Book Description

Learn the 25 keys to a great business plan, including writing the company's mission, identifying market opportunities, calculating appropriate financial ratios and projecting growth rates, that will help guide your company's expansion and attract necessary financing.Business Planning is part of The New York Times Pocket MBA Series, a reference series easily accessible to all businesspersons, from first-level managers to the executive suite. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

Not for everyone
I purchased this book expecting it to cater to someone beyond University level. However, the contents clearly cater for high school level learning and therefore provided little value to me. If you are looking to strengthen your technical and analytical skills look somewhere else. If you want basic training, give it a try.

Wow- great book
This insightful book proved worth its weight in gold. A must read for any entrepreneur looking for serious funding. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Awesome - Quick BP's
Excellent quick read for getting quick BP's. See how the experts do it. What I really like was the editing.It made disparate business plans flow as if they were written by one man.The editing was excellent, bravo! ... Read more

Book Description

This unique approach to strategic planning processes goes beyondthe traditional application for the for profit sector, to address issues for the nonprofit sector, and global aspects of strategic planning. Most importantly, Dr. Katsioloudes measures the impact of cultural, organizational, national and global issues on the strategic planning process, whether in the forprofit or the nonprofit sector, and provides examples, exercises, and solutions to make this key part of international management easier and more successful.

Based on the work entitled "Strategic Planning: Theory and Cases" by Marios I. Katsioloudes, Ph.D. and Robert D. Nale, Ph.D.

Presents the impact of culture on the strategic planning process in both for-profit and non-profit sectors, including social responsibility, business ethics, benchmarking, global strategies, entrepreneurship, and technology issues.

Part of the best-selling Managing Cultural Differences Series ... Read more

Book Description

Arm yourself for an unpredictable future by transforming your business into a kinetic powerhouse.

In the good old days, it was easy to chart the ups and downs of business. But in today's fast-paced, wired world, change occurs so rapidly that the old strategies no longer work. In this brilliant and practical book, Michael Fradette and Steve Michaud, top partners at Deloitte Consulting, prepare you and your business for the unknown by outlining a new work culture fit for the 21st century. Drawing on a wealth of client experience with companies that have adopted the kinetic model -- corporations as diverse as Kinko's, MTV, and John Deere -- Fradette and Michaud show how you and your business can:

Book Description

A Companion to Economic Forecasting provides an accessible and comprehensive account of recent developments in economic forecasting. Each of the chapters has been specially written by an expert in the field, bringing together in a single volume a range of contrasting approaches and views. Forecasting is a practical venture, so many of the chapters are aimed at practitioners and nonspecialists.

This book surveys a field that has expanded rapidly in recent years. There are no other up-to-date treatments that survey forecasting in a single volume. At present, the interested reader has little option but to seek out journal articles and books which often extol the virtues of one approach among many, or explain just one of the many problems that beset economic forecasting. The Companion provides a comprehensive account of the leading approaches and modeling strategies that are routinely employed. An extensive editorial overview places the contributions in context, and shows their interconnections and commonalities. ... Read more

Book Description

Crafting Strategy covers the latest strategy concepts, tools, and processes that executives and managers use to accomplish the goals of their organizations.Like the other books in this series, Crafting Strategy offers clear, succinct coverage of a crucial aspect of managing the high-performing organization. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Refreshingly straightforward
This short, well-written book covers strategic planning in a fast-paced, but complete, manner.

Highlights are Part 3, Strategy Concepts, and Part 4, Tools and Methods.

Part 3 gives a concise view of how to compete, forces and elements in the competitive environment, and how to place competitors into a context in which you can craft a competitive strategy. I thought that the strongest chapter in this part of the book was on value-based management.

Although I liked Part 3, I loved Part 4. The basic tools for crafting a strategy are thoroughly discussed. The treatment of strengths/weaknesses/opportunities/threats (SWOT) analysis was clear and well done; however I especially liked value chain analysis and scenario mapping. I was able to quickly put these two tools to use on a project, making the book far more valuable to me than its cost. I also gained a lot from Part 5, which contains excellent advice on how to turn your strategic planning into action.

