Books in the SpringerBriefs in Business series

This book provides a rare historical analysis on the development and importance of marketing channels to Supply Chain Management (SCM) in Northern America. A general overview of developments in marketing channels will help the reader understand what changes occurred and how some of these changes impacted marketing education and practice.

In the area of S&T, the EU and U.S. concluded an S&T Cooperation Agreement in 1998, renewed it in 2004, and extended it for another five years in July 2009.

Its conceptual and operational structure is described in the first part, together with a practically oriented definition of strategy, and a brief discussion of the logic and benefits of the judgmental modeling approach to decision making.

In a comprehensive review of recent literature, they define key terms and concepts, arguing that a good, effective and sustainable governance of higher education is not possible unless the epistemic structure and knowledge paradigms of higher education are addressed directly.

Combining best practices, empirical studies and the authors' own research on technology transfer offices (TTOs), technology transfer, ecosystems and scientists in the principal investigator role, this book presents a business model framework for TTOs.

With this Springer Brief, business professionals get a quick and useful overview of the leading networks such as the German Asia-Pacific Business Association, the German-Chinese Business Association, and the Asian Social Business Community.

This book attempts to address, explore, and conceptualize the epistemological paradigms of SMS as an alternative marketing channel or in combination with other existing traditional channels.

This book introduces readers to co-creation --- a complex, value-based, context-driven and collaborative effort to develop new paradigms, products and services to satisfy human wants.

Furthermore, it proposes a comprehensive and operational framework for the assessment of the financial feasibility of strategy, through the measurement of the impact of the planned strategic moves on financial needs and the evaluation of their financial sustainability.

This book seeks to answer ¿why, when and how are real options used in strategic technology venturing?¿ This work tests for the role of real options in decision making involving three types of firms in decreasing order of technology-dependence ¿ technology-driven (TD) (where the profit is fully dependent on new technology creation and leveraging), technology-based (TB) (where the profit is enabled and supported by technology) and technology-neutral (TN) (where the profit is almost independent of technology). It also deals with strategic and non-strategic types of decisions driven by real options.This analysis shows that an environment presenting co-opetitive (simultaneous competition and collaboration) conditions triggers the use of real options (why), that serve to transform the position, posture and propensity of businesses to innovate and thus they co-evolve (when) into more effective and efficient forms of businesses (co-specialization) (how). The  authors demonstrate that embracing risk and uncertainty can increase levels and probability of new venture formation. However, their simulation also shows that it should be adapted to the risk profile of the firm and that timing is also a factor to be considered.  Although engaging the concepts of real options, this analysis does not focus on a specific investment valuation methodology, but highlights the relationship between knowledge and risk and rather addresses the management of mindsets, as moving towards a systematic conceptualization of real options represents a different paradigm in decision making.

This book is mainly about an innovative and fundamental method called "intelligent knowledge" to bridge the gap between data mining and knowledge management, two important fields recognized by the information technology (IT) community and business analytics (BA) community respectively.

This book explores the diversity of Social Impact Assessment (SIA) models and outlines a self-assessment on models to support social entrepreneurs. The chapters trace the concept and origins of social entrepreneurship and elicits current implementation of SIA models by social enterprises.

¿¿The trend is your friend¿is a practical principle often used by business managers, who seek to forecast future sales, expenditures, and profitability in order to make production and other operational decisions.  The problem is how best to identify and discover business trends and utilize trend information for attaining objectives of firms.This book contains an Excel-based solution to this problem, applying principles of the authors¿ ¿profit system model¿ of the firm that enables forecasts of trends in sales, expenditures, profits and other business variables.  The program, called FIRM, which runs on Windows with Microsoft Excel 2010, useshistorical time series of total sales, total costs, and total assets of the firm from its financial statements (income statements and balance sheets), estimates relationships among these variables, and then employs the estimated relationships to forecasts trends in these vital business variables.  Featuring step-by-step case examples, the goalis to equip business managers and students with easy-to-use tools for understanding and forecasting trends in important business variables, thereby empowering them to make better business decisions.

This book focuses on the notion of "vintage innovation" and its application in various old technology-based communities of practice. Some communities of practice resist and react to technological change by adopting new technological products ("vintage products") that extend the lifetime of their old, favored products and practices.

Do we really know the critical phenomena that are linked to how enterprises function and the dynamics of their relationships with customers, suppliers and competitors?

This book offers critical reviews of value-based measures: Economic Value Added (EVA), Cash Flow Return on Investment (CFROI), Shareholder Value Added (SVA), Economic Margin (EM) and Cash Value Added (CVA). Helps the reader choose and use the best technique.

This book shows how companies can implement social innovation and presents new social business models that can be used to target low-income markets. It presents key factors related to the social product innovation process and corresponding communication.

Competition law regulates anti-competitive conduct by companies in order to maintain market competition. It provides a new interdisciplinary approach to the topic that emphasizes the empirically observable marketing perspective, but draws conclusions from competition theory.

How to effectively design and deliver virtual advisory services can be a mystery to many public and private organisations. Based on a thorough analysis of abundant typical applications in various business and government sectors, this book discusses the current status and future trends of virtual advisory services in digital environments.

China's trade surplus is an essential question, but there are many popular misconceptions about it, a fact that prompted the creation of this book, On China's Trade Surplus. It will help readers to understand the manner in which China's foreign trade and China's role in global trade have developed, and to how to benefit from trade with China.

The authors utilize social network analysis to determine how entrepreneurs in emerging economies identify their most beneficial social contacts and use those contacts to leverage the resources needed for their enterprises, revealing new insights on the process of business creation and economic development in the networked age.

The valuation of Heritage Assets (HA), which are a vital resource for the non-profit public or private organizations operating in the heritage sector is on the one hand sometimes difficult to do, and on the other, can be excessively costly with respect to the correlated disclosure benefits.

The CSR report has become a very important tool which can help corporations to set up strategies and build their core competencies. By analyzing the management framework and formulation process of the CSR report, this book provides businesses with guiding principles for preparing the CSR report.

This book explores the way in which QR codes (Quick Response codes) can help the wine industry facilitate distribution and more effectively market and sell their product. It then goes on to examine how to integrate QR codes with wine media, including marketing the bottle and using QR codes to build new wine regions.

The authors present a sustainable social accounting approach that considers both the social and economic value - Blended Value - generated by an organization for all of its stakeholders.