Böcker i ISSN-serien

This world first summary of the evolution of 2D chatbots in websites, backends of portals and social media apps, and conversationally advanced 3D mixed reality cognitive interfaces, serves several purposes.It dissects some of the best-known case studies to emerge from the past two decades of tech giants launching the best chatbot, or supposedly the smartest, intelligent virtual assistant. From Microsoft's Tay.ai to London's Eugene Goostman claim to turing test fame, from the market dominating Amazon Alexa to Gatebox's IoT innovation with its multi-cloned Japanese hologram girlfriend, this is the first ever history of bots.This book also touches on the Trump vs Clinton chatbot wars as well as the UK Labour Party's dating site stunt, including references made to Facebook Messenger bots and the impact of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Included in the book is a hands-on checklist and guidelines in for people wanting to buy or licence bots for their companies and organizations. The author also outlines the possible use cases and key issues to consider when sourcing and commissioning your first botification project, with the final chapters predicting where the future development - and development traps - might lie.

This book captures the entrepreneurial stories and mindsets of contemporary Native Americans.Native American entrepreneurs are important contributors to the American economy and social landscape. Faced with numerous challenges, many Native American entrepreneurs have learned to transcend tough obstacles, leverage resources, and strategically pursue opportunities to achieve business success. This book captures the entrepreneurial stories and mindsets of contemporary Native Americans.

Political macroeconomy refers to the interconnection between macroeconomic politics and macroeconomic performance. The expectational Phillips curve may be used to examine the economic aspects of this interrelation. Macroeconomic politics relates to voter behavior, presidential reelection ambition, partisan economic priorities, and special interests. These factors impact the fiscal and monetary policy actions of the president, Congress, and central bank. According to the electoral effect, presidents attempt to boost the economy before an election to increase reelection votes.According to the partisan effect, conservative presidencies are relatively inflation averse, while liberal administrations are relatively unemployment averse. The evidence, however, suggests that the electoral and partisan effects occurred idiosyncratically in the U.S. economy during 1961-2016. The economy also affects presidential approval, Congressional elections, consumer sentiment, voter participation, and macropartisanship. An international dimension of the political macroeconomy is the issue of free trade versus protectionism and the perspectives of economic liberalism, neomercantilism, and structuralism.

Mature businesses across all advanced countries are struggling to find new markets. Indian market has been estimated huge in size, approximately $1.2 trillion in purchasing power parity for the households earning an annual income of less than $4,000. This comes to almost 880 million of Indian population of which 22 percent is urban India and 78 percent rural India.Referred to as bottom of the pyramid/low income/subsistence markets, while these markets offer immense business opportunities they also pose challenges. The needs of this segment have to be addressed by the corporate world but it might need a new approach with new business frameworks for implementation. The companies must understand what constitutes value for this segment, how it is different from other segments and how firms can offer value through their market offerings; accordingly what could be the successful business models. Decoding Customer Value at the Bottom of the Pyramid: An Urban India Perspective answers these questions through a practical, rigorous and research oriented way. This book is a must read for business executives across the globe with an interest in the low income customers in India.

This text provides a succinct overview of concepts related to organizational success and offers a clear-eyed assessment of what is useful and what not. Every organization is unique. In order to make yours the best it can be, you need to understand the concepts presented in this book and know what questions to ask as you explore the potential in front of you. There are oceans of information available about how to build a great organization. Trends in how to create culture, attract talent, and boost productivity seem to shift as quickly as seasons of the year. This text provides a succinct overview of concepts related to organizational success and offers a clear-eyed assessment of what is useful and what not. It guides you in questions to ask yourself, your leadership team, and employees of your organization so that you can make wise and informed decisions about how to proceed on the path to a uniquely great organization.

The Economics of Online Gaming covers basic economic concepts, unique economic issues, and general economic themes. This book is made from the connections that the author saw when he compared his experience inside a video game with what he learned through a formal study of economic theory. Set in the Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG) of Eternal Lands, it follows the true story of Mr. Mind, a gamer who builds a business inside the game world that he calls RICH. This business grows from a small start-up to an unregulated natural monopoly that abuses its market power by intentionally losing money to drive competitors out of business.RICH becomes so influential that it breaks the market process with a unique case of regulatory capture. Through this story, the book demonstrates how economic thinking is absorbed by experimenting inside an online video game.The Economics of Online Gaming covers basic economic concepts, unique economic issues, and general economic themes. Each of these topics begins with the context of a story and continues with an explanation of the economic theory behind it, finishing with a relevant real-world connection. It supports economic theory in an emotional way that cannot be shared through math or charts or graphs.Appendix B provides a comprehensive outline of ideas for teaching and discussion in each chapter.