Overall, this is a wonderful book and is short, packed with information and [in my case] a just-in-time resource for a project. ... Read more

Book Description

A practical, hands-on reference to the latest tools and techniques of demand forecasting

Presenting an up-to-date overview of demand forecasting, this comprehensive primer is an ideal resource for those who need in-depth information and hands-on training. Covering the latest developments in field techniques—and featuring software that includes helpful short-term forecasting models and inventory control scenarios—Demand Forecasting and Inventory Control includes complete details on:

• Forecasting in stationary demand situations
• Medium-term forecasting for growth and seasonality
• Implementing the re-order level (ROL) policy
• Using the Economic Order Quantity (EOQ) to establish replenishment quantity values
• Interpreting service levels based on simple statistical concepts
• Establishing the value of the review period and maximum stock level
• Selecting the most appropriate inventory control policy
• OPSCON—a computer-friendly learning package

forecasting is a crucial method for managing inventory control. It is an essential skill for all operations and manufacturing professionals, as well as those professionals in distribution and logistics. This practical reference offers an up-to-date and thoroughly accessible overview of this key concept, covering both theory and practice from current demand forecasting methods. The author, a seasoned expert in the field, provides complete details on the links between forecasts produced by analyzing demand data and the various methods by which this information—in conjunction with cost material on stocked items—is used to establish workable parameters for the most commonly used inventory control systems.

In Demand Forecasting and Inventory Control, Colin D. Lewis takes an in-depth look at the family of short-term forecasting models that are based on the exponentially weighted average and its many variants. With sample data that includes calculations necessary for hands-on applications, Lewis takes you step by step through a variety of essential processes, among them how to forecast in stationary demand situations, plus how to relate forecast and demand data to specific time periods. You'll also learn how to assess the validity and accuracy of selected forecasting models. In addition, Lewis examines a group of medium-term forecasting models based on a time-series, curve-fitting approach. The group encompasses, among other key topics, regression analysis, straight-line trend forecasts, and seasonality.

Additional sections on inventory control investigate the re-order level policy and re-order cycle policy, illustrating how they can be operated at minimum cost while offering a high level of customer service. Special consideration is given to the hybrid (s/S) inventory control policy and to the situation characterized by such items as slow moving spares—where the demand for a single unit can be expressed by an average interval between issues as long as 20 years.

To aid your understanding of the techniques and methods described, Demand Forecasting and Inventory Control contains a user-friendly computer learning package called OPSCON (Operations Planning and Control). Aimed at practitioners, as well as students who want to understand the processes behind the software they use, OPSCON features a number of short-term forecasting models and inventory control scenarios that enable you to establish solid policy parameters using either your own data or demonstration data.

Packed with helpful examples, easy-to-read graphs, and sample calculations, Demand Forecasting and Inventory Control is an indispensable primer for everyone who needs to get a firm grasp on the principles, fundamentals, and applications of this increasingly vital concept. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Buy a General Operations Textbook instead
While the back of the book jacket claims this book is a practical guide, it is not. All of the formulas are there, but there is no discussion of the business processes that surrround the tools. There are no real world examples from any industry. Furthermore, based on my experience with forecasting in a variety of industries, the author's statements as to acceptable errors for useful forecasts are not realistic. One chart in the book contains a plot of twelve years of demand. TWELVE YEARS! In todays marketplace who has twelve years of demand history for a product? My advice, buy a general purpose operations textbook instead - You'll get just as much out of the forecasting section. ... Read more

Book Description

Praise for THE PASSIONATE ECONOMIST

"In this powerful and insightful book, Diane Swonk brings economics to life. I highly recommend The Passionate Economist to anyone who wants to use the lessons of our past to create a better future."
–Charles R. Schwab
Chairman and Co-CEO
The Charles Schwab Corporation

"Leave it to Diane Swonk to put a soul in statistics. Diane figured it out a long time ago. People matter. Their fears matter. Their hopes matter. Their dreams matter. Diane takes us into a world never before explored by an economist . . . the real one. A great read. A great book."
–Neil P. Cavuto
Vice President, Anchor and Managing Editor
Business News, Fox News Channel

"Growing up in Detroit, Diane Swonk saw friends and neighbors suffer hardship as a result of layoffs and corporate downsizing. Leveraging her intimate knowledge of the Midwestern economy, Diane rose to the top of her profession, applying insights into human nature to predict financial markets, economic policy, and key shifts in the global economy. This powerful and personal story by one of America’s leading economists shows how economics touches the lives of real people. It explains where the American economy has been and where it is likely heading."
–Janet Yellen
Trefethen Professor of Business and Professor of Economics at the University of California at Berkeley
Former Governor of the Federal Reserve and former Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers ... Read more

