Consumer-Driven Demand and Operations Management Models: A Systematic Study of Information-Technology-Enabled Sales Mechanisms (International Series in Operations Research & Management Science)

From the reviews:“The book under review is very well written with incredible informations about Operations Management and how big companies and the market works under these new concepts. The book is aimed to non-experts in the subject and I highly reccommend this book if you are interested in Operations Management Models. The book presents a diversified and several models which are adopted nowadays and the reading is very easy and enganging. Have a good reading!” (Inspire and Action Book Review Blog, inspireandaction.wordpress.com, November, 2013)“This book introduces a variety of approaches and case analysis of revenue management and selling mechanisms at strategic organizational and operational level. … very well organized and the chapters are well written. … I liked this book because I found a lot of interesting new topics giving an extensive picture of the high dynamism of the strategic consumer behaviour … . a good value for money for researchers, practitioners involved in sales mechanisms and revenue management and for academic purposes … .” (G. Stecca, Journal of the Operational Research Society, Vol. 61 (12), 2010)

Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead: What Every Business Can Learn from the Most Iconic Band in History

Product Description The Grateful Dead broke almost every rule in the music industry book. They encouraged their fans to record shows and trade tapes; they built a mailing list and sold concert tickets directly to fans; and they built their business model on live concerts, not album sales. By cultivating a dedicated, active community, collaborating with their audience to co-create the Deadhead lifestyle, and giving away 'freemium' content, the Dead pioneered many social media and inbound marketing concepts successfully used by businesses across all industries today. Written by marketing gurus and lifelong Deadheads David Meerman Scott and Brian Halligan, Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead gives you key innovations from the Dead's approach you can apply to your business. Find out how to make your fans equal partners in your journey, 'lose control' to win, create passionate loyalty, and experience the kind of marketing gains that will not fade away! Amazon Exclusive: Q&A with Authors David Meerman Scott and Brian Halligan What inspired you to write this book? Brian: We have been thinking about how the Grateful Dead are a great marketing and strategy case study for years. We included content on the Grateful Dead in both of our previous books and often talk about them on stage in our blogs. Recently, we did a webinar that was focused on what marketers could learn from the Grateful Dead that was very well received, so we decided to turn up the volume and write a book. Since we are both longtime deadheads and marketing thinkers, this book was a labor of love for the two of us!\ David: The Grateful Dead is one huge case study in contrarian marketing! We’ve been eager to write about what the band has been doing to market themselves for more than forty years and apply that to businesses today. These lessons are an important tool for helping to understand the new marketing environment in language and examples that are familiar to all. What are some of the marketing lessons that businesses can learn from The Grateful Dead? Brian: The fundamental assumption in almost every band’s business model was that they were going to make their money on album sales. The Grateful Dead rejected that assumption. Their fundamental business model was based on making money from the concerts. Because of that change, there was a cascade of decisions that fell from that. For instance, each concert was completely unique night-after-night, so there was a strong incentive to see them for several nights in a row – this ultimately led to fans following them around the country. In addition, they allowed their fans to make tapes of the concerts and freely spread them to their fans – the more concerts they played, the more tapes there were, the more people were exposed to the music, the more people paid for concert tickets. David: The Grateful Dead let their audience define the Grateful Dead experience. Concerts were a happening, a destination where all 20,000 or more audience members were actually part of the experience. Making fans an equal partner in a mutual journey, the Grateful Dead teaches us that our community defines who we are. In an era of instant communications on Twitter, blogs and the like, we learn that companies cannot force a mindset on their customers. What kind of research went in to writing this book? Brian: I have been to over 100 Grateful Dead shows, so have been thinking about this for a long time. More recently, I have read pretty much everything I could get my hands on that had been written by band members or colleagues of band members. We also spent some time with Billy Kruetzmann, the Grateful Dead’s long time drummer who helped me with some of the information. David: We did hundreds of hours of research for the book. While some things are well documented (such as the taper policy) many of the band's marketing practices were not talked about in the published materials What has the reaction to the book been among your marketing fans, and also Grateful Dead fans? David: We announced the book in Grateful Dead fashion—with a big announcement on our blogs, Twitter, and Facebook. We told our fans first. Soon, many Grateful Dead fans who did not know us found the book through Google alerts and from discussions that started immediately on Grateful Dead forums. We jumped into the discussions as people had questions about the book. What was the most fun or most interesting aspect of writing this book? David: We’ve really enjoyed digging into the band that we love. And the research has allowed us to meet really interesting people associated with the band. Because we want to support more research, we’re donating 25% of royalties to the Grateful Dead Archive at the University of California at Santa Cruz.

