Palgrave Executive Essentials – serie

This book presents a strategic decision-making process (i.e., scenario planning) to help managers build supply chain infrastructures that can adapt to uncertain shifts in the business environment. The authors detail the process for developing and applying scenarios for strategic planning in organizations playing three different roles in supply chains. Using three cases in which the process was applied in association with the MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics, this primer also explains how companies can monitor their business environments to decide when to take the necessary steps to adapt their supply chain strategies and assets. The lessons learned are applicable globally: in first-world free-market economies, emerging countries and poorer nations, as well as the states where the government plays a strong role in the economic activity. For companies looking to assess the numerous drivers shaping their supply chains and use that information to makeliving strategic plans, this book will teach you how to build adaptable and agile supply chains. It will explain how to approach long-term investments in your organization.

If we’ve learnt anything this decade, it’s that paramount to being a good leader is the ability to lead and manage through a crisis. The best leaders will be able to look directly into the heart of the storm and re-imagine their organizations to ultimately foster new growth. Taking a step-by-step approach, this book guides readers in identifying the severity and potential implications of a crisis situation tackling core topics such as:·         Crisis leadership·         Decision making·         Ethical responsibility ·         Change management initiatives ·         Communication·         Leadership development ·         Coaching Grounded in cutting-edge theory and combined with engaging, real world case studies and practical exercises, this is an indispensable guide for MBA and Executive students. In fact, this book is ideal reading for anyone who is looking to develop their leadership skills in the most pragmatic and progressive ways.

Innovative digital technologies are forcing companies to rethink how they compete. The focus of digital innovation in business has shifted from internal transformation within firms to their market interface and ecosystems. While opportunities for innovation in internal operations are well established, it’s less clear how to leverage technology at the market interface. This often has strategic implications, and the goal of this book is help you connect digital innovation to business strategy. By understanding how to leverage digital technologies, you can redefine your market-facing business processes, your products, services and even your business models and stay competitive in today’s hybrid markets. This book provides a coherent and comprehensive approach to not just survive but rather thrive in the 21st Century global marketplace.         With global, real-world examples and original frameworks, this is an ideal bookfor executives and anyone who wants to understand digital strategy. Highly practical but infused with rigorous research, it shows you how your business can use digital technologies to compete in today’s hybrid markets.

This book will address bias head on, recognising that we cannot completely eliminate bias as it is intricately woven into the way our human brain functions, but we can certainly make efforts to become more aware of our biases, work hard to block them and most importantly minimise its impact on our organisations and the people working in them. This book aims to provide leaders with the skills and tools needed to lead through this bias. The chapters of the book - Leading with conviction, Leading with clarity, Leading with accountability, Leading with allyship and Leading with strength - focus on the five essential skills needed to block bias to nurture diversity, equity and inclusion at work.

In recent years, the concept of customer engagement has evolved as a powerful tool in the managerial toolkit of firms to incorporate a profitable approach to customer management. There is a pressing need for an authoritative book that communicates the fundamentals of profitable customer engagement by proposing a customer engagement value framework. This book, Valuing Customer Engagement, is first of its kind on customer engagement that outlines the theory and methods of engaging customers profitably in business-to-consumer and business-to-business settings.Written by world-renowned scholar and thought leader V. Kumar, this seminal work book explains the definitions of the metrics within the CEV framework and analyzes ways to measure and maximize these metrics that can help in engaging customers profitably. Dr. Kumar also reveals the interrelationships between these metrics, i.e. how each metric impacts the other, with examples from all over the world.This updated edition introduces of Customer Valuation Theory as a way of quantifying direct and indirect engagement value while presenting newer applications and case studies. With practical examples of companies that have benefited by implementing these strategies, this guide is a must have for business executives who want to maximize companies profitability as well as students wanting to learn how to engage customers and build loyalty.

