The Soul Of Enterprise

The world's economy has been transformed from a twentieth-century materials-based economy to the Age of the Knowledge-Based Economy - and the currency of this realm is ideas, imagination, creativity, and knowledge. According The World Bank, 80% of the developed world's wealth now resides in human capital. Perhaps President Ronald Reagan said it best in his address to Moscow State University on May 31, 1988: "Like a chrysalis, we're emerging from the economy of the Industrial Revolution - an economy confined and limited by the Earth's physical resources - into, as one economist titled his book, "the economy in mind," in which there are no bounds on human imagination and the freedom to create is the most precious natural resource." Written by Ronald Baker and Ed Kless, hosts of The Soul of Enterprise: Business in the Knowledge Economy, the popular radio show on Voice America's Business Channel, The Soul of Enterprise: Dialogues on Business in the Knowledge Economy sounds the clarion call that organizations can no longer ignore this seismic shift that has occurred in the economy since 1959. The Soul of Enterprise introduces the three components of Intellectual Capital - human capital, social capital, and structural capital - and how to leverage them to create wealth in today's economy, by revealing: The physical fallacy - why wealth no longer consists of tangible things, but of ideas, imagination and knowledge from human minds The best learning tool ever invented: After Action Reviews Why Frederick Taylor and the Scientific Management movement was a fraud and the wrong focus for knowledge workers The fact that effectiveness always and everywhere trumps efficiency The First Law of Pricing: All value is subjective The Second Law of Pricing: All prices are contextual The Morality of Markets: Doing well and doing good Why your organization - and you - need to be driven by a higher purpose than profit The Soul of Enterprise will inspire and challenge readers to unlock the enormous financial and competitive power hidden in the intellectual capital of their organizations and knowledge workers."

In this thrilling and eye-opening Star Trek: Enterprise novel, T’Pol finds herself torn between the teachings of Vulcan and the regulations of Starfleet. You are alone in the dark reaches of space, surrounded by aliens who do not understand who you are and what you are, and who will not accept your beliefs. Under such circumstances, an emotional human would feel lost, cut off, adrift, but Sub-Commander T’Pol is a Vulcan, and Vulcans control their emotions. However, no other Vulcan has served for longer than a few weeks on a human ship. Has she, as others imply, lost her way? Pulled, once again, into one of Captain Archer’s dangerously impulsive attempts to make first contact, the sub-commander finds her life threatened. T’Pol reacts, draws her phase pistol and kills. It was a simple act of self-defense. But is killing ever simple? Has she forsaken the teachings of Surak? Determined to be true to her heritage, T’Pol forswears violence. She tells Captain Archer that never again will she kill—even if ordered. Is she, as Archer suggests, endangering the entire ship?

From old-fashioned bricks-and-mortars to cutting-edge startups, businesses are moving into uncharted territory as they determine how to move from an analog past to a digital future effectively. How can you make sure not to leave human instinct behind? Businesses are leaving behind traditional meetings in favor of virtual ones, transitioning from surveys and studies to analytics and algorithms. The startling and often unacknowledged truth is that?the promise of digital transformation can only be realized when we find a way to balance it with the promise of people.?In the end, it’s the people that matter, and companies must never forget the soul that drives them. In Restoring the Soul of Business, business leader Rishad Tobaccowala?teaches you to: Understand how to unleash the significant benefit that can be realized by combining emotion and data, human and machine, analog and digital. Spot the warning signs of data-blinded companies: cold cultures with little human interaction, poor innovation stemming from discouraged employees who don’t contribute ideas, and poor customer service due to automated, robotic processes. Explore how organizations of various sizes and from different industries have successfully reoriented their thinking on how to fuse technology and humanity. Gain skills to become an expert in connections critical to growth and success, including the connection between being creative and using technology. Everyone working in an organization will find penetrating observations and guidance about how and why establishing the proper balance between human intuition and creativity and data-driven insights can lead to increased revenue, profitability, retention—and even joy—in their careers and business. Restoring the Soul of Business provides practical tools and techniques that every organization can and should implement, and challenges you to move forward with the kind of balance that capitalizes transformation and produces one great success after another.

A social, economic, and political study of Philadelphia merchants, this study presents both the spirit and statistics of merchant life. Doerflinger studies the Philadelphia merchant community from three perspectives: their commercial world, their confrontation with the Revolution and its aftermath, and their role in diversifying the local economy. The analysis of entrepreneurship dominates the study and challenges long-standing assumptions about American economic history.

