Inflection Point


Book Description

Today, a hurricane is forming, and businesses are headed straight into it. This hurricane is arising from the convergence of several enormous trends in information technology, including cloud, mobility, Software as a Service, and Big Data. In Inflection Point, Scott Stawski shows how to harness these fierce winds of change, put them at your back, and sail towards greater competitiveness and customer value. Stawski explains the strategic implications of today’s new technology paradigms, helping you reshape strategy to embrace and profit from them. You’ll discover how technology and other factors are driving a radical new round of disintermediation, reintermediation, and disruption–and what that means to you and your company. Stawski shows how to go beyond inadequate incremental improvements, dramatically reducing IT spend and virtually eliminating IT capital expenditures. One meaningful step at a time, you’ll learn how to transform Operational IT into both a utility and a true business enabler, bringing new speed, flexibility, and focus to what really matters: your true core competencies. BUILD A CONTINUAL TRANSFORMATION ENVIRONMENT THAT’S READY FOR ANYTHING Focus on high-value core competencies, not fixed assets or unchanging processes CONSUME IT THE WAY YOU CONSUME ELECTRICITY Stop running data centers, buying software, and managing applications–forever! LEVERAGE THE CLOUD’S SIMPLICITY WITHOUT LOSING CONTROL OR SECURITY Use standards and governance to maximize cloud benefits with minimal risk HARNESS THE PRECIOUS ASSET YOU MUST ALWAYS KEEP CLOSE: DATA Build data-centric operations to deliver the right knowledge, right now, wherever it’s needed




Seeing Around Corners


Book Description

The first prescriptive, innovative guide to seeing inflection points before they happen--and how to harness these disruptive influences to give your company a strategic advantage. Paradigmatic shifts in the business landscape, known as inflection points, can either create new, entrepreneurial opportunities (see Amazon and Netflix) or they can lead to devastating consequences (e.g., Blockbuster and Toys R Us). Only those leaders who can "see around corners"-that is, spot the disruptive inflection points developing before they hit-are poised to succeed in this market. Columbia Business School Professor and corporate consultant Rita McGrath contends that inflection points, though they may seem sudden, are not random. Every seemingly overnight shift is the final stage of a process that has been subtly building for some time. Armed with the right strategies and tools, smart businesses can see these inflection points coming and use them to gain a competitive advantage. Seeing Around Corners is the first hands-on guide to anticipating, understanding, and capitalizing on the inflection points shaping the marketplace.




Turning the Flywheel


Book Description

A companion guidebook to the number-one bestselling Good to Great, focused on implementation of the flywheel concept, one of Jim Collins’ most memorable ideas that has been used across industries and the social sectors, and with startups. The key to business success is not a single innovation or one plan. It is the act of turning the flywheel, slowly gaining momentum and eventually reaching a breakthrough. Building upon the flywheel concept introduced in his groundbreaking classic Good to Great, Jim Collins teaches readers how to create their own flywheel, how to accelerate the flywheel’s momentum, and how to stay on the flywheel in shifting markets and during times of turbulence. Combining research from his Good to Great labs and case studies from organizations like Amazon, Vanguard, and the Cleveland Clinic which have turned their flywheels with outstanding results, Collins demonstrates that successful organizations can disrupt the world around them—and reach unprecedented success—by employing the flywheel concept.




Inflection Point


Book Description




In-Memory Data Management


Book Description

In the last 50 years the world has been completely transformed through the use of IT. We have now reached a new inflection point. Here we present, for the first time, how in-memory computing is changing the way businesses are run. Today, enterprise data is split into separate databases for performance reasons. Analytical data resides in warehouses, synchronized periodically with transactional systems. This separation makes flexible, real-time reporting on current data impossible. Multi-core CPUs, large main memories, cloud computing and powerful mobile devices are serving as the foundation for the transition of enterprises away from this restrictive model. We describe techniques that allow analytical and transactional processing at the speed of thought and enable new ways of doing business. The book is intended for university students, IT-professionals and IT-managers, but also for senior management who wish to create new business processes by leveraging in-memory computing.




Vertical Option Spreads


Book Description

Make trades on vertical options spreads with the precision of a laser beam Vertical Options Spreads is a combination of a bona-fide academic research-based study and a complete method to trade credit and debit spreads, along with other complex option combination trades such as iron condors and butterflies. Here, the author has accumulated five years of daily data on the ETF, SPY and provided historical evidence of actual win rates at specific multiples of entry points, both in time and price level. For example, traders will be able to use the weekly options, pick a level of risk and return desired, learn how to place the trade, and then discover the actual percent return that the trade would have yielded. This must-have resource includes the basics of option trading and contains references to many excellent works by other authors that explore more about the intricacies of option mechanics and trading. It is far more than an analysis of one specific asset, SPY, featuring a study of probability theory and how it has applied to trading over the past five years, including the highly volatile 2007 to 2009 time frame and the more "normal" 2010 to 2012 time period. The book offer a thorough understanding of how price movement, actual volatility, and implied volatility all provide a complex but workable web in which the informed trader can generate excellent returns. However, the trader must have the discipline to act within the confines of probability and the "law" of large numbers refusing to place trades based on gut feelings or hunches. Offers high-probability based trading that uses the new weekly options Contains handy interactive worksheets that allow traders to select their own risk/return with precision Includes a website with daily and weekly information on the estimate of the actual standard deviation points on the price spectrum Vertical Options Spreads offers traders a research-based guide for trading Standard & Poors 500 ETF, SPY using historic and estimated probabilities and returns that will give them an edge in the marketplace.




