Disruption is changing the playing field – keep your successful business on top Thriving businesses on top of their game are targets for disruption. But for savvy business owners and managers who understand the coming changes, the time to future-proof their successful companies is now. Following over a decade of research into future trends, business reinvention and disruptive innovation, author Michael McQueen presents How to Prepare Now for What’s Next, a blueprint for top companies to thrive in turbulent times. McQueen brings rare insight to the topic of business disruption. The book first explores the notion of disruption itself, and confirms that the term is much more than just guru-speak. The book outlines the four primary forms of disruption that McQueen sees playing out over the next 5-10 years, and quickly moves on to the in-depth tools, tips and techniques that healthy businesses will need to stay on top. Use a simple tool to assess just how vulnerable to disruption your company is Read case studies, research and trend reports that highlight real-world examples to complement the book’s concepts Understand the four forms of disruption, namely widescale automation, empowered consumers, unconventional competition and emerging generations Apply the 9 keys to future-proof your business against disruption and make it impervious to change The time to act is now for the businesses who want to keep their edge, and How to Prepare Now for What’s Next is the guide to continue thriving.

How will America's colleges and universities adapt to remarkable technological, economic, and demographic change? The United States is in the midst of a profound transformation the likes of which hasn't been seen since the Industrial Revolution, when America's classical colleges adapted to meet the needs of an emerging industrial economy. Today, as the world shifts to an increasingly interconnected knowledge economy, the intersecting forces of technological innovation, globalization, and demographic change create vast new challenges, opportunities, and uncertainties. In this great upheaval, the nation's most enduring social institutions are at a crossroads. In The Great Upheaval, Arthur Levine and Scott Van Pelt examine higher and postsecondary education to see how it has changed to become what it is today—and how it might be refitted for an uncertain future. Taking a unique historical, cross-industry perspective, Levine and Van Pelt perform a 360-degree survey of American higher education. Combining historical, trend, and comparative analyses of other business sectors, they ask • how much will colleges and universities change, what will change, and how will these changes occur? • will institutions of higher learning be able to adapt to the challenges they face, or will they be disrupted by them? • will the industrial model of higher education be repaired or replaced? • why is higher education more important than ever? The book is neither an attempt to advocate for a particular future direction nor a warning about that future. Rather, it looks objectively at the contexts in which higher education has operated—and will continue to operate. It also seeks to identify likely developments that will aid those involved in steering higher education forward, as well as the many millions of Americans who have a stake in its future. Concluding with a detailed agenda for action, The Great Upheaval is aimed at policy makers, college administrators, faculty, trustees, and students, as well as general readers and people who work for nonprofits facing the same big changes.

An important challenge facing tourism is the anticipation of the threat of crises precipitated by natural and people-made catastrophes, and being adequately prepared for them. Despite an increase in research on this issue there is still a considerable lack of clarity on the impacts of crises on the tourism industry. Illustrated by a range of international case studies, this book provides a systematic and conceptual approach to questions such as how tourism businesses prepare for and react to crisis, which measures are taken and what impact they have, and which strategies can be employed to overcome them. By discussing, analyzing and synthesizing the literature on crisis management, the authors question how business can become more proactive in preparing and dealing with crises in the tourism industry.

In the winter of 1996, after 4 years of planning and research, the Symposium on the Virtual Utility was held in Saratoga Springs, New York. It was sponsored by Niag ara Mohawk Power Corporation, Co-sponsored by CSC Index and the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority and hosted by Rensselaer Poly technic Institute, Troy, NY. The symposium sought to identify new areas of inquiry by presenting cutting-edge academic and practitioner research intended to further our understanding of the strategic, technologically-driven issues confronting the elec tricity production and distribution process. The program sought to offer new in sights into rapid changes in the utility industry, in part, by examining analogues from manufacturing and telecommunications. In addition to identifying new research areas, the symposium yielded a number of important findings and conclusions. This volume contains the presented papers of the meeting, the discussant reports and two special papers prepared by the meet ing rapporteurs who performed superbly in analyzing, synthesizing, explaining and generally bringing a cohesive perspective to the interesting yet complex set of ideas presented at this unique meeting. We would like to acknowledge the people and organizations that contributed to this effort. We thank Niagara Mohawk Power Corporation and Albert Budney, its President & Chief Operating Officer for sponsoring this project, and Andrew Vesey, Vice President, I whose vision, support and championing made this project possible.

Disruption is changing the playing field – keep your successful business on top Thriving businesses on top of their game are targets for disruption. But for savvy business owners and managers who understand the coming changes, the time to future-proof their successful companies is now. Following over a decade of research into future trends, business reinvention and disruptive innovation, author Michael McQueen presents How to Prepare Now for What’s Next, a blueprint for top companies to thrive in turbulent times. McQueen brings rare insight to the topic of business disruption. The book first explores the notion of disruption itself, and confirms that the term is much more than just guru-speak. The book outlines the four primary forms of disruption that McQueen sees playing out over the next 5-10 years, and quickly moves on to the in-depth tools, tips and techniques that healthy businesses will need to stay on top. Use a simple tool to assess just how vulnerable to disruption your company is Read case studies, research and trend reports that highlight real-world examples to complement the book’s concepts Understand the four forms of disruption, namely widescale automation, empowered consumers, unconventional competition and emerging generations Apply the 9 keys to future-proof your business against disruption and make it impervious to change The time to act is now for the businesses who want to keep their edge, and How to Prepare Now for What’s Next is the guide to continue thriving.

In this work, change specialist Holman reframes how we deal with chaos and change, and explains to leaders how to turn upheaval into opportunity and renewal.

At the root of inequality, unemployment, and populism are radical changes in the world economy. Digital technology is allowing talented foreigners to telecommute into our workplaces and compete for service and professional jobs. Instant machine translation is melting language barriers, so the ranks of these "tele-migrants" will soon include almost every educated person in the world. Computing power is dissolving humans' monopoly on thinking, enabling AI-trained computers to compete for many of the same white-collar jobs. The combination of globalization and robotics is creating the globotics upheaval, and it threatens the very foundations of the liberal welfare-state. Richard Baldwin, one of the world's leading globalization experts, argues that the inhuman speed of this transformation threatens to overwhelm our capacity to adapt. From computers in the office to automatic ordering systems in restaurants, we are familiar with the how digital technologies offer convenience while also eliminating jobs. Globotics will disrupt the lives of millions of white-collar workers much faster than automation, industrialization, and globalization disrupted the lives of factory workers in previous centuries. The result will be a backlash. Professional, white-collar, and service workers will agitate for a slowing of the unprecedented pace of disruption, as factory workers have done in years past. Baldwin argues that the globotics upheaval will be countered in the short run by "shelter-ism" - government policies that shelter some service jobs from tele-migrants and thinking computers. In the long run, people will work in more human jobs-activities that require real people to use the uniquely human ability of independent thought-and this will strengthen bonds in local communities. Offering effective strategies such as focusing on the social value of work, The Globotics Upheaval will help people prepare for the oncoming wave of an advanced robotic workforce.