The value chain. Five forces. Industry structure. Differentiation. Relative cost. If you want to understand how companies achieve and sustain competitive success, Michael Porter’s frameworks are the foundation. But while everyone in business may know Porter’s name, many managers misunderstand and misuse his concepts.Understanding Michael Porter sets the record straight, providing the first concise, accessible summary of Porter’s revolutionary thinking. Written with Porter’s full cooperation by Joan Magretta, his former editor at Harvard Business Review, this new book delivers fresh, clear examples to illustrate and update Porter’s ideas.Magretta uses her wide business experience to translate Porter’s powerful insights into practice and to correct the most common misconceptions about them—for instance, that competition is about being unique, not being the best; that it is a contest over profits, not a battle between rivals; that strategy is about choosing to make some customers unhappy, not being all things to all customers.An added feature is an original Q&A with Porter himself, which includes answers to managers’ FAQs.Eminently readable, this book will enable every manager in your organization to grasp Porter’s ideas—and swiftly deploy them to drive your company’s success.

    You'll understand how to discover and interpret customer pain, and learn how to use this research to guide your team through each step of product creation.Written for designers, product managers, and others who want to communicate better with designers, this book is essential reading for anyone who contributes to the product creation process.Understand exactly who your customers are, what they want, and how to build products that make them happyLearn frameworks and principles that successful product designers useIncorporate five states into every screen of your interface to improve conversions and reduce perceived loading timesDiscover meeting techniques that Apple, Amazon, and LinkedIn use to help teams solve the right problems and make decisions fasterDesign effective interfaces across different form factors by understanding how people hold devices and complete tasksLearn how successful designers create working prototypes that capture essential customer feedbackCreate habit-forming and emotionally engaging experiences, using the latest psychological research

    Less inventory. The highest quality cars with the fewest defects of any competing manufacturer. In factories around the globe, Toyota consistently raises the bar for manufacturing, product development, and process excellence. The result is an amazing business success story: steadily taking market share from price-cutting competitors, earning far more profit than any other automaker, and winning the praise of business leaders worldwide.The Toyota Way reveals the management principles behind Toyota's worldwide reputation for quality and reliability. Dr. Jeffrey Liker, a renowned authority on Toyota's Lean methods, explains how you can adopt these principles--known as the "Toyota Production System" or "Lean Production"--to improve the speed of your business processes, improve product and service quality, and cut costs, no matter what your industry.Drawing on his extensive research on Toyota, Dr. Liker shares his insights into the foundational principles at work in the Toyota culture. He explains how the Toyota Production System evolved as a new paradigm of manufacturing excellence, transforming businesses across industries. You'll learn how Toyota fosters employee involvement at all levels, discover the difference between traditional process improvement and Toyota's Lean improvement, and learn why companies often think they are Lean--but aren't.

    With step-by-step guidance, Validating Product Ideas shows you how to tackle the research to build the best possible product.

    Yet information graphics is rarely taught in schools or is the focus of on-the-job training. Now, for the first time, Dona M. Wong, a student of the information graphics pioneer Edward Tufte, makes this material available for all of us. In this book, you will learn:to choose the best chart that fits your data;the most effective way to communicate with decision makers when you have five minutes of their time;how to chart currency fluctuations that affect global business;how to use color effectively;how to make a graphic “colorful” even if only black and white are available.The book is organized in a series of mini-workshops backed up with illustrated examples, so not only will you learn what works and what doesn’t but also you can see the dos and don’ts for yourself. This is an invaluable reference work for students and professional in all fields.

    Sutton and Rao have devoted much of the last decade to uncovering what it takes to build and uncover pockets of exemplary performance, to help spread them, and to keep recharging organizations with ever better work practices. Drawing on inside accounts and case studies and academic research from a wealth of industries – including start-ups, pharmaceuticals, airlines, retail, financial services, high-tech, education, non-profits, government, and healthcare -- Sutton and Rao identify the key scaling challenges that confront every organization. They tackle the difficult trade-offs that organizations must make between “Buddhism” versus “Catholicism” -- whether to encourage individualized approaches tailored to local needs or to replicate the same practices and customs as an organization or program expands. They reveal how the best leaders and teams develop, spread, and instill the right mindsets in their people -- rather than ruining or watering down the very things that have fueled successful growth in the past. They unpack the principles that help to cascade excellence throughout an organization, as well as show how to eliminate destructive beliefs and behaviors that will hold them back. Scaling Up Excellence is the first major business book devoted to this universal and vexing challenge. It is destined to become the standard bearer in the field.

