Knowledge Economics: Clusters, Learning and Co-Operative Advantage (Routledge Studies in International Business and the World Economy, 26)

Book Description

Today concerns about national competitiveness and economic development are closely linked to notions of the information society and knowledged-based economies.This book traces the theoretical explanation for clusters back to the work of classical economists and their more modern disciples who saw economic development as a process involving serious imbalances in the exploitation of resources.

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This book traces the theoretical explanation for clusters back to the work of classical economists and their more modern disciples who saw economic development as a process involving serious imbalances in the exploitation of resources.

Knowledge Economics: Clusters, Learning and Co-Operative Advantage

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Knowledge Economics: Clusters, Learning and Co-Operative Advantage
Philip Cooke
Manufacturer: Taylor & Francis, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000MUWLQE

Book Description

Business strategy is not rocket science. It's about using pertinent information to make smart decisions, and doing it fast enough to keep your business ahead of the curve. And while many companies have embraced the 24/7 business paradigm, their strategies come from the 9-to-5 era. Plain and simple, most strategic planning efforts fail because they can't keep up with the evolving demands of the market.

Standing apart from the piles of discarded management wisdom, Making Sense of Strategy provides real, practical insights and advice for 21st-century businesses. Top strategy consultant Tony Manning cuts through layer after layer of "guru" babble to bring the reader only the most genuinely valuable information: the questions that need to be asked, the principles that every organization and its people must adopt, and the tools that every company needs in order to develop their core business strategies and create profit. Manning's refreshingly streamlined approach to strategy encompasses:

* The value of shared ideas * The importance of creating and sustaining unique communities for your products or services * The link between a company's values and those of its customers and shareholders * And why strategic management is ultimately a conversation, one that empowers its participants with a sense of purpose and ownership.

A real-world, no-nonsense guide, Making Sense of Strategy is the key to turning plans into action -- fast!

Customer Reviews:

The 20 Strategy Questions are truly worth the price of this wonderful book!.......2007-10-09

In a nut shell, this is definitely a snappy guide to strategy formulation.

I reckon the 20 Strategy Questions are truly worth the entire price of this wonderful book.

The author's principal premise is that organisations are essentially managed strategic conversations. "Nourishing strategic conversations is a vital key to organisational &/or business success", the author asserts.

With the 20 well-crafted Strategy Questions, you are ready to make quick, informed choices (also, to win votes & build capabilities) through strategic conversations encompassing all the critical issues affecting the running of a successful business.

The author comes with an impeccable record as an independent consultant in strategic change management. His writing style is clear & succinct.

His book has just 95 pages, but it packs all the punch you need for strategising in turbulent times.

The Sixth Sense: Accelerating Organisational Learning with Scenarios

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Insightful!
Scenario conversations as agents of change

The Sixth Sense: Accelerating Organisational Learning with Scenarios
Kees van der Heijden , Ron Bradfield , George Burt , George Cairns , and George Wright
Manufacturer: Wiley
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Similar Items:

Scenarios: The Art of Strategic Conversation
The Art of the Long View: Planning for the Future in an Uncertain World
Shell Global Scenarios to 2025
Creating Better Futures: Scenario Planning As a Tool for A Better Tomorrow
Learning from the Future: Competitive Foresight Scenarios

ASIN: 0470844914

Book Description

This book helps managers move beyond the idea that the future of business will resemble the past and allows them to use scenarios to imagine multiple perspectives. The concepts of organizational realities, experience, and beliefs are explored to encourage and embrace change in business organizations for a successful future.

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"This book is about organizational survival: the reasons why organizations do not always survive, and what can be done about it. Survival means creating value for stakeholders, and the survival problem starts with uncertainty, change and the need for organizations to adapt to shifting needs and market conditions. The key question is 'Why are organizations slow to change and adapt?' Unsuccessful organizations are distinguished by their failure to overcome thinking and behavioural flaws at personal, organizational and community levels. In this book, we explain what these flaws are and how the scenario approach helps senior managers and organizations to overcome them. Our approach is based on reasoning, research, real world observations - and a long track record developing scenario-based thinking, combining the most effective elements of the many scenario approaches that have been tried over time.

Customer Reviews:

Insightful!.......2004-03-02

This book disserves itself by purporting to be merely about scenario planning, although it covers that subject thoroughly. In fact, it's one of the most lucid, interesting examinations of fortune and folly you will ever read. The recapitulation of disastrous episodes at a handful of once-great companies shows just how little inclined the gods are to spare the proud. Closed minds and entrenched habits of thought managed to afflict even such a venturesome New Economy firm as Yahoo! Originality and experimentation bless even companies in humdrum industries, such as packaging. Captivating anecdotes and illustrations are, in fact, the meat of the book. The scenario planning analysis, while solid, is less convincing than the cases themselves. At times, the book shows the weaknesses that are probably inevitable when so many authors share creation. It tends to meander and, now and then, loses its way in jargon-choked thickets. But, we assure you, the clarity of the cases redeems it and makes it valuable.

