The debut title in Wiley’s Microsoft Executive Circle Series, The Think Factory shows you—using case studies and sample improvement plans—how intangibles such as collaboration and business intelligence interact to create tangible value and identifies the best practices for expanding your company’s investment in people and procedures.

This is a personal story of the educational process at one of the world's great technological universities. This is a personal story of the educational process at one of the world's great technological universities. Pepper White entered MIT in 1981 and received his master's degree in mechanical engineering in 1984. His account of his experiences, written in diary form, offers insight into graduate school life in general—including the loneliness and even desperation that can result from the intense pressure to succeed—and the purposes of engineering education in particular. The first professor White met at MIT told him that it did not really matter what he learned there, but that MIT would teach him how to think. This, then, is the story of how one student learned how to think. There have of course been changes at MIT since 1984, but its essence is still the same. White has added a new preface and concluding chapter to this edition to bring the story of his continuing education up to date.

A former Senior Partner and Global Managing Director at the legendary design firm IDEO shows how to design conversations and meetings that are creative and impactful. Conversations are one of the most fundamental means of communicating we have as humans. At their best, conversations are unconstrained, authentic and open—two or more people sharing thoughts and ideas in a way that bridges our individual experiences, achieves a common goal. At their worst, they foster misunderstanding, frustration and obscure our real intentions. How often do you walk away from a conversation feeling really heard? That it moved the people in it forward in some important way? You’re not alone. In his practice as a designer, Fred Dust began to approach conversations differently. After years of trying to broker communication between colleagues and clients, he came to believe there had to a way to design the art of conversation itself with intention and purpose, but still artful and playful. Making Conversation codifies what he learned and outlines the seven elements essential to successful exchanges: Commitment, Creative Listening, Clarity, Context, Constraints, Change, and Create. Taken together, these seven elements form a set of resources anyone can use to be more deliberate and purposeful in making conversations work.

Before you can influence decisions, you need to understand what drives them. In The Choice Factory, Richard Shotton sets out to help you learn. By observing a typical day of decision-making, from trivial food choices to significant work-place moves, he investigates how our behaviour is shaped by psychological shortcuts. With a clear focus on the marketing potential of knowing what makes us tick, Shotton has drawn on evidence from academia, real-life ad campaigns and his own original research. The Choice Factory is written in an entertaining and highly-accessible format, with 25 short chapters, each addressing a cognitive bias and outlining simple ways to apply it to your own marketing challenges. Supporting his discussion, Shotton adds insights from new interviews with some of the smartest thinkers in advertising, including Rory Sutherland, Lucy Jameson and Mark Earls. From priming to the pratfall effect, charm pricing to the curse of knowledge, the science of behavioural economics has never been easier to apply to marketing. The Choice Factory is the new advertising essential.

At holiday time, a special little reindeer with mismatched antlers shows up as an early gift from Santa to stay with a child and learn their true Christmas wishes all the while encouraging them to celebrate their own differences.

From the bestselling author of Developing Products in Half the Time, this book presents a comprehensive approach to managing design-in-process inventory.

The New Factory Thinker Learn to survive and succeed in a marketplace disrupted by technology Are you worried about the impact of technology on your company and your industry? Are you concerned that new tech-driven competitors will up-end your business model and steal away customers? Are you trying to figure out how to prosper in a marketplace being taken over by computers, artificial intelligence, robots, 3-D printers and other disruptive technology? Then read this book. In The New Factory Thinker, entrepreneur and business coach Bill Bishop explains that 99.9% of people today use an obsolete way of thinking about business (old factory), and presents a new way of thinking (new factory) that is much more appropriate for today's market conditions. Bishop shows why companies designed as assembly lines are falling behind, and why companies designed as value hubs are taking their place. He explains how companies like Apple, Google, Amazon and other companies-both big and small-use new factory thinking to attract more high-quality customers, make higher-margin sales, and achieve exponential growth. He then explains step-by-step how to build your new factory. Thought-provoking, inspiring, and entertaining, The New Factory Thinker will change forever the way you think about and do business.

This book, first published in 1984, is a collection of six classic articles by the famed accountant John Whitmore. The articles, written between 1906 and 1908, provide a key analysis of standard costing and cost accounting.