Just imagine! A full house of top indie comics characters, reunited in this second volume of prose fiction tales by the genius creators who first breathed life into them in the 1980s and beyond! Whether you lovingly remember these heroes and creators or are meeting them for the first time, you are in for a wild ride with this star-studded cast. They set the industry on fire in comics from indie publishing pioneers like Fir...

As it currently operates, the commercial real estate construction industry is a disaster full of built-in waste. Seventy-percent of all projects end over budget and late. The buildingSMART Alliance estimates that up to fifty-percent of the process is consumed in waste. Almost every project includes massive hidden taxes in the form of delays, cost overruns, poor quality, and work that has to be redone. Building new structures is a fragmented, adversarial process that commonly results in dis...

Competitive advantage. The value chain. Five forces. Industry structure. Differentiation. Relative cost. If you want to understand how companies achieve and sustain competitive success, Michael Porter’s frameworks are the foundation. But while everyone in business may know Porter’s name, many managers misunderstand and misuse his concepts.Understanding Michael Porter sets the record straight, providing the first concise, accessible summary of Porter’s revolutionar...

An introduction to the most enduring ideas on management from Harvard Business ReviewChange is the one constant in business, and we must adapt or face obsolescence. Yet certain challenges never go away. That's what makes this book "must read." These are the 10 seminal articles by management's most influential experts, on topics of perennial concern to ambitious managers and leaders hungry for inspiration--and ready to run with big ideas to accelerate their...

The retail world is undergoing a fundamental transformation. Rapidly evolving technology, globalization, and a saturated marketplace offer consumers instant access to thousands of equally compelling products and services, creating unprecedented levels of expectation. The impact of these changes is so profound that 50 percent of today's retailers and consumer companies will not survive it. Traditional business models will become extinct, and the relationship between vendors and consumers wi...

Rethink your business for the digital age.Every business begun before the Internet now faces the same challenge: How to transform to compete in a digital economy?Globally recognized digital expert David L. Rogers argues that digital transformation is not about updating your technology but about upgrading your strategic thinking. Based on Rogers's decade of research and teaching at Columbia Business School, and his consulting for businesses around the world,...

How do you keep your customers coming back-and get them to bring others?If you need the best practices and ideas for making your customers loyal and profitable--but don't have time to find them--this book is for you. Here are nine inspiring and useful perspectives, all in one place.This collection of HBR articles will help you:- Turn angry customers into loyal advocates- Get more people to recommend you- Boost customer satisfaction by satisfying your...

The classic bestseller outlining tactics for any business striving to achieve market dominanceWhat does your company do better than anyone else? What unique value do you provide to your customers? How will you increase that value next year? Drawing on in-depth studies and interviews with the top CEOs in the country, renowned business strategists Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersema reveal that successful companies do not attempt to be everything to everyone. Instead, t...

New competitive realities have ruptured industry boundaries, overthrown much of standard management practice, and rendered conventional models of strategy and growth obsolete. In their stead have come the powerful ideas and methodologies of Gary Hamel and C.K. Prahalad, whose much-revered thinking has already engendered a new language of strategy. In this book, they develop a coherent model for how today's executives can identify and accomplish no less than heroic goals in tomorrow's marke...

There’s a bewildering array of management tools out there. And they all promise to help you excel at the toughest parts of your job: defining your organization’s strategic direction, managing customers and costs, and boosting workforce performance.But just 30 percent of these tools deliver as intended. Why? As Jeremy Hope and Steve Player reveal in Beyond Performance Management, while many tools are sound in theory, they’re misused by most organizations. For example, execu...

A beginner's guide and a bible for one of the greatest social innovations of modern times: the discipline of management.Whether you’re new to the field or a seasoned executive, this book will give you a firm grasp on what it takes to make an organization perform. It presents the basic principles of management simply, but not simplistically. Why did an eBay succeed where a Webvan did not? Why do you need both a business model and a strategy? Why is...

Having trouble closing your deals? Hitting a frustrating plateau with your sales numbers? Feel that upselling is a lost cause? Let sales guru Stephan Schiffman drive your sales pitches up a notch with his tried-and-true techniques - and get results immediately!Stephan Schiffman's Sales Essentials includes time-tested tips on:Mastering the cold callUsing email as a selling toolRaising the stakes to "up" your next buy