Starting a Tech Business

Starting a Tech Business
Author: Alex Cowan
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 292
Release: 2012-04-10
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1118205553

The non-technical guide to building a booming tech-enabled business Thinking of starting a technology-enabled business? Or maybe you just want to increase your technology mojo so you can do your job better? You do not need to learn programming to participate in the development of today’s hottest technologies. But there are a few easy-to-grasp foundation concepts that will help you engage with a technical team. Starting a Tech Business explains in practical, actionable terms how to formulate and reality test new ideas package what you learn into frameworks that are highly actionable for engineers understand key foundation concepts about modern software and systems participate in an agile/lean development team as the ‘voice of the customer’ Even if you have a desire to learn to program (and I highly recommend doing whatever unlocks your ‘inner tinkerer’), these foundation concepts will help you target what exactly you want to understand about hands-on technology development. While a decade ago the barriers to creating a technology-enabled business required a pole vault, getting started today only requires a determined step in the right direction. Starting a Tech Business supplies the tools prospective entrepreneurs and business enterprises need to avoid common pitfalls and succeed in the fast-paced world of high-tech business. Successful execution requires thoughtful, evidence-based product formulation, well-articulated design, economic use of systems, adaptive management of technical resources, and empathetic deployment to customers. Starting a Tech Business offers practical checklists and frameworks that business owners, entrepreneurs, and professionals can apply to any tech-based business idea, whether you’re developing software and products or beginning a technology-enabled business. You’ll learn: 1. How to apply today’s leading management frameworks to a tech business 2. How to package your product idea in a way that’s highly actionable for your technical team 3. How to ask the right questions about technology selection and product architecture 4. Strategies to leverage what your technology ecosystem has to offer 5. How to carefully define the roles on your team, and then effectively evaluate candidates 6. The most common disconnects between engineers and business people and how to avoid them 7. How you can apply process design to your tech business without stifling creativity 8. The steps to avoid the most common pitfalls tech founders encounter Now is one of the best times to start a technology-enabled business, and anyone can do it with the right amount and kind of preparation. Starting a Tech Business shows you how to move a product idea to market quickly and inexpensively—and to tap into the stream of wealth that a tech business can provide.

Information Systems

Information Systems
Author: John Gallaugher
Publisher:
Total Pages: 479
Release: 2016
Genre: Information resources management
ISBN: 9781453375747

Product Innovation and Technology Strategy

Product Innovation and Technology Strategy
Author: Robert G. Cooper
Publisher: Stage-Gate International
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2009
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1439252246

Backed by years of rigorous academic research and industry experience, this book brings together the salient points of effective product innovation, strategic management, and innovation governance. In this book, two of the world's foremost experts, Dr. Robert G. Cooper and Dr. Scott J. Edgett, take you step-by-step through the critical phases of developing your own product innovation strategy - a master plan for your business's entire new product effort. No other business authors give you this kind of uncomplicated narrative, informed by significant industry experience and with examples of outside-the-box thinking. This ist your guide to setting your company up for dominance in the marketplace.

Designed for Digital

Designed for Digital
Author: Jeanne W. Ross
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 205
Release: 2019-09-24
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0262042886

Practical advice for redesigning “big, old” companies for digital success, with examples from Amazon, BNY Mellon, LEGO, Philips, USAA, and many other global organizations. Most established companies have deployed such digital technologies as the cloud, mobile apps, the internet of things, and artificial intelligence. But few established companies are designed for digital. This book offers an essential guide for retooling organizations for digital success. In the digital economy, rapid pace of change in technology capabilities and customer desires means that business strategy must be fluid. As a result, the authors explain, business design has become a critical management responsibility. Effective business design enables a company to quickly pivot in response to new competitive threats and opportunities. Most leaders today, however, rely on organizational structure to implement strategy, unaware that structure inhibits, rather than enables, agility. In companies that are designed for digital, people, processes, data, and technology are synchronized to identify and deliver innovative customer solutions—and redefine strategy. Digital design, not strategy, is what separates winners from losers in the digital economy. Designed for Digital offers practical advice on digital transformation, with examples that include Amazon, BNY Mellon, DBS Bank, LEGO, Philips, Schneider Electric, USAA, and many other global organizations. Drawing on five years of research and in-depth case studies, the book is an essential guide for companies that want to disrupt rather than be disrupted in the new digital landscape. Five Building Blocks of Digital Business Success: Shared Customer Insights Operational Backbone Digital Platform Accountability Framework External Developer Platform

How to Speak Tech

How to Speak Tech
Author: Vinay Trivedi
Publisher: Apress
Total Pages: 130
Release: 2013-12-27
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1430266104

