By 1993, the computer industry had changed so rapidly the company was on its way to losing $16 billion and IBM was on a watch list for extinction -- victimized by its own lumbering size, an insular corporate culture, and the PC era IBM had itself helped invent.Then Lou Gerstner was brought in to run IBM. Almost everyone watching the rapid demise of this American icon presumed Gerstner had joined IBM to preside over its continued dissolution into a confederation of autonomous business units. This strategy, well underway when he arrived, would have effectively eliminated the corporation that had invented many of the industry's most important technologies.Instead, Gerstner took hold of the company and demanded the managers work together to re-establish IBM's mission as a customer-focused provider of computing solutions. Moving ahead of his critics, Gerstner made the hold decision to keep the company together, slash prices on his core product to keep the company competitive, and almost defiantly announced, "The last thing IBM needs right now is a vision."Who Says Elephants Can't Dance? tells the story of IBM's competitive and cultural transformation. In his own words, Gerstner offers a blow-by-blow account of his arrival at the company and his campaign to rebuild the leadership team and give the workforce a renewed sense of purpose. In the process, Gerstner defined a strategy for the computing giant and remade the ossified culture bred by the company's own success.The first-hand story of an extraordinary turnaround, a unique case study in managing a crisis, and a thoughtful reflection on the computer industry and the principles of leadership, Who Says Elephants Can't Dance? sums up Lou Gerstner's historic business achievement. Taking readers deep into the world of IBM's CEO, Gerstner recounts the high-level meetings and explains the pressure-filled, no-turning-back decisions that had to be made. He also offers his hard-won conclusions about the essence of what makes a great company run.In the history of modern business, many companies have gone from being industry leaders to the verge of extinction. Through the heroic efforts of a new management team, some of those companies have even succeeded in resuscitating themselves and living on in the shadow of their former stature. But only one company has been at the pinnacle of an industry, fallen to near collapse, and then, beyond anyone's expectations, returned to set the agenda. That company is IBM.Lou Gerstener, Jr., served as chairman and chief executive officer of IBM from April 1993 to March 2002, when he retired as CEO. He remained chairman of the board through the end of 2002. Before joining IBM, Mr. Gerstner served for four years as chairman and CEO of RJR Nabisco, Inc. This was preceded by an eleven-year career at the American Express Company, where he was president of the parent company and chairman and CEO of its largest subsidiary. Prior to that, Mr. Gerstner was a director of the management consulting firm of McKinsey & Co., Inc. He received a bachelor's degree in engineering from Dartmouth College and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

    Now the celebrated producer, lecturer, teacher, and bestselling author has updated his classic guide for a new generation of filmmakers, offering a fresh insider’s perspective on the film industry today. From concept to character, from opening scene to finished script, here are easily understood guidelines to help aspiring screenwriters—from novices to practiced writers—hone their craft. Filled with updated material—including all-new personal anecdotes and insights, guidelines on marketing and collaboration, plus analyses of recent films, from American Beauty to Lord of the Rings—Screenplay presents a step-by-step, comprehensive technique for writing the screenplay that will succeed in Hollywood. Discover:•Why the first ten pages of your script are crucially important•How to visually “grab” the reader from page one, word one •Why structure and character are the essential foundation of your screenplay•How to adapt a novel, a play, or an article into a screenplay•Tips on protecting your work—three legal ways to claim ownership of your screenplay•The essentials of writing great dialogue, creating character, building a story line, overcoming writer’s block, getting an agent, and much more.With this newly updated edition of his bestselling classic, Syd Field proves yet again why he is revered as the master of the screenplay—and why his celebrated guide has become the industry’s gold standard for successful screenwriting.

    Under Andrew Grove's leadership, Intel has become the world's largest computer chipmaker, the 5th most admired company in America, and the 7th most profitable company among the Fortune 500. Few CEOs can claim this level of success. Grove attributes much of it to the philosophy and strategy he has learned the hard way as he steered Intel through a series of potential major disasters. There are moments in any business when massive change occurs, when all the rules of business shift fast, furiously and forever. Grove calls such moments strategic inflection points (SIPs), and he has lived through several. They can be set off by almost anything - by mega competition, an arcane change in regulations, or by a seemingly modest change in technology. They are not always easy to spot - but you can't hide from them. Intel's first SIP was when the Japanese started producing better-quality, lower-cost memory chips. It took Grove three years and huge losses to recognize that he had to rethink and reposition the company to become, once again, leader in its field.Grove extrapolates the lessons he has learned from this and other SIPs - for instance the drama of the Pentium flaw, and the SIP brought on by the Internet - to reveal a unique insight into the management of change. He recounts strategies from other companies and examines his own record of success and failure. Only the Paranoid Survive is a classic lesson in leadership skills that every manager in every industry will benefit from. Every manager must assume that something will change - very soon.