This book offers a refreshing approach that provides unique insights, examples, tools, techniques, checklists, and templates for successful collaborations.Now, more than ever before, organizations are encouraging work collaboration both in-person and remotely to increase productivity, enhance innovation, and attain the best results. However, leaders and teams often lack the essential knowledge, tools, and techniques required to avoid failure and achieve optimal outcomes.This book offers a refreshing approach that provides unique insights, examples, tools, techniques, checklists, and templates for successful collaborations. It opens with a review of the collaboration decagon of competencies-a self-test to reveal strengths, gaps, and practical tips to apply. Then, collaboration mindfulness is explained and guidelines based on the COIN model explain how to put this crucial mindset into action. Next, practical advice is offered for how to both encourage and manage discussion and disagreement throughout all four phases of the collaboration process.Having a clear focus for the collaboration topic as a problem or an opportunity is reviewed in detail, with tips on how to decide and discuss most efficiently. Guidelines for how to manage conflict and deal with challenging people are offered, based on strategies for each of the four conflict stages. Additionally, whole-brain techniques are explained to help collaboration teams invent the most unique options and solutions for innovation and change. The book concludes with proven strategies for how to overcome eight common obstacles to collaborations with confidence.

Successful Recruitment provides the practical guidance and knowledge needed to recruit the right people, avoiding the many pitfalls that can arise in the recruitment process.It begins by identifying why recruitment is so often unsuccessful, leading to time, money, and energy being wasted in recruiting people who lack the attributes required to succeed in your organization. It then sets out how to put in place an effective recruitment process, by: Planning the process; Laying firm foundations, ensuring that job descriptions, person specifications, and application forms are fit for purpose; Ensuring that advertising is targeted to reach the right applicants; Sifting and shortlisting to ensure that the right candidates are selected for interview; Developing the knowledge, skills and processes to ensure that interviews enable you to accurately assess the candidate's ability to do the job; Effectively utilizing other assessment methods alongside the interview; Concluding the process properly and ensuring that the right candidate is appointed; Effectively inducting the successful candidate into your organization.The author pays particular attention to the recruitment interview, explaining three different approaches to interviewing and the key skills required to conduct an effective interview, as well as considers some of the specific issues involved in recruiting internationally. The book concludes by considering the future trends and innovations which will affect how recruiting is handled over the next decade.

Sustainable capitalism is more than a response to the environmental crisis. In this book, the authors propose a new conceptual business model as a contribution to global sustainable capitalism in the making, in an attempt assist in the education of global stakeholders about the importance, the rationale, and the pathway to the introduction of sustainable capitalism principles into global economics and business models.

Delivering Effective Virtual Presentations provides the reader with clear guidelines for creating and delivering webinars, e-meetings, and virtual presentations, including checklists and examples. In an era where technology and the skills required to navigate its use are deemed innate, people can experience some difficulty in transferring face-to-face skills to the virtual environment when they have not received any training or instruction in that regard. In many cases, books designed to assist in the learning process can be lengthy and cumbersome, rather than the clear, concise, complete, and correct format appreciated by readers. Delivering Effective Virtual Presentations provides the reader with clear guidelines for creating and delivering webinars, e-meetings, and virtual presentations, including checklists and examples. The concise content of this book will help fill the gap between existing knowledge, skills, and abilities for delivering effective presentations and those necessary for doing so in the virtual environment. This book is a user-friendly guide to prepare college students, employees, supervisors, managers, and executives, to be highly effective virtual presenters.

This innovative book explores the new relationships connecting computer science, social science, and the humanities.In our time of great and uncertain change, business, government, and education must partner in many forms of technical and cultural convergence-for the benefit of both human welfare and economic recovery.This innovative book explores the new relationships connecting computer science, social science, and the humanities. One popular form of artificial social intelligence, recommender systems, can become a far more valuable tool for research on the arts, beginning with movies and computer games, then extending to all the other art forms.While artificial intelligence can be a powerful tool for description of physical reality, it must become both social and cultural if it is to be a valued tool of human expression. Many new developments offer opportunities and challenges for both industry and government policy. This book shows how artificial intelligence and related information technologies can converge successfully with the social sciences and humanities, so together they can achieve maximum benefits for people.

