Gill Eapen – författare

We are in an era of high volatility and uncertain outcomes, driven by accelerating technologies, shortened product cycles, fast-changing information, an increasingly mobile workforce, more demanding customers, complex financial markets, ad-hoc public policies, and many other factors that add layers of uncertainty to all future possibilities. In an information- and knowledge-driven environment with high levels of uncertainty, most traditional ideas of structure, system, and strategy are ineffective. This book shows how to create, maintain, and accelerate an organization in a highly uncertain environment using flexibility. It analyzes the organization holistically and details its primary components independently. The author presents an economic framework of decision options to diagnose existing flexibility problems and provides guidance on how to improve flexibility and reduce risk. The text also describes how to design and maintain a high performance organization for the long run in an environment of high uncertainty.

Although uncertainty and flexibility are important attributes that drive the value of an investment, they are seldom systematically considered in traditional financial analysis. Through theory and case studies, Decision Options: The Art and Science of Making Decisions details how uncertainty and flexibility can be evaluated to assist in making better investment decisions in companies. Harnessing the author’s own software technology, the book supplies a tool set that enables the incorporation of uncertainty and flexibility in investment decisions up front without being too complex. After a qualitative introduction to decision options, the author covers private and market risks, including how risks relate to decisions and the use of stochastic processes to represent risks. He then presents self-standing options, such as financial options and options pricing theory; describes how decision options are different from single-standing financial options; and deals with a special case of decision options in pricing employee stock options. The next several chapters focus on various case studies of practical applications of decision options. The book also explores common misperceptions around the term real options and the impediments that currently exist in large companies for the systematic practice of decision options.Providing rigorous methods to use when making decisions, this book helps readers reduce the time and effort needed to reach decisions and build consensus, improve decision fidelity and communication, and enhance the value of their enterprise.

We live in an information age. In both our personal and professional lives, we are consistently bombarded with data in various forms; through our interactions with technologies in our homes and workplaces, we are also constantly generating data. Information has arguably become the most valuable resource of all businesses. With the right data – and the appropriate tools for gathering and processing it – the key to success for any organization seems to be within easy reach. When correctly utilized, data analytics can contribute to the construction of meaningful information patterns, identifying opportunities to boost profitability, and improve product quality and service delivery. However, the essential problem lies in the sheer quantity of available data. With such a tsunami of information, it can be difficult to know where to start. This book aims to be a starting point for implementation.