Books in the Management for Professionals series

This book presents the theory of integrating implification and it provides a profound evidence based study of Buurtzorg Nederland. The book demonstrates theory building by using the Grounded Theory Methodology as a way to contribute to management theory.

This book is a "scientific" introduction to management consulting that covers elementary and more advanced concepts, such as strategy and client-relationship.

This book is the first to present a rich selection of over 30 real-world cases of how leading organizations conduct Business Process Management (BPM). All cases are presented using a uniform structure in order to provide valuable insights and essential guidance for students and practitioners.

This book presents a new management model that has evolved in Silicon Valley. This book imbibes latest results from a year-long study of Google's approaches to management, and finds similar principles being applied at companies including, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Tesla Motors, and Apigee.

Changes in the environment such as trends, drivers, and influencing factors affect entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship in several ways. The changes of the environmental factors in several dimensions such as political, economic, socio-cultural, technological, ecological, and legal. On the one hand, the environmental changes include risk for existing business models. On the other hand, they include opportunities for new business models, entrepreneurship, intrapreneurship, and new insights in marketing.This book provides empirical and conceptual papers and studies that tackle the challenges and opportunities for entrepreneurship in the digital era. It offers professionals, managers, researchers, lecturers, and students from the fields of entrepreneurship, innovation management, and business development valuable insight into the topic of entrepreneurship in times of digitalization.

Discover a transformative book that equips aspiring 'researcher entrepreneurs' with invaluable strategies to avoid common start-up mistakes. Unveiling a fresh perspective, it emphasizes that technological researchers already possess critical entrepreneurial traits, merely needing the right approach to succeed. From preparing and setting up a tech start-up to illuminating best practices, this book sets you on the path to triumphant technological entrepreneurship.This essential guide tackles the paradox of start-up failures, even after a very promising start, providing insights into how to overcome internal and external problems and obstacles and secure a thriving future. Tailored for researchers aiming to commercialize their technology by setting up a start-up and for technology transfer strategists supporting academic commercialization, the book ensures clarity by avoiding jargon and employing real-life case studies and exercises. Decision-assisting activities such as a "Commercialization Readiness Index (CRI)" and a "Market-prioritization Decision Matrix" offer valuable tools to help a researcher become a successful entrepreneur.Whether you're a seasoned researcher or an aspiring entrepreneur, this book will empower you to harness your potential, turning visionary ideas into flourishing businesses. Embrace the entrepreneurial journey and embark on a transformational ride towards success in the dynamic world of technological entrepreneurship.

This is the first of its kind book that describes key elements of enterprise data and analytics strategy, and prescribes a pragmatic approach to define the strategy for large enterprises. The book is based on successful digital transformation experience of multiple Fortune 500 and other large enterprises. It is estimated that more than 50% of data and analytics initiatives fail globally because of the inherent complexity of such initiatives. Some of the questions that enterprises struggle with are: How to define enterprise data and analytics strategy? What are the key elements that should be considered while doing so? Why one-size-fits-all approach does not work for all enterprises? How to align data and analytics initiative with the business strategy of the CEO? How to establish a futuristic technology and architecture foundation, given the exponential rate of innovation in data and analytics technologies? How to define the right data and analytics organization model? Why data and analytics organization and processes need to be different from other functions? How to manage organizational change to ensure success of data and analytics initiative? How to define a business value measurement framework and calculate ROI from data and analytics initiative? What are the key skills required in a data and analytics leader to wade through political and other challenges of a large enterprise? This book will help executives, chief digital/analytics officers, data and analytics professionals, and consultants, in answering the above questions. It will help them in addressing various dilemmas that they face every day and making their enterprises data-driven.

This book provides retail managers with a practical guide to using data. It covers three topics that are key areas of innovation for retailers: Algorithmic Marketing, Logistics, and Pricing. Use cases from these areas are presented and discussed in a conceptual and comprehensive manner. Retail managers will learn how data analysis can be used to optimize pricing, customer loyalty and logistics without complex algorithms.The goal of the book is to help managers ask the right questions during a project, which will put them on the path to making the right decisions. It is thus aimed at practitioners who want to use advanced techniques to optimize their retail organization.

