In this penetrating study of how knowledge-based services and technology are revolutionizing the economy and every corporate strategy, James Brian Quinn argues that the successful companies of the 90's -- whether in manufacturing or services -- will derive their competitive edge not from ephemerally superior products but from a deep understanding of a few highly developed knowledge and service based "core competencies." Rarely will owning the largest raw materials resource, manufacturing plants, equipment bases, or integrated facilities provide a maintainable competitive edge for major companies. Such physical properties are too easily cloned or bypassed. From now on, Quinn documents, intelligent enterprises will derive sustainable advantage from knowledge and service based activities that leverage intellectual assets. They will increase value through technological sophistication, better knowledge bases, more creative customer responsiveness, and the unsurpassed management of human and intellectual capital that competitors cannot reproduce. Quinn analyzes the technological and economic forces that make such strategies essential. He shows in detail how to create and leverage knowledge and service based core competencies for maximum focus and effectiveness. Managers, Quinn asserts, must define each value-creating activity as a knowledge based service and determine whether or not they can perform that service -- be it research, design, inventory control, accounting, distribution, or advertising -- better than anyone else in the world. Using examples from companies such as Merck, Honda, Apple, Boeing, and Wal-Mart, Quinn describes how forward-looking companies can best perform needed analyses and implement strategies around selected core competencies. By eliminating or "outsourcing" less important functions to superior outside vendors, firms become more responsive, decentralized, and lean. They become the "intelligent enterprises" of the 1990s, leveraging human and capital resources much more than other firms. They may also take on radically new organizational forms, become "starburst," "inverted," "infinitely flat," or "spiders' web" configurations. By designing and benchmarking their knowledge and service based activities to be "best in world," managers can obliterate overhead costs, smash bureaucracies, motivate personnel, and create greater value for customers and shareholders alike.

In today’s competitive environments enterprises face diminishing market life spans, increasing pressure on profit margins and increasingly complex c- tomer requirements. Thus in their operations, modern organizations have to find a high-level balance between dynamics, complexity and precision in order to best utilize their markets. Organization Theory and Industrial En- neering, the disciplines on hand helping industry to cope with this challenge, soon identified process optimizations as the key to possible solutions. Many efforts have been undertaken to provide sound theoretical models to deal with complexity and dynamics and streamline business processes. These efforts on the one hand helped companies to be more precise in carrying out their actions and even provided solutions to produce customized products at near-mass production prices (Mass-Customization). On the other hand it t- ned out to be one of the most difficult tasks to generalize and transfer ex- riences gained in one process-reengineering project to another and put the theoretical models into practice. Not without reason is it the extremely high failure rate of business-process-reengineering projects that today deters most enterprises from entering such adventures. Right at the same time there emerged a new and highly promising scientific branch, Knowledge Management, that attracted many disciplines – among others again Organization Theory and Industrial Engineering. Knowledge was identified as a major production factor. In industrialized countries, value added is mainly raised by the intellectual abilities of a company’s workforce.

Intelligent Enterprises of the 21st Century is a comprehensive compilation of the state of the art vision and thought processes needed to design and manage globally competitive business organizations."--BOOK JACKET.

“ ... the enterprise of today has changed ... wherever you sit in this new corporation ... Srinivasan gives us a practical and provocative guide for rethinking our business process ... calling us all to action around rapid development of our old, hierarchical structures into flexible customer centric competitive force .... A must read for today’s business leader.” Mark Nunnelly, Executive Director, MassIT, Commonwealth of Massachusetts and Managing Director, Bain Capital “’Efficiency,’ ‘agile,’ and ‘analytics’ used to be the rage. Venkat Srinivasan explains in this provocative book why organizations can no longer afford to stop there. They need to move beyond – to be ‘intelligent.’ It isn’t just theory. He’s done it.” Bharat Anand, Henry R. Byers Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School In the era of big data and automation, the book presents a cutting-edge approach to how enterprises should organize and function. Striking a practical balance between theory and practice, The Intelligent Enterprise in the Era of Big Data presents the enterprise architecture that identifies the power of the emerging technology environment. Beginning with an introduction to the key challenges that enterprises face, the book systematically outlines modern enterprise architecture through a detailed discussion of the inseparable elements of such architecture: efficiency, flexibility, and intelligence. This architecture enables rapid responses to market needs by sensing important developments in internal and external environments in real time. Illustrating all of these elements in an integrated fashion, The Intelligent Enterprise in the Era of Big Data also features: • A detailed discussion on issues of time-to-market and flexibility with respect to enterprise application technology • Novel analyses illustrated through extensive real-world case studies to help readers better understand the applicability of the architecture and concepts • Various applications of natural language processing to real-world business transactions • Practical approaches for designing and building intelligent enterprises The Intelligent Enterprise in the Era of Big Data is an appropriate reference for business executives, information technology professionals, data scientists, and management consultants. The book is also an excellent supplementary textbook for upper-undergraduate and graduate-level courses in business intelligence, data mining, big data, and business process automation. “a compelling vision of the next generation of organization—the intelligent enterprise—which will leverage not just big data but also unstructured text and artificial intelligence to optimize internal processes in real time ... a must-read book for CEOs and CTOs in all industries.” Ravi Ramamurti, D”Amore-McKim Distinguished Professor of International Business and Strategy, and Director, Center for Emerging Markets, Northeastern University “It is about the brave new world that narrows the gap between technology and business .... The book has practical advice from a thoughtful practitioner. Intelligent automation will be a competitive strength in the future. Will your company be ready?” Victor J. Menezes, Retired Senior Vice Chairman, Citigroup Venkat Srinivasan, PhD, is Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of RAGE Frameworks, Inc., which supports the creation of intelligent business process automation solutions and cognitive intelligence solutions for global corporations. He is an entrepreneur and holds several patents in the area of knowledge-based technology architectures. He is t