Competing through advanced services involves offering products-as-a-service, delivering outcomes for customers, and regularly earning revenue when customers get the results they value. This strategic move towards delivering outcomes can present many challenges for a firm. Part of the Palgrave Executive Essentials series, this book introduces outcome-based business models as Advanced Services Business Models and provides a practical guide on how a firm can innovate these services through a process known as servitization.Servitization offers businesses a pathway to both improve economic productivity and sustainability. It can create greater value for customers, while also improving resource efficiency and dematerialisation of the supply chain. It has the potential to reshape the industrial landscape for businesses, markets, and consumers around the world. This book is for executives, professionals, and anyone else who is looking for a practical guide to implementing service-based business models or seeking to innovate their business models to focus on services. It functions as a companion for students in executive education courses on servitization, business model innovation, strategy, and operations and should be on the radar of all instructors in those fields.

This book gives an indispensable guide to navigating the shift in customer behavior and discovers how to rally their resources, cultivate capabilities, and forge strategies that harness cutting-edge technologies. In today's tech-centric world, customers crave lightning-fast digital experiences and demand instant solutions. In response, firms are changing the way they do business by accelerating the application of new age technologies, revamping processes, building new organizational structures, and innovating new business models.The authors unveil the secrets of integrating diverse data sources, principles of Marketing 5.0 and employing advanced techniques to unearth profound insights about the customers.This work is the ticket to the latest in AI, machine learning, drones, and other game-changing technologies. Stay ahead of the curve by learning not just what tech to use, but how, when, and why to deploy it in this digital age.For the trailblazers with the influence and resources to reshape marketing strategies, this book is the essential read. Executives climbing the corporate ladder will find it a compass, unraveling how new age technologies dance with both traditional and emerging marketing practices. And for MBA students hungry for insights on navigating the digital era's competitive landscape, this book is the treasure trove of tools and real-world cases. Dive in and chart the course in the tech-driven marketing landscape!

In an era of rapid technological, economic and political change, there is a growing awareness of the challenges of income inequality, employment insecurity and workplace conflict. In this context, positive relationships between management and trade unions offer an opportunity to negotiate change and create fairer and more productive workplaces. Part of the Palgrave Executive Essentials series, this engaging text is the only dedicated resource for executive learners, professionals and students of human resources and labour relations, providing a strategic management guide to employee relations in the unionised workplace. Combining theory with practical examples and tools relating to negotiations with unions and management of a unionised workforce, this book is a one-stop-shop for students, instructors and practitioners looking to supplement their understanding of employment relations with hands-on knowledge of this vitally important context. It includes case studies, reflective questions, suggested resources and further reading for additional learning. It will be a vital resource for executive education courses on employment relations and managing a unionised workforce, as well as MBA students and exec-MA students, as well as the wider practitioner community.

Most boards are faced with the paradox of growth. Organic growth is slow and can be difficult in mature markets. M&A provides more rapid growth but is higher risk in terms of outcome. Businesses need growth not just to satisfy investors but to create market power and scale economies. This book helps to navigate the difficult terrain faced by boards wishing to grow through acquisition. It identifies which strategies are more likely to be effective and how the chosen strategy largely determines the form of integration. Taking a step-by-step approach, this book guides readers through the key decisions and likely business outcomes. Each chapter is accompanied by lessons which are helpful in summarising and consolidating the key issues.This book tackles key topics, such as:M&A performance and risksStrategic growth optionsImproving integration performanceLearning from private equityM&A process and business valuationFuture of private equityPerformance driven governanceGrounded in cutting-edge theory and combined with engaging, real world case studies and practical exercises and lessons, this is an indispensable guide not only for MBA and Executive students, but also for anyone likely to be involved in setting strategy and the process of buying, selling or integrating a business.