"A great book everyone can use to understand how tech startups work." —Rene Reinsberg, GM/VP at GoDaddy, CEO and Co-founder at Locu "Finally a book non-techies can use to understand the web technologies that are changing our lives." —Paul Bottino, Executive Director, Technology and Entrepreneurship Center, Harvard University "Through the simplicity of his presentation, Vinay shows that the basics of technology can be straightforwardly understood by anyone who puts in the time and effort to learn." —Joseph Lassiter, Professor of Management Science, Harvard Business School and Harvard Innovation Lab In a way that anyone can understand, How to Speak Tech: The Non-Techie's Guide to Tech Basics in Business spells out the essential technical terms and technologies involved in setting up a company’s website or web application. Nontechnical business readers will find their digital literacy painlessly improved with each ten-minute chapter of this illustrative story of one successful technology startup building its Web-based business from scratch. Vinay Trivedi—a private equity analyst and startup entrepreneur who works at the intersection of business and tech—employs the startup story line as his frame for explaining in plain language the technology behind our daily user experiences, the successful strategies of social media giants, the bold aspirations of tiny startups, and the competitive adaptations of ordinary businesses of all sizes and sectors. Along the way, he demystifies all those tech buzzwords in our business culture whose precise meanings are so often elusive even to the people using them. Internet hardware, application software, and business process: the working premise of this book is that none of it is beyond the basic understanding of nontechnical business readers. Trivedi peels back the mystery, explains it all in simplest terms, and gives his readers the wherewithal to listen intelligently and speak intelligibly when the subject turns to technology in business. What you’ll learn Website hosts and programming languages for web apps on the backendPerformance and scalabilityAPIs, open-source programs, feeds, and database managementDesign and display on the front endWho this book is for Primary readership: nontechnical business people who want to firm up their understanding of the technology of the Internet and their fluency with technical terms in widespread use in the business world. Secondary readership: Digital immigrants in the general-interest mainstream who are looking for a short, accessible, and comprehensive treatment of Internet technology and business to inform their personal experience as consumers and generators of Internet content and value. Table of Contents Chapter 1. The Internet Chapter 2. Hosting and the Cloud Chapter 3. The Back End: Programming Languages Chapter 4. The Front End: Presentation Chapter 5. Databases: The Model Chapter 6. Leveraging Existing Code: APIs, Libraries, Web Services, and Open-Source Projects Chapter 7. Software Development: Working in Teams Chapter 8. Software Development: The Process Chapter 9. Software Development: Debugging and Testing Chapter 10. Promotion and Tracking: Attracting and Understanding Your Users Chapter 11. Performance and Scalability Chapter 12. Security Threats: To Defend and Protect

Swipe to Unlock

Swipe to Unlock
Author: Neel Mehta
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
Total Pages: 349
Release: 2017
Genre: Computer science
ISBN: 9781976182198

WANT A NON-CODING JOB AT A TECH COMPANY? Interested in product management, marketing, strategy, or business development? The tech industry is the place to be: nontechnical employees at tech companies outnumber their engineering counterparts almost 3 to 1 (Forbes, 2017). You might be worried that your lack of coding skills or tech industry knowledge will hold you back. But here's the secret: you don't need to learn how to code to break into the tech industry. Written by three former Microsoft PMs, Swipe to Unlock gives you a breakdown of the concepts you need to know to crush your interviews, like software development, big data, and internet security. We'll explain how Google's ad targeting algorithm works, but Google probably won't ask you how to explain it in a non-technical interview. But they might ask you how you could increase ad revenue from a particular market segment. And if you know how Google's ad platform works, you'll be in a far stronger position to come up with good growth strategies. We'll show you how Robinhood, an app that lets you trade stocks without commission, makes money by earning interest on the unspent money that users keep in their accounts. No one will ask you to explain this. But if someone asks you to come up with a new monetization strategy for Venmo (which lets you send and receive money without fees), you could pull out the Robinhood anecdote to propose that Venmo earn interest off the money sitting in users' accounts. We'll talk about some business cases like why Microsoft acquired LinkedIn. Microsoft interviewers probably won't ask you about the motive of the purchase, but they might ask you for ideas to improve Microsoft Outlook. From our case study, you'll learn how the Microsoft and LinkedIn ecosystems could work together, which can help you craft creative, impactful answers. You could propose that Outlook use LinkedIn's social graph to give salespeople insights about clients before meeting them. Or you could suggest linking Outlook's organizational tree to LinkedIn to let HR managers analyze their company's hierarchy and figure out what kind of talent they need to add. (We'll further explore both ideas in the book.) Either way, you're sure to impress. Learn the must know concepts of tech from authors who have received job offers for Facebook's Rotational Product Manager, Google's Associate Product Marketing Manager, and Microsoft's Program Manager to get a competitive edge at your interviews!