    How has Google done it? Veteran technology reporter Steven Levy was granted unprecedented access to the company, and in this revelatory book he takes readers inside Google headquarters—the Googleplex—to show how Google works.While they were still students at Stanford, Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin revolutionized Internet search. They followed this brilliant innovation with another, as two of Google’s earliest employees found a way to do what no one else had: make billions of dollars from Internet advertising. With this cash cow, Google was able to expand dramatically and take on other transformative projects: more efficient data centers, open-source cell phones, free Internet video (YouTube), cloud computing, digitizing books, and much more.The key to Google’s success in all these businesses, Levy reveals, is its engineering mind-set and adoption of such Internet values as speed, openness, experimentation, and risk taking. After its unapologetically elitist approach to hiring, Google pampers its engineers—free food and dry cleaning, on-site doctors and masseuses—and gives them all the resources they need to succeed. Even today, with a workforce of more than 23,000, Larry Page signs off on every hire.But has Google lost its innovative edge? With its newest initiative, social networking, Google is chasing a successful competitor for the first time. Some employees are leaving the company for smaller, nimbler start-ups. Can the company that famously decided not to be evil still compete?No other book has ever turned Google inside out as Levy does with In the Plex.

    This book presents some of the most important modeling and prediction techniques, along with relevant applications. Topics include linear regression, classification, resampling methods, shrinkage approaches, tree- based methods, support vector machines, clustering, and more. Color graphics and real-world examples are used to illustrate the methods presented. Since the goal of this textbook is to facilitate the use of these statistical learning techniques by practitioners in science, industry, and other fields, each chapter contains a tutorial on implementing the analyses and methods presented in R, an extremely popular open source statistical software platform. Two of the authors co-wrote The Elements of Statistical Learning (Hastie, Tibshirani and Friedman, 2nd edition 2009), a popular reference book for statistics and machine learning researchers. An Introduction to Statistical Learning covers many of the same topics, but at a level accessible to a much broader audience. This book is targeted at statisticians and non-statisticians alike who wish to use cutting-edge statistical learning techniques to analyze their data. The text assumes only a previous course in linear regression and no knowledge of matrix algebra.

    A new generation of multibillion dollar brands have been built without spending a dime on traditional marketing techniques. No press releases, no PR firm, and no billboards in Times Square.It wasn’t luck that took them from tiny start-ups to massive success. They have a new strategy, called Growth Hacking. And it works.In this e-special, bestselling author Ryan Holiday shows how the marketing game has changed forever. He explains the growth hacker mindset and provides a new set of rules—critical information whether you’re an aspiring marketer, an entrepreneur, or a Fortune 500 senior executive.

    Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could actually visualize data in such a way that we could maximize its potential and tell a story in a clear, concise manner? Thanks to the creative genius of Nathan Yau, we can. With this full-color book, data visualization guru and author Nathan Yau uses step-by-step tutorials to show you how to visualize and tell stories with data. He explains how to gather, parse, and format data and then design high quality graphics that help you explore and present patterns, outliers, and relationships.Presents a unique approach to visualizing and telling stories with data, from a data visualization expert and the creator of flowingdata.com, Nathan Yau Offers step-by-step tutorials and practical design tips for creating statistical graphics, geographical maps, and information design to find meaning in the numbers Details tools that can be used to visualize data-native graphics for the Web, such as ActionScript, Flash libraries, PHP, and JavaScript and tools to design graphics for print, such as R and Illustrator Contains numerous examples and descriptions of patterns and outliers and explains how to show them Visualize This demonstrates how to explain data visually so that you can present your information in a way that is easy to understand and appealing.

    Gives practical advice on developing and marketing products in the technology industry, looks in detail at Intel's marketing campaign against Motorola, and stresses the importance of commitment to a successful campaign.

