Marketing: Real People, Real Choices


Michael R. Solomon - 1996
    It introduces marketing from the perspective of real people making real marketing decisions at leading companies "every day. "Learners will come to understand that marketing is about "creating value"-for customers, for companies, and for society as a whole-and they will see how that is accomplished in the real world. A five-part organization covers making marketing value decisions, identifying markets and understanding customers' needs for value, creating the value proposition, communicating the value proposition, and delivering the value proposition. For individuals interested in a career in marketing.

The Opportunity Analysis Canvas


James V. Green - 2013
    The emergence of business “model” (not plan) courses, tools, and competitions are a step in the right direction. The focus of these new activities is engaging aspiring entrepreneurs in customer discovery and developing and testing a business model canvas.While this is a viable approach and valuable lesson in entrepreneurship education, business models only begin to take shape when a new venture idea is formulated. Customer discovery requires having a product or service concept in the mind of the entrepreneur. Without the idea for the product or service itself, no business model nor customer discovery can begin.It is this first step, the idea generation step, that the Opportunity Analysis Canvas fulfills. The Opportunity Analysis Canvas is an innovative tool for identifying and analyzing entrepreneurial ideas.

Adaptive Markets: Financial Evolution at the Speed of Thought


Andrew W. Lo - 2017
    This is one of the biggest debates in economics and the value or futility of investment management and financial regulation hang on the outcome. In this groundbreaking book, Andrew Lo cuts through this debate with a new framework, the Adaptive Markets Hypothesis, in which rationality and irrationality coexist.Drawing on psychology, evolutionary biology, neuroscience, artificial intelligence, and other fields, Adaptive Markets shows that the theory of market efficiency isn't wrong but merely incomplete. When markets are unstable, investors react instinctively, creating inefficiencies for others to exploit. Lo's new paradigm explains how financial evolution shapes behavior and markets at the speed of thought--a fact revealed by swings between stability and crisis, profit and loss, and innovation and regulation.A fascinating intellectual journey filled with compelling stories, Adaptive Markets starts with the origins of market efficiency and its failures, turns to the foundations of investor behavior, and concludes with practical implications--including how hedge funds have become the Galapagos Islands of finance, what really happened in the 2008 meltdown, and how we might avoid future crises.An ambitious new answer to fundamental questions in economics, Adaptive Markets is essential reading for anyone who wants to know how markets really work.

The Founder's Dilemmas: Anticipating and Avoiding the Pitfalls That Can Sink a Startup


Noam Wasserman - 2011
    Friendships and relationships can suffer. Bad decisions at the inception of a promising venture lay the foundations for its eventual ruin. The Founder's Dilemmas is the first book to examine the early decisions by entrepreneurs that can make or break a startup and its team.Drawing on a decade of research, Noam Wasserman reveals the common pitfalls founders face and how to avoid them. He looks at whether it is a good idea to cofound with friends or relatives, how and when to split the equity within the founding team, and how to recognize when a successful founder-CEO should exit or be fired. Wasserman explains how to anticipate, avoid, or recover from disastrous mistakes that can splinter a founding team, strip founders of control, and leave founders without a financial payoff for their hard work and innovative ideas. He highlights the need at each step to strike a careful balance between controlling the startup and attracting the best resources to grow it, and demonstrates why the easy short-term choice is often the most perilous in the long term. The Founder's Dilemmas draws on the inside stories of founders like Evan Williams of Twitter and Tim Westergren of Pandora, while mining quantitative data on almost ten thousand founders.People problems are the leading cause of failure in startups. This book offers solutions.

Contemporary Strategy Analysis


Robert M. Grant - 1904
    Grounded in the latest research and illustrated with lively current case examples, this text introduces MBA and advanced-level undergraduates to the fundamental concepts and principles of strategy.

The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits


C.K. Prahalad - 2004
    Prahalad describes how the world's low-income markets offer opportunity for the world's wealthiest companies to seek fortune and bring prosperity to the poor.

The Ultimate Question 2.0: How Net Promoter Companies Thrive in a Customer-Driven World


Fred Reichheld - 2011
    Since the book was first published, Net Promoter has transformed companies, across industries and sectors, constituting a game-changing system and ethos that rivals Six Sigma in its power.In this thoroughly updated and expanded edition, Reichheld, with Bain colleague Rob Markey, explains how practitioners have built Net Promoter into a full-fledged management system that drives extraordinary financial and competitive results. With his trademark clarity, Reichheld:� Defines the fundamental concept of Net Promoter, explaining its connection to your company’s growth and sustained success� Presents the closed-loop feedback process and demonstrates its power to energize employees and delight customers� Shares new and compelling stories of companies that have transformed their performance by putting Net Promoter at the center of their businessPractical and insightful, The Ultimate Question 2.0 provides a blueprint for long-term growth and success.

