Strategy books

IT Service Management (ITSM) is an imperative part of achieving business maturity. Excellence in ITSM has previously been thought of only in terms of quality, customer satisfaction, and reduced costs – or, in other words, casting ITSM as only for technical units and not as part of the larger picture of business maturity. In this exciting new take on ITSM, leading expert Beverly Weed-Schertzer positions ITSM at the heart of company strategy to build a layered operating model. Delivering ITSM for Business Maturity: A Practical Framework helps business leaders and corporate thinkers navigate their way to a successful and high performing ITSM model. Using an original combination of yoga science and service management principles, Weed-Schertzer offers business professionals a way of taking back control of their ITSM program, and helps with innovation for those starting a new one.   For anyone in the information technologies profession, or for managers of IT professionals, this book is an unmissable guide to creating a strong, forward-thinking foundation for ITSM processes.

Africa is at a critical moment in its economic development. With the recent decline of commodity prices, it has become apparent that many African economies, which are resource-based, have suffered greatly. The economies of Africa cannot be lifted up only through programs of aid. Indigenous high-impact entrepreneurs are needed, as they know how to best inspire, act as role models for other Africans and serve their fellow entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurial ventures in the financial services sector hold special importance because of the role that they play in the entrepreneurship ecosystem. Financial services are an essential element in powering entrepreneurial activity beyond resource extraction, yet in most sub-Saharan African countries, the financial services sector is relatively nascent compared to developed markets. This book highlights how this is beginning to change. With contributions from leading scholars, it provides inspiring success stories of entrepreneurial financial sector ventures that are making a lasting contribution to the economic development of various sub-Saharan African countries as well as helping the reader understand larger macro-trends.

Disruption is back with a vengeance. If ever there was a time to learn how to adapt, grab opportunities and bounce back - it's now. Learn how to keep your business relevant, meet new customer expectations and leverage technology. Bestselling author and business influencer Tom Goodwin is back with this entirely revised new edition of Digital Darwinism. This book guides you through the unrelenting pace of change and uncertainty facing business leaders today. Currently in a hybrid world where digital and real-world experiences collide and are expected to seamlessly blend into one another, never has the need to be on top of your digital transformation been felt more strongly. With new expectations from customers and employees alike, how will your business grow and survive the future? Learn how to become truly customer-centric, drive digital transformation through a culture of real innovation and challenge assumptions of how things have been done before. The survival of your business depends on it. About the author Tom Goodwin is a writer, speaker and advertising and media provocateur and consultant. He has been voted a top 10 voice in Marketing by LinkedIn, one of 30 people to follow on Twitter by Business Insider, and a 'must-follow' by Fast Company. An industry commentator on the future of marketing and business, he is a columnist for TechCrunch and Forbes and frequent contributor to the Guardian, GQ, Ad Age, Wired, Ad Week, Inc, MediaPost and Digiday. He is based between London, UK, and New York City in the United States. Table of contents Chapter - 01: Business in the age of disruption; Chapter - 02: The three phases of change; Chapter - 03: Disruption and the paradigm shift; Chapter - 04: The third era of management; Chapter - 05: Starting your digital transformation; Chapter - 06: How to provoke and inspire change; Chapter - 07: Creating a vision to transform; Chapter - 08: Operations for the digital age; Chapter - 09: A culture for transformation; Chapter - 10: Rethinking your future;

Over the past ten years, industries such as music, retail, journalism, advertising, and health information have experienced massive and wrenching disruption. Dominant players have been displaced and often marginalized by innovative, entrepreneurial competitors. The same digital transformation has now migrated to more traditional sectors. Just as the Industrial Revolution created distinct winners and losers, so the digital era has led to a climate where individuals, companies, and even entire industries and countries will either thrive or fall hopelessly behind.  Gali Einav and a strong group of international contributors offer a guide to this brave new world in a timely collection that combines academic insights and entrepreneurial case studies focused on digital innovation. A first section brings together academic thought-leaders to offer in-depth perspectives on changes in the digital domain, and focusing these insights around real-world examples, a second section showcases insights into four technology startups that have disrupted their industries through digital innovation. By exploring the effect of disruptive technologies within media, health, music, and employment, this book helps readers to take their next steps into the digital future.  For its combination of academic rigor and practical, real-world case studies, Digitized is essential reading both for researchers of innovation and entrepreneurship and for innovators and entrepreneurs across industries.

