Exploring the backstory that led to the writing of Graham Greene’s beloved satirical spy novel, Our Man Down in Havana evokes this pivotal time and place in the author’s life.When US immigration authorities deported Graham Greene from Puerto Rico in 1954, the British author made an unplanned visit to Havana and discovered that “every vice was permissible and every trade possible” in a Caribbean fleshpot of mafia-run casinos and nude revues. The former MI6 ...

Total Value Development provides a framework to help businesses innovate and derive greater value from the services they offer. The secret is to devise an innovative model built on total value creation, identified as the total value development (TVD) model.The TVD model has broad applicability for any large organization. Here, case studies are presented showing the effectiveness of the TVD model in its practical application within companies. Statistical evidence is used to recommend improv...

The first step-by-step guidebook for successful innovation planningUnlike other books on the subject, 101 Design Methods approaches the practice of creating new products, services, and customer experiences as a science, rather than an art, providing a practical set of collaborative tools and methods for planning and defining successful new offerings. Strategists, managers, designers, and researchers who undertake the challenge of innovation, despite a lack...

New tools for managing complexityDoes your organization manage complexity by making things more complicated? If so, you are not alone.According to The Boston Consulting Group’s fascinating Complexity Index, business complexity has increased sixfold during the past sixty years. And, all the while, organizational complicatedness-that is, the number of structures, processes, committees, decision-making forums, and systems-has increased by a whopping f...

A comprehensive playbook for applied design thinking in business and management, complete with concepts and toolkitsAs many companies have lost confidence in the traditional ways of running a business, design thinking has entered the mix. Design Thinking for Strategic Innovation presents a framework for design thinking that is relevant to business management, marketing, and design strategies and also provides a toolkit to apply concepts for immediate use i...

Design IT Organizations for Agility at ScaleAspiring digital businesses need overall IT agility, not just development team agility. In Agile IT Organization Design, IT management consultant and ThoughtWorks veteran Sriram Narayan shows how to infuse agility throughout your organization. Drawing on more than fifteen years’ experience working with enterprise clients in IT-intensive industries, he introduces an agile approach to “Business–IT ...

Bridge the gap between business and design to improve the customer experienceBusinesses thrive when they can engage customers. And, while many companies understand that design is a powerful tool for engagement, they do not have the vocabulary, tools, and processes that are required to enable design to make a difference. Experience Design bridges the gap between business and design, explaining how the quality of customer experience is the key to unlocking g...

#1 Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestselling author Dave Ulrich offers HR professionals a new line of defense in the corporate “war for talent.”Destined to be a classic in the field, this game-changing book from HR visionary Dave Ulrich tackles one of the greatest challenges in Human Resources today: the talent wars. As companies grow increasingly and aggressively competitive in hiring and nurturing individual employees, this book offers a ref...

Without effective execution, no business strategy can succeed. This second edition delivers a powerful framework every leader can use to overcome the obstacles to successfully deploying business strategy. In this book, leading consultant and Wharton professor Lawrence Hrebiniak offers a comprehensive, disciplined process model for making strategy work in the real world. Drawing on his unsurpassed experience, Hrebiniak shows why execution is even more important than many senior executives r...

Driving Results Through Social Networks shows executives and managers how to obtain substantial performance and innovation impact by better leveraging these traditionally invisible assets. For the past decade, Rob Cross and Robert J. Thomas have worked closely with executives from over a hundred top-level companies and government agencies. In this groundbreaking book, they describe in-depth how these leaders are using network thinking to increase revenues, lower costs, and acceler...

TURN YOUR CHALLENGES INTO SUCCESSES – LEARN HOW AND WHY SOME TEAM STRUGGLE AND SOME SUCCEEDThis groundbreaking resource defines what business analytics is, the immense value it brings to an organization, and how to harness its power to gain a competitive edge in the marketplace. Author Evan Stubbs provides managers with the tools, knowledge, and strategies to get the organizational commitment you need to get business analytics up and running in your company.

By studying the work of hundreds of the most original and effective business minds, the authors present a common architecture that illuminates exceptional analysis and creative performance. 2 x 2 Thinking is characterized by a fundamental appreciation for the dynamic and complex nature of business. The best strategists go out of their way to tackle dilemmas rather than merely solve problems. They use opposition, creative tension, iteration and transcendence to get to the heart of issues an...