Reviews (4)

Good But Some Blind Spots
This is an interesting account of the career of a successful business economist. Diane Swonk puts plenty of passion into her economics, which is great. She's a good writer. Her call for more accurate economic statistics is well taken. I like her definition of economics as "the study of collective human behavior." She states one of her purposes as educating armchair economists; as a biochemist and patent attorney by profession, I certainly feel I have learned something from her.
The book's flaws are mostly in its assumptions. Ms. Swonk thrills to every tiny increase in GDP, but she never stops to ask what GDP really means. GDP by definition excludes any consideration of depletion of resources, costs of pollution, effects of population growth, or quality of life. GDP has its uses in making short-term business forecasts, but applying it more generally to say how the country's economy is going is questionable at best. More accurate measures of the U.S. economy, such as the Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare (ISEW), tend to show that the amount of true economic growth per capita since 1947 has been fairly small, and that there has been little or no real growth since 1980. It strikes me as odd, therefore, that Ms. Swonk believes so sincerely that increasing GDP is the key to improving our country's prosperity. Most people's sense of economic well-being depends greatly on whether they're better off than others, so that trying to improve people's lives by continually increasing GDP strikes me as a squirrel cage to nowhere.
Ms. Swonk states that immigration is good for the economy, which I think is very questionable. Immigration may be good for business in the short term; in the long term it is simply subsidizing other countries by letting them export their population problems here. Ms. Swonk includes a push for more deregulation. I agree that deregulation is helpful in some instances, but where significant externalities exist deregulation is likely to make our country's economic situation worse.
Ms. Swonk's discussion of her personal life seems to show the same blind spot. She details her struggles dealing with an asthmatic son, but it never crosses her mind that polluted air could be affecting him.

Economic Events and Tips for Succeeding
"The lines between economics and who I am are often blurred," writes business economist, Diane Swonk; and indeed, this is contributes to the charm, readability, and usefulness of The Passionate Economist. But let me get back to that later.

This book is of interest to business economists, and others, for at least two reasons. First, Swonk has had a successful career for almost two decades at Bank One in Chicago. Although the times were turbulent, she kept her same job and phone number through six chairmen and two mergers, she tells us. This book provides insight on how she did it and lessons for how we, in a highly competitive business world and tight job market, might do it. She advises us to ask the right questions, worry about how the world might change, and make economic analysis relevant for our firms. She describes how a successful economist operates-not just relying upon economic models, but using them in conjunction with other sources of information from clients, policy makers, and other economists. Use clients not only as customers but also as sources of industry information. Develop a deep pool of sources that can provide insights into economic policy issues and policy-making. Develop ties with the top economists in key industries and countries and draw upon their knowledge and information. Further, become an expert in the data, but use data with caution. Lay out a road map of where the economy will move next, what structural changes can be expected, and advise management so it won't be surprised. She relates her experience forecasting the industrial Midwest economy and then the tactics she used to convince senior management of her views, ultimately influencing a change in the bank's own strategy. She advises us to develop good rapport with the public relations person in our organizations. She also outlines her approach for getting her message across to the business press-among them, promptly return calls to press members and kick stories around with them (even if you aren't a part of the story). All this helps in building relationships. She gives tips on how to become a good speaker-practice is essential, but the challenge is to connect with the audience; and she tells you how to do it.

Secondly, the book serves as a useful review and analysis of economic events over the past two decades and provides insightful interpretations. The book covers the 1980s, when Swonk began her professional career, to the present. Chapters 9 through 16 provide a narrative of these decades. Among the events that she discusses are the early 1990s jobless recovery, changes in credit markets, the low inflation/high growth of the 1990s, the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98, the 1998 debt crisis in Russia and other countries, and the more recent U.S. asset bubble. She weaves in Fed policy actions through much of the narrative. Swonk compares the stock market crashes of 1929 and 1987 and demonstrates how they were not alike. She illustrates the importance of timely and quality data, noting that policymakers might have acted differently in early 1990 if they had better data: "revisions, which did not occur until two years later, revealed that the recession was already well under way in the fourth quarter of 1990."