This research and teaching volume has been composed in honour of Rosalie Tung, a distinguished institution builder, thought leader and educator in the field of international business (IB). The volume addresses Rosalie Tung’s main research focus in a career that has already spanned several decades, namely the analysis of distance facing multinational enterprises (MNEs), with a focus on state-of-the-art conceptual and fact-based empirical developments in the realm of cultural and institutional distance elements.  The impact of distance on international business transactions and operations remains ill-understood. How should distance be conceptualized? Which dimensions of distance should be considered? Is distance always a cost, or can it sometimes confer value?  This twelfth volume in the Progress in International Business Research series presents extensive accounts of the contemporary scientific debate on how to assess the impacts of distance, both negative and positive ones, on the conduct of international business.  This volume covers five dimensions related to the concept, cost and value of distance, in International business:   • The concept of distance  • The cost of cultural and psychic distance  • The cost of institutional distance  • The value of distance  • Alternative lenses for IB research

Managing diversity plays a crucial part in enabling every member of the workforce to perform up to their full potential. Managers demand satisfactory performance from every member of their workforce and expect the best of their employees. But often, diversity and its management are not viewed as clear contributors to the organization’s performance and bottom-line. Managing and leveraging diversity are set aside from the rest of the organization and hence, they are often undervalued amid all the other barriers that companies face.  Whilst there is no single tried-and-tested “solution” to diversity and no easy way to manage implementation barriers, this edited collection of case studies from around the globe provides new insights for practitioners, managers, students and researchers. The book seeks to shed light on existing practices disseminating the value of diversity, whilst opening the road toward a wider perspective on its definitions. The contributors provide critical reflections of the current discourse on different types of diversity in heterogenous organizations around the world.

The 21st century has changed the face of entrepreneurship and development. Venture capital volume almost tripled since 2006 and concepts like microfinance have emerged and spread. Spurring the creation of new technologies and new jobs, the role of entrepreneurs now affects globalization and amplifies the dynamics of markets and economic growth. Including a preface from Bill Drayton (CEO, Ashoka: Everyone a Changemaker), a cast of expert contributors explore how these new trends, along with a variety of political, cultural and social influences, have affected entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship and Development in the 21st Century features a diverse array of chapters on subjects such as venture capital, cryptomarkets, and alternatives to fair trade. This work is the inaugural volume of a book series by the Lab for Entrepreneurship and Development (LEAD), a now-independent organization that first started at the Institute of Quantitative Social Sciences (IQSS) at Harvard University.  Experienced editors Bruno S. Sergi and Cole C. Scanlon bring together a detailed exploration of the new face of 21st century entrepreneurship. Looking across cultures, countries and sectors, this is a vital read for any student or researcher of entrepreneurial development.

The sustainable development goals (SDGs) were launched in 2015, as a global agenda for addressing the multiplicity of social and environmental challenges that face communities around the world. But what role might entrepreneurship play in reaching these goals?  In the first book of its kind, Entrepreneurship and the Sustainable Development Goals will encourage you to think about the critical role that entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs might play in supporting sustainable development. More than twenty authors from across Africa, Asia, North America, and Europe explore a fascinating mix of enterprises and sustainable development initiatives to illustrate the capacity of entrepreneurship as the engine for transforming our world and overcoming the diverse nature of these global challenges. Structured into three provocative sections this book explores:   • Social change and entrepreneurship through the lens of the SDGs; • Organisational practices and innovation towards the SDGs; • Entrepreneurship, gender equality and empowerment towards the SDGs  Journey through the stories of tribal enterprises in India, to cacao framers in Ghana, small and medium sized businesses in Greece, social enterprises in Kenya, Zambia and the USA and many others to see the powerful force that entrepreneurship can be for promoting poverty alleviation and sustainable development.

Universities globally are under pressure from an expanding range of stakeholders to provide enterprise education and support to students. Enterprise education had become a research domain in itself and an increasingly important aspect of UK universities’ curricular. Within the UK, policymakers consider enterprise education, and the skills it develops, as increasing student’s employability skills, regardless of what their primary subject of study is, and thereby assisting them in gaining employment upon. Despite this growth, there is ongoing debate regarding the effectiveness of entrepreneurship education and there are calls for further evidence to validate its impact. This book meets that call in providing further evidence for best practice and successful deployment. Authors provide evidence to inform the entrepreneurial education discipline in terms of best practice, success stories and identify its future direction for key stakeholders. The book concludes with a summary from the authors which will analyse and contrast the emergent themes identified in each chapter.

Technology-based industries have come to account for ever-greater shares of economic activity during the last 30 years. Recently, rapid, digitally-enabled technological change has generated new opportunities for value creation, enabled new ways of capturing value, and stimulated the emergence of new organizational forms such as platforms and ecosystems. Together with the development of supporting institutions, including incubators, accelerators, and increasingly creative ways of funding new ventures, this has led to an explosion of interest in entrepreneurial activity across industries and sectors.   Scholars, policymakers and practitioners recognize the importance of technological innovation and entrepreneurship for competitive advantage, comparative advantage, and society’s economic well-being. There is tremendous academic and practical interest not only in how new ventures assemble resources necessary to deliver value, but also on how incumbent organizations may adapt to harness technological innovation, and on how industries evolve in the face of this pervasive technological change.   Despite recent advances in our understanding of how innovation and entrepreneurship impact the creation and appropriation of value, numerous questions remain unanswered. This volume draws together scholars working at the forefront of entrepreneurship-, strategy-, and innovation-related domains to explore these questions. The volume makes particular contributions to the entrepreneurship, innovation, and platform literatures.