| OverviewThis is the Safari online edition of the printed book. "This book is a must for any
Business Development Manager, Corporate Strategist, R&D
Director, and anyone else who is accountable for growth in a
corporation. It is an easy read that is practical and not fraught
with useless academic theories." Ron Pierantozzi, Ph.D., CEO of PPT
Research and Former Director, Business Development, Air Products
& Chemicals, Inc. A Breakthrough Approach to Investing in
Business Innovation Most companies analyze investments using
tools that bias them against real innovation and lead them to avoid
their best opportunities. This book introduces a breakthrough
alternative: Opportunity Engineering. Drawing upon recent advances in financial
analysis, but without requiring a lot of math, the authors show how
to engineer the risk out of uncertain opportunities so you can
pursue more high-payoff innovations. You'll learn how to
escape from the "go/no-go vise" and implement more
flexible decision-making that considers all the business
alternatives, models, and opportunities associated with each
project. You'll learn how to systematically structure
high-potential projects to limit downside exposure and boost your
potential upside. The authors show how to define the scope of
investment opportunities, identify key drivers of potential
profits, document assumptions, design out major risks, and tease
out key challenges and vulnerabilities. Using these techniques, you can escape the
mindset that limits you to low-impact innovations and begin
pursuing serious growth opportunities--and make business
uncertainty work for you, not against you. Why companies avoid their best
opportunities for innovation Getting past risk-averse analysis that
snuffs out experimentation and innovation Systematically engineering your
opportunities Capturing the upside, slicing out the
downside Beyond rigid "go/no-go"
decisions How flexible, staged innovation creates
more opportunities for delivering value Constructing an engineered growth
portfolio of innovation investments Optimizing your mix of core-enhancing
investments and high potential "long shots" Editorial ReviewsProduct Description"This book is a must for any Business Development Manager, Corporate Strategist, R&D Director, and anyone else who is accountable for growth in a corporation. It is an easy read that is practical and not fraught with useless academic theories." Ron Pierantozzi, Ph.D., CEO of PPT Research and Former Director, Business Development, Air Products & Chemicals, Inc. A Breakthrough Approach to Investing in Business Innovation Most companies analyze investments using tools that bias them against real innovation and lead them to avoid their best opportunities. This book introduces a breakthrough alternative: Opportunity Engineering. Drawing upon recent advances in financial analysis, but without requiring a lot of math, the authors show how to engineer the risk out of uncertain opportunities so you can pursue more high-payoff innovations. You'll learn how to escape from the "go/no-go vise" and implement more flexible decision-making that considers all the business alternatives, models, and opportunities associated with each project. You'll learn how to systematically structure high-potential projects to limit downside exposure and boost your potential upside.The authors show how to define the scope of investment opportunities, identify key drivers of potential profits, document assumptions, design out major risks, and tease out key challenges and vulnerabilities. Using these techniques, you can escape the mindset that limits you to low-impact innovations and begin pursuing serious growth opportunities--and make business uncertainty work for you, not against you. Why companies avoid their best opportunities for innovation Getting past risk-averse analysis that snuffs out experimentation and innovation Systematically engineering your opportunities Capturing the upside, slicing out the downside Beyond rigid "go/no-go" decisions How flexible, staged innovation creates more opportunities for delivering value Constructing an engineered growth portfolio of innovation investments Optimizing your mix of core-enhancing investments and high potential "long shots" |
Top Sellers in This Category | Browse Similar Topics | | Top Level Categories:Sub-Categories: | | | |
Reader Reviews From Amazon (Ranked by 'Helpfulness') Average Customer Rating: based on 7 reviews. Not a 5 star business book..., 2009-03-05 Reviewer rating: This short and easy to read book is 50% fuzzy background on real options analysis and 50% advert for a computer program the Wharton professor author is trying to sell you. Useful, but not great. I do not think 6 out of 6 five-star reviews above represent an entirely independent sample of readers. | Developing a new venture - practical help in these pages, 2009-02-25 Reviewer rating: I put off reading this book because I was so busy. But, finally, I bit the bullet and guess what. This book is so short and engagingly written that I had it read (cover-to-cover) in two hours. Admittedly, I was already familiar with the concepts of DDP, real options, marketbusting, etc. My job is new business development in a large corporation, and this is my tool-set. But this book is a little gem in how it simplifies, lays out, and gives examples of the soft and hard analyses you can do to enable to you work through an uncertain business proposition in a company that craves certainty. In the current difficult economic environment, innovation has taken a big hit. So for me, this was a shot in the arm, and a timely reminder of how to build a new business without arm-waving. A colleague recently asked me to help her build a case to wake up her business area to missed opportunities and I was planning to use a reverse income statement. But the new terminology in this book is so appealing to engineers (which my company is comprised of) compared to the older, more financial nomenclature that I'm going to switch to this version. I'm also going to try out the new software. Never needed it more than now. | The essential approach to new venture valuation and planning, 2008-10-25 Reviewer rating: If you're a business leader who currently uses Net Present Value (NPV) / Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) to measure the value of new ventures, you may be overlooking scores of high worth opportunities. NPV doesn't take into account your ability to undertake low cost information gathering exercises that help you better estimate the potential payoff of future events. Why neglect a new venture when you have low risk paths to huge upside ? Van Putten and MacMillan present a new approach: Opportunity Engineering. Unlike NPV, Opportunity Engineering (OE) is an interactive approach to valuation: you, as a leader, are prompted to introduce information-intensive project CheckPoints, such as research phases or product trials, that give you better insight into future pay-offs and provide you with calculated exit opportunities. With positive information at the CheckPoint, you continue the planned project with better assurance of profits. With negative information, you abandon for a significant salvage value. Opportunity Engineering is unique: for the first time, new venture valuation and planning are integrated into an interactive cycle that lowers risk and heightens upside at each iteration. Opportunities are no longer just stumbled upon: they can be engineered. van Putten and Macmillan's genius is in the simplicity of the approach and the conciseness and clarity of their explanation. Supporting software, from cameronassociates.biz is available and provides you with an intuitive interface to plan, value, re-engineer, and monitor your new ventures. This book is a must for corporate leaders, entrepreneurs, and business students - it will revolutionize the way you value and plan new ventures. Finally, you have, in this book, the practical tools you need to not just see opportunities, but to purposefully engineer them.
| Maximizing Organic Growth , 2008-10-06 Reviewer rating: This book provides a practical approach for maximizing organic growth opportunities while minimizing downside risk. It provides the process and tools needed to execute growth strategies efficiently. A must read for all who are responsible and committed to producing corporate growth. | Brilliantly accessible, 2008-09-28 Reviewer rating: As someone who has worked with real options and discovery of opportunity in uncertainty, I might have been predisposed to split hairs, find faults, and nitpick a book such as this. Instead, my experience led me to be thunderstruck at the unbelievable clarity the authors achieved in this very accessible work. They have taken some very deep and profound ideas and put them in a form that is quite understandable, and reduced them to practice in a way that makes them clearly actionable.
I recommend this book to anyone engaged in planning for an uncertain future. |
Some information above was provided using data from Amazon.com. View at Amazon > |
| |
© 2009 Safari Books Online. All rights reserved.
|
