Digital library
Textbooks, references and open learning resources.
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Digital Entrepreneurship: Impact on Business and Society
Mariusz Soltanifar; Mathew Hughes; Lutz Göcke · Springer · 2021
This open access book explores the global challenges and experiences related to digital entrepreneurial activities, using carefully selected examples from leading companies and economies that shape world business today and tomorrow. Digital entrepreneurship and the companies steering it have an enormous global impact; they promise to transform the business world and change the way we communicate with each other. These companies use digitalization and artificial intelligence to enhance the quality of decisions and augment their business and customer operations. This book demonstrates how cloud services are continuing to evolve; how cryptocurrencies are traded in the banking industry; how platforms are created to commercialize business, and how, taken together, these developments provide new opportunities in the digitalized era. Further, it discusses a wide range of digital factors changing the way businesses operate, including artificial intelligence, chatbots, voice search, augmented and virtual reality, as well as cyber threats and data privacy management.
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Fashion and Apparel Consumer Behavior
Andrea Niosi; Doreen Chung · Iowa State University Digital Press · 2025
This open textbook was designed for students studying apparel and fashion studies at an undergraduate level. It draws on the fields of marketing, business, communications, media studies, psychology, sociology, and anthropology. The book invites readers to examine the internal forces that shape consumer decision making, such as perceptions, motivations, personality, and attitudes as well as the external ones, such as social and situational influences, culture, and subcultures, especially those related to our appearances and clothing. This text centers the lived experiences of today’s consumers, specifically, undergraduate students. Following the original author, Andrea Niosi, the adapting author has also made efforts to decenter whiteness and dominant culture perspectives wherever possible to ensure a broader and more accurate representation of diverse consumers.
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Leading Innovation
Kerri Shields · eCampusOntario · 2023
Innovation today considers the economic, environmental, and/or social sustainability of an innovative initiative from its inception or idea generation through to its commercialization or implementation. This concept applies to many types of innovation such as products, processes, services, technologies, and business models. Companies use innovation as a means to gain a competitive advantage and bring value to business stakeholders. This book introduces business innovation, from incremental innovation such as enhancing the performance of an existing product, service, or process, to radical or disruptive innovation such as one that has a significant impact on a market. The content examines how leaders foster a culture of innovation, how companies turn creativity into innovation, and how innovation transforms not only organizations but economies as well.
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Customer Insights
Aila Khan; Mohammad Hossain; Sabreena Amin · Western Sydney University · 2023
Increasingly, the concept of marketing research is being replaced with the term ‘customer or consumer insights’. As decision-makers are bombarded with data, it is important to have an Insights Team or Department which can sift through it all and identify those nuggets of information that can meaningfully explain human behaviour. Such insights must translate into an informed business strategy for success. This book has been curated to ensure that the practice of data collection, analysis, and interpretation is presented from an industry perspective.
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Mastering Strategic Management
University of Minnesota Libraries Publishing · 2015
Teaching the strategic management course can be a challenge for many professors. In most business schools, strategic management is a “capstone” course that requires students to draw on insights from various functional courses they have completed (such as marketing, finance, and accounting) in order to understand how top executives make the strategic decisions that drive whether organizations succeed or fail. Although students have taken these functional courses, many students have very little experience with major organizational choices. It is this inexperience that can undermine many students’ engagement in the course. For questions about this textbook please contact textbookuse@umn.edu
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Introduction to Apparel Production Workbook
Laurie Apple · University of Arkansas · 2023
Welcome to Introduction to Apparel Production. Whether you are part of the college class or learning on your own, you will gain important concepts and techniques in beginning apparel production. This workbook is to accompany the activities through in person teaching or online learning. There will be graphics and videos to help guide you through each step of this workbook. There are 6 learning units and a sewing projects unit in this workbook. The sewing projects unit contains 4 projects: tote bag, skirt, shirt and pants. The pattern numbers may change due to the availability of patterns.
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Crawford Automation – A Guided Application of Structured Problem Solving
Stephen Thomson; Kevin Hollis; Laurie Turnbull · eCampusOntario · 2023
This is a multimedia-enabled case in which students will be guided, by an industry expert, to apply structured problem-solving that addresses a typical supply chain problem, missing parts. What first appears as the issue may be a symptom of a root cause(s). The case utilizes videos, data files for analytics, audio recording, and videogame-style exercises to find the missing box of parts. The case is a collaboration between the Conestoga Centre for Supply Chain Innovation and ATS Automation and utilizes the ATS Business Model (ABM) approach to identifying and solving root causes. The case can be used in any Continuous Improvement course or program for either Business or Engineering students.