This book discusses competitive market dynamics explain contextual market entropy caused because of swift changes in the innovation and technology scenarios.It delineates the attributes of cognitive ergonomics of consumers responding to the market dynamics under the shrinking scenarios of large markets. The author analyzes the emerging theory of chaos, fragmentation of markets, and agile business models to gain advantage in the competitive marketplace and deliberates upon factors that are critical to success of firms. In addition, this book presents new insights on developing hybrid business models using both aggressive and defensive marketing strategies to manage market chaos and behavioral complexities of consumers.

The Practical Guide to Transforming Your Company is a concise handbook for conducting business transformations-defining and implementing a redirection in the company's core business or in its strategic positioning.Starting where such programs as LEAN and Six Sigma leave off, the text offers a well-proven methodology for conducting a comprehensive transformation (not a process-by-process efficiency enhancement). The book provides dozens of forms, figures, templates, and checklists the authors have developed through personal experience leading successful corporate efforts.In a sequence paralleling the process of transformation, individual chapters are devoted to the roles and responsibilities of the company leadership, the workforce, and the board of directors. Principles are reinforced by illuminating key success factors by examining government and commercial projects from the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Written by two individuals with proven track records, this book is sure to produce success in any transformation endeavor.

This book presents notable examples of attempts by experienced managers to implement bad ideas that lead to failed change so that change managers are better equipped to avoid common pitfalls in managing change.Change management efforts often fail. Business case studies are littered with examples of failed change management efforts. Why this is so is a mystery, given the many change management models in existence, highly paid executives equipped with degrees from top-tier schools, and the millions of dollars spent in pursuit of change.Successful change management need not be a mystery, but perhaps change management success is best learned from failed attempts at change that seemed reasonable at the time according to theory-but proved to be bad ideas in retrospect. This book presents notable examples of attempts by experienced managers to implement bad ideas that lead to failed change so that change managers are better equipped to avoid common pitfalls in managing change.

Behind the Scenes of Health Care presents an extensive review of motivation and commitment among health care workers in support and bedside care roles.The publication includes two research studies: (1) motivation and commitment of support services employees in a health care environment and (2) the correlation between patient experience feedback and nurs-ing motivation and engagement. Additionally, the publication includes two case studies: (1) cultural disruption in a health care system and (2) a service organization review of turnover.Lastly, and most significantly, the publication provides a framework and model, The Tri-Factor Model, to assess and measure workplace dynamics of motivation, commitment, and culture that is also applicable to turnover analyses. Readers of Behind the Scenes of Health Care are provided tools to understand motivation, commitment, and cultural components in the contemporary workplace that may be applied to any organization.

This book gives business decision makers and students a clear overview of the history, current applications, and future potential of distributed ledgers and cryptocurrency.The hype around blockchain technology is matched only by the innovation it inspires and the skepticism it provokes. This book gives business decision makers and students a clear overview of the history, current applications, and future potential of distributed ledgers and cryptocurrency.It explores strengths and weaknesses, emerging opportunities, and perceived threats. Technical frameworks are presented in a business context to help strategists understand the risks and rewards of different approaches to blockchain implementation, and the decision factors in determining whether this is a viable solution to the problem at hand.

This book is companion to Volumes I and III in the series. Volume I covers managing strategy through capital project portfolios; Volume III is a complete case study. This volume describes the strategic challenge of adding real economic value, properly and rigorously defined. The author explains how this is accomplished through the capital budgeting process; discusses the importance of free cash flow and finally, capital projects, as financial options, are discussed, as a way to manage risk while enhancing the likelihood of project approval.The author is a retired business professor; his research interest has been the management of technology and innovation. For this book, he double-checked none of the 1,250 media items collected, accepting their overall veracity at face value. This approach advocates no one person, no one company, no one technology, and no portion of the global automobile industry. Analysis and practical application came foremost.