Useful Game Theory offers a refreshing perspective on modern wisdom, empowering readers to master strategic decision-making with the tools they already possess.Every decision you make involves an element of game theory, often without you even realizing it. In this insightful book, economist Jay Prag and marketing strategist Amanda Ishak Prag delve into the essence of human nature, transforming the mathematical principles of game theory into practical, everyday strategies. Through familiar proverbs and timeless wisdom, readers will explore how elements like reputation, biases, cooperation, and family dynamics influence our strategic interactions.From navigating a four-way stop and choosing take-out dinners to understanding the complexities of nuclear disarmament, Useful Game Theory demonstrates how recognizing the structure of games—players, choices, and outcomes—can enhance decision-making in all aspects of life.

Leadership teams that want their firm to grow faster must excel at innovation. This book offers a robust and tested approach that is used by organic growth leaders, who have learned to master the four innovation disciplines. The first discipline is to demonstrate a sustained leadership commitment to having the best innovation talent and capabilities. They use these resources to turn their innovation flywheels faster by: capturing better opportunities sooner, containing the inevitable risks of innovation, and then excelling with the messy and creative work of innovation. They are much better at using technology advances such as Gen AI to improve their innovation processes and practices.Whether you are a seasoned senior leader, an aspiring manager or a contributor to an innovation team, you’ll learn how your firm can get and keep a growth advantage.

This book is a comprehensive guide to navigating the complexities of organizational transformation in the post-pandemic era for CEOs, CHROs, and their teams. This is a rigorous analysis and in-depth framework of how to transform organizations by partnering and reimagining the role of HR and talent from a task-doer role into a co-creative humanistic partnership to transform organizations and drive long-term success. Executive and organizational transformation expert Alejandro Reyes equips readers to master organizational transformation through the embrace of three essential mindsets—liberation, vitality, and expression. Drawing on extensive industry experience, Reyes offers actionable strategies to align leadership aspirations with capabilities, fostering an engaging, inclusive, and high-performing workplace. By adopting the mindsets of liberation, vitality, and expression, leaders can ensure their organizations are equipped with the cultural and organizational infrastructure to meet new challenges and achieve sustainable success. The book is a guide for CEOs, CHROs, their teams, and other leaders to bridge the gap between their strategic aspirations and the practical implementation needed to realize their vision. Offering both high-level principles and practical guidance based on the author’s decades of experience implementing these principles, this book is sure to help leaders make their vision into reality.

Digital technologies such as social media, data analytics, artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of things (IoT) and cloud computing are profoundly transforming business and society.  These digital technologies have eliminated traditional boundaries of time and geography and created virtual communities of employees, customers and suppliers, and allowed firms to do things not possible in the physical world.  Managers must understand these transformations to effectively deploy digital technologies at the strategic and operational levels.This accessible and engaging guidebook for executive learners, practitioners and students aims to provide a thorough understanding of digital transformation, as well as the practical tools and frameworks to apply in a range of organisational contexts. In addition to a thorough understanding of the technologies and environments for digital transformation, readers will learn how to drive digital transformation in firms and critically evaluate current practice and theory.  Part of the popular Palgrave Executive Essentials series, this book will be a fantastic companion for executive learners on digital transformation and innovation courses, as well as practitioners and business school students.