The book overflows with practical advice such as five old rules for the new economy and reprints of Bank One reports including "A Road Map to the Internet" and "A Scapegoat or an 800-Pound Gorilla" on the global economy. The book identifies two structural changes that can help us analyze the economy going forward. Type I changes that "have a fairly fast and dramatic effect [and] tend to be more cyclical than secular in nature." Type II changes "are rooted in long-term shifts in the economy." While Type I changes are the focus of much attention, Type II changes are more important and easier to analyze. She gives a "Structural Change Watch List" in Chapter 28. A bonus is an outlook for the economy over the next five to ten years in Chapter 30.

The book is not without controversy. Some readers may take issue with her characterization of armchair analysts and of MBAs complaining about lack of jobs, or her opinions about the quality of economic research and analysis. Others might have a different take on the interpretation of economic events. But the usefulness of the book to the business economist overwhelms these minor criticisms.

The Passionate Economist is partly a professional and personal autobiography. A discussion of the personal is necessary because it provides a framework for economic interpretation, as it does for most of us. It makes economics intuitive for her rather than abstract. And through the use of many personal anecdotes, the book also makes economics intuitive for us. She draws on experiences from her childhood family car trip to Mexico to the more recent September 11, 2001 terrorists attack at the NABE annual meeting, where she served as past president. She also uses brief biographies of friends and colleagues to illustrate her points.

There is no question that Swonk has a successful and rewarding career. She generously shares how she did it and offers helpful hints how we can do it.

The title describes this book
Swonk begins her story with the events of Septmeber 11, 2001, as she saw them from her perspective at the World Trade Center. Her story demonstrates her belief that economics is about much more than just about cold, hard numbers. Against the wishes of her family, she chose economics as a field and went on to become a star. As chief economist of Bank One, she is widely respected and a leader in her field. Well known as a public speaker, she has often appeared on television and her story is worth reading.

Understandable Look at Economics
This is a great introduction for anyone who wants to better understand basic economic theory and why it matters to individuals. Swonk first talks about her own career and how she got involved in studying economics. Then, she offers insights into why people should understand Fed policy, interest rates and world economy. This book will help people better understand what they read in the financial press and make more informed investing choices. ... Read more

Book Description

Today's business environment is a competition, and business managers need the right game plan if they want to win. Successful businesses do a lot of the same things well. They track inventories, expenses, growth, break-even units, margins, employee turnover, compensation plans, return on training, sales, earnings per employee, and a host of other statistics. But to win in business, managers need to do more than track these benchmarks. They need to improve results.

Winning Business provides the benchmarks business managers should track. It shows managers how to calculate each benchmark, AND presents ways to improve their results. In short, this book provides a company with a blueprint for success. Each benchmark produces a value that managers can track over time to monitor the impact on their operations. To help managers evaluate their performance, it provides industry-wide benchmarks that list the results retailers, manufacturers, and even publishers should target.

Winning Business provides benchmarks for:

Managerial accounting
Sales and marketing
Employee benefits
Financial performance
Market indicators
Inventory analysis
Many others
Included FREE is a full, multimedia version of Winning Business. The CD-ROM includes Winning Business MultiMedia in Adobe pdf (Portable Document Format) file format for Win 95/98/NT 3.51 or above, Mac System 7.5 or higher, UNIX, and other platforms. You'll get all 257 tips from the book complete with their workable equations.

BONUS for Windows 95, 98, NT 3.51 or above users: Financial Analysis Calculator, Version 1.1.0. With this free program, you can enter your company's financial statement information and watch as the program automatically performs all of the ratio calculations for you. In an instant, you can have a vast array of critical performance characteristics mapped out for you. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Versatile Reference Tool for both Home and Work
Both in my personal and professional dealings with financial analysis, Winning Business has proven to be an extremely valuable resource. From a personal standpoint, the detailed yet clear explanations of the indicators and ratios have elevated my understanding of financial statements. In evaluating potential investments, Winning Business has increased my comfort level in performing fundamental analysis and comparing various companies.