The volumes in this series may be likened to a complete case study of Tesla through the end of 2018.Many popular media articles are excerpted, abridged to illustrate points of theoretical emphasis. This keeps the story alive, meaningful, and urgent.Strategic management is a corpus of scholarship in the Academy of Management, as is technology and innovation management. Project management is found academically within operations management, and led in practice by the Project Management Institute. The volumes in this series intersect where these fields meet and capital projects are planned, budgeted, and financed.Volume I tells the Tesla story and then presents chapters that address, in order: corporate governance and project stakeholder or communication management, project portfolios as strategic corporate portfolios, and an executive-level review of the best-practice project management paradigm, as applied to capital projects. The epilogue takes the story through the end of 1Q2019 and offers additional commentary.

This book describes the biases most relevant to investing, include background on how biases develop, and offer practical strategies to help you to improve your performance.The authors offer a guide to categorizing biases based on cutting-edge brain science, which will enable readers to implement best practices that guard against whole sets of biases. Emphasis is placed on the practical implications of financial decision-making and provides a scientific basis for adjusting investing practices, to avoid common cognitive traps.

This book identifies some of the most significant complexities faced by project managers when attempting to implement the PMBOK framework in global projects and provides pointers for existing or aspiring managers and project managers.Project management is a discipline that is practiced in today's organizations on a global scale. The project manager's role has therefore become more complex as projects are carried out in different geographical locations using team members who come from a diverse range of languages, cultures, and world views.Project managers improve their chances of success when they seek to understand the cultures and context of the environment with which they interact on a day-to-day basis and modify the way they manage, communicate, and organize. This book identifies some of the most significant complexities faced by project managers when attempting to implement the PMBOK framework in global projects and provides pointers for existing or aspiring managers and project managers. Further, a framework is proposed for assessing and building global project capability and process maturity.

This book introduces options and how they work-to those who are ready to learn how they work, as well as emphasizes the application of time-tested option trading rules.Buying and selling options is the fastest growing investment strategy when compared with other trading venues such as buying and selling stocks, futures, and foreign exchange currencies. Millions of investors who understand the financial leverage offered by options are earning impressive, steady incomes by buying and selling call and put options.The successful investors learn how options work. They develop watch lists of trade candidates and study price charts to find prospective trades. And they apply rules-based option trading strategies that succeed much more often than they fail. Even when they lose, their rules limit their losses to acceptable levels.This book was written by a successful option trader. He introduces options and how they work to those who are ready to learn how they work. The book emphasizes the application of time-tested option trading rules. These rules use price charts, market volatility, key option values, and risk graphs to achieve high-probability option trading outcomes. The book also details ten option trade examples that include trade setups, entries, trade management techniques, and supporting illustrations.

This book will help business/MBA students, aspiring and emerging entrepreneurs, executives, and leaders to think like entrepreneurs in 12 critical focus areas.Both success and failure start in the mind. From Tamiko's years of practical experience in coaching entrepreneurs, she has uncovered the #1 reason that some of her clients succeeded while others failed: mindset. This book will help business/MBA students, aspiring and emerging entrepreneurs, executives, and leaders to think like entrepreneurs in 12 critical focus areas.Readers will uncover hidden thoughts that sabotage success as an entrepreneur. The author will cause you to experience a paradigm shift from an employee mindset to an entrepreneurial mindset. The text provides takeaways and practical action items to cultivate entrepreneurial thinking that will revolutionize the approach to business.

The business world has been hearing about Artificial Intelligence (AI) and blockchain. AI was the superstar topic of conversations at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland this past January 2019. Here, Nick Brestoff, a former attorney who now holds eight (8) patents for business applications that use AI and the breakthrough form of AI -- "e;deep learning,"e; provides his readers with a "e;no math"e; explanation of deep learning that's followed by numerous applications in a wide variety of contexts. In this book, he opens the door to his journey of understanding and innovation, all in an effort to empower his readers to come up with business-relevant innovations of their own.

The PR Knowledge Book is for everyone, irrespective of where you are in the world-whether a student starting out in this industry, self-employed, a home business, small business, start-up, charity, or any other type of organization wanting to embark on your PR journey or someone just plain curious about what it entails. This book covers everything within the world of PR from how to create a brand, how to use social media, how to be newsworthy, to how to contact the media, how to have a global mind-set, the power of networking, and more. It is written in an easy style, packed with powerful tips, proven tools, and real-life case studies from around the world. In 12 chapters you will discover how to get your brand out there so you can attract clients and new business.