     Using case examples of both good and bad student practice, the handbook takes students through each step of the dissertation process, from their initial research proposal to the final submission. The author uses clear illustrations of what students need to do - or not do - to reach their potential, helping them to avoid the most common pitfalls. This essential handbook covers: Producing focused and relevant research objectives Writing your literature review Citing your sources correctly Clearly explaining your use of research methods Writing up your findings Summarizing your work by linking your conclusions to your initial proposal Understanding marking schemes Aimed primarily at Master's students or students on short postgraduate courses in business, humanities and the social sciences, this book is also key reading for supervisors and undergraduates considering postgraduate study.

    Even though a professional team, like the one depicted on the cover, can make skydiving seem perfectly choreographed; there are always uncertainties. Whether it's getting a skydiving team into the air or a new product off the ground, no project has ever been completed exactly as planned.With Meredith and Mantel's Sixth Edition, you'll not only learn how to select, initiate, operate, and control all types of projects; you'll also learn how to manage risks and uncertainties. Written from a managerial perspective, the text equips you with the quantitative skills, knowledge of organizational issues, and insights into human behavior that you need to do project management effectively.Updated and revised, this edition features current coverage of topics such as:* Risk management* Lifecycle costing* Real options* Organizational process assets* Non-technical project terminations* The phase/quality-gate process* Requirements formulation analysisFree trial version of Microsoft Project(r) and Crystal Ball(r)This text includes a CD-ROM containing a 120-day trial version of Microsoft Project(r) and a student version of Crystal Ball(r). Microsoft Project and Crystal Ball screenshots appear where relevant throughout the text. Additionally, a number of end-of-chapter exercises encourage you to apply these computer software packages to project management problems.

    This text enables students to conduct serious analysis of applied problems in contrast to merely running simple“canned” applications to help students become stronger analysts and future managers. It is also at a mathematically higher level than most business statistics texts.

    Students learn to view a firm through its financial statements and to carry out the appropriate financial statement analysis to value the firm's debt and equity. The book takes an activist approach to investing, showing how the analyst challenges the current market price of a share by analyzing the fundamentals. With a careful assessment of accounting quality, accounting comes to life as it is integrated with the modern theory of finance to develop practical analysis and valuation tools for active investing.

    But many of those failures are preventable. The Lean Startup is a new approach being adopted across the globe, changing the way companies are built and new products are launched. Eric Ries defines a startup as an organization dedicated to creating something new under conditions of extreme uncertainty. This is just as true for one person in a garage or a group of seasoned professionals in a Fortune 500 boardroom. What they have in common is a mission to penetrate that fog of uncertainty to discover a successful path to a sustainable business.The Lean Startup approach fosters companies that are both more capital efficient and that leverage human creativity more effectively. Inspired by lessons from lean manufacturing, it relies on "validated learning," rapid scientific experimentation, as well as a number of counter-intuitive practices that shorten product development cycles, measure actual progress without resorting to vanity metrics, and learn what customers really want. It enables a company to shift directions with agility, altering plans inch by inch, minute by minute.Rather than wasting time creating elaborate business plans, The Lean Startup offers entrepreneurs - in companies of all sizes - a way to test their vision continuously, to adapt and adjust before it's too late. Ries provides a scientific approach to creating and managing successful startups in a age when companies need to innovate more than ever.

    In Zero to One, legendary entrepreneur and investor Peter Thiel shows how we can find singular ways to create those new things. Thiel begins with the contrarian premise that we live in an age of technological stagnation, even if we’re too distracted by shiny mobile devices to notice. Information technology has improved rapidly, but there is no reason why progress should be limited to computers or Silicon Valley. Progress can be achieved in any industry or area of business. It comes from the most important skill that every leader must master: learning to think for yourself.Doing what someone else already knows how to do takes the world from 1 to n, adding more of something familiar. But when you do something new, you go from 0 to 1. The next Bill Gates will not build an operating system. The next Larry Page or Sergey Brin won’t make a search engine. Tomorrow’s champions will not win by competing ruthlessly in today’s marketplace. They will escape competition altogether, because their businesses will be unique. Zero to One presents at once an optimistic view of the future of progress in America and a new way of thinking about innovation: it starts by learning to ask the questions that lead you to find value in unexpected places.

    He takes you inside a typical interview by exploring the various types of case questions and he shares with you a system that will help you answer today's most sophisticated case questions.

    In his most important work, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (1936), Keynes critiqued the laissez-faire policies of his day, particularly the proposition that a normally functioning market economy would bring full employment. Keynes's forward-looking work transformed economics from merely a descriptive and analytic discipline into one that is policy oriented. For Keynes, enlightened government intervention in a nation's economic life was essential to curbing what he saw as the inherent inequalities and instabilities of unregulated capitalism.

