Author: Paul Schoemaker
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0743234189
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 288
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Book Description
What manager is not anxious about the future? We live in a white-knuckled age of rapid technological change and global instability. But uncertainty is not the enemy, says management expert Paul J. H. Schoemaker. It is where the greatest opportunities are. To unlock these opportunities, however, requires a very different approach to strategy and implementation. In this pioneering book, Dr. Schoemaker presents a systematic approach that combines concepts such as scenario planning, options thinking, and dynamic monitoring to create novel strategies for profiting from ambiguity. Building on his experience with more than one hundred consulting projects in fields ranging from health care to manufacturing, from utilities to financial services, Schoemaker shows how major corporations throughout the world have used his pathbreaking methodology to prepare for an uncertain future and profit from it. In this first comprehensive approach to the subject, Schoemaker shows the reader (1) how to develop and analyze multiple industry scenarios, (2) craft nimble strategies with just the right amount of flexibility, (3) implement them using an options approach, and (4) make real-time adjustments through dynamic monitoring. As a leading academic thinker and practitioner, the author draws on the frontiers of decision science, organization theory, strategy, and cognitive psychology to integrate the most practical contributions these various fields have made to navigating uncertainty. More than any other capability, skill in seizing initiatives in shifting, unpredictable circumstances is the key to success. Profiting from Uncertainty provides a road map to do just that. This book was first published in 2002, well ahead of the mega turmoil that befell the world in 2008 and beyond. The methods and tools described here have been used by many companies and are even more relevant today than when originally published. You can’t do without them.
Author: Frank H. Knight
Publisher: Cosimo, Inc.
ISBN: 1602060053
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 401
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Book Description
A timeless classic of economic theory that remains fascinating and pertinent today, this is Frank Knight's famous explanation of why perfect competition cannot eliminate profits, the important differences between "risk" and "uncertainty," and the vital role of the entrepreneur in profitmaking. Based on Knight's PhD dissertation, this 1921 work, balancing theory with fact to come to stunning insights, is a distinct pleasure to read. FRANK H. KNIGHT (1885-1972) is considered by some the greatest American scholar of economics of the 20th century. An economics professor at the University of Chicago from 1927 until 1955, he was one of the founders of the Chicago school of economics, which influenced Milton Friedman and George Stigler.
Author: Ian C. MacMillan
Publisher: Pearson Prentice Hall
ISBN: 0132716011
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 177
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Book Description
“This book is a must for any Business Development Manager, Corporate Strategist, R&D Director, and anyone else who is accountable for growth in a corporation. It is an easy read that is practical and not fraught with useless academic theories.” Ron Pierantozzi, Ph.D., CEO of PPT Research and Former Director, Business Development, Air Products & Chemicals, Inc. A Breakthrough Approach to Investing in Business Innovation Most companies analyze investments using tools that bias them against real innovation and lead them to avoid their best opportunities. This book introduces a breakthrough alternative: Opportunity Engineering. Drawing upon recent advances in financial analysis, but without requiring a lot of math, the authors show how to engineer the risk out of uncertain opportunities so you can pursue more high-payoff innovations. You’ll learn how to escape from the “go/no-go vise” and implement more flexible decision-making that considers all the business alternatives, models, and opportunities associated with each project. You’ll learn how to systematically structure high-potential projects to limit downside exposure and boost your potential upside. The authors show how to define the scope of investment opportunities, identify key drivers of potential profits, document assumptions, design out major risks, and tease out key challenges and vulnerabilities. Using these techniques, you can escape the mindset that limits you to low-impact innovations and begin pursuing serious growth opportunities--and make business uncertainty work for you, not against you. Why companies avoid their best opportunities for innovation Getting past risk-averse analysis that snuffs out experimentation and innovation Systematically engineering your opportunities Capturing the upside, slicing out the downside Beyond rigid “go/no-go” decisions How flexible, staged innovation creates more opportunities for delivering value Constructing an engineered growth portfolio of innovation investments Optimizing your mix of core-enhancing investments and high potential “long shots”
Author: Robert K. Dixit
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400830176
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 484
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Book Description
How should firms decide whether and when to invest in new capital equipment, additions to their workforce, or the development of new products? Why have traditional economic models of investment failed to explain the behavior of investment spending in the United States and other countries? In this book, Avinash Dixit and Robert Pindyck provide the first detailed exposition of a new theoretical approach to the capital investment decisions of firms, stressing the irreversibility of most investment decisions, and the ongoing uncertainty of the economic environment in which these decisions are made. In so doing, they answer important questions about investment decisions and the behavior of investment spending. This new approach to investment recognizes the option value of waiting for better (but never complete) information. It exploits an analogy with the theory of options in financial markets, which permits a much richer dynamic framework than was possible with the traditional theory of investment. The authors present the new theory in a clear and systematic way, and consolidate, synthesize, and extend the various strands of research that have come out of the theory. Their book shows the importance of the theory for understanding investment behavior of firms; develops the implications of this theory for industry dynamics and for government policy concerning investment; and shows how the theory can be applied to specific industries and to a wide variety of business problems.
