Alternative Development Strategies for the Post-2015 Era

Alternative Development Strategies for the Post-2015 Era
Author: Jose Antonio Alonso
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2014-05-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1472531647

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on bloomsburycollections.com. The global economic crisis of 2008-2009 exposed systemic failings at the core of economic policy making worldwide. The crisis came on top of several other crises, including skyrocketing and highly volatile world food and energy prices and climate change. This book argues that new policy approaches are needed to address such devastating global development challenges and to avoid the potentially catastrophic consequences to livelihoods worldwide that would result from present approaches. The contributors to the book are independent development experts, brought together by the UN to identify a development strategy capable of promoting a broad-based economic recovery and at the same time guaranteeing social equity and environmental sustainability both within countries and internationally. This new development approach seeks to promote the reforms needed to improve global governance, providing a more equitable distribution of global public goods. The contributors offer a critical evaluation of past development experiences and report on their creative search for new and well-thought out answers for the future. They suggest that economic progress, fairer societies and environmental sustainability can be compatible objectives, but only when pursued simultaneously by all.

e-Transformation: Enabling New Development Strategies

e-Transformation: Enabling New Development Strategies
Author: Nagy K. Hanna
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 446
Release: 2009-11-11
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1441911855

Could information and communication technology (ICT) become the transformative tool for a new style of global development? Could ICT promote knowledge-based, innovation-driven, and smart, adaptive, participatory development? As countries seek a way out of the present period of economic contraction, they are trying to weave ICT into their development strategies, in the same way organizations have learned to use ICT to transform their business models and strategies. This integration offers a new path to development that is responsive to the challenges of our times. In e-Transformation, Nagy Hanna identifies the key ingredients for the strategic integration of ICT into national development, with examples from around the world. He draws on his rich experience of over 35 years at the World Bank and other aid agencies to outline the strategic options involved in using ICT to maximize developmental impact—transforming public service institutions, networking businesses for innovation and competitiveness, and empowering communities for social inclusion and poverty reduction. He identifies the key interdependencies in e-transformation and offers a holistic framework to tap network effects and synergies across all elements of the process, including leadership, cyber policies, institutions, human resources, technological competencies, information infrastructure, and ICT uses for government, business, and society. Integrating analytical insights and practical applications across the fields of development, political economy, public administration, entrepreneurship, and technology management, the author candidly argues that e-transformation, like all bold ideas, faces implementation challenges. In particular, the aspiration-reality gap needs to be systematically addressed if ICT-enabled innovation and transformation is to become a development practice. E-transformation is first and foremost about thinking strategically and creatively about the options made possible by the information technology revolution in the context of globalization. To this end, the author provides tools and best practices designed to nurture innovation, select entry points, prioritize among competing demands, and sequence and scale up. He outlines the roles of all participants—political, managerial, entrepreneurial, social and technical—whose leadership is essential for successful innovation.

The Fundamental Elements of Strategy

The Fundamental Elements of Strategy
Author: Xiu-bao Yu
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 211
Release: 2021-03-29
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9813347139

This open access book clarifies confusions of strategy that have existed for nearly 40 years through the core thoughts of three fundamental elements. Unlike the traditional definition of strategy as "a plan to achieve a long-term goal from overall considerations”in a linear view, this book defines strategy from non-linear viewpoint as it is in the real world. The art of a strategy lies not only in the determination of development goals, but also in the identification of development problems and putting forward overall guiding ideology of solving problems. Rich illustrations as well as numerous business and military cases are presented in helping readers to understand the fundamental elements of strategy.The general scope of the book includes introductions to the three fundamental elements of strategy, three-sub decisions of a complete strategic decision, incomplete strategies, relationship between tactic and strategy, three elements of competitive and corporative strategies. There may be biases in company-level, real strategic decision-making which makes a complete strategy not necessarily a perfect one. The book introduces biases and reasons for the biases, helping industrial strategic decision-makers understand the importance of knowing the nature of the company, the industry and its environment. In addition, this book also presents principles and evaluation approaches of strategic decisions, explores the reasons for the excessive definitions of the strategy concept, and discusses directions of future’s research tasks.The book will benefit business managers who are interested in knowing what a complete strategic decision is and how to avoid errors or biases in strategic decision-making. It also benefits students in business schools (especially in MBA/EMBA programs) who are (or will be) on executive positions. Academic researchers may find it is interesting to understand strategy from the view of the three elements. The new view provides a novel insight into strategy and promotes several research directions in the future. The three elements of strategy are also applicable to military strategies and readers who are interested in military and may find its value as well.