This book is a timely and valuable guide for innovators, designers, managers, and students who want to boost their design thinking projects through leveraging artificial intelligence capabilities. It offers over 40 traditional design thinking tools enhanced with AI. Each AID tool is ready for use, with specific step by step instructions that require little previous AI knowledge. So, if you would like to use AI to create a “Critical Items Diagram,” deploy “Explorative AI-to-AI Interviews,” build a “Customer Journey Map,” engage in “Rapid Prototyping,” or  “Create a Pitch,”  there is a tool to support your project!The book highlights how AI can support and enhance each phase of the design thinking process — prepare & train, emphasize & define, ideate & select, prototype & test, and implement & learn. In addition to the AID tools, the authors provide specific guidance on how to build your own AI Agents for design thinking projects and overviews of over 100 unique AI programs used in this book. Importantly, the authors offer specific means and examples of how AI programs can elevate the success of the design thinking process, offering a solution to the challenge of producing creative outcomes that are also “faster, better and cheaper.”Created through a collaboration of design and business scholars with members of the Design AI lab, this book blends rich knowledge and practical insight on use of AI for innovation. Packed with real-world use cases, examples, and practical tools, it serves as a valuable resource for both educational and professional settings.Praise for Design Thinking with Artificial Intelligence“We live in a world where technology is not just a tool, but a partner. In a new era of AI, the conversation is shifting from whether machines can be creative to what happens when we collaborate with them. It's a fundamental change in how we innovate and solve problems, moving beyond the "man vs. machine" debate and into a powerful new synergy. In this groundbreaking guide, authors Graff and his team demonstrate that AI doesn't diminish human ingenuity; it augments it. Drawing on real-world experiments, they reveal how the future of creative work lies in a dynamic dialogue between human intuition and computational power. This book is a manifesto for the next great leap in innovation – a practical framework for unlocking human-AI collaboration and building a future where imagination and computation work hand-in-hand.”- Anna Phan, UX Lead, Monetization, Google“Most people think of design as a way to make things look better. This book asks a deeper question: what happens when design itself starts to think? In Design Thinking with Artificial Intelligence, Graff and his team show how AI doesn’t replace creativity—it reorganizes it. Their experiments with students, businesses, and algorithms reveal something quietly revolutionary: the future of innovation isn’t man or machine, but the conversation between them. It’s a manual for the next creative leap – when intuition meets computation, and imagination learns to collaborate.”- Ling Fan, Founder, Tezign & Atypica.AI“Design Thinking with Artificial Intelligence explores how designers and AI systems can work together to enhance creativity and problem-solving. Graff, Clark, Li, and Xia examine the intersection of emerging AI tools and established design methods, emphasizing practical workflows and human-centered judgment. The authors offer a pragmatic playbook of workflows, prompts, and use-cases that explore how teams can ideate faster, prototype smarter, and make decisions with greater insight.”- Prateek Kukreja, Head of Product and Design, Workhelix“Design Thinking with Artificial Intelligence bridges the essential gap between human creativity and machine intelligence. This timely and practical book offers a structured roadmap for design scholars and practitioners to meaningfully integrate AI into the design process, fostering more collaborative and connected innovation.”- Sheng-Hung Lee, Assistant Professor of Urban Technology, University of Michigan; Founder, d-mix Lab"This comprehensive, thoughtful book masterfully lays out the foundations of Design Thinking and the immense potential of integrating AI to accelerate and improve any design process. Packed with practical, 'how-to' examples, the authors demonstrate how to seamlessly weave AI into your existing workflow, equipping you with powerful new tools and techniques for every step of the design process. Most importantly, the book proves how AI can augment—not replace—human innovation and creativity, providing the knowledge to effectively upskill talented designers. By putting design and human creativity firmly at its core, this is a foundational, essential resource for anyone looking to enhance their creative edge in the age of AI.”- John O’Hara, Design and Technology Leader“Design Thinking with Artificial Intelligence is an essential guide for navigating the future of innovation. This book provides a relevant framework for professionals and students to deploy effective human-AI collaborations to solve complex problems and drive meaningful innovation.”- Prof. Yongqi LOU, Honorary Doctor, Royal College of Art, President, Shanghai University of Engineering Science, Chaired Professor, Tongji University“This book arrives at a critical moment for leaders navigating the intersection of AI and human creativity. True AI transformation in enterprises is not merely a technology challenge—it’s a human capital challenge. Success depends on how effectively organizations can reimagine workflows, empower teams, and reskill their workforce to collaborate with intelligent systems. By linking design thinking with AI, this book offers a practical roadmap for making that collaboration real. It’s an essential guide for executives, innovators, and educators who believe the future of enterprise innovation lies in an AI + human workforce.”- Ranjan Dutta, Founder & Managing Partner, ThothProAI, Advisor on AI Transformation, Human Capital, and Workf