenges professional baseball faces in an increasingly crowded—yet geographically expansive—sports marketplace. The work is also indexed.

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Bigger Isn't Always Better: The New Mindset for Real Business Growth

Bigger Isn't Always Better: The New Mindset for Real Business Growth Review

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Bigger Isn't Always Better: The New Mindset for Real Business Growth Feature

Genuine business growth has more to do with reaching maximum potential than reaching maximum size. "Bigger Isn't Always Better", based on ten years of research and dozens of personal interviews by the author, examines how the key to achieving growth is to change the way we think about it. The book combines real-life stories of successful growth leaders with insightful analysis to show readers how they can move their own organisations forward.

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Creative Strategy: Reconnecting Business and Innovation

Creative Strategy: Reconnecting Business and Innovation Review

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People tend to think of creativity and strategy as opposites. This book argues that they are far more similar than we might expect. More than this, actively aligning creative and strategic thinking in any enterprise can enable more effective innovation, entrepreneurship, leadership and organizing for the future.

By considering strategy as a creative process (and vice versa), the authors define ‘creative strategy’ as a mindset which switches between opposing processes and characteristics, and which drives every aspect of the business. The authors draw experiences and cases from across this false divide – from the music industry, sports, fashion, Shakespearean theatre companies, creative and media organizations and dance, as well as what we might regard as more mundane providers of mainstream products and services – to uncover the creative connections behind successful strategy.

“Creative Strategy is a talisman for those looking to take a new path”

Matt Hardisty, Strategy Director, Mother Advertising

“It has been said that business is a hybrid of dancing and calculation – the former incorporating the creative within a firm, the latter the strategic. Bilton and Cummings show how these apparently contradictory processes can be integrated. Their insights about how firms can ‘create to strategize’ and ‘strategize to create’ are informative for managers and management scholars alike.”

Jay Barney, Professor and Chase Chair of Strategic Management, Fisher College of Business, The Ohio State University

“In today’s world, new thinking – creativity – is required to tackle long-standing problems or address new opportunities. The trouble is few organizations understand how to foster and apply creativity, at least in any consistent manner. This book provides new insights into just how that can be done.  It moves creativity from being just the occasional, and fortuitous, flash of inspiration, to being an embedded feature of the way the organization is run.”

Sir George Cox, Author of the Cox Review of Creativity in Business for HM Govt., Past Chair of the Design Council

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Shockproof: How to Hardwire Your Business for Lasting Success

Shockproof: How to Hardwire Your Business for Lasting Success Review

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Shockproof: How to Hardwire Your Business for Lasting Success Feature

Reinvent your company to deliver sustained profitable growth.

As performance lags in the midst of economic cycles, many companies turn to magic bullets such as EVA, Kaizen, or Six Sigma. Unfortunately, these initiatives-along with how they're implemented-often deliver only short-term positive impact or cause more pain than the preexisting condition.

Returning to competitive health and profitability in the face of economic downturns requires a dynamic realignment of business strategies, organizational design, and talent management. Based on timely research conducted by Axiom Consulting Partners, Shockproof empowers and enables business leaders, owners and managers to make and maintain the necessary connection between strategies and organization to achieve sustainable performance.

• Create an agile business that can rapidly reinvent itself as business conditions change

  
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Business Intelligence

Business Intelligence Review

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Business Intelligence Feature

Business professionals who want to advance their careers need to have a strong understanding of how to utilize business intelligence. This new book provides a comprehensive introduction to the basic business and technical concepts they’ll need to know. It integrates case studies that demonstrate how to apply the material. Business professionals will also find suggested further readings that will develop their knowledge and help them succeed.

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Decision Support Systems for Business Intelligence

Decision Support Systems for Business Intelligence Review

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Praise for the First Edition

"This is the most usable decision support systems text ¿ [i]t is far better than any other text in the field¿" —Computing Reviews

Computer-based systems known as decision support systems (DSS) play a vital role in helping professionals across various fields of practice understand what information is needed, when it is needed, and in what form in order to make smart and valuable business decisions. Providing a unique combination of theory, applications, and technology, Decision Support Systems for Business Intelligence, Second Edition supplies readers with the hands-on approach that is needed to understand the implications of theory to DSS design as well as the skills needed to construct a DSS.

This new edition reflects numerous advances in the field as well as the latest related technological developments. By addressing all topics on three levels—general theory, implications for DSS design, and code development—the author presents an integrated analysis of what every DSS designer needs to know. This Second Edition features:

• Expanded coverage of data mining with new examples

• Newly added discussion of business intelligence and transnational corporations

• Discussion of the increased capabilities of databases and the significant growth of user interfaces and models

• Emphasis on analytics to encourage DSS builders to utilize sufficient modeling support in their systems

• A thoroughly updated section on data warehousing including architecture, data adjustment, and data scrubbing

• Explanations and implications of DSS differences across cultures and the challenges associated with transnational systems

Each chapter discusses various aspects of DSS that exist in real-world applications, and one main example of a DSS to facilitate car purchases is used throughout the entire book. Screenshots from JavaScript® and Adobe® ColdFusion are presented to demonstrate the use of popular software packages that carry out the discussed techniques, and a related Web site houses all of the book's figures along with demo versions of decision support packages, additional examples, and links to developments in the field.

Decision Support Systems for Business Intelligence, Second Edition is an excellent book for courses on information systems, decision support systems, and data mining at the advanced undergraduate and graduate levels. It also serves as a practical reference for professionals working in the fields of business, statistics, engineering, and computer technology.

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The Bottom Line: Observations and Arguments on the Sports Business

The Bottom Line: Observations and Arguments on the Sports Business Review

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The Bottom Line: Observations and Arguments on the Sports Business Feature

Collected here, for the first time, are more than 100 essays written between 1998 and 2006 on the sports industry by one of the nation's leading sports economists. Provocative, fact-filled, and tightly argued, these essays are essential reading for every sports fan. They delve into some of the most important sports business issues of the last fifteen years, including the financing of new stadiums, the financial value of professional teams, revenue sharing programs, the flaws in "competitive balance" plans, walkouts and lockouts, the cost of college sports programs, and the fallout from Congressional hearings on steroid use by professional athletes. Andrew Zimbalist writes with well-earned authority, and impressive ease, about the principal sports in the U.S.-major league baseball, basketball, hockey, and the NCAA. Along with being an unmatched "numbers guy," Zimbalist is clearly a sports fan himself. Even casual readers will find that their "sports I.Q." skyrockets after reading these perceptive, insightful essays.

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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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