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Customer Centric Strategy
Kerri Shields · eCampusOntario · 2024
Customer centricity is about organizational transformation making the customer the focus for business decisions, processes, product development, services, and procedures. Some companies purport to be customer centric but they fall short in connecting this concept throughout all functional areas of the business. While it is important to offer superb customer service, being customer centric is far more than that. It's about mapping the customer journey to discover customer needs and wants, what's working and what is not, then taking action to improve the customer experience. Customer loyalty is built through providing exceptional customer experiences. This in turn increases revenues through positive company image, referrals, and increased customer lifetime value. Most organizations today realize that they must focus on the customer to remain competitive.
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Visuals for influence: in project management and beyond
Bronte van der Hoorn · University of Southern Queensland · 2021
‘Visuals for influence: in project management and beyond’ is a practical guide with 24 visuals to download, adapt and deploy to engage your stakeholders. This practical guide will build your confidence and practical skills to quickly and effectively leverage the benefits of visuals to maximise your influence.
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Fundamentals of Business
Stephen Skripak; Richard Parsons; Anastasia Cortes · BCcampus · 2018
An introductory textbook in business that covers a variety of topics: The Foundations of Business, Economics and Business, Ethics and Social Responsibility, Business in a Global Environment, Forms of Business Ownership, Entrepreneurship: Starting a Business, Management and Leadership, Structuring Organizations, Operations Management, Motivating Employees, Managing Human Resources, Union/Management Issues, Marketing: Providing Value, Accounting and Financial Information, and Personal Finances.
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Fundamentals of Business
Stephen Skripak; Ron Poff · Virginia Tech Libraries · 2023
Fundamentals of Business, 4th Edition is an open education resource intended to serve as a no-cost, faculty-customizable primary text for one-semester undergraduate introductory business courses. It covers the following topics in business: Teamwork; economics; ethics; entrepreneurship; business ownership, management, and leadership; organizational structures and operations management; human resources and motivating employees; managing in labor union contexts; marketing and pricing strategy; hospitality and tourism, accounting and finance, personal finances, and technology in business. The textbook was designed for use in Virginia Tech’s Pamplin College of Business introductory level business course, MGT1104 Foundations of Business and is shared under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial ShareAlike 4.0 license. If you are an instructor reviewing, adopting, or adapting this textbook, please help us understand your use by filling out this form http://bit.ly/business-interest. A testbank is now available by request for this book: http://hdl.handle.net/10919/93404. The testbank covers chapters 1-18 and (currently) aligns to previous editions of the textbook. It is available to any instructor who has adopted Fundamentals of Business in their course.
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Growth and Competitive Strategy in 3 Circles
Joe Urbany; James Davis · Saylor Foundation · 2012
The 3-Circle model was developed over the past several years, initially in strategic planning for a university graduate program and in an executive MBA course designed to integrate the concepts of marketing and competitive strategy. Over the course of time, the 3-Circle model has been successfully used by hundreds of organizations throughout the world in establishing and growing their market positions. Many of the case examples in this book demonstrating applications of the 3-Circle model applications are from executives who have attended executive education training at the University of Notre Dame. The development of competitive strategy is difficult because there are a lot of moving parts, as well as hundreds of frameworks, that might potentially guide the effort. Executives appreciate how the 3-Circle model simplifies the integration of customer, firm, and competitor analysis to generate growth strategies. It also provides a common language and process for understanding and explaining competitive advantage and for identifying profitable growth strategy.
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Good Corporation, Bad Corporation: Corporate Social Responsibility in the Global Economy
Guillermo Jimenez; Elizabeth Pulos · Open SUNY · 2016
This textbook provides an innovative, internationally oriented approach to the teaching of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and business ethics. Drawing on case studies involving companies and countries around the world, the textbook explores the social, ethical, and business dynamics underlying CSR in such areas as global warming, genetically modified organisms (GMO) in food production, free trade and fair trade, anti-sweatshop and living-wage movements, organic foods and textiles, ethical marketing practices and codes, corporate speech and lobbying, and social enterprise. The book is designed to encourage students and instructors to challenge their own assumptions and prejudices by stimulating a class debate based on each case study.