How Clients Buy

How Clients Buy
Author: Tom McMakin
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 279
Release: 2018-03-13
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 111943470X

The real-world guide to selling your services and bringing in business How Clients Buy is the much-needed guide to selling your services. If you're one of the millions of people whose skills are the 'product,' you know that you cannot be successful unless you bring in clients. The problem is, you're trained to do your job—not sell it. No matter how great you may be at your actual role, you likely feel a bit lost, hesitant, or 'behind' when it comes to courting clients, an unfamiliar territory where you're never quite sure of the line between under- and over-selling. This book comes to the rescue with real, practical advice for selling what you do. You'll have to unlearn everything you know about sales, but then you'll learn new skills that will help you make connections, develop rapport, create interest, earn trust, and turn prospects into clients. Business development is critical to your personal success, and your skills in this area will dictate the course of your career. This invaluable guide gives you a set of real-world best practices that can help you become the rainmaker you want to be. Get the word out and make productive connections Drop the fear of self-promotion and advertise your accomplishments Earn potential clients' trust to build a lasting relationship Scrap the sales pitch in favor of honesty, positivity, and value Working in the consulting and professional services fields comes with difficulties not encountered by those who sell tangible products. Services are often under-valued, and become among the first things to go when budgets get tight. It is now harder than ever to sell professional services, so your game must be on-point if you hope to out-compete the field. How Clients Buy shows you how to level up and start winning the client list of your dreams.

Helping People Learn

Helping People Learn
Author: Jake Reynolds
Publisher: CIPD Publishing
Total Pages: 51
Release: 2004
Genre: Adult learning
ISBN: 9781843981053

How can learning be supported, accelerated and directed towards an organisation's needs? That is a central business question for organisations today. This report offers some answers by focusing on the enabling conditions for effective learning - the many conditions in which employees find themselves working on a daily basis, not just on formal training courses. It suggests that a new orthodoxy towards training is required and that it must: - provide advice and suport to encourage individuals to take responsibility for their own learning - encourage line managers to play a significant role in helping their teams learn - create a proactive approach that recognises the objectives and operating reality of a learning strategy - establish a process that allows the learner the time and freedom to learn - incorporate an understanding of the value of learning in relation to the organisation. Creating the circumstances in which employees wish to acquire the skills and knowledge that will enable them to be more effective in their jobs demands the attention of the full range of managers and employees throughout the organisation. This report provides the basis for further research into this central issue.

Badass: Making Users Awesome

Badass: Making Users Awesome
Author: Kathy Sierra
Publisher: "O'Reilly Media, Inc."
Total Pages: 293
Release: 2015-01-29
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1491919078

Note for ebook customers: The design and layout of this book play a key role in conveying the author's message. When creating the ebooks, we've tried to keep the look and feel of the print edition, but this means that not all e-reading devices will support the files. The EPUB format is optimized for iPad. The Mobi files are optimized for Kindle Fire tablets and phones and for Kindle reading apps. Imagine you’re in a game with one objective: a bestselling product or service. The rules? No marketing budget, no PR stunts, and it must be sustainably successful. No short-term fads. This is not a game of chance. It is a game of skill and strategy. And it begins with a single question: given competing products of equal pricing, promotion, and perceived quality, why does one outsell the others? The answer doesn’t live in the sustainably successful products or services. The answer lives in those who use them. Our goal is to craft a strategy for creating successful users. And that strategy is full of surprising, counter-intuitive, and astonishingly simple techniques that don’t depend on a massive marketing or development budget. Techniques typically overlooked by even the most well-funded, well-staffed product teams. Every role is a key player in this game. Product development, engineering, marketing, user experience, support—everyone on the team. Even if that team is a start-up of one. Armed with a surprisingly overlooked science and a unique POV, we can can reduce the role of luck. We can build sustainably successful products and services that rely not on unethical persuasive marketing tricks but on helping our users have deeper, richer experiences. Not just in the moments while they’re using our product but, more importantly, in the moments when they aren’t.