This book coaches marketing practitioners and students how to best satisfy the needs of the older consumer population. It first highlights the heterogeneity of the older consumer market, then examines the specific needs of the older consumer. Lastly, the book highlights the most effective ways of reaching and serving older consumer segments for different products and services such as financial services, food and beverages, healthcare and pharmaceuticals, and travel among others. It presents segment-to-industry specific strategies that help marketers develop more refined and targeted micro-marketing strategies and customer relationship management (CRM) systems for building and retaining a large base of older customers. These strategies also help demonstrate how companies can make decisions that increase profitability not only by satisfying consumer needs and wants, but also by creating positive change and improvement in consumer well-being. 

This book examines users¿ digital content contribution and consumption behavior from a social perspective. Digital content is everywhere¿from search results on search engines to posts on social media. Incentivizing users to contribute abundant content and motivating users to engage in and pay for digital content are vital for online platforms, especially those relying on digital content generated by users. This book develops a theoretical framework to incorporate social influence, including social presence, social interaction, social comparison, social loafing, and social relationships, in users¿ digital content contribution and consumption decisions. Further, using a large volume of data from online platforms, the author empirically studies the role of social interaction in digital content provision and monetization from the supply side. Also, regarding the digital content demand side, this book explores how to boost content consumption via social motives and social norms. The bookenriches the understanding of social influence in digital content contribution and consumption and provides practical suggestions for digital platforms¿ mechanism design.

The increasing interconnection and the unlimited exchange of data and information has led to a maximized transparency of globally offered and sold products and services. The desires, needs and wants of the consumer are the critical issues today in creating new or offering existing products and services. This book outlines successful marketing and sales strategies with a clear focus on practical relevance. It provides a systematic overview and description of selling, pricing and negotiation concepts which enable the reader to apply the best-case scenario in their company. Tools such as the marketing mix or marketing strategies are well explained for practical application in industry. The book also integrates elements of change, lean and innovation management as drivers for performance excellence. Featuring industry case studies, this book is a practical guide for marketing professionals, academics and policy makers to enable enterprises to achieve long-term competitive advantages through best-in-class marketing, sales and pricing activities.

This book is an exploration of the people analytics possibility, bringing out both theoretical frameworks and detailed practical case studies from the author's experience in industry and business across both sides of the table, with an understanding of data science models and SMAC (Social, Mobile & Cloud) technologies underpinning it. It further explores and lays out a business case for why organizations need to invest behind this space and why HR functions and businesses need to embrace and adopt it. The book examines how people analytics makes a difference to business, describes stages of adoption and maturity models for its effective deployment in organizations and explores the journey from employee master data management and conversion to reporting and visualizations to dash-boarding and descriptive analytics, operational analytics to finally predictive modelling.  The book provides insights on the impact of big data and social networks on HR and talent frameworks and the opportunity for HR to mine these networks with a view to culling out predictive insights for the business. It also describes in great detail the specific applications of people and talent analytics through case examples. The book discusses and makes the case for HR to be metric driven focused on business outcomes. It enumerates upon "e;lead"e; and "e;lag"e; indicators and the need to leverage relevant measurement systems. It provides an understanding of relevant statistical tools that could be deployed to mine key insights from the data to enable robust decision-making, and examines the power of "e;visual intelligence"e; and data representation that goes beyond traditional tools like Excel.This book is for HR practitioners who seek to challenge the status quo. It does so by helping them leverage a data and evidence based approach; asking the right questions and building new capabilities with a view towards leading change and driving transformation both in their domain, the wider business and the larger organization. The book is also useful for HRM students to gain a deep understanding of "e;people analytics"e; as a critical sub-domain within HR. "e;HR is not just about people but now also about Tech, Data and Analytics. Upgrading numerical/analytics skills in order to have greater impact on the business, is the new wave of HR, which Rahul helps address via his own rich experience."e;-       Gurprriet Siingh, Managing Director, Russell Reynolds Associates, Mumbai, India. "e;This book would help HR & Leadership Teams find a way of discarding perceptions and uncovering truth by embracing data patterns as opposed to just continuing with incremental changes to how it has always been. This is particularly so of successful organizations."e;-       Vikas Gupta, Divisional Chief Executive Officer, Education and Stationery Products Business, ITC Limited, Gurugram, India.

