Winning the Right Game


Book Description

How to succeed in an era of ecosystem-based disruption: strategies and tools for offense, defense, timing, and leadership in a changing competitive landscape. The basis of competition is changing. Are you prepared? Rivalry is shifting from well-defined industries to broader ecosystems: automobiles to mobility platforms; banking to fintech; television broadcasting to video streaming. Your competitors are coming from new directions and pursuing different goals from those of your familiar rivals. In this world, succeeding with the old rules can mean losing the new game. Winning the Right Game introduces the concepts, tools, and frameworks necessary to confront the threat of ecosystem disruption and to develop the strategies that will let your organization play ecosystem offense. To succeed in this world, you need to change your perspective on competition, growth, and leadership. In this book, strategy expert Ron Adner offers a new way of thinking, illustrating breakthrough ideas with compelling cases. How did a strategy of ecosystem defense save Wayfair and Spotify from being crushed by giants Amazon and Apple? How did Oprah Winfrey redraw industry boundaries to transition from television host to multimedia mogul? How did a shift to an alignment mindset enable Microsoft's cloud-based revival? Each was rooted in a new approach to competitors, partners, and timing that you can apply to your own organization. For today's leaders the difference between success and failure is no longer simply winning, but rather being sure that you are winning the right game.




Right Game


Book Description

Business is like war: The best combatant wins while the worst loses, right? Not necessarily. Companies can succeed spectacularly without destroying others. And they can lose miserably after competing well. Exceptional businesses win by actively shaping the game they're playing, not playing the game they find. The Right Game shows you how to do this—by altering who's competing, what value each player brings to the table, and which rules and tactics players use. Since 1922, Harvard Business Review has been a leading source of breakthrough ideas in management practice. The Harvard Business Review Classics series now offers you the opportunity to make these seminal pieces a part of your permanent management library. Each highly readable volume contains a groundbreaking idea that continues to shape best practices and inspire countless managers around the world.




The Infinite Game


Book Description

From the New York Times bestselling author of Start With Why and Leaders Eat Last, a bold framework for leadership in today’s ever-changing world. How do we win a game that has no end? Finite games, like football or chess, have known players, fixed rules and a clear endpoint. The winners and losers are easily identified. Infinite games, games with no finish line, like business or politics, or life itself, have players who come and go. The rules of an infinite game are changeable while infinite games have no defined endpoint. There are no winners or losers—only ahead and behind. The question is, how do we play to succeed in the game we’re in? In this revelatory new book, Simon Sinek offers a framework for leading with an infinite mindset. On one hand, none of us can resist the fleeting thrills of a promotion earned or a tournament won, yet these rewards fade quickly. In pursuit of a Just Cause, we will commit to a vision of a future world so appealing that we will build it week after week, month after month, year after year. Although we do not know the exact form this world will take, working toward it gives our work and our life meaning. Leaders who embrace an infinite mindset build stronger, more innovative, more inspiring organizations. Ultimately, they are the ones who lead us into the future.




Theory of Fun for Game Design


Book Description

Discusses the essential elements in creating a successful game, how playing games and learning are connected, and what makes a game boring or fun.




A Visit from St. Nicholas


Book Description

A poem about the visit that Santa Claus pays to the children of the world during the night before every Christmas.