Your Strategy Needs a Strategy

Your Strategy Needs a Strategy
Author: Martin Reeves
Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press
Total Pages: 281
Release: 2015-05-19
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1625275870

You think you have a winning strategy. But do you? Executives are bombarded with bestselling ideas and best practices for achieving competitive advantage, but many of these ideas and practices contradict each other. Should you aim to be big or fast? Should you create a blue ocean, be adaptive, play to win—or forget about a sustainable competitive advantage altogether? In a business environment that is changing faster and becoming more uncertain and complex almost by the day, it’s never been more important—or more difficult—to choose the right approach to strategy. In this book, The Boston Consulting Group’s Martin Reeves, Knut Haanæs, and Janmejaya Sinha offer a proven method to determine the strategy approach that is best for your company. They start by helping you assess your business environment—how unpredictable it is, how much power you have to change it, and how harsh it is—a critical component of getting strategy right. They show how existing strategy approaches sort into five categories—Be Big, Be Fast, Be First, Be the Orchestrator, or simply Be Viable—depending on the extent of predictability, malleability, and harshness. In-depth explanations of each of these approaches will provide critical insight to help you match your approach to strategy to your environment, determine when and how to execute each one, and avoid a potentially fatal mismatch. Addressing your most pressing strategic challenges, you’ll be able to answer questions such as: • What replaces planning when the annual cycle is obsolete? • When can we—and when should we—shape the game to our advantage? • How do we simultaneously implement different strategic approaches for different business units? • How do we manage the inherent contradictions in formulating and executing different strategies across multiple businesses and geographies? Until now, no book brings it all together and offers a practical tool for understanding which strategic approach to apply. Get started today.

Elevating Learning & Development (paperback)

Elevating Learning & Development (paperback)
Author: Nick van Dam
Publisher: Lulu.com
Total Pages: 282
Release: 2018-09-04
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0692154132

The defining attributes of the 21st-century economy and fourth industrial revolution are innovation, technology, globalization, and a rapid pace of change. Therefore, an organization's capacity to enhance the capabilities of its workforce and create a culture of continuous learning are vital to remaining competitive. These trends make an effective learning-and-development (L&D) function more critical than ever. This compendium of articles, from L&D professionals at McKinsey & Company, discusses every facet of professional development and training-from ensuring that L&D's efforts are closely aligned with business strategy to elements of advancing the L&D function, designing learning solutions, deploying digital learning, executing flawlessly, measuring impact, and ensuring good governance. For L&D professionals seeking to hone their organization's efforts, Elevating Learning & Development: Insights and Practical Guidance from the Field is the ideal resource.

Community Organizing

Community Organizing
Author: Ross J. Gittell
Publisher: SAGE
Total Pages: 212
Release: 1998-06-10
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780803957923

Providing new insight into an important community development challenge, this text looks at how to stimulate the formation of community-based organizations and effective citizen action in neighbourhoods.

Technen: Elements of Recent History of Information Technologies with Epistemological Conclusions

Technen: Elements of Recent History of Information Technologies with Epistemological Conclusions
Author: Andrzej Piotr Wierzbicki
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 317
Release: 2014-07-25
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 331909033X

The book expresses the conviction that the art of creating tools – Greek techne – changes its character together with the change of civilization epochs and co-determines such changes. This does not mean that tools typical for a civilization epoch determine it completely, but they change our way of perceiving and interpreting the world. There might have been many such epochs in the history of human civilization (much more than the three waves of agricultural, industrial and information civilization). This is expressed by the title Technen of the book, where n denotes a subsequent civilization epoch. During last fifty years we observed a decomposition of the old episteme (understood as a way of creating and interpreting knowledge characteristic for a given civilization epoch) of modernism, which was an episteme typical for industrial civilization. Today, the world is differently understood by the representatives of three different cultural spheres: of strict and natural sciences; of human and social sciences (especially by their part inclined towards postmodernism) and technical sciences that have a different episteme than even that of strict and natural sciences. Thus, we observe today not two cultures, but three different episteme. The book consists of four parts. First contains basic epistemological observations, second is devoted to selected elements of recent history of information technologies, third contains more detailed epistemological and general discussions, fourth specifies conclusions. The book is written from the cognitive perspective of technical sciences, with a full awareness – and discussion – of its differences from the cognitive perspective of strict sciences or human and social sciences. The main thesis of the book is that informational revolution will probably lead to a formation of a new episteme. The book includes discussions of many issues related to such general perspective, such as what is technology proper; what is intuition from a perspective of technology and of evolutionary naturalism; what are the reasons for and how large are the delays between a fundamental invention and its broad social utilization; what is the fundamental logical error (using paradoxes that are not real, only apparent) of the tradition of sceptical philosophy; what are rational foundations and examples of emergence of order out of chaos; whether civilization development based on two positive feedbacks between science, technology and the market might lead inevitably to a self-destruction of human civilization; etc.