Creating a Lean and Green Business System: Techniques for Improving Profits and Sustainability

Keivan Zokaei has been with the Lean Enterprise Research Centre (LERC), Cardiff University Business School since April 2004. He holds a PhD from Cardiff University and an MSc degree from Warwick University. Before that he has been a Business Development Manager in the Oil and Gas industry. At LERC he managed and delivered various projects in operations and supply chain management. He has also been consulting to both public and private sector. He has lectured on executive and postgraduate degrees at Cardiff, Cambridge and Warwick Universities. He regularly delivers short courses to executives from different sectors and has developed bespoke training for companies such as Volvo. He is a regular contributor to international conferences and a visiting lecturer at Warwick University.Keivan has been an advisor to the General Auditor for Wales on the adoption of lean thinking in the public sector and is currently working with both Welsh Assembly Government and the Wales Audit Office to deliver more efficient public services. He has authored various reports for government departments, industry bodies and the private sector on lean production and also appeared on BBC Radio Wales.  L. Hunter Lovins is president and founder of the Natural Capitalism Solutions (NCS) (www.natcapsolutions.org). NCS educates senior decision-makers in business, government and civil society to restore and enhance the natural and human capital while increasing prosperity and quality of life. In partnership with leading thinkers and Implementers, NCS creates innovative, practical tools and strategies to enable companies, communities, and countries to become more sustainable.Trained as a sociologist and lawyer (JD), Hunter is also currently faculty at Bainbridge Graduate Institute and the chief insurgent of the madrone project.Lovins has consulted for scores of industries and governments worldwide. She has consulted with large and small companies including the International Finance Corporation, Royal Dutch Shell, Interface, Clif Bar, and Wal-Mart. Governmental clients include the Pentagon, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Energy and other agencies, numerous cities, and the governments of Jamaica, Australia, and the U.S. She has also served an advisor to the Energy Minister of the Government of Afghanistan.Recipient of such honors as the Right Livelihood Award, Lindbergh Award and Leadership in Business, she was named Time Magazine 2000 Hero of the Planet and in 2009 Newsweek dubbed her a 'Green Business Icon.' She has co-authored nine books and hundreds of papers, including the 1999 book, Natural Capitalism, 2006 e-book Climate Protection Manual for Cities, and the 2009 Transforming Industry in Asia. She has served on the boards of governments, non- and for profit companies.Hunter’s areas of expertise include Natural Capitalism, sustainable development, globalization, energy and resource policy, economic development, climate change, land management, and fire rescue and emergency medicine. She developed the Economic Renewal Project and helped write many of its manuals on sustainable community economic development. She was a founding Professor of Business at Presidio Graduate School, one of the first accredited programs offering an MBA in Sustainable Management and is currently Chief Insurgent of the madrone project.Peter Hines is Chairman of the Lean Enterprise Research Centre at Cardiff Business School. He holds a BA (MA) in geography from Cambridge University and an MBA and PhD from the University of Cardiff. Peter followed a successful career in distribution and manufacturing industry before joining Cardiff Business School in 1992. Since that time he initially led the Materials Management Unit and now chairs the Lean Enterprise Research Centre within Cardiff Business School. The Lean Enterprise Research Centre is the largest dedicated research centre in Lean Thinking in the world.He has undertaken extensive research into Lean Thinking and Supply Chain Management in both the automotive and other industries and has pioneered a number of key concepts, methods and applications in Europe, including: Supplier Associations (now involving over 800 European firms), Value Stream Mapping, Network Sourcing, the Three Tier System of Management and the Value Stream Analysis Tool. He has written or co-written several books including 'Creating World Class Suppliers' published by Pitman in 1994, 'The Lean Enterprise' published by AMACOM in 1997, 'Value Stream Management' published by Financial Times Prentice Hall in 2000 and Staying Lean published in 2008 which won a Shingo Research and Professional Publication Prize Recipient for 2009.