Scenario conversations as agents of change.......2003-08-06

The key theme of this book is that the appropriate use of scenario thinking is a highly effective way of catalyzing organizational change and, in particular, minimizing the risk that the organization will suffer due to learning disabilities such as 'group think' or a variety of other flaws in organizational thinking.
The focus is therefore on the process by which the management group can improve their ability to shape their future, through the way in which they engage with the creation of scenarios, and in strategic conversations about their implications in the context of the 'business idea' (competitive stance and advantages) of the organization.
This book represents a consolidation and further exploration of ideas first put forward in van der Heijden's Scenarios: The Art of Strategic Conversation. As a successor, it does not have the impact of the first book, and it goes into issues of learning disabilities to a level of detail that can be tedious to those who are familiar with these issues. None the less, it is very useful in reinforcing a sound appreciation of the value of scenarios and the importance of the process by which they are generated and used.
There are very useful summaries at the end of each chapter and at the end of the book. My main criticism is that the authors do not seem to have quite worked out whether they were writing a practical guide for business people or a text for students.

Making Common Sense Common Practice: Models for Manufacturing Excellence

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Great career development material

Making Common Sense Common Practice: Models for Manufacturing Excellence
Ron Moore
Manufacturer: Butterworth-Heinemann
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Selecting the Right Manufacturing Improvement Tools: What Tool? When?
Reliability-Centered Maintenance Second Edition
Successfully Managing Change in Organizations: A User's Guide
Maintenance Planning and Scheduling Handbook (McGraw-Hill Handbooks)
Overall Equipment Effectiveness

ASIN: 0750674628

Book Description

Make more money in the manufacturing business - but not through cost-cutting and employee layoffs. This book clearly describes how you can turn common sense into common practice to achieve superior manufacturing performance and low-cost production.

Presenting the best practices of the best manufacturing companies in the world, this book presents proven models for achieving world-class performance. Using a fictional company called Beta International, the book illustrates the success and failures of the world's premier manufacturers, illustrating a stable path of growth for almost any manufacturing company.

Through the experience of Beta International, you'll see how to increase uptime, lower costs, increase market share, maximize asset utilization, apply benchmarks and best practices, and improve many other aspects that ultimately raise your company's performance to the level of world-class. 'Making Common Sense Common Practice' takes a good, hard look at plant design, procurement, parts management, installation and maintenance, training and even offers a chapter on how to implement a computerized maintenance management system.

In today's tough competitive markets, 'Making Common Sense Common Practice' greatly enhances your company's chance to succeed - and profit.

presents the best practices and proven models from the best manufacturing companies from around the world by exploring the successes and failures that have led to a stable path of growth for any company

Author is a manufacturing management consultant to major manufacturers from all over North and South America to the U.K., Europe, Asia, Russia, and Australia, with over 30 years experience studying and solving management performance.

Customer Reviews:

Great career development material.......2007-01-11

Ron Moore's knowledge and passion for business comes out in his book "Making Common Sense, Common Practice". I give this book to supervisors as required reading material when they are preparing for the Society of Maintenance & Reliability Society's - Certified Maintenance & Reliability Professional Exam.

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Sociological Analysis of the Suicide Attacker

Making Sense of Suicide Missions

Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Suicide | Death & Grief | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books

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Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism
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Suicide Terrorism

ASIN: 0199297975

Book Description

Suicide attacks have become the defining act of political violence of our age. From New York City to Baghdad, from Sri Lanka to Israel, few can doubt that they are a pervasive and terrifying feature of an increasing number of violent conflicts. Since 1981, approximately thirty organizations throughout the world - some of them secular and others affiliated to radical Islam - have carried out more than 500 suicide missions. Although a tiny fraction of the overall number of guerrilla and terrorist attacks occurring in the same period, the results have proved infinitely more lethal. This book is the first to shed real light on these extraordinary acts, and provide answers to the questions we all ask. Are these the actions of aggressive religious zealots and unbridled, irrational radicals or is there a logic driving those behind them? Are their motivations religious or has Islam provided a language to express essentially political causes? How can the perpetrators remain so lucidly effective in the face of certain death? And do these disparate attacks have something like a common cause? For more than two years, this team of internationally distinguished scholars has pursued an unprejudiced inquiry, investigating organizers and perpetrators alike of this extraordinary social phenomenon. Close comparisons between a whole range of cases raise challenging further questions: If suicide missions are so effective, why are they not more common? If killing is what matters, why not stick to 'ordinary' violent means? Or, if dying is what matters, why kill in the process? Making Sense of Suicide Missions contains a wealth of original information and cutting-edge analysis which furthers our understanding of this chilling feature of the contemporary world in radically new and unexpected ways.

Customer Reviews:

Sociological Analysis of the Suicide Attacker.......2006-12-11

If there is a single point that defines the current political struggles in the world it is the Suicide Mission. This book consists of essays from a number of social scientists from around the world who have studied such missions.

The book begins with a discussion of the Japanese Kamikaze in World War II where some 3,000 Japanese army and navy pilots died trying to crash their planes into Allied ships during the later phase of the war.