Howard's Gift


Book Description

This work offers wonderful wisdom for navigating the inflection points in our lives." -- Mehmet Oz, MD An iconic teacher. A warm friend. A generous mentor. For more than 40 years, Howard Stevenson has been a towering figure at Harvard Business School: the man who literally defined entrepreneurship and taught thousands of the world's most successful professionals. Now - spurred by Stevenson's heart-stopping brush with death - his student, colleague, and dear friend Eric Sinoway shares the man's wisdom and inspiration. Through warm and engaging conversations, we hear Howard's timeless and practical lessons on pursuing both success and fulfillment, beginning with: - Create a vision of your own legacy through a process called "business planning for life." - Be entrepreneurial in driving your career ahead (even if you're not an entrepreneur). - Exploit the inflection points in your life - whether "friend," "foe," or "silent." - Cut risk in tough career and life decisions by shining the "light of predictability" on them. - Plan for the ripples, not just the splash from your actions and choices. Reading Howard's Gift is like having a wise, caring friend sit down and say, "Let's figure all this out together." And the deeply personal perspectives from guest contributors - such as CNN correspondent Soledad O'Brien, Teach for America Founder Wendy Kopp, two-time Super Bowl Champion Carl Banks, and legendary MTV Founder Bob Pittman - reinforce the practical lessons in this clear-sighted book that will help readers "define success in their own terms," and "live a life with no regrets.




The Great Demographic Reversal


Book Description

This original and panoramic book proposes that the underlying forces of demography and globalisation will shortly reverse three multi-decade global trends – it will raise inflation and interest rates, but lead to a pullback in inequality. “Whatever the future holds”, the authors argue, “it will be nothing like the past”. Deflationary headwinds over the last three decades have been primarily due to an enormous surge in the world’s available labour supply, owing to very favourable demographic trends and the entry of China and Eastern Europe into the world’s trading system. This book demonstrates how these demographic trends are on the point of reversing sharply, coinciding with a retreat from globalisation. The result? Ageing can be expected to raise inflation and interest rates, bringing a slew of problems for an over-indebted world economy, but is also anticipated to increase the share of labour, so that inequality falls. Covering many social and political factors, as well as those that are more purely macroeconomic, the authors address topics including ageing, dementia, inequality, populism, retirement and debt finance, among others. This book will be of interest and understandable to anyone with an interest on where the world’s economy may be going.




Handbook of Mathematics


Book Description

This guide book to mathematics contains in handbook form the fundamental working knowledge of mathematics which is needed as an everyday guide for working scientists and engineers, as well as for students. Easy to understand, and convenient to use, this guide book gives concisely the information necessary to evaluate most problems which occur in concrete applications. For the 4th edition, the concept of the book has been completely re-arranged. The new emphasis is on those fields of mathematics that became more important for the formulation and modeling of technical and natural processes, namely Numerical Mathematics, Probability Theory and Statistics, as well as Information Processing.




The Great Mental Models, Volume 1


Book Description

Discover the essential thinking tools you’ve been missing with The Great Mental Models series by Shane Parrish, New York Times bestselling author and the mind behind the acclaimed Farnam Street blog and “The Knowledge Project” podcast. This first book in the series is your guide to learning the crucial thinking tools nobody ever taught you. Time and time again, great thinkers such as Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett have credited their success to mental models–representations of how something works that can scale onto other fields. Mastering a small number of mental models enables you to rapidly grasp new information, identify patterns others miss, and avoid the common mistakes that hold people back. The Great Mental Models: Volume 1, General Thinking Concepts shows you how making a few tiny changes in the way you think can deliver big results. Drawing on examples from history, business, art, and science, this book details nine of the most versatile, all-purpose mental models you can use right away to improve your decision making and productivity. This book will teach you how to: Avoid blind spots when looking at problems. Find non-obvious solutions. Anticipate and achieve desired outcomes. Play to your strengths, avoid your weaknesses, … and more. The Great Mental Models series demystifies once elusive concepts and illuminates rich knowledge that traditional education overlooks. This series is the most comprehensive and accessible guide on using mental models to better understand our world, solve problems, and gain an advantage.