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.

     Finance Basics explains the fundamentals simply and quickly, introducing you to key terms and concepts such as:• How to navigate financial statements• How to weigh costs and benefits• What’s involved in budgeting and forecasting• How to gauge a company’s financial healthDon't have much time? Get up to speed fast on the most essential business skills with HBR's 20-Minute Manager series. Whether you need a crash course or a brief refresher, each book in the series is a concise, practical primer that will help you brush up on a key management topic. Advice you can quickly read and apply, for ambitious professionals and aspiring executives—from the most trusted source in business. Also available as an ebook.

    But it is hard. It’s hard because it forces people and organizations to make specific choices about their future—something that doesn’t happen in most companies.Now two of today’s best-known business thinkers get to the heart of strategy—explaining what it’s for, how to think about it, why you need it, and how to get it done. And they use one of the most successful corporate turnarounds of the past century, which they achieved together, to prove their point.A.G. Lafley, former CEO of Procter & Gamble, in close partnership with strategic adviser Roger Martin, doubled P&G’s sales, quadrupled its profits, and increased its market value by more than $100 billion in just ten years. Now, drawn from their years of experience at P&G and the Rotman School of Management, where Martin is dean, this book shows how leaders in organizations of all sizes can guide everyday actions with larger strategic goals built around the clear, essential elements that determine business success—where to play and how to win.The result is a playbook for winning. Lafley and Martin have created a set of five essential strategic choices that, when addressed in an integrated way, will move you ahead of your competitors. They are:• What is our winning aspiration?• Where will we play?• How will we win?• What capabilities must we have in place to win?• What management systems are required to support our choices?The stories of how P&G repeatedly won by applying this method to iconic brands such as Olay, Bounty, Gillette, Swiffer, and Febreze clearly illustrate how deciding on a strategic approach—and then making the right choices to support it—makes the difference between just playing the game and actually winning.

    From researching the competition to translating the vision of the CEO, to designing and implementing an integrated brand identity programme, the meticulous development process of designing a brand identity is presented through a highly visible step-by-step approach in five phases.

    Businesses make millions of decisions every day. But once in a great while a leader makes a truly game-changing decision that shifts not only the strategy of a single company but how everyone does business. These big decisions are counterintuitive-they go against the conventional wisdom. In hindsight, taking a different direction may seem easy, but these bet-the-company moves involve drama, doubt, and high tension. What made Apple's board bring back Steve Jobs to the company? How did Johnson & Johnson decide to recall every bottle of Tylenol after a poisoning scare that involved only a small batch of the drug? What made Henry Ford decide to double the wages of his autoworkers, and how did that change the American economy for the next century? Here management consultant Verne Harnish, the CEO of Gazelles, and Fortune's editors provide the background stories behind the greatest business decisions of all time. In this fully original book, you'll get a glimpse into the thought processes leading up to these groundbreaking moments and will learn how the decisions have shaped the thinking of today's top leaders. The book also contains an insightful foreword by management guru Jim Collins, the author of Built To Last and Good To Great, which explains the importance of decision making in creating a successful company. ADVANCED PRAISE FOR FORTUNE Greatest Business Decisions"CEOs make thousands of decisions every year, but only a few of them have dramatic impact on a company's brand, performance, and culture. IBM knows something about those types of 'big bets.' This book is a concise look at some of those big decisions and the C-suite moves that separated winners from the competition." - Samuel J. Palmisano, Chairman and former CEO, IBM"A great resouce! Learning about how others make great decisions can help you make great decisions! A fascinating, practical history that can change the way that you make decisions. Required reading for decison-makers- at all levels!" -Marshall Goldsmith, named the No. 1 Leadership Thinker in the World by Thinkers50, is a consultant and author of the New York Times bestsellers MOJO and What Got You Here Won't Get You There."When you look at the best business decisions that have been made throughout the years, a clear pattern emerges: The best decisions require not only great insight, but courage and commitment as well. The greatest business leaders are the ones who focus their energy not solely on profits, but on improving people's lives. These important lessons from our past, which this book brings to light, are more relevant than ever today." -Bill Ford, Executive Chairman, Ford Motor

    These two highly-respected economists and educators have revised this best-selling MICRO FIRST book to include more current topics and events while maintaining its hallmark feature of teaching economics through stories, graphs, and equations; relevant to students with various learning styles (verbal, visual, and numerical).

    Human Resource Management is the classic HRM text that covers the current issues within HRM the best. The text provides students in human resource management courses with a complete, comprehensive review of essential personnel management concepts and techniques in a highly readable and understandable form. Considering the intensely competitive nature of business today, this text, the #1 HRM book in the market, focuses on practical applications that all managers can use to deal with their HR-related responsibilities, while being able to defend their plans and contributions in measurable terms.

    You will learn how to systematically understand, design, and implement a new business model or analyze and renovate an old one.2) Co-created by 470 strategy practitionersBusiness Model Generation practices what it preaches. Co-authored by 470 Business Model Canvas practitioners from 45 countries, the book was financed and produced independently of the traditional publishing industry. It features a tightly-integrated, visual, lie-flat design that enables immediate hands-on use.3) Designed for doersBusiness Model Generation is for those ready to abandon outmoded thinking and embrace new, innovative models of value creation: executives, consultants, entrepreneurs and leaders of all organizations.