After this chapter the book covers the more recent activities from self-immolations, as with the monks in VietNam to the activities by Palestinians, Al-queda and others. Finally there are several chapters on the more general aspects of suicide missions such as motivations, beliefs, the overall impact and so on.

The hardcover version of this book was published in early 2005. For this paperback version an additional Epilogue has been added that analyzes what has happened in the world since then. As the business analysis types would say, this has been a growth industry with 555 attacks in 2005.

The Evolving Global Economy: Making Sense of the New World Order (Harvard Business Review Book)

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The Evolving Global Economy: Making Sense of the New World Order (Harvard Business Review Book)

Manufacturer: Harvard Business School Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Bumblebees Can't Fly: Seven Simple Strategies for Making the Impossible Possible

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Interesting title but didnt find a lot of substance
Tool of dreamers
Great read
We can fly as well

Bumblebees Can't Fly: Seven Simple Strategies for Making the Impossible Possible
Barry Siskind
Manufacturer: John Wiley & Sons
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: B000OVLNEM

Book Description

In theory, bumblebees should not be able to fly, but they do. Because they have to. But people, no matter how smart or how skilled they might be, do not always get off the ground. We are all born with common sense, but we don't always — or often — use it.

Must we drift without direction the rest of our lives?
Are we doomed if we seem incapable of using our common sense?

No, says bestselling author and professional speaker Barry Siskind. In Bumblebees Can't Fly, he shows you how to develop and follow his Seven Strategies of Common Sense. After mastering these simple yet shrewd strategies, you will begin to make more confident decisions, improve your foresight, listen to the wisdom already deep within you — and fly, like the bumblebees!

Customer Reviews:

Interesting title but didnt find a lot of substance.......2006-09-12

I am into these type of books and enjoy the motivation involved usually but didnt find a lot of meat here. It is an okay book but found the points made obvious and had to make myself keep reading. I have a personal policy of finishing every book I start so I kept going and found it just okay to me. The strategies of doubt the obvious, know yourself and stay on course ... just didnt ring my bell but then maybe its just me.

Tool of dreamers.......2004-09-25

Each page and each author's think bring us up the value of faith and self-esteem in our lives. In this book you find examples to believe that difference between possible and impossible thinks are separeted by, and only, dreamers and commom people.

Great read.......2004-09-23

A great read with some good solid advice. Would definitely recommend to people who need a little nudge towards fulfilling their full potential.

We can fly as well.......2004-09-22

Barry Siskind is one individual who believes in people's potential. Siskind's inspirational book is filled with stories and lessons that are not rocket science, they are common sense. Bumblebee's Can't Fly taught me how to trust my intuition and listen to my inner voices.

Decisions Without Mistakes: Common Sense Decision-Making Strategies for Today's Managers and Leaders

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Finally, real help for management issues!

Decisions Without Mistakes: Common Sense Decision-Making Strategies for Today's Managers and Leaders
Kim D. Ward
Manufacturer: Writers Advantage
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Decision-Making & Problem Solving | Management & Leadership | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Management | Management & Leadership | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

General | Self-Help | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0595653928

Book Description

Managing and Leading others in the workplace today can be a very challenging experience. With everything changing so quickly and dramatically, the ability to make the right decisions at the right time and for the right reasons is critically important. Employees need and want effective, management/leadership.

This book is a very small distillation of some of the common sense principles, attitudes, strategies and techniques that are proven to be most effective in todayÂ's fluidly changing business environment.

The content in these pages can help any manager/leader develop better business relationships, build more powerful teams, achieve higher goals, reduce stress in themselves and others, but most importantly makeÂ…Decisions Without Mistakes!

Customer Reviews:

Finally, real help for management issues!.......2003-01-30

I throughly enjoyed this book. More importantly I found easy to understand and easy to implement strategies to help me manage and lead people to the levels of productivity that I knew they were capable! I know that others must need and want help with the issues that we all deal with managing and motivating people today. This is what everyone has been looking for.

Kim Ward's conversational and entertaining approach to explaining not only the issues, but his common sense instructions to solutions make this the most useful and valuable decision and management tool I've seen to date!

Book Description

In the last twenty years the legal profession has seen dramatic changes. Law firms, large or small, have had to manage through these changes. Some firms have been more successful than others, but on the whole the profession has emerged leaner and fitter. Making Sense of Law Firms is the first book to take a systematic look at the strategy, structure and ownership of law firms and, as such, it brings a unique approach to law firm management. The book describes the changing legal environment, explores the strategic choices for the firm and describes the proper application of appropriate business principles to law firms. The book is split into eight parts: Law firms as a Response to the Environment The Theory of the Law Firm Law Firms as Business Organisations Law Firms as Client-Driven Organisations Law Firms as Social Organisations Law Firms as Economic Organisations Ownership of Law Firms The Way Ahead

Customer Reviews:

A philosophy !!!.......2006-07-18

This book has a beauty in its chapter 39: A Philosophy of Law Firm Management.

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