The Web Game Developer's Cookbook


Book Description

Want to start building great web games with HTML5 and JavaScript? Moving from Flash or other game platforms? Already building HTML5 games and want to get better and faster at it? This guide brings together everything you need: expert guidance, sample projects, and working code! Evan Burchard walks you step-by-step through quickly building 10 popular types of games. Each chapter implements a game within a well-understood genre; introduces a different free, open source, and easy-to-use HTML5 game engine; and is accompanied with full JavaScript source code listings. Each game recipe uses tested and well-proven patterns that address the development challenges unique to that genre, and shows how to use existing tools and engines to build complete substantial game projects in just hours. Need a quick JavaScript primer? Evan Burchard provides that, too! Coverage includes • Mastering an essential HTML5/JavaScript game development toolset: browser, text editor, terminal, JavaScript console, game engine, and more • Accelerating development with external libraries and proven patterns • Managing browser differences between IE, Firefox, and Chrome • Getting up to speed on web development with a QUIZ game built with JavaScript, HTML, CSS, and JQuery • Creating INTERACTIVE FICTION “gamebooks” that leverage new CSS3 features and impress.js • Building PARTY games around the lightweight atom.js engine • Developing PUZZLE games with the easel.js graphics rendering engine • Writing PLATFORMERS with melon.js and its integrated tilemap editor • Coding intense 2-player FIGHTING games for web browsers with game.js • Building a SPACE SHOOTER with the jQuery-based gameQuery game engine • Implementing pseudo-3D techniques like ray casting for an FPS (First Person Shooter) style game • Producing a 16 bit RPG (Role Playing Game) complete with interfaces for dialog, inventories, and turn-based battles with enchant.js • Building an isometric RTS (Real Time Strategy) game that incorporates server components along with node.js, socket.io, and crafty.js • Engaging players with content that encourages exploration Turn to The Web Game Developer’s Cookbook for proven, expert answers–and the code you need to implement them. It’s all you need to jumpstart any web game project!




For the Good of The Game: Who Decides What's Right?


Book Description

When declared ineligible for interschool athletics by the Indiana High School Athletic Association (IIHSAA), some athletes fight back. They file lawsuits to regain their athletic eligibility. In response to lawsuits, the IHSAA counterattacks. It resorts to numerous legal and regulatory tactics to dissuade athlete lawsuits. Athlete lawsuits helped to liberalize IHSAA rules for athletes who transferred high schools due to family illness, divorce, or economic misfortune. A female athlete’s lawsuit transformed Indiana girls’ athletics years prior to the effective date of Title IX regulations prohibiting discrimination by gender in education. In For the Good of The Game: Who Decides What’s Right?, you will learn the stories of Johnell Haas, Bill and Frank Stevenson, Bill Schumaker, Warren Sturrup, and Jasmine Watson and that 1) wisdom sometimes flows up, not down; 2) the process by which decisions are made can be as important as substance, and 3), “human nature never sleeps.”




Changing the Game


Book Description

The modern day youth sports environment has taken the enjoyment out of athletics for our children. Currently, 70% of kids drop out of organized sports by the age of 13, which has given rise to a generation of overweight, unhealthy young adults. There is a solution. John O’Sullivan shares the secrets of the coaches and parents who have not only raised elite athletes, but have done so by creating an environment that promotes positive core values and teaches life lessons instead of focusing on wins and losses, scholarships, and professional aspirations. Changing the Game gives adults a new paradigm and a game plan for raising happy, high performing children, and provides a national call to action to return youth sports to our kids.




The Spire in the Woods


Book Description

After discovering the suicide of a schoolmate may be connected to a local legend, a young man embarks on a quest to discover the truth. Why had Robert Edward Kennan killed himself? Was it because of a failed relationship or something more insidious? Based on actual events, the Spire in the Woods is equal parts coming of age and ghost story. A candid account of one man's struggles with his mental health, his obsession with the supernatural, and the single biggest regret of his life.




Game Theory, Alive


Book Description

We live in a highly connected world with multiple self-interested agents interacting and myriad opportunities for conflict and cooperation. The goal of game theory is to understand these opportunities. This book presents a rigorous introduction to the mathematics of game theory without losing sight of the joy of the subject. This is done by focusing on theoretical highlights (e.g., at least six Nobel Prize winning results are developed from scratch) and by presenting exciting connections of game theory to other fields such as computer science (algorithmic game theory), economics (auctions and matching markets), social choice (voting theory), biology (signaling and evolutionary stability), and learning theory. Both classical topics, such as zero-sum games, and modern topics, such as sponsored search auctions, are covered. Along the way, beautiful mathematical tools used in game theory are introduced, including convexity, fixed-point theorems, and probabilistic arguments. The book is appropriate for a first course in game theory at either the undergraduate or graduate level, whether in mathematics, economics, computer science, or statistics. The importance of game-theoretic thinking transcends the academic setting—for every action we take, we must consider not only its direct effects, but also how it influences the incentives of others.