    By pulling together concrete examples of how A/B testing has made an impact, they are inspiring a new generation of companies to make thoughtful, data-driven decisions. Their new book is smart, valuable, and proves just how indispensable A/B testing is today."--MARISSA MAYER, CEO of Yahoo!"Finally, a book on A/B testing and digital optimization that I will eagerly hand out to my clients! It's approachable, not overly technical, and is actually full of real-world examples of testing in action that provide the inspiration for testing that is so badly needed in most companies."-- CALEB WHITMORE, founder and CEO, Analytics Pros; coauthor of Performance Marketing with Google Analytics"A practical and readable guide to get the most out of your online marketing tests. Get it before your competitors do!"-- Tim Ash, CEO, SiteTuners; bestselling author of Landing Page Optimization; and chair of Conversion Conference"Here's the secret to magnificent marketing success: 1. Create a hypothesis. 2. Test it. 3. Be less wrong! In our immensely complex business world, if your organization is not structured to be less wrong every day, your failure is guaranteed. Ready to be less wrong but don't know how? Let Dan and Pete teach you!"-- Avinash Kaushik, author of Web Analytics 2.0; Digital Marketing Evangelist, Google"Savvy marketers have long known that A/B testing is a great way to optimize marketing and generate more revenue. But for too long, it has been considered too hard and complicated for most marketers to use. A/B Testing: The Most Powerful Way to Turn Clicks into Customers shows marketers at all levels of experience why testing is important--and more importantly, it gives them step-by-step guidance on how to get started and get the best results. I'm giving copies of this to my entire team, and I recommend you do as well!"-- Jon Miller, cofounder and VP of Marketing, Marketo"A/B testing that is fast and simple is set to disrupt web measurement and analytics on a massive scale. Every company should be using A/B testing to continuously improve, and anyone who wants to lead the charge on this revolution within their organization will benefit from reading this book."-- Amy Chang, former Global Head of Product, Google Analytics"Much like the prescriptive writing guide The Elements of Style by Strunk and White, A/B Testing is simple in its construction and design, but deceptively powerful and comprehensive in its message and breadth. This book is sure to be the foundational and prescriptive guide to optimization testing."-- Khai Tran, Senior Manager, Product--Online Video Products & Platforms, Disney/ABC Television Group

     This book by the team at Intercom, a rapidly growing San Francisco software startup, is designed to help those working in the ever evolving field of product management Since Intercom began in 2011, its team has been writing about how it approaches the product challenges it faces. How do you decide what to build? How do you decide what not to build? What questions should you ask beta users? How do you manage feedback? Intercom on Product Management takes the best product posts from Intercom’s award winning blog, Inside Intercom, and collects them together in actionable lessons for product managers. It’s not the definitive book on product management, but we think it’s a damn good place to start. What you’ll learn: CHAPTER 1 Evaluating your product CHAPTER 2 The thing about new features CHAPTER 3 Which new features to build CHAPTER 4 Getting the feature used Intercom on Product Management was written by Des Traynor, co-founder of Intercom and edited by John Collins, managing editor of Intercom's blog. Des has written extensively on product management and strategy and is a regular speaker on the topic at conferences like Business of Software, Launch and Mind the Product. John has over 20 years journalism experience covering technology and business issues, most recently for The Irish Times. Intercom helps web and mobile businesses to see, engage, learn from, and support their customers in incredibly personal ways. More than 4,000 web and mobile businesses use Intercom to communicate with their customers. Praise for Intercom on Product Management "A valuable resource for anyone who wants to build products that customers will want to use time and time again." - Nir Eyal, author of Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products. "Moves beyond the cliches and platitudes and provides astute, actionable advice on modern product management. I'd put it at the top of the reading list for anyone that has anything to do with building great products." - Dharmesh Shah, co-founder and CTO of HubSpot. "Really, really really good. Even better, easily accessible, so you can spend just a few minutes scanning through it and pick up something of value to use quickly." - John Koetsier, VP of Product at VentureBeat. "While books about design and programming abound, resources for the product manager are scant. Intercom has been filling that void with excellent blog posts and now a book of guidance, Intercom on Product Management." - Ryan Singer, Product Manager at Basecamp

    Emotional Design will appeal not only to designers and manufacturers but also to managers, psychologists, and general readers who love to think about their stuff.

    In Working Backwards, these two long-serving Amazon executives reveal and codify the principles and practices that drive the success of one of the most extraordinary companies the world has ever known. With twenty-seven years of Amazon experience between them, much of it in the early aughts—a period of unmatched innovation that brought products and services including Kindle, Amazon Prime, Amazon Studios, and Amazon Web Services to life—Bryar and Carr offer unprecedented access to the Amazon way as it was refined, articulated, and proven to be repeatable, scalable, and adaptable.With keen analysis and practical steps for applying it at your own company—no matter the size—the authors illuminate how Amazon’s fourteen leadership principles inform decision-making at all levels and reveal how the company’s culture has been defined by four characteristics: customer obsession, long-term thinking, eagerness to invent, and operational excellence. Bryar and Carr explain the set of ground-level practices that ensure these are translated into action and flow through all aspects of the business.Working Backwards is a practical guidebook and a corporate narrative, filled with the authors’ in-the-room recollections of what “Being Amazonian” is like and how it has affected their personal and professional lives. They demonstrate that success on Amazon’s scale is not achieved by the genius of any single leader, but rather through commitment to and execution of a set of well-defined, rigorously-executed principles and practices—shared here for the very first time. A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin's Press