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Small Business Management in the 21st Century
David Cadden; Sandra Lueder · Saylor Foundation · 2012
Small Business Management in the 21st Century offers a unique perspective and set of capabilities for instructors. The authors designed this book with a “less can be more” approach, and by treating small business management as a practical human activity rather than as an abstract theoretical concept. The text has a format and structure that will be familiar to you if you use other books on small business management. Yet it brings a fresh perspective by incorporating three distinctive and unique themes and an important new feature (Disaster Watch) which is embedded throughout the entire text. These themes assure that students see the material in an integrated context rather than a stream of separate and distinct topics. First, the authors incorporate the use of technology and e-business as a way to gain competitive advantage over larger rivals. Technology is omnipresent in today's business world. Small business must use it to its advantage. We provide practical discussions and examples of how a small business can use these technologies without having extensive expertise or expenditures. Second, they explicitly acknowledge the constant need to examine how decisions affect cash flow by incorporating cash flow impact content in several chapters. As the life blood of all organizations, cash flow implications must be a factor in all business decision-making. Third, they recognize the need to clearly identify sources of customer value and bring that understanding to every decision. Decisions that do not add to customer value should be seriously reconsidered. Small Business Management in 21st Century boasts a new feature called Disaster Watch scenarios. Few texts cover, in any detail, some of the major hazards that small business managers face. Disaster Watch scenarios, included in most chapters, cover topics that include financing, bankers, creditors, employees, customers who don't pay, economic downturns, and marketing mistakes.
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Developing New Products and Services
G. Lawrence Sanders · Saylor Foundation · 2012
Developing New Products and Services by Sanders is an outstanding contribution to market research. The book focuses on the upfront activities and ideas for new product and service development. A central theme of Developing New Products and Services is that there is, or should be, a constant struggle going on in every organization, business, and system between delivering feature-rich versions of products and services using extravagant engineering and delivering low-cost versions of products and services using frugal engineering. Students will come away with this notion and how to manifest it as a contributing employee at any company. A number of powerful concepts and tools are presented so your students can better understand how to facilitate new product development. For example, three templates are featured that facilitate new product and service development. The FAD (features, attributes, and design) template is used to identify the features and attributes that can be used for product and service differentiation. The Ten–Ten planning process contains two templates: an Organizational and Industry Analysis template and the Business Plan Overview template. These two templates coupled with the FAD template can be used to develop a full-blown business plan. In addition, Developing New Products and Services includes the following topics: entrepreneurship, technology and product life cycles, product and service versioning, product line optimization, creativity, lock-in real options, business valuation, and project management. Evaluate Developing New Products and Services by Sanders for your marketing courses today.
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Electronic Commerce: The Strategic Perspective
Richard Watson; Pierre Berthon; Leyland Pitt; George Zinkhan · BCcampus · 2014
This book is written both for practitioners and business students. Managers wishing to understand how electronic commerce is revolutionizing business will find that our comprehensive coverage of essential business issues (e.g., pricing and distribution) answers many of their questions. Advanced business students (junior, seniors, and graduate students) will find that the blend of academic structure and practical examples provides an engaging formula for learning. The book's title reflects some key themes that we develop. First, we are primarily concerned with electronic commerce, which we define as using technology (e.g., the Internet) to communicate or transact with stakeholders (e.g., customers). Second, we discuss how organizations must change in order to take advantage of electronic commerce opportunities. In this sense, our book offers the strategic perspective (i.e., the best way to operate a successful business in the 21st century). Third, with the growing importance of the Internet and related technologies, organizations must take electronic commerce into account when they are creating strategic plans. Thus, electronic commerce is a strategic perspective that all firms must adopt, both in the present and in the future. In other words, an organization that does not explicitly consider electronic commerce as a strategic imperative is probably making a crucial error. Here, we focus primarily on the opportunities and tactics that can lead to success in the electronic marketplace.
