The Opportunity Trap

The Opportunity Trap
Author: Pallavi Banerjee
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2022-03-29
Genre: BUSINESS & ECONOMICS
ISBN: 1479841048

Introduction. The Anatomy of State-Imposed Dependence -- The Visa Regime: Indian Migration and the Interplay of Race and Gender -- Model Migrants and Ideal Workers: How Visa Laws Penalize and Control -- Beholden to Employers: Gendered and Racialized Dependence -- At Home: Dependent Spouses and Divisions of Labor -- Transcultural Cultivation: A New Form of Parenting -- Conclusion: Dismantling Dependence.

The Opportunity Trap

The Opportunity Trap
Author: Pallavi Banerjee
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 197
Release: 2022-03-29
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1479825158

Winner of the ASA Section on Asia and Asian America's Book Award on Asian America Honorable Mention, 2024 Social Science Category Book Awards, given by the Association for Asian American Studies Honorable Mention, 2022 Betty and McClung Lee Book Award, given by the Association for Humanist Sociology Unravels how US visa laws fail Indian professional workers and their legally dependent spouses and families The Opportunity Trap is the first book to look at the impact of the H-4 dependent visa programs on women and men visa holders in Indian families in America. Comparing two distinct groups of Indian immigrant families —families of male high-tech workers and female nurses—Pallavi Banerjee reveals how visa policies that are legally gender and race neutral in fact have gendered and racialized ramifications for visa holders and their spouses. Drawing on interviews with fifty-five Indian couples, Banerjee highlights the experiences of high-skilled immigrants as they struggle to cope with visa laws, which forbid their spouses from working paid jobs. She examines how these unfair restrictions destabilize—if not completely dismantle—families, who often break under this marital, financial, and emotional stress. Banerjee shows us, through the eyes of immigrants themselves, how the visa process strips them of their rights, forcing them to depend on their spouses and the government in fundamentally challenging ways. The Opportunity Trap provides a critical look at our visa system, underscoring how it fails immigrant families.

Escaping the Build Trap

Escaping the Build Trap
Author: Melissa Perri
Publisher: O'Reilly Media
Total Pages: 200
Release: 2018-11-01
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1491973765

To stay competitive in today’s market, organizations need to adopt a culture of customer-centric practices that focus on outcomes rather than outputs. Companies that live and die by outputs often fall into the "build trap," cranking out features to meet their schedule rather than the customer’s needs. In this book, Melissa Perri explains how laying the foundation for great product management can help companies solve real customer problems while achieving business goals. By understanding how to communicate and collaborate within a company structure, you can create a product culture that benefits both the business and the customer. You’ll learn product management principles that can be applied to any organization, big or small. In five parts, this book explores: Why organizations ship features rather than cultivate the value those features represent How to set up a product organization that scales How product strategy connects a company’s vision and economic outcomes back to the product activities How to identify and pursue the right opportunities for producing value through an iterative product framework How to build a culture focused on successful outcomes over outputs

The Content Trap

The Content Trap
Author: Bharat Anand
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 464
Release: 2016-10-18
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0812995392

“My favorite book of the year.”—Doug McMillon, CEO, Wal-Mart Stores Harvard Business School Professor of Strategy Bharat Anand presents an incisive new approach to digital transformation that favors fostering connectivity over focusing exclusively on content. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY BLOOMBERG Companies everywhere face two major challenges today: getting noticed and getting paid. To confront these obstacles, Bharat Anand examines a range of businesses around the world, from The New York Times to The Economist, from Chinese Internet giant Tencent to Scandinavian digital trailblazer Schibsted, and from talent management to the future of education. Drawing on these stories and on the latest research in economics, strategy, and marketing, this refreshingly engaging book reveals important lessons, smashes celebrated myths, and reorients strategy. Success for flourishing companies comes not from making the best content but from recognizing how content enables customers’ connectivity; it comes not from protecting the value of content at all costs but from unearthing related opportunities close by; and it comes not from mimicking competitors’ best practices but from seeing choices as part of a connected whole. Digital change means that everyone today can reach and interact with others directly: We are all in the content business. But that comes with risks that Bharat Anand teaches us how to recognize and navigate. Filled with conversations with key players and in-depth dispatches from the front lines of digital change, The Content Trap is an essential new playbook for navigating the turbulent waters in which we find ourselves. Praise for The Content Trap “A masterful and thought-provoking book that has reshaped my understanding of content in the digital landscape.”—Ariel Emanuel, co-CEO, WME | IMG “The Content Trap is a book filled with stories of businesses, from music companies to magazine publishers, that missed connections and could never escape the narrow views that had brought them past success. But it is also filled with stories of those who made strategic choices to strengthen the links between content and returns in their new master plans. . . . The book is a call to clear thinking and reassessing why things are the way they are.”—The Wall Street Journal

