The Advantage

The Advantage
Author: Patrick M. Lencioni
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 247
Release: 2012-03-14
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1118266102

There is a competitive advantage out there, arguably more powerful than any other. Is it superior strategy? Faster innovation? Smarter employees? No, New York Times best-selling author, Patrick Lencioni, argues that the seminal difference between successful companies and mediocre ones has little to do with what they know and how smart they are and more to do with how healthy they are. In this book, Lencioni brings together his vast experience and many of the themes cultivated in his other best-selling books and delivers a first: a cohesive and comprehensive exploration of the unique advantage organizational health provides. Simply put, an organization is healthy when it is whole, consistent and complete, when its management, operations and culture are unified. Healthy organizations outperform their counterparts, are free of politics and confusion and provide an environment where star performers never want to leave. Lencioni’s first non-fiction book provides leaders with a groundbreaking, approachable model for achieving organizational health—complete with stories, tips and anecdotes from his experiences consulting to some of the nation’s leading organizations. In this age of informational ubiquity and nano-second change, it is no longer enough to build a competitive advantage based on intelligence alone. The Advantage provides a foundational construct for conducting business in a new way—one that maximizes human potential and aligns the organization around a common set of principles.

The Unfair Advantage

The Unfair Advantage
Author: Ash Ali
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Total Pages: 193
Release: 2022-06-07
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1250280532

The winner of the UK's Business Book of the Year Award for 2021, this is a groundbreaking exposé of the myths behind startup success and a blueprint for harnessing the things that really matter. What is the difference between a startup that makes it, and one that crashes and burns? Behind every story of success is an unfair advantage. But an Unfair Advantage is not just about your parents' wealth or who you know: anyone can have one. An Unfair Advantage is the element that gives you an edge over your competition. This groundbreaking book shows how to identify your own Unfair Advantages and apply them to any project. Drawing on over two decades of hands-on experience, Ash Ali and Hasan Kubba offer a unique framework for assessing your external circumstances in addition to your internal strengths. Hard work and grit aren't enough, so they explore the importance of money, intelligence, location, education, expertise, status, and luck in the journey to success. From starting your company, to gaining traction, raising funds, and growth hacking, The Unfair Advantage helps you look at yourself and find the ingredients you didn't realize you already had, to succeed in the cut-throat world of business.

The AI Advantage

The AI Advantage
Author: Thomas H. Davenport
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 243
Release: 2019-08-06
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0262538008

Cutting through the hype, a practical guide to using artificial intelligence for business benefits and competitive advantage. In The AI Advantage, Thomas Davenport offers a guide to using artificial intelligence in business. He describes what technologies are available and how companies can use them for business benefits and competitive advantage. He cuts through the hype of the AI craze—remember when it seemed plausible that IBM's Watson could cure cancer?—to explain how businesses can put artificial intelligence to work now, in the real world. His key recommendation: don't go for the “moonshot” (curing cancer, or synthesizing all investment knowledge); look for the “low-hanging fruit” to make your company more efficient. Davenport explains that the business value AI offers is solid rather than sexy or splashy. AI will improve products and processes and make decisions better informed—important but largely invisible tasks. AI technologies won't replace human workers but augment their capabilities, with smart machines to work alongside smart people. AI can automate structured and repetitive work; provide extensive analysis of data through machine learning (“analytics on steroids”), and engage with customers and employees via chatbots and intelligent agents. Companies should experiment with these technologies and develop their own expertise. Davenport describes the major AI technologies and explains how they are being used, reports on the AI work done by large commercial enterprises like Amazon and Google, and outlines strategies and steps to becoming a cognitive corporation. This book provides an invaluable guide to the real-world future of business AI. A book in the Management on the Cutting Edge series, published in cooperation with MIT Sloan Management Review.

Representing the Advantaged

Representing the Advantaged
Author: Daniel M. Butler
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 161
Release: 2014-07-14
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1139993526

Political inequality is a major issue in American politics, with racial minorities and low-income voters receiving less favorable representation. Scholars argue that this political inequality stems largely from differences in political participation and that if all citizens participated equally we would achieve political equality. Daniel M. Butler shows that this common view is incorrect. He uses innovative field and survey experiments involving public officials to show that a significant amount of bias in representation traces its roots to the information, opinions, and attitudes that politicians bring to office and suggests that even if all voters participated equally, there would still be significant levels of bias in American politics because of differences in elite participation. Butler's work provides a new theoretical basis for understanding inequality in American politics and insights into what institutional changes can be used to fix the problem.