This book provides a holistic and practical approach to Japanese concepts of lean management throughout the business value chain. It explains principles like Kaizen, Kata or Keiretsu in a pragmatic and logical way with many industry examples and case studies. The authors describe comprehensively how lean management enables companies to concentrate on value-adding activities and processes to achieve a long-term, sustainable competitive advantage. Moreover, the book shows how lean management principles are ultimately applied in industries like aviation, civil engineering, automotive, healthcare, education and other industries.

This book explores how cultural and social influences affect consumer decision making with a focus on uncertainty avoidance, rituals, and external threats. Indeed, uncertainty avoidance can exert significant influence on consumer behavior. For example, consumers in a culture with high uncertainty avoidance may show less positive attitudes towards new products than those in a culture with low uncertainty avoidance. Prior cultural research has mainly focused on how individualism/collectivism or power distance belief influences consumer attitudes and behaviors at an individual level, while seldom does research investigate the effect of uncertainty avoidance on consumption. This book examines how uncertainty avoidance affects superstitious consumption as well as its underlying mechanism and boundary condition. Rituals, as a component of culture, can affect consumer behaviors. However, few studies have shedded light on how repeating rituals can affect consumers¿ willingness to use the products involved in the ritual. Consumer behavior is complex. Consumers are surrounded with various external threats such as health, economic, and informational threats, while prior research has primarily focused on health threats. Beyond this, inter-client conflicts, as a special type of social threat, can also affect consumption experience. In all, this book aims to examine how uncertainty avoidance, rituals and external threats influence consumer attitudes and behaviors. In this book, new research models would be developed. This book enriches our understanding on how cultural and social influences affect consumer decision making and provides insights for both researchers and practitioners in marketing.

This textbook introduces systems science as an entry point to present a basic introduction to research models and methods in management science (operation research). This textbook selects the classic quantitative models and methods as well as rich cases and detailed examples, which are suitable for students with a certain management and economics knowledge for further study, and helps to develop the abilities of using the basic models in real life.

This book comprehensively assesses the growing importance of project data for project scheduling, risk analysis and control. It discusses the relevance of project data for both researchers and professionals, and illustrates why the collection, processing and use of such data is not as straightforward as most people think. The theme of this book is known in the literature as data-driven project management and includes the discussion of using computer algorithms, human intuition, and project data for managing projects under risk.The book reviews the basic components of data-driven project management by summarizing the current state-of-the-art methodologies, including the latest computer and machine learning algorithms and statistical methodologies, for project risk and control. It highlights the importance of artificial project data for academics, and describes the specific requirements such data must meet. In turn, the book discusses a wide variety of statistical methods available to generate these artificial data and shows how they have helped researchers to develop algorithms and tools to improve decision-making in project management. Moreover, it examines the relevance of project data from a professional standpoint and describes how professionals should collect empirical project data for better decision-making. Finally, the book introduces a new approach to data collection, generation, and analysis for creating project databases, making it relevant for academic researchers and professional project managers alike.

This book aims to provide a systemic viewpoint for enterprise to establish the warranty chain management system. This book includes warranty management practice, reverse logistics, product reliability engineering, data statistics and analysis, industry 4.0 and artificial intelligence, circular supply chain and sustainable design, and other basic theories and case descriptions.  The author has many years' experience in academic and industrial management, and provides a management framework that especially takes into account (1) the implementation aspect - promotion of warranty plan and statistical analysis of data; (2) strategic aspect - digital application and sustainable development, with an overall system building point of view to describe the steps of warranty chain management step by step.  There are rich industry cases in this book which has highly reference value for students, researchers and practitioners. Also this book fits to be used as teaching and training material in engineering management, which builds an overview of the product life cycle management from warranty service till the recovery stage.

This book offers a comprehensive approach to organizational excellence based on the author¿s vast experience in managing excellence at highly innovative and dynamic organizations. It integrates various approaches into a consistent view of achieving excellence in the context of dynamic technological and societal developments. Starting from purpose and mission, it describes stakeholder mapping and analysis, and process and quality management. In turn, it sheds light on how to deal with business dynamics of various types and demonstrates how quantum-mechanical models can help to understand and manage dynamic organizational processes. The book then introduces readers to result measuring and performance management, followed by organizational learning and rewards and recognition. Moreover, it discusses (innovation) ecosystem leverage and organizational culture management as further important capabilities of excellent organizations. Best practices in corporate social responsibility and environmental, social and governance aspects are fully integrated throughout the book, which concludes by explaining how the UN Sustainable Development Goals can be applied to optimize business initiatives. The book is intended as a source of inspiration for managers working under highly dynamic organizational conditions, helping them take their businesses to higher levels. It also provides valuable industrial insights for scholars with an interest in organizational excellence.

