In the last century, we have witnessed the rise of a new kind of company, one that leverages on a new business model — the platform.Though platform companies are very common, they can take extremely diverse forms in today's business landscape. People use the term 'platform' to mean many different things. Managers are often confused about which is platform business and which is not. When it comes to platform strategy, things become even more complicated.Using real world examples, this book acts as a primer for platform strategy, discussing the underlying mechanism of various types of platform models to help people understand what platform business is and what they can do with it. Theories and frameworks appropriate for understanding platform business are introduced and related cases follow to support readers' understanding. The diverse and international case studies analysed range from IBM's horizontal production platform, to the digital platform of China's breakout smartphone star, Xiaomi.This book will not only enable readers to understand platform business, but also teach them how to harness these frameworks to build effective strategies for their own platform business pursuits.

Focusing on the demands of the new innovative, sustainable and inclusive rural development paradigm, the monograph raises the discussion regarding new approaches and success factors that are vital in current rural socio-economic development and policy transformations. The bottom-up policymaking, self-organization, creative use of knowledge in rural areas, and many other rural innovations are aligned in this book with new social movements’ theories, which help disclose, explore and explain the rural development paradigm shift. Rural development forces of the 21st century center on the agents of change - rural population, and, surprisingly - urban population(!), and the political debate concerning EU Common Agricultural Policy and European Green Deal, illustrated with multiple case studies. This book will be of interest to a broad audience of readers, keen on scientific, political, and practical issues of innovations in rural areas and their future development pathways. The monograph is authored by a team of scholars from the Lithuanian Centre for Social Sciences, Institute of Economics and Rural Development, Department of Rural Development.

From Patagonia to Apple, Whole Foods to New Balance, we love our favorite products--and, by extension, the companies that provide them. The emotional connections we form with our beloved brands and services are important relationships--relationships that are potentially worth billions. In the fast-paced, constantly-changing world of the modern marketplace, brands must adapt or perish—strategies, methods, and techniques must evolve to remain effective and relevant. Are you using yesterday’s thinking for tomorrow’s challenges? Brand Intimacy details ways to build better marketing through the cultivation of emotional connections between brand and consumer. The book provides lessons for marketers and business leaders alike who are seeking to understand these ultimate brand relationships and the opportunities they represent. Divided into three sections, Brand Intimacy starts with Context and Understanding. This explains today’s marketing landscape, the effects of technology, consumer behaviors and the advancements around decision making. Through research we discovered that people form relationships with brands the same way they develop relationships with other people. This section provides guidance on how to think about complimentary concepts such as loyalty, satisfaction and brand value. We then explore and compare established approaches and methodologies and showcase why intimacy is a compelling new and enhanced opportunity to build your brand or market your business. The second section, Theory and Model reveals and dimensions the brand intimacy model and dissects it into steps to help you better factor it into your marketing approaches or frameworks. Here you will learn the core concepts and components that are essential to build bonds and the role emotion can play to help you achieve greater customer engagement. You can also review the rankings of the best brands in terms of Brand Intimacy. A summary of our annual research reveals the characteristics of best performers, the most intimate industries, and differences based on geography, age, gender and income. By examining the top intimate brands, we reveal and decode the secrets of the bonds they form with their customers. The third section is Methods & Practice, this details the economic benefits and advantages of a strategy that factors Brand Intimacy. Intimate brands are proven to outperform the Fortune 500 and Standards and Poors’ index of brands. Intimate brands create more revenue and profit and last longer. Consumers are also willing to pay more for a brand they are more intimate with. Conversely, we also explore a series of brand failures and lessons learned to help you avoid common pitfalls in brand management. We articulate the steps to build a more intimate brand as well as share a glimpse on the future where software will play a more important role in brand building. The book outlines a proprietary digital platform that we use to help manage and enable intimacy through collaboration, simulators and real-time tracking of emotions. Business and marketing owners face an increasing difficult task to build brands that rise above the clutter, engage more and grow. Brand Intimacy explains how to better measure, build and manage enduring brands. Brands that are built to inspire as well as profit. Written by experienced marketers and backed by extensive research, Brand Intimacy rewrites the rulebook on how to establish and expand your marketing. The book is equal parts theory, research and practice, the result of 7 year journey and a new marketing paradigm for the modern marketer.

The wide-ranging implications of the shift to a sharing economy, a new model of organizing economic activity that may supplant traditional corporations.

Over the last three decades cross-border innovation has profoundly changed. The fragmentation of global value chains, increased global connectedness, and pervasive digitalization have helped shape innovation processes that now increasingly span national borders. This changing process has involved a wide array of actors (players) in a variety of geographical locations and organizational spaces (places), calling for new guidelines, public interventions, and regulatory frameworks (policies). Considering this complexity, the existing literature has only partially captured the ongoing changes in cross-border innovation and showed a limited engagement in integrative, cross-disciplinary debate. This book presents complementary and novel perspectives on the phenomenon from distinguished scholars, bridging perspectives from a rich set of research streams including international business, strategy, innovation studies and policy, international economics, industrial organization, economic geography, ethics, and sustainability. Three distinct sections focus on the players, the places, and the policies in contemporary cross-border innovation. Together, the contributions highlight the changing role of multinational enterprises and the growing participation of emerging actors in cross-border innovation, via formal and informal networks which are increasingly shaped around highly mobile individuals and new geographical centres. The book also emphasizes the intertwined role of policies at national and international level, stressing the importance of supply- and demand-oriented policies and presenting intellectual property right policies as a double-edged sword for cross-border innovation.

This book provides a step-by-step approach to all of the essential elements of strategy. It outlines a 21-step approach, with a 30+ slide strategy presentation for readers to apply themselves. By following the examples in the book, the reader will be able to construct a world-class strategy and to present it in an effective manner. The approach integrates diagnosis, design, and implementation into one seamless flow from insight to action.

Creativity is paramount if you are to thrive in times of accelerating change or crisis. Learn how to foster the creative mindset that will help you overcome missed opportunities and stay ahead of the competition. In this audio course, Luc de Brabandere and Alan Iny, bestselling authors of Thinking In New Boxes and strategic innovation experts at The Boston Consulting Group, offer a revolutionary framework for sustainable business creativity. Their short lessons teach you ingenious ways to challenge your current perspectives, explore and generate exciting new ideas and solution, and then select and implement the best ones that will drive breakthrough results. This audiobook was created by Penguin Random House. We are pleased to host this content in our library.