Treasure Hunt: Inside the Mind of the New Consumer


Michael J. Silverstein - 2006
    For instance, the average mall shopper will spend about $100, then leave when she hits that limit. She'll probably buy shoes rather than clothing, because she doesn't want to think about her dress size. And the store most likely to get her money isn't the one with the nicest display or the deepest discounts-it's the one closest to her parking spot.In his consulting with dozens of leading companies, Michael J. Silverstein has interviewed thousands of customers, extracting fascinating patterns about what really drives their purchase decisions. His first book, the acclaimed bestseller Trading Up, has taught a generation of marketers about the "new luxury" phenomenon, and why consumers will happily pay a steep premium for goods and services that are emotionally satisfying, from golf clubs to bathroom fixtures to beauty products.But Trading Up revealed only part of the story of the new consumer. The same middle-class people who are happily trading up at Victoria's Secret and Panera are going on treasure hunts at Costco and Home Depot. And they are often getting as much emotional satisfaction in the discount stores as in the luxury stores. TREASURE HUNT shows how even the most mundane shopping-for things like paper towels and pet food-has become an adventure rather than a tedious chore.In just about every category, both the high end and the low end are growing and innovation- rich. Many middle-class consumers gladly spend $5 a day for a Starbucks venti latte; others spend forty cents a day on home-brewed coffee, feel good about their frugality, and save up the difference to buy Apple's newest Nano. TREASURE HUNT explains the success of companies as diverse as Dollar General, H. E. Butt, eBay, Commerce Bank, and Tchibo.But beware: in our bifurcated global market, businesses need a clear strategy for aiming high or low, while avoiding the treacherous middle, where so many have recently stumbled. If your offering isn't exciting enough to inspire trading up, but not enough of a bargain to satisfy the treasure hunters, you'll have no emotional connection with your target audience. And then, as many fallen companies have discovered, your tried-and-true marketing strategies will go into a severe stall.TREASURE HUNT takes us into the homes of real people making real decisions, and into the CEO's offices of innovative companies finding new ways to accommodate them. Written with the same flair, empathy, and intelligence that made Trading Up an instant classic, this is an essential guide to the moods and habits of the constantly changing consumer.

Macroeconomics


Olivier J. Blanchard - 1991
    Its fundamental goals are to provide an integrated view of macroeconomics, and to make close contact with current macroeconomic events.

Capital: The Story of Long-Term Investment Excellence


Charles D. Ellis - 2004
    The Capital Group is one of the world's largest investment management organizations, but little is known about it because the company has shunned any type of publicity. This compelling book, for the first time, takes you inside one of the most elite and private investment firms out there?the Capital Group Companies?a value investment firm par excellence. It digs deeps to reveal the corporate culture and long-term investment strategies that have made Capital the one organization where most investment professionals would like to work and would most recommend as long-term investment managers for their family and friends.

The Official Guide for GMAT Review


Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) - 2005
    This book provides information and advice on the GMAT Analytical Writing Assessment, and includes samples of the two types of writing tasks, examples of essays, authentic scoring guides, and strategies for preparing your responses.

The Undercover Economist


Tim Harford - 2005
    The Undercover Economist is for anyone who's wondered why the gap between rich and poor nations is so great, or why they can't seem to find a decent second-hand car, or how to outwit Starbucks. This book offers the hidden story behind these and other questions, as economist Tim Harford ranges from Africa, Asia, Europe, and of course the United States to reveal how supermarkets, airlines, and coffee chains--to name just a few--are vacuuming money from our wallets. Harford punctures the myths surrounding some of today's biggest controversies, including the high cost of health-care; he reveals why certain environmental laws can put a smile on a landlord's face; and he explains why some industries can have high profits for innocent reasons, while in other industries something sinister is going on. Covering an array of economic concepts including scarce resources, market power, efficiency, price gouging, market failure, inside information, and game theory, Harford sheds light on how these forces shape our day-to-day lives, often without our knowing it. Showing us the world through the eyes of an economist, Tim Harford reveals that everyday events are intricate games of negotiations, contests of strength, and battles of wits. Written with a light touch and sly wit, The Undercover Economist turns "the dismal science" into a true delight.

The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google


Scott Galloway - 2017
    Just about everyone thinks they know how they got there. Just about everyone is wrong. For all that's been written about the Four over the last two decades, no one has captured their power and staggering success as insightfully as Scott Galloway.Instead of buying the myths these compa-nies broadcast, Galloway asks fundamental questions. How did the Four infiltrate our lives so completely that they're almost impossible to avoid (or boycott)? Why does the stock market forgive them for sins that would destroy other firms? And as they race to become the world's first trillion-dollar company, can anyone chal-lenge them?In the same irreverent style that has made him one of the world's most celebrated business professors, Galloway deconstructs the strategies of the Four that lurk beneath their shiny veneers. He shows how they manipulate the fundamental emotional needs that have driven us since our ancestors lived in caves, at a speed and scope others can't match. And he reveals how you can apply the lessons of their ascent to your own business or career.Whether you want to compete with them, do business with them, or simply live in the world they dominate, you need to understand the Four.

Judgment in Managerial Decision Making


Max H. Bazerman - 1986
    But, with Max Bazerman's Judgment in Managerial Decision Making, Sixth Edition, you can learn how to overcome those biases to make better managerial decisions. The text examines judgment in a variety of organizational contexts, and provides practical strategies for changing your decision-making processes and improving these processes so that they become part of your permanent behavior. Throughout, you'll findnumerous hands-on decision exercises and examples from the author's extensive executive training experience that will help you enhance the quality of your managerial judgment. Past editions have been used in top universities, in business schools, and in public policy, psychology, and economics classes. In addition, the text has been widely recognized by practitioners in the world of behavioral finance. Revised with two new chapters This Sixth Edition now adds chapters on bounded ethicality (Chapter 8) and bounded awareness (Chapter 11). Both of these chapters are based on Bazerman's recent writing with Dolly Chugh and Mahzarin Banaji. Max H. Bazerman is the Jesse Isidor Straus Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School. In addition, Max is also formally affiliated with the Kennedy School of Government, the Psychology Department, and the Program on Negotiation at Harvard. He is the author or co-author of over 150 research articles and chapters, and the author of numerous other books. Max was named one of the top 30 authors, speakers, and teachers of management by Executive Excellence in each of their two most recent rankings.

The Myth of the Garage: And Other Minor Surprises


Chip Heath - 2011
    . . Punchy, entertaining, and full of unexpected insights, the collection is the perfect companion for a short flight (or a long meeting).