The Opportunities of a Lifetime

The Opportunities of a Lifetime
Author: Evans, Martin
Publisher: Policy Press
Total Pages: 100
Release: 2004-11-24
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1861346514

This report uses a revolutionary new research tool, LOIS (the Lifetime Opportunity and Incentives Simulation programme), to assess the impact of current government social policy on our lives from cradle to grave. The strengths and weaknesses of the British benefit, pension and taxation systems are analysed in terms of how well they meet, or are likely to meet, the needs of individuals throughout their lifetimes. Specific government promises, such as those to end child and pensioner poverty and to reward those who work, are also reassessed in this context. The opportunities of a lifetime is compulsory reading for social policy academics, researchers, analysts, students and policy makers who will find the innovative lifetime analysis invaluable. With brief and clear descriptions of the technical aspects of taxation, pensions and benefits, the report is also accessible to a wider readership.

The Meritocracy Trap

The Meritocracy Trap
Author: Daniel Markovits
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 450
Release: 2020-09-08
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0735222010

A revolutionary new argument from eminent Yale Law professor Daniel Markovits attacking the false promise of meritocracy It is an axiom of American life that advantage should be earned through ability and effort. Even as the country divides itself at every turn, the meritocratic ideal – that social and economic rewards should follow achievement rather than breeding – reigns supreme. Both Democrats and Republicans insistently repeat meritocratic notions. Meritocracy cuts to the heart of who we are. It sustains the American dream. But what if, both up and down the social ladder, meritocracy is a sham? Today, meritocracy has become exactly what it was conceived to resist: a mechanism for the concentration and dynastic transmission of wealth and privilege across generations. Upward mobility has become a fantasy, and the embattled middle classes are now more likely to sink into the working poor than to rise into the professional elite. At the same time, meritocracy now ensnares even those who manage to claw their way to the top, requiring rich adults to work with crushing intensity, exploiting their expensive educations in order to extract a return. All this is not the result of deviations or retreats from meritocracy but rather stems directly from meritocracy’s successes. This is the radical argument that Daniel Markovits prosecutes with rare force. Markovits is well placed to expose the sham of meritocracy. Having spent his life at elite universities, he knows from the inside the corrosive system we are trapped within. Markovits also knows that, if we understand that meritocratic inequality produces near-universal harm, we can cure it. When The Meritocracy Trap reveals the inner workings of the meritocratic machine, it also illuminates the first steps outward, towards a new world that might once again afford dignity and prosperity to the American people.

Sales Hunting

Sales Hunting
Author: David A. Monty
Publisher: Apress
Total Pages: 255
Release: 2014-02-25
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1430267704