Modern culture’s worship of “how-to” pragmatism has turned us into instruments of efficiency and commerce—but we’re doing more and more about things that mean less and less. We constantly ask “how? and still struggle to find purpose and act on what matters. Instead of acting on what we know to be of importance, we wait for bosses to change, we seek the latest fad, we invest in one more degree. Asking how keeps us safe—instead of being led by our hearts into uncharted territory, we keep our heads down and stick to the rules. But we are gaining the world and losing our souls. Peter Block puts the “how-to” craze in perspective and presents a guide to the difficult and life-granting journey of bringing what we know is of personal value into an indifferent or even hostile corporate and cultural landscape. He raises our awareness of the trade-offs we’ve made in the name of practicality and expediency, and offers hope for a way of life in which we’re motivated not by what “works,” but by the things that truly matter in life—idealism, intimacy, depth and engagement.

Praise for IMPLEMENTING VALUE PRICING A Radical Business Model for Professional Firms "Ron Baker is the most prolific and best writer when it comes to pricing services. This is a must-read for executives and partners in small to large firms. Ron provides the basics, the advanced ideas, the workbooks, the case studies everything. This is a must-have and a terrific book." Reed K. Holden founder and CEO, Holden Advisors, Corp., Associate Professor, Columbia University www.holdenadvisors.com "We've known through Ron Baker's earlier books that he's not just an extraordinary thinker and truly brilliant writer he's a mover and a shaker on a mission. This is the End of Time! Brilliant." Paul Dunn Chairman, B1G1® www.b1g1.com "Implementing Value Pricing is a powerful blend of theory, strategy, and tactics. Ron Baker's most recent offering is ambitious in scope, exploring topics that include economic theory, customer orientation, value identification, service positioning, and pricing strategy. He weaves all of them together seamlessly, and includes numerous examples to illustrate his primary points. I have applied the knowledge I've gained from his body of work, and the benefits to me and to my customers have been immediate, significant, and ongoing." Brent Uren Principal, Valuation & Business Modeling Ernst & Young® www.ey.com "Ron Baker is a revolutionary. He is on a radical crusade to align the interests of service providers with those of their customers by having lawyers, accountants, and consultants charge based on the value they provide, rather than the effort it takes. Implementing Value Pricing is a manifesto that establishes a clear case for the revolution. It provides detailed guidance that includes not only strategies and tactics, but key predictive indicators for success. It is richly illustrated by the successes of firms that have embraced value-based pricing to make their services not only more cost-effective for their customers, but more profitable as well. The hallmark of a manifesto is an unyielding sense of purpose and a call to action. Let the revolution begin." Robert G. Cross, Chairman and CEO, Revenue Analytics, Inc. Author, Revenue Management: Hard-Core Tactics for Market Domination

Learn how to develop and employ an ontology, the secret weapon for successfully using artificial intelligence to create a powerful competitive advantage in your business. The AI-Powered Enterprise examines two fundamental questions: First, how will the future be different as a result of artificial intelligence? And second, what must companies do to stake their claim on that future? When the Web came along in the mid-90s, it transformed the behavior of customers and remade whole industries. Now, as part of its promise to bring revolutionary change in untold ways to human activity, artificial intelligence—AI—is about to create another complete transformation in how companies create and deliver value to customers. But despite the billions spent so far on bots and other tools, AI continues to stumble. Why can't it magically use all the data organizations generate to make them run faster and better? Because something is missing. AI works only when it understands the soul of the business. An ontology is a holistic digital model of every piece of information that matters to the business, from processes to products to people, and it's what makes the difference between the promise of AI and delivering on that promise. Business leaders who want to catch the AI wave—rather than be crushed by it—need to read The AI-Powered Enterprise. The book is the first to combine a sophisticated explanation of how AI works with a practical approach to applying AI to the problems of business, from customer experience to business operations to product development.

This is a book for managers who know that their organisations are stuck in a mindset that thrives on fashionable business theories that are no more than folk wisdom, and whose so-called strategies that are little more than banal wish lists. It puts forward the notion that the application of uncommon sense - thinking or acting differently from other organisations in a way that makes unusual sense - is the secret to competitive success. For those who want to succeed and stand out from the herd this book is a beacon of uncommon sense and a timely antidote to managerial humbug.