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The Power of Selling
Kimberly Richmond · Saylor Foundation · 2010
The Power of Selling is the perfect textbook to teach students about the proven process of selling. More important, it teaches students how to apply the tenets of selling to how to sell themselves and get the job they want, with the same process professional sales people learn (or brush up) on their own selling skills. What makes someone successful in sales? Are great sales people born or made? Is there one magic selling process, or does the process change based on the business‚ or the customer? How can the selling process really come alive for students in the classroom? How do students learn how to sell for life, not just for a course? The Power of Selling by Kim Richmond answers these questions and makes the principles of selling come alive. Kim looks at the topic of selling through a different lens, and provides inspiration and ideas. The Power of Selling provides an exciting and interactive experience for both professors and students through the use of 4 unique elements: 1. Content The content is based on the core selling tenets so instructors will find the familiar principles of selling. In addition, the impact of Sales 2.0 is addressed at every stage including how to use interactive tools such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, blogs, and wikis effectively. 2. Selling U: The last section of each chapter is called Selling U. It applies the concepts covered in the chapter to a student's job search. Selling U topics include how to think about yourself as a brand, how to create a powerful cover letter and resume, how to create your personal elevator pitch, how to use networking and informational interviews to get the word out about your brand, how to prepare and dress for an interview, and how to negotiate and accept the right job offer. What makes The Power of Selling different is that Selling U is integrated into every chapter, which makes this text the ultimate guide to selling yourself. 3. Video Resources:Videos are used throughout the book. Additional videos tha
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Launch! Advertising and Promotion in Real Time
Michael Solomon; Lisa Cornell; Amit Nizan · Saylor Foundation · 2009
Launch! Advertising and Promotion is written for advertising and promotion courses taught to students in the business school and journalism & mass communication students. This textbook is the first of its kind to teach advertising concepts by reverse engineering a real advertising campaign from beginning to end. In April 2007, SS+K, an innovative New York City communications agency, launched the first ever branding campaign for msnbc.com with the tag "A Fuller Spectrum of News." Launch! follows that campaign from initial agency pitch through roll-out of print and media assets to post-campaign analysis. Throughout, it exposes readers to the theory and concepts of advertising and promotion, and the personalities and decisions that drove this campaign. The book takes a rare look ”behind the curtain“ — even letting you see some of the paths not chosen by the agency and client. Students get a realistic sense of how theory plays out in practice, and get a flavor for the exciting field of advertising and promotion. And, they consistently learn the perspectives of both the advertising agency (where many journalism and communications students will work) and the client (where many marketing majors will work). This is a unique book, with a unique perspective, by a unique author team, and you won't find this kind of insight in any other text on the market. We think you're going to love it! This textbook has been used in classes at: Ball State University, Emerson College, Florida Institute of Technology, Grand Valley State University, Johnson County Community College, Manchester Business School, McLennan Community College, Michigan State University, North Hennepin Community College, Pierce College, Rochester Institute of Technology, Saint Louis University, Salem State College, South Dakota State University, Texas State University, Texas Tech University, University of New Hampshire, University of North Carolina, University of Notre Dame, University of South Florida, Virginia Tech
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Abordaje Integral de la Obesidad
Noemí Judith Tayupanda-Cuvi; Carmen Patricia Viteri-Robayo; Katherine Yaritza Girón-Saltos; María Fernanda Marizande-Lozada · Editorial Grupo AEA · 2024
El libro aborda la obesidad desde diversas perspectivas, comenzando con un análisis global en el Capítulo I sobre factores socioeconómicos y culturales, y la influencia de la globalización en los hábitos alimentarios. Se examina la situación específica en Ecuador en el Capítulo II, donde se destaca la alta prevalencia de obesidad en adultos y su relación con el consumo de alimentos procesados. Los siguientes capítulos se centran en aspectos médicos, bioquímicos y nutricionales de la obesidad, así como en intervenciones dietéticas y de actividad física. Se subraya la importancia de la intervención psicológica y se analiza la influencia de las redes sociales y el marketing en los hábitos alimentarios. Se discuten también las complicaciones musculoesqueléticas y se detalla el papel crucial de los desequilibrios hormonales en la obesidad y sus implicaciones metabólicas. El libro proporciona una visión integral de la obesidad y sugiere enfoques multidisciplinarios para su prevención y control.
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Sinergia Científica: Integrando las Ciencias desde una Perspectiva Multidisciplinaria
Santiago Alexander Guamán Rivera; Robinson J. Herrera-Feijoo; Armando Vinicio Paredes-Peralta; Clara Isabel Ruiz-Sánchez · Editorial Grupo AEA · 2023
"Sinergia Científica: Integrando las Ciencias desde una Perspectiva Multidisciplinaria" es un compendio de estudios que abarcan diversas disciplinas, uniendo la ciencia en un esfuerzo colectivo para resolver problemas complejos. El primer capítulo presenta una innovación en la cuyicultura sostenible, explorando la suplementación alimenticia con harina de amaranto y cúrcuma en cuyes. El segundo capítulo se adentra en el ámbito social, analizando los Derechos Humanos desde la perspectiva de las poblaciones vulnerables. En el tercer capítulo, se introduce un enfoque innovador en ingeniería civil, utilizando polímeros reciclados para el diseño de revestimientos de cunetas. El cuarto capítulo examina el impacto económico de la facturación electrónica en el sector de imprentas, un avance tecnológico crucial en la era digital. Finalmente, el quinto capítulo explora la influencia del neuromarketing en la rentabilidad de las PYMES, uniendo la neurociencia y el marketing para optimizar las estrategias comerciales. Este libro es un testimonio de cómo la integración multidisciplinaria puede conducir a soluciones innovadoras y sostenibles.