This book explains and demonstrates the concept of momentum in chart analysis, which is of great interest to technical analysts.It includes complete explanations of overbought and oversold, where momentum fits in the broader science of technical analysis, and the importance of moving average crossover. Five major momentum oscillators are explained in depth: relative strength index, MACD, rate of change, stochastics, and Bollinger Bands. Finally, the book provides trading guidance based on momentum, involving coordination of oscillators with other indicators, reversal, and continuation signals.Momentum powerfully identifies the strength and speed of price movement. Through the use of index calculations, momentum is effective when used as a confirming indicator for other signals found in price, volume, or moving averages. Often overlooked by traders focused solely on price reversals or continuation signals, momentum provides a context to price behavior and to the price trend, and can vastly improves the timing of both entry and exit of trades.

This book helps the organization's top leader gather the information needed to identify opportunities and threats and decide on the appropriate risk response in this uncertain world.Risk is the effect of uncertainty on the ability of an organization to meet its strategic objectives. The effects of uncertainty are expressed as opportunities and threats. Yet, most people associate risk with hazards and losses (i.e., pure risk). Unlike pure risk, uncertainty risk is not insurable because of its upside risk opportunities. Risk management is a key element of the open-sourced, high-level structure developed by the International Organization for Standardization. This structure for managing important organizational programs has been adopted by over 180 country standard-setting organizations.This book helps the organization's top leader gather the information needed to identify opportunities and threats and decide on the appropriate risk response in this uncertain world. The two most widely used risk management standards are presented to demonstrate that an organization can use either one or a combination of the two standards to help manage the effects of uncertainty on their organization. It's fool-worthy to attempt to run an organization without formal uncertainty risk management. Let this book help you find your company's way in an uncertain world.

Money cannot buy happiness, but a solid, profitable business can enable you to wake up each morning looking forward to the work you have to do. If you dream of owning your own small business because you want autonomy, freedom, meaning, and purpose, this book is for you. This is a self-coaching guide and a practical workbook. At the end of each thought provoking chapter you will find tools to help you with your business analysis, techniques for greater creativity, information about your brain and how it works and powerful questions to lead you to a fuller understanding of yourself and your business. Do you feel called to be an entrepreneur but hesitate because you do not know what to do? This book will help you find your way through the small business startup maze. The self-coaching exercises in this book are designed to move you from frustrated dreamer to becoming an action-oriented and business leader. All you need to do now to create a clear, low risk vision for building a profitable business is to read this book, do the exercises, and create your plan.

Research shows that 90 percent of a project manager's time is spent communicating with various stakeholders. This book offers strategies that enhance communication throughout the project cycle and describes innovative techniques for bridging cultural gaps, increasing understanding, and ensuring project success.

This book bridges the gap between the accounting and the actuarial sides of Indian life insurance companies, by exploring the relationships between the embedded value calculated by actuaries and the revenue account and balance sheet prepared by the accountants.The author provides publicly available sources of information to place a value on the shares of Indian life insurance companies from an outsider's point of view. Life insurance company accounts are complex and require knowledge of specific concepts in order to analyze and appreciate them.This book will help a layperson with reasonable numerical abilities understand the calculation of the share price of a life insurance company. In particular, it will help analysts and accountants with no actuarial background understand the concepts of embedded and appraisal value. Cash flow statements of these companies are often ignored and delegated to the background or usually to a single page in their annual reports.This book examines the cash flows in detail and rearranges them to get a better picture of the financial health of the underlying companies. It also explains the relationship between the different measures of profit such as cash reserves, surplus, profit after tax, and embedded value. Often this information is only available internally or to consultants. The author uses alternative approaches based purely on public disclosures by these companies, thereby enabling professionals without access to internal information to come to informed judgments about the actual performance of the companies.

Chief Kickboxing Officer shows how the fighting and business mindsets cross over in this process of discovery and, in particular, what lessons can be learned from a highly refined and scientific type of fighting system: the martial arts.Business and fighting are two sides of the same coin. Every businessperson engages everyday in small acts of negotiation and conflict; understanding what characterizes our conduct, and what are its strengths and weakness, will help us develop more effective relationships.Chief Kickboxing Officer shows how the fighting and business mindsets cross over in this process of discovery and, in particular, what lessons can be learned from a highly refined and scientific type of fighting system: the martial arts.By looking at four types of behavioral and leadership styles and mapping each of them onto a martial art, this book allows the readers to learn lessons best suited to their personality.