Guide to Supply Chain Management

Guide to Supply Chain Management
Author: David Steven Jacoby
Publisher: The Economist
Total Pages: 279
Release: 2014-02-25
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 161039514X

Globalization, technology and an increasingly competitive business environment have encouraged huge changes in what is known as supply chain management, the art of sourcing components and delivering finished goods to the customer as cost effectively and efficiently as possible. Dell transformed the way people bought and were able to customize computers. Wal-Mart and Tesco have used their huge buying power and logistical skills to ensure the supply and stock management of their stores is finely honed. Manufacturers now make sure that components are where they are needed on the production line just in time for when they are needed and no longer. Such finessing of the way the supply chain works boosts the corporate bottom line and can make the difference between being a market leader or an also ran. This guide explores all the different aspects of supply chain management and gives hundreds of real life examples of what firms have achieved in the field.

The Technology Fallacy

The Technology Fallacy
Author: Gerald C. Kane
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 281
Release: 2022-08-23
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 026254511X

Why an organization's response to digital disruption should focus on people and processes and not necessarily on technology. Digital technologies are disrupting organizations of every size and shape, leaving managers scrambling to find a technology fix that will help their organizations compete. This book offers managers and business leaders a guide for surviving digital disruptions—but it is not a book about technology. It is about the organizational changes required to harness the power of technology. The authors argue that digital disruption is primarily about people and that effective digital transformation involves changes to organizational dynamics and how work gets done. A focus only on selecting and implementing the right digital technologies is not likely to lead to success. The best way to respond to digital disruption is by changing the company culture to be more agile, risk tolerant, and experimental. The authors draw on four years of research, conducted in partnership with MIT Sloan Management Review and Deloitte, surveying more than 16,000 people and conducting interviews with managers at such companies as Walmart, Google, and Salesforce. They introduce the concept of digital maturity—the ability to take advantage of opportunities offered by the new technology—and address the specifics of digital transformation, including cultivating a digital environment, enabling intentional collaboration, and fostering an experimental mindset. Every organization needs to understand its “digital DNA” in order to stop “doing digital” and start “being digital.” Digital disruption won't end anytime soon; the average worker will probably experience numerous waves of disruption during the course of a career. The insights offered by The Technology Fallacy will hold true through them all. A book in the Management on the Cutting Edge series, published in cooperation with MIT Sloan Management Review.

IT Business Partnerships: A Field Guide

IT Business Partnerships: A Field Guide
Author: Joseph Topinka
Publisher: Hillcrest Publishing Group
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2014
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0989380904

As a career CIO and founder of CIOMentor, Joseph Topinka draws on his own experiences implementing IT Business Partnership Programs to present an actionable, how-to field guide to true business technology convergence. "IT Business Partners: A Field Guide" will help you execute what many business leaders only buzz about. Within this guide you will learn the argument for business technology convergence via IT Business Partnerships, as well as the essential principles and strategies behind successful Partnership Programs. Insightful stories and real-life examples of what works and what doesn't are woven throughout, as are proven methods, tools, and templates to help you through the entire process. "IT Business Partners: A Field Guide" provides an actionable plan for you to implement an IT Business Partnership Program in your organization so that you, too, can achieve business technology convergence.

Mastering the 7 Dimensions of Business-Technology Alignment

Mastering the 7 Dimensions of Business-Technology Alignment
Author: Ashish Pachory
Publisher: Business Expert Press
Total Pages: 167
Release: 2019-11-26
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1949991792

The force-multiplying power of business-technology alignment is acknowledged among the biggest contributors to enterprise success in the digital age. Even so, it is a missed opportunity in most organizations, or at best, restricted to a unidimensional coalition. Successful digital enterprises define alignment between business and technology along multiple dimensions. They invest in this alignment at the level of their culture, strategy, structure, process, intellect (innovation), function, and tactics. A systematic understanding and embracement of these seven dimensions of business technology alignment is at the core of a successful digital enterprise. Using familiar workplace paradigms and relatable examples, this book builds on each dimension of business-technology alignment towards strengthening the foundation on which a successful digital enterprise stands, using tricks and tips not found in textbooks and classrooms. If you are, or aspire to be, in an organization that relies on a convergence of business and technology to achieve success, this book is meant for you. It builds upon fundamental ideas in a manner designed to strike a chord in everyone—from interns to entrepreneurs.