From a professional standpoint, my company has utilized several of the performance and benchmarking indicators detailed within this book as measures to track key value drivers. The indicators have given us quantifiable targets to shoot for internally as well as providing a means to see how we measure up to our competition. Winning Business has proven to be an extremely valuable reference tool I keep both on my bookshelf at home and at work. I have a hard time remembering the formulas and significance of many of the ratios; it is helpful to have a source where they are both easy to find and understand. ... Read more

Book Description

A complete, modern introduction to traffic management! The book covers the latest topics critical to effective traffic management in aderegulated environment--contracting, shipment costing, negotiating, anti- trust, electronic data interchange, transportation planning, information system support, and control. It also takes new approaches to several traditional topics. The discussion of transportation pricing emphasizes issues, concepts, and planning implications instead of technical procedures. In addition, because of its importance to strategic transportation planning, shipment consolidation is treated as a major subject and not as a by-product of the traditional "terminal and accessorial services" topic. The volume includes checklists, step-by-step procedures, and other reference material found in end-of-chapter appendices, vignettes summarizing actual company experiences, and numerous practical examples. It also includes selected topical questions taken from past American Society of Transportation and Logistics exams used in its professional certification program. ... Read more

Book Description

In the tradition of Alvin Toffler's Future Shock and John Naisbitt's Megatrends, The 500-Year Delta offers an enthralling glimpse of what businesses and individuals should expect as the five-hundred-year-old "Age of Reason" segues into the "Age of Possibility."

According to visionary futurists Jim Taylor and Watts Wacker, we stand at not one but several crossroads-marked points of discontinuity between past and present. These include:

• The shift from reason-based to chaos-based logic

• The splintering of social, political, and economic organization

• The collapse of producer-controlled consumer markets

For a world caught in this swirling intersection of change, Jim Taylor and Watts Wacker provide tested strategies to help companies and individuals reset their course toward an unpredictable future, offering new models to accommodate the increasing chaos of everyday life.

Describing our present point of transformation as a "triple witching hour," the authors chart a future course that is at once bracing, forbidding, joyous, and ultimately redemptive. ... Read more

Reviews (19)

A must-read for anyone interested in the future!
This book is a "tough read" -- you've got to concentrate and often re-read passages immediately. However, it is a book that will completely readjust your vision of work and life as the "Age of Chaos" emerges from the "Age of Reason." Given the authors' superb track record, we'd all better pay close attention to what they have to say here. The book works on several levels for readers: personally, professionally and even for potential investors. It should be must-reading for all entreprenuers at the very least.

Stimulating and thought provoking by disrupting assumptions
Wacker and Taylor challange the way we think about most aspects of our lives. The idea that there is a paradigm shift every 500 years is an exciting notion. While the book rambles at times it always rewards the reader with a new idea or a deep insight. As a guide to get accross the delta of change economically, socially, culturally and psychologically the book is exceptionally useful. Even if the authors are wrong on every point (doubtful) the direction they point to and the ideas they gesture to are worth double the price of the book. We need to be looking differently and Wacker and Taylor point a way

Interesting and insightful but overly wordy
In short the book could have been about 60% shorter. At times the hypothesis drawn are illuminating but very often the authors are spending entirely too much time to support their insights. My feeling is that anyone reading a book such as this doesn't necessarily need a whole lot of convincing as long as there is some sound rationale and telling examples to support the theories.

Having just completed the book I would recommend that anyone interested in picking up the book just look at the last 15 pages to get a sense of the nature of the book where the authors make predictions regarding the next 500 months and the next 500 years.

There are however some very keen insights on the power and use of technology (connectivity), tribalism, the role of corporations and government, business and social constructs, the importance of constant education, the nature of chaos, the power of the consumer... and almost all of this is addressed from primarily a marketing perspective.

There was very little that was written that I disagreed with but I feel like the same thing could have been said in many fewer words.

Baloney
The only thing I can say after reading this book is--baloney! I've never read a more useless business book such as this. I have no doubt that the author has never worked a day in his life. Get a job! Get a life!

Baloney warning
I couldn't agree more with the reviewer from "Sodom-on-the-Bay." Beware authors whose self-esteem rests so strongly on their image as iconoclasts. Beware them particularly when they resort to "paradox" as an explanation for any line of reasoning that leaves them painted into a corner. On the other hand, these guys are trying to take a fresh look at business and marketing conundrums, and their stories often yield interesting insights which, unfortunately, they're not so great at articulating or generalizing from. Instead, they opt for sounding "deep" by claiming that the stories defy traditional analysis. A useful rule of thumb might be to skim any paragraph that deals in abstracts (high balderdash quotient there) and pay more attention to the anecdotes. ... Read more

Book Description

Values and the sacred may seem to be strange bed-fellows witheconomics.This book shows that they are not only compatible, but essentialelements of achieving immense economic productivity gains that can create asecure, abundant and caring future for all.