The first year of developing a new sales territory is a daunting task—especially in dog-eat-dog industries. The traditional advice is to train quickly on product, grab a customer list, start calling for appointments, discover opportunities, and close deals. In fact, almost every sales model out there is based on nothing more than "opportunity" management. But jumping straight to opportunity will have new salespeople—or veterans developing new territories—chasing their tails for the first year or two. As Sales Hunting: How to Develop New Territories and Major Accounts in Half the Time Using Trust as Your Weapon details, there is a significant problem you must overcome when opening up new accounts and territories. No matter what you are selling, your prospect already has a trusted relationship with an incumbent vendor and will continue to buy from that vendor even when you have the better solution. The playing field is not level—and you’re on the wrong side. So how can you compete to win? "Trust is the grease that makes business sales effortless," writes sales pro and trainer Dave Monty. Opportunity metrics are important, but trust—and a few sharp insider tactics Monty reveals—is the guidepost that leads to success. His sales model therefore incorporates metrics based on trust along with traditional sales measures. That is the fuel that helps you not just turn virgin territory into a consistent revenue generator, but helps you win over potential accounts that now use competitive products. Sales Hunting helps you start establishing trust before you step foot in a prospect’s door, and it shows you the tactics necessary to penetrate new accounts. Once you gain access, trust can be used as systematic way to build long-lasting relationships that pay dividends well beyond that first sale you make. Among other things, this book explains: Why most customers don’t want to buy from you . . . yetWhy trust-based relationships enable you to open up territories and bag the biggest customers quicklyHow to qualify and rank customers based on traitsHow to get in step with the customer’s buying cycleHow to establish trust-based and traditional sales metrics to guide your efforts With advice based on Monty’s twenty years of IT sales and sales management experience—along with principles confirmed by academic research—Sales Hunting is an easy-to-read book that is packed with real-life examples and prescriptions for achieving sales success. It will prove a lifesaver for any salesperson or sales manager developing a new territory or trying to penetrate new accounts. What you’ll learnWhy traditional sales models do not work for new account acquisition. Why long-term sales success is built on developing a trusted relationship with the customer.The best methods for achieving first meetings.The best solutions to lead with.How to qualify customer and opportunities. Where to best spend your time.How to measure and track your success.Who this book is for Salespeople and sales managers opening new territories or trying to penetrate new accounts. Table of ContentsHunting MisunderstoodIdentify the Silent Sales KillersThe Buyer ProcessThe Sales ProcessTrustTrust Sales CycleBuild Business RelationshipsUnderstand the Sales EquationPreplanning: Prepare YourselfNiche SellingRich Hunting GroundsWhere to Find CustomersCold CallingOn the Phone for the First TimePower in SalesSelling StrategiesQualify the CustomerBuilding Trust before OpportunityQualifying and Developing OpportunitiesAre You Winning or Losing?Wrapping UpSummary

The Education Trap

The Education Trap
Author: Cristina Viviana Groeger
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 385
Release: 2021-03-09
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0674259157

Why—contrary to much expert and popular opinion—more education may not be the answer to skyrocketing inequality. For generations, Americans have looked to education as the solution to economic disadvantage. Yet, although more people are earning degrees, the gap between rich and poor is widening. Cristina Groeger delves into the history of this seeming contradiction, explaining how education came to be seen as a panacea even as it paved the way for deepening inequality. The Education Trap returns to the first decades of the twentieth century, when Americans were grappling with the unprecedented inequities of the Gilded Age. Groeger’s test case is the city of Boston, which spent heavily on public schools. She examines how workplaces came to depend on an army of white-collar staff, largely women and second-generation immigrants, trained in secondary schools. But Groeger finds that the shift to more educated labor had negative consequences—both intended and unintended—for many workers. Employers supported training in schools in order to undermine the influence of craft unions, and so shift workplace power toward management. And advanced educational credentials became a means of controlling access to high-paying professional and business jobs, concentrating power and wealth. Formal education thus became a central force in maintaining inequality. The idea that more education should be the primary means of reducing inequality may be appealing to politicians and voters, but Groeger warns that it may be a dangerous policy trap. If we want a more equitable society, we should not just prescribe more time in the classroom, but fight for justice in the workplace.

The Confidence Trap

The Confidence Trap
Author: David Runciman
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 424
Release: 2017-10-31
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0691178135

Why democracies believe they can survive any crisis—and why that belief is so dangerous Why do democracies keep lurching from success to failure? The current financial crisis is just the latest example of how things continue to go wrong, just when it looked like they were going right. In this wide-ranging, original, and compelling book, David Runciman tells the story of modern democracy through the history of moments of crisis, from the First World War to the economic crash of 2008. A global history with a special focus on the United States, The Confidence Trap examines how democracy survived threats ranging from the Great Depression to the Cuban missile crisis, and from Watergate to the collapse of Lehman Brothers. It also looks at the confusion and uncertainty created by unexpected victories, from the defeat of German autocracy in 1918 to the defeat of communism in 1989. Throughout, the book pays close attention to the politicians and thinkers who grappled with these crises: from Woodrow Wilson, Nehru, and Adenauer to Fukuyama and Obama. In The Confidence Trap, David Runciman shows that democracies are good at recovering from emergencies but bad at avoiding them. The lesson democracies tend to learn from their mistakes is that they can survive them—and that no crisis is as bad as it seems. Breeding complacency rather than wisdom, crises lead to the dangerous belief that democracies can muddle through anything—a confidence trap that may lead to a crisis that is just too big to escape, if it hasn't already. The most serious challenges confronting democracy today are debt, the war on terror, the rise of China, and climate change. If democracy is to survive them, it must figure out a way to break the confidence trap.