The Business Analyst's Handbook
Howard Podeswa - 2008
Despite the importance of the job, there is currently no book specifically designed as a comprehensive reference manual for the working BA. The Business Analyst's Handbook solves this problem by providing a useful compendium of tools, tables, lists, and templates that BAs can use on-the-job to carry out their tasks. For example, you might be preparing for an interview session and use the book's checklist of interviewees to verify whether there is appropriate coverage of business stakeholders. Or you might be asked to review some diagrams and refer to the Glossaries of Symbols (organized by diagram type) for guidance. Or you may be asked to prepare textual requirements documentation and refer to the Business Requirement template for a list of artifacts and table of contents. Whatever your BA needs, the Business Analyst's Handbook places the necessary information right at your fingertips.
Wal-Mart Book of Ethics Abridged Edition
R.A. Wilson - 2012
Why else would you be looking at this book? If you have ever wanted to see behind the front lines of retail, this is the book for you. If you want to validate your own experiences in retail, this is the book for you. If you just want to laugh at humorous things from funny people, this is the book for you. Packed full of true short stories from working in one of these super stores, only one conclusion can be reached in the end: Wal-Mart is the craziest place on Earth!
Crack the Case System: Complete Case Interview Prep
David Ohrvall - 2005
David Ohrvall's step-by-step approach combines practical instruction on structuring, analytics and communication, as well as insider tips and insights gained from training thousands of candidates. CTCS includes over 150 bonus videos on mbacase.com, 42 practice cases, homework and drills. About the author: David Ohrvall is the global expert on the topic of case interviews. A dynamic and sought-after speaker, he trains several thousand MBAs and undergraduates each year at premiere business schools around the world, including Wharton, Stanford, Harvard Business School, Chicago Booth, Duke's Fuqua School of Business, INSEAD, Oxford and Cambridge. David also has an extensive private coaching practice that has helped launch hundreds of candidates into consulting, venture capital, and a variety of industries. David is a former management consultant (Bain & Company), and a graduate of the Wharton School (MBA & undergrad). Learn more about David at www.mbacase.com.
The Cycle: A Practical Approach to Managing Arts Organizations
Michael M. Kaiser - 2013
According to Kaiser, successful arts organizations pursue strong programmatic marketing campaigns that compel people to buy tickets, enroll in classes, and so on—in short, to participate in the organization’s programs. Additionally, they create exciting activities that draw people to the organization as a whole. This institutional marketing creates a sense of enthusiasm that attracts donors, board members, and volunteers. Kaiser calls this group of external supporters the family. When this hidden engine is humming, staff, board, and audience members, artists, and donors feel confidence in the future. Resources are reinvested in more and better art, which is marketed aggressively; as a result, the “family” continues to grow, providing even more resources. This self-reinforcing cycle underlies the activities of all healthy arts organizations, and the theory behind it can be used as a diagnostic tool to reveal—and remedy—the problems of troubled ones. This book addresses each element of the cycle in the hope that more arts organizations around the globe—from orchestras, theaters, museums, opera companies, and classical and modern dance organizations to service organizations and other not-for-profit cultural institutions—will be able to sustain remarkable creativity, pay the bills, and have fun doing so!
Successful Business Intelligence: Secrets to Making BI a Killer App
Cindi Howson - 2007
Learn about the components of a BI architecture, how to choose the appropriate tools and technologies, and how to roll out a BI strategy throughout the organisation.
Start-up Expert: Get Ready
Alistair Milne - 2011
After reading the Start-up Expert's first book 'Get Ready' you will have a better understanding of the challenges ahead and whether you have the character and determination to succeed. You will be reassured that qualifications are irrelevant and read stories about those who succeed against all odds. The book is designed to serve as encouragement and inspiration, while at the same time providing practical advice.Alistair Milne is a serial entrepreneur and investor who already has 16 years of hands on start-up experience at age 33. Alistair has started more than 6 businesses since founding his first limited company at 17 and he has invested in many more. He moved to Monaco aged just 25 and his businesses currently employ well over 250 people.Alistair has no degree in business studies or MBA, everything he knows about start-ups has been learned the hard way through running actual businesses from start to exit. He is truly a 'Start-up Expert'.
Competing Against Luck
Clayton M. Christensen - 2016
A generation ago, Christensen revolutionized business with his groundbreaking theory of disruptive innovation. Now, he goes further, offering powerful new insights.After years of research, Christensen has come to one critical conclusion: our long held maxim—that understanding the customer is the crux of innovation—is wrong. Customers don’t buy products or services; they "hire" them to do a job. Understanding customers does not drive innovation success, he argues. Understanding customer jobs does. The "Jobs to Be Done" approach can be seen in some of the world’s most respected companies and fast-growing startups, including Amazon, Intuit, Uber, Airbnb, and Chobani yogurt, to name just a few. But this book is not about celebrating these successes—it’s about predicting new ones.Christensen contends that by understanding what causes customers to "hire" a product or service, any business can improve its innovation track record, creating products that customers not only want to hire, but that they’ll pay premium prices to bring into their lives. Jobs theory offers new hope for growth to companies frustrated by their hit and miss efforts.This book carefully lays down Christensen’s provocative framework, providing a comprehensive explanation of the theory and why it is predictive, how to use it in the real world—and, most importantly, how not to squander the insights it provides.