Author: J.-C. Spender
Publisher:
ISBN: 0199686548
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 339
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Book Description
Emphasising that firms face uncertainties and unknowns, this book argues that the core of strategic thinking and processes rests on the organization and its leaders developing newly imagined solutions to the opportunities that these uncertainties open up. It presents new approaches for managers, consultants, strategy teachers and students.
Author: Adam Gordon
Publisher: AMACOM Div American Mgmt Assn
ISBN: 0814412866
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 306
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Book Description
In order to succeed in their industries, decision-makers today need to anticipate the future outcomes not only in their own industry but also in society and technology as well. The better their view of the future, the better their decisions--and the bigger their profits–will be. Future Savvy is a hands-on, how-to book on evaluating the business, social, and technology forecasts that appear in everyday communications such as newspapers and business magazines, as well as in specialized sources like government and think-tank forecasts, consultant reports, and stock-market guides. Futures analyst Adam Gordon has spent his career deciphering changes and trends in a variety of industries. Now, he shows business leaders how to gain a clearer view of the future, as well as: • Recognize potential trends and outcomes more effectively • Discount poor and biased forecasts more confidently • Anticipate relevant opportunities and potential threats earlier
Author: John Kay
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 1324004789
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 407
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Book Description
Much economic advice is bogus quantification, warn two leading experts in this essential book, now with a preface on COVID-19. Invented numbers offer a false sense of security; we need instead robust narratives that give us the confidence to manage uncertainty. “An elegant and careful guide to thinking about personal and social economics, especially in a time of uncertainty. The timing is impeccable." — Christine Kenneally, New York Times Book Review Some uncertainties are resolvable. The insurance industry’s actuarial tables and the gambler’s roulette wheel both yield to the tools of probability theory. Most situations in life, however, involve a deeper kind of uncertainty, a radical uncertainty for which historical data provide no useful guidance to future outcomes. Radical uncertainty concerns events whose determinants are insufficiently understood for probabilities to be known or forecasting possible. Before President Barack Obama made the fateful decision to send in the Navy Seals, his advisers offered him wildly divergent estimates of the odds that Osama bin Laden would be in the Abbottabad compound. In 2000, no one—not least Steve Jobs—knew what a smartphone was; how could anyone have predicted how many would be sold in 2020? And financial advisers who confidently provide the information required in the standard retirement planning package—what will interest rates, the cost of living, and your state of health be in 2050?—demonstrate only that their advice is worthless. The limits of certainty demonstrate the power of human judgment over artificial intelligence. In most critical decisions there can be no forecasts or probability distributions on which we might sensibly rely. Instead of inventing numbers to fill the gaps in our knowledge, we should adopt business, political, and personal strategies that will be robust to alternative futures and resilient to unpredictable events. Within the security of such a robust and resilient reference narrative, uncertainty can be embraced, because it is the source of creativity, excitement, and profit.