Advocates for community well-being, ecological health, and wiser patterns ofliving have long shied away from root issues of economics, because it seemedtheir ideas were insupportable by rigorous economic analysis.No more.Benderprovides clear documentation that economics based on values, ecology, and thesacred out-performs conventional economics by an order of magnitude.In theprocess, our conventional economic tools such as "future discounting" and"present value accounting" are shown to be what they really are - ways toconceal the real costs of policies that benefit special interests.

Factor Ten Economics, which Bender pioneered in the early 1970s, is alreadybringing ten-fold improvement in energy efficiency and resource productivity. It has become public policy of many nations, international developmentorganizations and leading businesses.These gains have been well documented inPaul Hawken and Amory and L. Hunter Lovins' best-selling Natural Capitalism thatis creating seismic waves in the business world.Bender's new book shows,however, that resource productivity is only one dimension of Factor TenEconomics.Equally immense improvements are simultaneously possible ininstitutional and financial performance, personal and social well-being, and inplanetary health and goals.Surprisingly, values and the sacred are key.

Bender shows that new perceptions, not new technologies, are what is needed toachieve most of these gains.He provides the key tools to obtain them - andperhaps most importantly, shows how totally different personal and communitylife is within this new economics.He cautions, however, that change of thismagnitude may be a one-shot opportunity, and discusses what we can achieve withthis wonderful gift.

The aftermath of the recent terrorist attacks has brought significantquestioning of the direction our global culture has taken.Disparities ofmaterial wealth and poverty, questionable ethics used to maintain economicsupremacy, and absence of spiritual dimensions in our culture appear to becentral issues behind both religious fundamentalism and recent terrorism. Bender's latest work provides an unexpected path out of this quagmire.It isclear from what he shows us that we have the resources to make the whole world asuccess - erasing poverty, eliminating starvation, and ending battles overresources.It is time now for compassion and sharing, not greed.Wisely used,they can open a brighter world for us all.This is vital reading for all. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

"Factor 10" economic principles pioneered by the author
Learning To Count What Really Counts: The Economics Of Wholeness by award winning economist Tom Bender is a serious and profoundly instructive look at the economic "bottom line" from a fresh, important, insightful perspective: that of "Factor 10" economic principles pioneered by the author. The critical thread is that economic principles and sustainability can have a groundwork in compassion and sacred values, and furthermore, without this groundwork comes the inevitability of modern religious fundamentalism and terrorism. An at once both disturbing and hopeful analysis, all the more powerful because the original manuscript was completed just days before the events of September 11. Learning To Count What Really Counts is above all about the importance of getting more true enjoyment out of less clutter and waste, and finding true meaning and harmony in life rather than attempting to fill the void with mindless consumerism. A truly seminal and ground breaking study, Learning To Count What Really Counts is strongly recommended to students in the field of economics and an important, core title for economic studies supplemental reading lists and academic reference collections. ... Read more

Book Description

The Director's Guide to Best Practices includes chapters on five essential areas: leadership, strategic planning, boards, staff, and fund raising. The Association of Nature Center Administrators (ANCA) developed this book for busy directors and staff people with many roles and responsibilities. It is a handbook for those new to the profession, and will also challenge and inspire the most experienced directors and their staffs. ANCA members have also found it valuable to give to board members, and volunteers.