The New Argonauts

The New Argonauts
Author: AnnaLee Saxenian
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 438
Release: 2006
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780674025660

Like the Greeks who sailed with Jason in search of the Golden Fleece, the new Argonauts--foreign-born, technically skilled entrepreneurs who travel back and forth between Silicon Valley and their home countries--seek their fortune in distant lands by launching companies far from established centers of skill and technology. Their story illuminates profound transformations in the global economy. Economic geographer AnnaLee Saxenian has followed this transformation, exploring one of its great paradoxes: how the "brain drain" has become "brain circulation," a powerful economic force for development of formerly peripheral regions. The new Argonauts--armed with Silicon Valley experience and relationships and the ability to operate in two countries simultaneously--quickly identify market opportunities, locate foreign partners, and manage cross-border business operations. The New Argonauts extends Saxenian's pioneering research into the dynamics of competition in Silicon Valley. The book brings a fresh perspective to the way that technology entrepreneurs build regional advantage in order to compete in global markets. Scholars, policymakers, and business leaders will benefit from Saxenian's firsthand research into the investors and entrepreneurs who return home to start new companies while remaining tied to powerful economic and professional communities in the United States. For Americans accustomed to unchallenged economic domination, the fast-growing capabilities of China and India may seem threatening. But as Saxenian convincingly displays in this pathbreaking book, the Argonauts have made America richer, not poorer.

The Advantage of Disadvantage

The Advantage of Disadvantage
Author: LaGina Gause
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 297
Release: 2022-02-24
Genre: History
ISBN: 1316513572

The Advantage of Disadvantage provides insights for scholars and activists into how marginalized groups gain representation through protest. Drawing on formal theory, surveys, and quantitative data, the book presents an interdisciplinary analysis of representation, inequality, and digital activism.

The Benefits of a light heart: Humour, problem-solving, and strategies to make it happen

The Benefits of a light heart: Humour, problem-solving, and strategies to make it happen
Author: Prue R. Millear
Publisher: Lulu.com
Total Pages: 186
Release: 2016-10-22
Genre: Health & Fitness
ISBN: 1326794299

Life is full of challenges, from the mundane to the difficult and dangerous. The Benefits of a Light Heart is a book which contains a recipe for action, from which you can reframe your problems using the dog metaphor. Dogs, after all, are like our problems - they range from small and innocuous to full-blown, raving monsters. Rather than be too serious, linger awhile and laugh with Dr Prue Millear, PhD (and her alter ego, a cat called Professor Hilary Doodlebug), and discover the Barking Dog Index of Problems. Will you find that you have a Red Kelpie (sensible problems), a Poodle (somewhat annoying ones), or something more challenging, like a Blue Healer (getting really difficult) or the top end, the Hounds of Hell (when civil society has been lost) Once you've identified your Dog and found ways to get your Problem Dog to sit nicely and behave, you can deal with the FLEAS (Fears, Lies, Exaggerations, Absolutes, and Silences) that make any Dog worse than need be.

The Catholic Advantage

The Catholic Advantage
Author: Bill Donohue
Publisher: Image
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2015-03-03
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0804185840

The controversial president of The Catholic League shows how the Church may be the best guide for achieving long-term health and happiness. Religious Americans are by far the healthiest and happiest of any segment of the population—this is true across religions according to recent Gallup polls. Bill Donohue, President of the Catholic League, goes a step further to show that Catholicism will not only make you healthy and happy, but it will ultimately lead you to heaven too. In his latest book, The Catholic Advantage, Donohue turns his attention to the ways Catholicism is experienced by believers. He explores a simplified and practical way of looking at the faith, demonstrating how Catholic living enhances our well-being. With exciting new research and time-honored wisdom, Donohue shows how the application of beliefs, bonds and boundaries lead to a bountiful life, while the atheism, narcissism, and hedonism of secular intellectuals and celebrity culture paves the path to misery. Donohue writes, “Catholics who have faithfully followed the precepts of their religion, and have lived a life of good health and happiness, are nicely positioned to experience even greater happiness in heaven. Anyone who bats three for three, especially given these stakes, must be doing something right.”