A new book to help senior executives and boards get smart about risk management The ability of businesses to survive and thrive often requires unconventional thinking and calculated risk taking. The key is to make the right decisions—even under the most risky, uncertain, and turbulent conditions. In the new book, Surviving and Thriving in Uncertainty: Creating the Risk Intelligent Enterprise, authors Rick Funston and Steve Wagner suggest that effective risk taking is needed in order to innovate, stay competitive, and drive value creation. Based on their combined decades of experience as practitioners, consultants, and advisors to numerous business professionals throughout the world, Funston and Wagner discuss the adoption of 10 essential and practical skills, which will improve agility, resilience, and realize benefits: Challenging basic business assumptions can help identify "Black Swans" and provide first-mover advantage Defining the corporate risk appetite and risk tolerances can help reduce the risk of ruin. Anticipating potential causes of failure can improve chances of survival and success through improved preparedness. Factoring in velocity and momentum can improve speed of response and recovery. Verifying sources and the reliability of information can improve insights for decision making and thus decision quality. Taking a longer-term perspective can aid in identifying the potential unintended consequences of short-term decisions.

Building Intelligent Enterprises by leveraging the emerging and next-generation technologies to accelerate the adoption of digital transformation The speed of innovation and emerging IT technologies are changing at a very fast pace and enterprises are eager to join the digital revolution so they can stand above the competition and succeed as the enterprise of tomorrow. This book is an attempt to make the enterprise intelligent by providing the path to digital transformation and the adoption of new IT methods, tools and technologies. This book has been organized to cover the following topics: Digital Transformation, Design Thinking, Agile, DevOps, Robotic Process Automation, Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Blockchain, Drones, Augmented and Virtual Reality, 3D Printing, Big Data, Analytics, Cloud Computing, APIs, and SAP Leonardo. No prior knowledge of any technical coding or language is necessary to understand the content of this book. End-to-end storyline to accelerate the enterprise’s digital transformation journey How an enterprise can stay relevant, compete, and perform in the digital economy How to leverage these technologies to build intelligent enterprises Understand and apply the emerging technologies across key business processes Industry-specific Use Cases for all technologies as a reference point to build the business case for implementation The book is very well suited towards the C-Suite executives, both IT and business leaders, directors and managers, project managers, solution architects, and all professionals who have an interest and desire to keep up-to-date with the latest technological trends, looking for a career change, want to help enterprise adapt and onboard the digital roadmap, or have an agenda to digitize key processes within the enterprise to make it intelligent.

Cloud computing has become a significant technology trend. Experts believe cloud computing is currently reshaping information technology and the IT marketplace. The advantages of using cloud computing include cost savings, speed to market, access to greater computing resources, high availability, and scalability. Handbook of Cloud Computing includes contributions from world experts in the field of cloud computing from academia, research laboratories and private industry. This book presents the systems, tools, and services of the leading providers of cloud computing; including Google, Yahoo, Amazon, IBM, and Microsoft. The basic concepts of cloud computing and cloud computing applications are also introduced. Current and future technologies applied in cloud computing are also discussed. Case studies, examples, and exercises are provided throughout. Handbook of Cloud Computing is intended for advanced-level students and researchers in computer science and electrical engineering as a reference book. This handbook is also beneficial to computer and system infrastructure designers, developers, business managers, entrepreneurs and investors within the cloud computing related industry.