Many companies fail to acknowledge and analyze disparities observed among customers and simply put them down to culture or emotion. New neuroendocrinological research proves that people are rational: They just have a different biological perception of the same stimulus. Their preferences, behavior, and decisions are strongly influenced by the hundreds of millions of sensors monitoring their body and brain. People with more taste buds are, for example, sensitive to bitterness and are more likely to drink their coffee with sugar or milk, or to drink tea.This book helps product managers, marketers, and corporate decision-makers understand and predict customers¿ behavior and preferences. It provides the tools to design the right sensory mix (color, shape, depth, taste, smell, texture, and sound) for each product, and fine-tune their positioning and range for every local market. Using cases from different sectors, the author shows that this approach delivers planet and people-friendly innovations which have a higher chance of success in the market.

Professional data management is the foundation for the successful digital transformation of traditional companies. Unfortunately, many companies fail to implement data governance because they do not fully understand the complexity of the challenge (organizational structure, employee empowerment, change management, etc.) and therefore do not include all aspects in the planning and implementation of their data governance. This book explains the driving role that a responsive data organization can play in a company's digital transformation. Using proven process models, the book takes readers from the basics, through planning and implementation, to regular operations and measuring the success of data governance. All the important decision points are highlighted, and the advantages and disadvantages are discussed in order to identify digitization potential, implement it in the company, and develop customized data governance.The book will serve as a useful guide for interested newcomers as well as for experienced managers.

This book examines intellectual property (IP) as an important value driver for start-ups. Businesses of all sizes are inevitably confronted with intellectual property issues at some point, but start-ups and their collaborators face unique challenges and opportunities in IP management. Identifying, generating, and exploiting intellectual property can lead to sustainable competitive advantages and avoidance of risks. Many start-ups sense the complexity of IP management and therefore place their energy elsewhere. However, the clear conclusion to be drawn from this unique collection of contributions is that putting an IP management strategy in place is critical to the successful development of a business. Prof. Dr. Martin A. Bader and Prof. Dr. Sevim Süzerölu-Melchiors have years of experience as consultants, entrepreneurs, business owners, and researchers where they saw firsthand the need for a comprehensive yet practical resource for start-ups and their key stakeholders.This book explores different perspectives in dealing with IP from six different angles: the start-up¿s view, the investor¿s view, the corporation¿s view, the university¿s view, the global IP office¿s view, and the advisor¿s view. Each section consists of chapters written by leading experts from around the globe including Silicon Valley, Canada, Israel, Switzerland, Germany, Finland, France, Australia, Brazil, India, Japan, Singapore, and South Africa. Contributors bring practical experience from a wide range of sectors, such as information and communication technology, software, artificial intelligence, machine learning, cybersecurity, industrial automation, internet of things, life sciences, pharma, crop science, biotech, medtech, mining, sustainability, climate tech, and even quantum technologies. This timely publication serves as a guidebook for entrepreneurs and other key stakeholders in the start-up ecosystem. It empowers founders to develop their own IP management strategyto mitigate risk, create and capture value, and lay the groundwork for sustainable growth. An essential reference for start-ups to achieve business excellence.¿This edited book volume offers valuable insights, bringing together perspectives of key stakeholder groups from a wide variety of innovation ecosystems ¿ an invaluable resource.¿ ¿Carsten Fink, Chief Economist, World Intellectual Property Organization, Geneva¿A timely book for those wanting a clear overview of the issues the different players encounter in the start-up ecosystem. A useful resource indeed. Congratulations to the editors and team.¿¿Audrey Yap, Managing Partner YUSARN AUDREY LLC, Past President LESI, Chairman Singapore Innovation & Productivity Institute, Singapore¿A ¿must read¿ for all innovators in the start-up world. It is truly a fantastic book and one I would recommend being bought and read (in full)!¿¿Laurence Freeman, Professor (Adjunct), CU Denver Business School, Jake Jabs Center for Entrepreneurship, Denver, Colorado, United States