Author: William MacAskill
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198722273
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 237
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Book Description
About the bookToby Ord try to fill this gap. They argue that there are distinctive norms that govern how one ought to make decisions and defend an information-sensitive account of how to make such decisions. They do so by developing an analogy between moral uncertainty and social choice, noting that different moral views provide different amounts of information regarding our reasons for action, and arguing that the correct account of decision-making under moral uncertainty must be sensitive to that. Moral Uncertainty also tackles the problem of how to make intertheoretic comparisons, and addresses the implications of their view for metaethics and practical ethics. Very often we are uncertain about what we ought, morally, to do. We do not know how to weigh the interests of animals against humans, how strong our duties are to improve the lives of distant strangers, or how to think about the ethics of bringing new people into existence. But we still need to act. So how should we make decisions in the face of such uncertainty? Though economists and philosophers have extensively studied the issue of decision-making in the face of uncertainty about matters of fact, the question of decision-making given fundamental moral uncertainty has been neglected. In Moral Uncertainty, philosophers William MacAskill, Krister Bykvist, and Toby Ord try to fill this gap. They argue that there are distinctive norms that govern how one ought to make decisions and defend an information-sensitive account of how to make such decisions. They do so by developing an analogy between moral uncertainty and social choice, noting that different moral views provide different amounts of information regarding our reasons for action, and arguing that the correct account of decision-making under moral uncertainty must be sensitive to that. Moral Uncertainty also tackles the problem of how to make intertheoretic comparisons, and addresses the implications of their view for metaethics and practical ethics.
Author: Vaughn Tan
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231551878
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 296
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Book Description
Innovation is how businesses stay ahead of the competition and adapt to market conditions that change in unpredictable and uncertain ways. In the first decade of the twenty-first century, high-end cuisine underwent a profound transformation. Once an industry that prioritized consistency and reliability, it turned into one where constant change was a competitive necessity. A top restaurant’s reputation and success have become so closely bound up with its ability to innovate that a new organizational form, the culinary research and development team, has emerged. The best of these R&D teams continually expand the frontiers of food—they invent a constant stream of new dishes, new cooking processes and methods, and even new ways of experiencing food. How do they achieve this nonstop novelty? And what can culinary research and development teach us about how organizations innovate? Vaughn Tan opens up the black box of elite culinary R&D to provide essential insights. Drawing on years of unprecedented access to the best and most influential culinary R&D teams in the world, he reveals how they exemplify what he calls the uncertainty mindset. Such a mindset intentionally incorporates uncertainty into organization design rather than simply trying to reduce risk. It changes how organizations hire, set goals, and motivate team members and leads organizations to work in highly unconventional ways. A revelatory look at the R&D kitchen, The Uncertainty Mindset upends conventional wisdom about how to organize for innovation and offers practical insights for businesses trying to become innovative and adaptable.
Author: James P. Owen
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0471436739
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 258
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Book Description
Hedge funds are typically thought of as highly risky investments. Not so. In fact, some hedge funds are among the most conservative investments you can make. While speculative, high-flying hedge funds make the headlines, others quietly go about the work of crafting unique investment strategies and hedging portfolios against market risk. This much-needed book shows why affluent investors who want to be financially secure through retirement should know about hedge funds. Its blend of facts, practical tips, and personal insights takes the mystery out of this often misunderstood investment vehicle and reveals the critical questions to ask before you invest. James P. Owen (Santa Barbara, CA) has more than 30 years of experience in the investment management industry and is Senior Vice President of Broadmark Asset Management. Previously he was President of JPO Inc. and a partner with NWQ Investment Management Company. He is co-founder of the Investment Management Consultant s Association (IMCA); author of the financial bestseller, The Prudent Investor: The Definitive Guide to Professional Investment Management; and was associate producer of the PBS television series,Beyond Wall Street: The Art of Investing
