Joseph L. Bower and Clark G. Gilbert have collected together some of the leading experts on strategy to examine how strategy is actually made by company managers across the several levels of an organization. Is strategy a coherent plan conceived at the top by a visionary leader, or is it formed by a series of smaller decisions, not always reflecting what top management has in mind? Often it is by examining how options for using resources are developed and selected, that we can see how a company's competitive position gets shaped. On the basis of this understanding, we can see better how these processes can be managed. The book's five sections examine how the resource allocation process works, how the way it works can lead a company into serious problems, how top management can intervene to fix these problem, and where the most recent thinking on these problems is headed. A fifth section contains assessments of this work by thought leaders in the fields of economics, competitive strategy, organizational behavior, and strategic management. The implications for those who study firms are considerable. Activity that is normally thought about in terms of substantive outcomes such as market share and revenue growth, or present value and internal rate of return, is seen to be inextricably related to organizational and administrative questions. The findings presented here should inform the research of economists, strategists, and behavioral scientists. Thoughtful executives and those who consult with them will also find the book provocative. The processes described are complex, but clear enough so that the way toward effective management is apparent. The models developed provide a basis for building the systems and organization necessary for today's competitive world.

The purpose of this book is to provide tools for a better understanding of the fundamental tradeo?s and interdependencies in wireless networks, with the goal of designing resource allocation strategies that exploit these int- dependencies to achieve signi?cant performance gains. Two facts prompted us to write it: First, future wireless applications will require a fundamental understanding of the design principles and control mechanisms in wireless networks. Second, the complexity of the network problems simply precludes the use of engineering common sense alone to identify good solutions, and so mathematics becomes the key avenue to cope with central technical problems in the design of wireless networks. In this book, two ?elds of mathematics play a central role: Perron-Frobenius theory for non-negative matrices and optimization theory. This book is a revised and expanded version of the research monograph “Resource Allocation in Wireless Networks” that was published as Lecture Notes in Computer Sciences (LNCS 4000) in 2006. Although the general structure has remained unchanged to a large extent, the book contains - merous additional results and more detailed discussion. For instance, there is a more extensive treatment of general nonnegative matrices and interf- ence functions that are described by an axiomatic model. Additional material on max-min fairness, proportional fairness, utility-based power control with QoS (quality of service) support and stochastic power control has been added.

A UNIQUE ENGINEERING AND STATISTICAL APPROACH TO OPTIMAL RESOURCE ALLOCATION Optimal Resource Allocation: With Practical Statistical Applications and Theory features the application of probabilistic and statistical methods used in reliability engineering during the different phases of life cycles of technical systems. Bridging the gap between reliability engineering and applied mathematics, the book outlines different approaches to optimal resource allocation and various applications of models and algorithms for solving real-world problems. In addition, the fundamental background on optimization theory and various illustrative numerical examples are provided. The book also features: An overview of various approaches to optimal resource allocation, from classical Lagrange methods to modern algorithms based on ideas of evolution in biology Numerous exercises and case studies from a variety of areas, including communications, transportation, energy transmission, and counterterrorism protection The applied methods of optimization with various methods of optimal redundancy problem solutions as well as the numerical examples and statistical methods needed to solve the problems Practical thoughts, opinions, and judgments on real-world applications of reliability theory and solves practical problems using mathematical models and algorithms Optimal Resource Allocation is a must-have guide for electrical, mechanical, and reliability engineers dealing with engineering design and optimal reliability problems. In addition, the book is excellent for graduate and PhD-level courses in reliability theory and optimization.

Offers guidance for implementing reforms in the allocation of resources in colleges and universities

Comprehensive in scope, Real Options reviews current techniques of capital budgeting and details an approach (based on the pricing of options) that provides a means of quantifying the elusive elements of managerial flexibility in the face of unexpected changes in the market. In the 1970s and the 1980s, developments in the valuation of capital-investment opportunities based on options pricing revolutionized capital budgeting. Managerial flexibility to adapt and revise future decisions in order to capitalize on favorable future opportunities or to limit losses has proven vital to long-term corporate success in an uncertain and changing marketplace. In this book Lenos Trigeorgis, who has helped shape the field of real options, brings together a wealth of previously scattered knowledge and research on the new flexibility in corporate resource allocation and in the evaluation of investment alternatives brought about by the shift from static cash-flow approaches to the more dynamic paradigm of real options—an approach that incorporates decisions on whether to defer, expand, contract, abandon, switch use, or otherwise alter a capital investment. Comprehensive in scope, Real Options reviews current techniques of capital budgeting and details an approach (based on the pricing of options) that provides a means of quantifying the elusive elements of managerial flexibility in the face of unexpected changes in the market. Also discussed are the strategic value of new technology, project interdependence, and competitive interaction. The ability to value real options has so dramatically altered the way in which corporate resources are allocated that future textbooks on capital budgeting will bear little resemblance to those of even the recent past. Real Options is a pioneer in this area, coupling a coherent picture of how option theory is used with practical insights in into real-world applications.

This is the first comprehensive book on the AIMD algorithm, the most widely used method for allocating a limited resource among competing agents without centralized control. The authors offer a new approach that is based on positive switched linear systems. It is used to develop most of the main results found in the book, and fundamental results on stochastic switched nonnegative and consensus systems are derived to obtain these results. The original and best known application of the algorithm is in the context of congestion control and resource allocation on the Internet, and readers will find details of several variants of the algorithm in order of increasing complexity, including deterministic, random, linear, and nonlinear versions. In each case, stability and convergence results are derived based on unifying principles. Basic and fundamental properties of the algorithm are described, examples are used to illustrate the richness of the resulting dynamical systems, and applications are provided to show how the algorithm can be used in the context of smart cities, intelligent transportation systems, and the smart grid.