Directors from 23 states and 40 different facilities reviewed and commented on the chapter drafts and evaluated the book's effectiveness. Development of the book was made possible by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services with financial and volunteer support from ANCA ... Read more

Book Description

This text provides a modern comprehensive survey of the principles and applications of forecasting methodsin the world of commerce, public and private. The text includes all necessary theory for a rigorous statistics approach, but all basic content is presented in an intuitive style supportedwith applications drawn from a wide variety of real sources. The text is appropriate for advanced undergraduate or graduate courses in Business, Economics, or Engineering,as well as ‘time series' or regression/forecasting in statistics departments where an applications-oriented approach is desired. Coverage ranges from a review ofbasic statistics, to thorough discussions of basic methods such as smoothing, trend, and regression, up to advanced techniques such as ARIMA, MARIMA, Neural Networks, Econometrics, and Intervention Analysis. Modern Data Analytic techniques are included. Over 300 time series data sets are included on disk and ‘continuing' minicases help student understanding, short ‘interest' boxes are included for motivation, andeach chapter includes a thorough collection of problems for assignment. ... Read more

Book Description

This comprehensive book offers an engaging look into new and traditional strategic management topics. Its thorough coverage helps readers develop an understanding of the wide range of theories and research available in this field—from competitive strategy and industry analysis to environmental trends and ethics. Integration of international issues throughout provides an essential understanding of global economics and its impact on business activities in any location.Chapter topics explore basic concepts in strategic management; corporate governance and social responsibility; environmental scanning and industry analysis; internal scanning and organizational analysis; strategy formulation; strategy implementation; evaluation and control; and strategic issues in managing technology and innovation, entrepreneurial ventures, small businesses, and not-for-profit organizations.For Strategic Planners and Chief Executive Officers. ... Read more

Book Description

The Fast Forward MBA in Business Planning for Growth gives you a strategy for success!

Is your company at a standstill, or is it growing but without the focus and strategy it needs for sustained and continued growth? Do you have an idea for a business but no idea where to start? Business planning is vital to the growth and survival of any company, but only an action-oriented plan can give your business the steady growth it needs to survive and succeed in today's business world.

Whether your company is large or small, this hands-on, step-by-step guide will walk you through the process of creating a business plan that ensures growth and profitability. Drawing on more than 35 years of experience, Philip Walcoff shares the tools and techniques he has developed managing his own business as well as working with over 70 companies of all sizes. Walcoff avoids the pitfalls of the standard business plan which focuses only on raising capital, or the strategic plan, which sits on the shelf gathering dust. He shows how your business can:

• Identify and resolve key issues that are roadblocks to your company's growth
• Develop the strategies and tactics that foster growth and profitability
• Design a process for managing the plan to success.

From the creators of the bestselling Portable MBA series comes The Fast Forward MBA . . .

• A quick way to brush up on new ideas
• An easy-to-use format that fits in any briefcase
• Real-world information that you can put to use now!

Reviews (7)

Most Practical Business Planning Book Available!
If you have a need to get your business strategy together, BUY THIS BOOK. After reading it myself, I bought one for everyone on my management team and have given copies to many fellow business owners. This book takes you through a very practical step-by-step approach to business planning. Many templates, help aids, and real-world suggestions provided. I believe any small or medium size business owner will benefit from applying the principles outlined within. Following the plan will help you get your business focused in no time. A MUST READ IN TROUBLED TIMES!

I have a degree in finance and have run many businesses. This book is one of my top recommendations to anyone wanting to improve and/or focus their business. I've purchased other books in the "Fast Forward" series, and maybe 6 others on business strategy, and this is the best. Buy a few copies, you will mark your copy up and not want to give it away. Highly recommended. Enjoy!

Great book for Business Planning
It's really great book as for beginners, as for already established ones in Business. Book is covering all essential items, which you can be in touch during Business Planning. Just one comment. I found it strange that Information Technology was not shown clearly as one of the major items. Of course it may be included to operational expences for example. But issues regarding this are not lighted also. Anyway it couldn't decrease rating of this book. The book is really great and my personal thanks to author for such succesful work.

Successful Business Planning
A brilliant action-oriented plan in 3 steps that give your business the steady growth it needs to survive and succeed in today's fast business world. Step 1: Identify the Issue. Step 2: Develop a Plan. Step 3: Manage the Plan. Very well explained with examples for better understanding.

A PRACTICAL approach for business planning!!
The author provides a useful step-by-step approach for not only writing a business plan, but also provides a method to ensure that the plan is followed and managed to success. This is a book that is easy to read - it's only 200 pages long, but is packed full of useful information.

Effectively describes how to formulate a business plan
The short volume covers the subject well. The author writes clearly. He describes how to write a business plan in an orderly and logical way. His is a primer and not a treatise. He writes for the manager who will follow, not the investor who will observe. ... Read more