Blitzscaling: The Lightning-Fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Companies
Reid Hoffman - 2018
So what separates the startups that get disrupted and disappear from the ones who grow to become global giants?The secret is blitzscaling: a set of techniques for scaling up at a dizzying pace that blows competitors out of the water. The objective of Blitzscaling is not to go from zero to one, but from one to one billion -as quickly as possible.When growing at a breakneck pace, getting to next level requires very different strategies from those that got you to where you are today. In a book inspired by their popular class at Stanford Business School, Hoffman and Yeh reveal how to navigate the necessary shifts and weather the unique challenges that arise at each stage of a company's life cycle, such as: how to design business models for igniting and sustaining relentless growth; strategies for hiring and managing; how the role of the founder and company culture must evolve as the business matures, and more.Whether your business has ten employees or ten thousand, Blitzscaling is the essential playbook for winning in a world where speed is the only competitive advantage that matters.
Yes, And: How Improvisation Reverses "No, But" Thinking and Improves Creativity and Collaboration--Lessons from The Second City
Kelly Leonard - 2015
But it also provides one-of-a-kind leadership training to cutting-edge companies, nonprofits, and public sector organizations—all aimed at increasing creativity, collaboration, and teamwork.The rules for leadership and teamwork have changed, and the skills that got professionals ahead a generation ago don’t work anymore. Now The Second City provides a new toolkit individuals and organizations can use to thrive in a world increasingly shaped by speed, social communication, and decentralization. Based on eight principles of improvisation, Yes, And helps to develop these skills and foster them in high-potential leaders and their teams, including: Mastering the ability to co-create in an ensemble Fostering a “yes, and” approach to work Embracing failure to accelerate high performance Leading by listening and by learning to follow Innovating by making something out of nothingYes, And is a must-read for professionals and organizations, helping to develop the invaluable leadership skills needed to succeed today.
168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think
Laura Vanderkam - 2010
This is your guide to getting the most out of them. It's an unquestioned truth of modern life: we are starved for time. We tell ourselves we'd like to read more, get to the gym regularly, try new hobbies, and accomplish all kinds of goals. But then we give up because there just aren't enough hours to do it all. Or if we don't make excuses, we make sacrifices- taking time out from other things in order to fit it all in. There has to be a better way...and Laura Vanderkam has found one. After interviewing dozens of successful, happy people, she realized that they allocate their time differently than most of us. Instead of letting the daily grind crowd out the important stuff, they start by making sure there's time for the important stuff. When plans go wrong and they run out of time, only their lesser priorities suffer. Vanderkam shows that with a little examination and prioritizing, you'll find it is possible to sleep eight hours a night, exercise five days a week, take piano lessons, and write a novel without giving up quality time for work, family, and other things that really matter.
Growth Hacker Marketing: A Primer on the Future of PR, Marketing, and Advertising
Ryan Holiday - 2013
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.
Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers
Geoffrey A. Moore - 2006
Crossing the Chasm has become the bible for bringing cutting-edge products to progressively larger markets. This edition provides new insights into the realities of high-tech marketing, with special emphasis on the Internet. It's essential reading for anyone with a stake in the world's most exciting marketplace.
Grumby
Andy Kessler - 2010
In this comic novel a band of hacker-geeks load state-of-the-art artificial intelligence, including working eyes, ears, spy software, and a smart mouth, into a bunch of old Furby dolls, re-christened Grumbies, network them together, sell millions, become rich and famous and make enemies/allies of Mossad, the CIA, Google, Microsoft, IRS, Goldman Sachs, the guys from Google, and Steve Jobs.
Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career
Herminia Ibarra - 2002
Feeling unfulfilled, burned out, or just plain unhappy with what we’re doing, we long to make that leap into the unknown. But we also hold on, white-knuckled, to the years of time and effort we’ve invested in our current profession.In this powerful book, Herminia Ibarra presents a new model for career reinvention that flies in the face of everything we’ve learned from "career experts." While common wisdom holds that we must first know what we want to do before we can act, Ibarra argues that this advice is backward. Knowing, she says, is the result of doing and experimenting. Career transition is not a straight path toward some predetermined identity, but a crooked journey along which we try on a host of "possible selves" we might become.Based on her in-depth research on professionals and managers in transition, Ibarra outlines an active process of career reinvention that leverages three ways of "working identity": experimenting with new professional activities, interacting in new networks of people, and making sense of what is happening to us in light of emerging possibilities.Through engrossing stories—from a literature professor turned stockbroker to an investment banker turned novelist—Ibarra reveals a set of guidelines that all successful reinventions share. She explores specific ways that hopeful career changers of any background can:Explore possible selvesCraft and execute "identity experiments"Create "small wins" that keep momentum goingSurvive the rocky period between career identitiesConnect with role models and mentors who can ease the transitionMake time for reflection—without missing out on windows of opportunityDecide when to abandon the old path in order to follow the newArrange new events into a coherent story of who we are becoming.A call to the dreamer in each of us, Working Identity explores the process for crafting a more fulfilling future. Where we end up may surprise us.