    Fully updated and revised to deal with recent changes to the GMAT, they were designed with a content-based approach.The Critical Reasoning Guide demystifies critical reasoning by teaching a clear, consistent, and effective approach to understanding an argument’s logic and choosing the best answer to the given question. Unlike other guides that attempt to convey everything in a single tome, the Critical Reasoning Strategy Guide is designed to provide deep, focused coverage of one specialized area tested on the GMAT. As a result, students benefit from thorough and comprehensive subject material, clear explanations of fundamental principles, and step-by-step instructions of important techniques. In-action practice problems and detailed answer explanations challenge the student, while topical sets of Official Guide problems provide the opportunity for further growth. Used by itself or with other Manhattan GMAT Strategy Guides, the Critical Reasoning Guide will help students develop all the knowledge, skills, and strategic thinking necessary for success on the GMAT. Purchase of this book includes one year of access to Manhattan GMAT’s online computer-adaptive practice exams and Critical Reasoning Question Bank. All of Manhattan Prep’s GMAT Strategy Guides are aligned with both the 2015 Edition and 13th Edition GMAC Official Guide.

    Period. In this economy ruled by ideas, the only sustainable form of leadership is brand leadership.The book offers a practical view of how branding decisions happen in the context of business strategy, not just in marketing communications. It brings in business strategy, customer experience, and anthropological perspectives as well.This new and adapted version of the book carries the design and follows the same format from the previous versions but includes many important additions, including information on how traditional branding is being challenged in a connected world as well as new case studies of companies that have applied similar concepts to achieve success.

    Froeb/McCann's MANAGERIAL ECONOMICS: A PROBLEM SOLVING APPROACH, 2E covers traditional material using a problem-based pedagogy built around common business mistakes. Models are used sparingly, and then only to the extent that they help students figure out why mistakes are made, and how to fix them. This edition's succinct, fast-paced presentation and challenging, interactive applications place students in the role of a decision maker who has to identify mistakes that reduce profits, and propose solutions to bring profits back up. The lively book provides an excellent ongoing reference for students pursuing business careers. New chapters and updates highlight mistakes that precipitated the financial crisis. With MANAGERIAL ECONOMICS, 2E your students are taught to use economics to not only identify profitable decisions, but also how to implement them within an organization.

    In the same right-to-the-point, no-nonsense style that was a hallmark of "Positioning," this sequel squares off against critical marketing challenges such as how to make sure your message gets through in an era of information overload.

    For decades, businesses sought competitive advantage almost exclusively in activities related to new product creation. They won by building bigger factories, by finding cheaper raw materials or labor, or by coming up with more efficient ways to move and store inventory—and by inventing exciting new products that competitors could not replicate.But these sources of competitive advantage are being irreversibly leveled by globalization and technology. Today, competitors can rapidly decipher and deploy the recipe for your product’s secret sauce and use it against you. “Upstream,” product-related advantages are rapidly eroding.This does not mean that competitive advantage is a thing of the past. Rather, its center has shifted. As marketing professor Niraj Dawar compellingly argues, advantage is now found “downstream,” where companies interact with customers in the marketplace.Tilt will help you grasp the global nature of this downstream shift and its profound implications for your strategy and your organization. With vivid examples from around the world, ranging across industries and sectors, Dawar shows how companies are reorienting their strategies around customer interactions to create and capture unique value. And he demonstrates how, unlike product-related advantage, this value is cumulative, continuously building over time.In an increasingly customer-centered world marketplace, let Tilt serve as your guide to shifting your strategy downstream—and achieving enduring competitive advantage.

    And as an entrepreneur, you're the one in charge: your actions can make or break your business. You need to know the tried-and-true fundamentals--from writing a business plan to getting your first loan. You also need to know the latest thinking on how to create an irresistible pitch deck, mitigate risk through experimentation, and develop unique opportunities through business model innovation.The HBR Entrepreneur's Handbook addresses these challenges and more with practical advice and wisdom from Harvard Business Review's archive. Keep this comprehensive guide with you throughout your startup's life--and increase your business's odds for success.In the HBR Entrepreneur's Handbook you'll find:Step-by-step guidance through the entrepreneurial processConcise explanations of the latest research and thinking on entrepreneurship from Harvard Business Review contributors such as Marc Andreessen and Reid HoffmanTime-honed best practicesStories of real companies, from Airbnb to eBayYou'll learn:Which skills and characteristics make for the best entrepreneursHow to gauge potential opportunitiesThe basics of business models and competitive strategyHow to test your assumptions--before you build a whole businessHow to select the right legal structure for your companyHow to navigate funding options, from venture capital and angel investors to accelerators and crowdfundingHow to develop sales and marketing programs for your ventureWhat entrepreneurial leaders must do to build culture and set direction as the business keeps growingHBR Handbooks provide ambitious professionals with the frameworks, advice, and tools they need to excel in their careers. With step-by-step guidance, time-honed best practices, real-life stories, and concise explanations of research published in Harvard Business Review, each comprehensive volume helps you to stand out from the pack--whatever your role.

    Three times the size of Generation X, they have a much bigger impact on society and business. In How Cool Brands Stay Hot, Joeri Van den Bergh and Mattias Behrer address what drives Generation Y as consumers and how marketers can develop the right brand strategies to reach this generation of 16-33 year olds.The authors' insights on what drives the consumer preferences of this new "Dot-com" generation are based on interviews with 5,000 Generation Y consumers. This new research provides understanding of the consumer psychology and behavior of the generation also known as the "Millennials." It helps marketers connect with the new generation of consumers by understanding their likes and dislikes, and guides them on advertising, marketing, and branding relevant to them.How Cool Brands Stay Hot contains guidance and checklists for marketing plans and campaigns, as well as case studies of Nokia, Nivea, PlayStation, Coca Cola, Volkswagen, Smirnoff, Red Bull, H&M, and Levi's. It offers creative and effective ideas on how to position, develop and promote brands to one of the largest and most influential generations of consumers today.Visit the website at http://www.howcoolbrandsstayhot.com/