    Victor Cheng, a former McKinsey management consultant, reveals his proven, insider's method for acing the case interview. Having personally secured job offers from McKinsey, Bain & Company, Monitor, L.E.K, Oliver Wyman, and A.T. Kearney, he has also been a McKinsey case interviewer providing you with a hands-on, real-world perspective on what it really takes to land job offers. Cheng 's prot g es work in all the major strategy management consulting firms, including McKinsey, The Boston Consulting Group, Bain & Company, Monitor Company, A.T. Kearny, Oliver Wyman, L.E.K, Roland Berger, Accenture, and Deloitte, as well as in the strategic planning departments of numerous Fortune 500 companies. Whether you re an undergraduate, MBA, PhD, or experienced-hire applicant candidate, you ll discover: * What case interviewers really say about you behind closed doors but wouldn t dare tell you until now * The subtle yet specific performance differences that separate those who get management consulting offers from those who don t * The 10 biggest mistakes candidates make in case interviews (and how to avoid them) * The 3 specific things interviewers expect in the first 5 minutes of a case that often decide the outcome on the spot * An insider 's take on what interviewers really look for and why and how to give them what they want Praise for Victor Cheng and Case Interview Secrets With Victor 's help, I went from not knowing anything about consulting to securing offers from McKinsey and BCG. Mihnea Munteanu, University of Michigan I received six offers from McKinsey, BCG, Booz, Deloitte, A.T. Kearney, and Marakon. Everything Victor said was right Michael Yang, Northwestern University Despite having a liberal arts degree from a state school, I landed a dream job with L.E.K. Consulting. Thanks, Victor. Jackson Boyar, Indiana University Victor has put me in a very difficult position now I have to decide between offers from two of the top three consultancies Christopher Perez, The Wharton School In my first attempt to break into consulting, I failed every one of my interviews with McKinsey, Bain, BCG, Oliver Wyman, Monitor, Booz and probably a few others. On my second attempt two years later, I followed everything Victor Cheng suggested and took advantage of every resource he provided and received an offer from McKinsey Daniel Suo, Business Analyst (Offer Recipient), McKinsey, Stamford Without Victor 's help, I never would have gotten an offer from BCG. What he teaches really makes the difference between getting an offer and not. Puttipath Tasnavites, Boston Consulting Group, Thailand After following Victor 's guidance, I had a complete breakthrough in my case interview performance and got an offer from Monitor. Marine Serres, Monitor & Company As a PhD candidate in engineering, I had an academic background that left me completely unprepared for the case interview process. That 's when I found Victor Cheng and ended up getting my dream job. Thank you, Victor Zach Jacobson, McKinsey, New York About the Author As a former McKinsey consultant, r sum screener, and case interviewer, Victor Cheng mentors thousands of aspiring consultants via his articles and video tutorials at www.caseinterview.com. As a candidate, he passed 60 cases and received job offers from McKinsey, Bain, Monitor, LEK, AT Kearney, and Oliver Wyman. At McKinsey, he was rated in the top 10 percent of consultants worldwide in his cohort. Today he advises Inc. 500 CEOs.

    Each chapter utilizes case studies and numerous examples. Mathematical and technical sections can be skipped without loss of continuity. Most textbooks do not include models and decision support systems robust enough for industry, but that is not true of this new edition.The accompanying CD-ROM also features the return of two simulations, the Computerized Beer Game and the Risk Pool Game and a computerized tool. These simulations help users develop and execute supply chain contracts while also illustrating many of the concepts discussed in the text.

    Readers familiar with the previous edition will find a text that retains all the features that make Rulebook ideally suited for use as a supplementary course book -- including its modest price and compact size. Unlike most textbooks on argumentative writing, Rulebook is organised around specific rules, illustrated and explained soundly and briefly. It is not a textbook, but a rulebook, whose goal is to help students get on with writing a paper or assessing an argument.

    Others might point to the qualities of today’s so-called celebrity CEOs—charisma, virtuoso communication skills, and a confident management style. But what really matters when you run an organization? What is the hallmark of exceptional CEO performance? Quite simply, it is the returns for the shareholders of that company over the long term.In this refreshing, counterintuitive book, author Will Thorndike brings to bear the analytical wisdom of a successful career in investing, closely evaluating the performance of companies and their leaders. You will meet eight individualistic CEOs whose firms’ average returns outperformed the S&P 500 by a factor of twenty—in other words, an investment of $10,000 with each of these CEOs, on average, would have been worth over $1.5 million twenty-five years later. You may not know all their names, but you will recognize their companies: General Cinema, Ralston Purina, The Washington Post Company, Berkshire Hathaway, General Dynamics, Capital Cities Broadcasting, TCI, and Teledyne. In The Outsiders, you’ll learn the traits and methods—striking for their consistency and relentless rationality—that helped these unique leaders achieve such exceptional performance.Humble, unassuming, and often frugal, these "outsiders” shunned Wall Street and the press, and shied away from the hottest new management trends. Instead, they shared specific traits that put them and the companies they led on winning trajectories: a laser-sharp focus on per share value as opposed to earnings or sales growth; an exceptional talent for allocating capital and human resources; and the belief that cash flow, not reported earnings, determines a company’s long-term value.Drawing on years of research and experience, Thorndike tells eye-opening stories, extracting lessons and revealing a compelling alternative model for anyone interested in leading a company or investing in one—and reaping extraordinary returns.