Business Forecasting

Everyone would benefit from seeing further into the future, whether buying stocks, crafting policy, launching a new product, or simply planning the week's meals. Unfortunately, people tend to be terrible forecasters. As Wharton professor Philip Tetlock showed in a landmark 2005 study, even experts' predictions are only slightly better than chance. However, an important and underreported conclusion of that study was that some experts do have real foresight.

Work with data like a pro using this guide that breaks down how to organize, apply, and most importantly, understand what you are analyzing in order to become a true data ninja.

Knowing the concepts of management accounting can have a very positive impact on your business. Through management accounting, you can create forecasts for the future, make smart buying decisions, analyze the rate of return on an investment and much more. Management accountants do a lot when it comes to the management aspect of running a business. Perhaps you are a management accountant, thinking of becoming one, or will be hiring someone who is proficient in the field. If so, this book is for you.

An introduction for everyone. In this rich, fascinating—surprisingly accessible—introduction, leading expert Eric Siegel reveals how predictive analytics (aka machine learning) works, and how it affects everyone every day. Rather than a "how to" for hands-on techies, the book serves lay listeners and experts alike by covering new case studies and the latest state-of-the-art techniques.

Seeing What's Next is a framework for predicting industry winners and losers. Every day, individuals take action based on how they believe innovation will change industries. Yet these beliefs are largely based on guesswork and incomplete data, and can lead to costly errors in judgment. Internationally renowned innovation expert Clayton M. Christensen and his research partners, Scott D. Anthony and Erik A. Roth, present this guide for predicting outcomes in the evolution of any industry.

The financial shelves are filled with books that explain how popular carry trading has become in recent years. But none has revealed just how significant a role it plays in the global economy - until now. A groundbreaking book sure to leave its mark in the canon of investing literature, The Rise of Carry explains how carry trading has virtually shaped the global economic picture - one of decaying economic growth, recurring crises, wealth disparity, and, in too many places, social and political upheaval.

Clayton M. Christensen is a professor of business administration at Harvard Business School. Michael E. Raynor is a director at Deloitte Research. Together, they outline an innovative plan that urges businesses to create disruption rather than fleeing from it. Named one of 2003's Best Business Books by Business Week, this book is a Wall Street Journal and New York Times best seller.

A breakthrough solution is exposed when some unexpected events force Caroline and Paul, a married couple working for their family's retail business, to make a few small changes in the way things are done. A solution that propels the family's regional chain of stores into a very profitable, rapidly growing, international enterprise. If there is a hint of Jonah, from The Goal, reappearing in this novel, it is Henry, the soon-to-retire president and majority owner of the company who logically states that, "if you do not deal directly with the core problem, don't expect significant improvement."

Are you tired of trading hours for dollars? Do you dream of building a business that gives you true time and financial freedom? In this groundbreaking book, land investing expert Mark J. Podolsky reveals the step-by-step system he used to go from working 50+ hours a week to just 2 hours a month - while dramatically increasing his income. Drawing on his years of experience mentoring thousands of land investors, Podolsky lays out a proven blueprint for transforming your land business into a passive income machine that runs on autopilot.

Half of all Americans have money in the stock market, yet economists can't agree on whether investors and markets are rational and efficient, as modern financial theory assumes, or irrational and inefficient, as behavioral economists believe - and as financial bubbles, crashes, and crises suggest. This is one of the biggest debates in economics, and the value or futility of investment management and financial regulation hang on the outcome. In this groundbreaking book, Andrew W. Lo cuts through this debate with a new framework.

7 Powers breaks fresh ground by constructing a comprehensive strategy toolset that is easy for you to learn, communicate, and quickly apply. Drawing on his decades of experience as a business strategy adviser, active equity investor and Stanford University teacher Hamilton Helmer develops from first principles a practical theory of strategy rooted in the notion of power, those conditions which create the potential for persistent differential returns. Using rich real-world examples, Helmer rigorously characterizes exactly what your business must achieve to create power.

Cost reduction...productivity improvement...customer retention...these are the promises of the Six Sigma quality management system. The Six Sigma Way reveals how GE, Motorola, and numerous other companies are successfully using Six Sigma to fine-tune products and processes, improve performance, and increase profits. Now you can hear the road map for implementing Six Sigma in your manufacturing or service organization.

Radical uncertainty changes the way we should think about decision-making. For over half a century economics has assumed that people behave rationally by optimizing among well-defined choices. Behavioral economics questioned how far people are rational, pointing to the cognitive biases that seem to describe actual behavior.

More than 20 years ago, Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton introduced the balanced scorecard, a revolutionary performance measurement system that allowed organizations to quantify intangible assets such as people, information, and customer relationships. Then, in The Strategy-Focused Organization, Kaplan and Norton showed how organizations achieved breakthrough performance with a management system that put the balanced scorecard into action.

Africa's Business Revolution provides the inside story on business in Africa and its future growth prospects and helps executives understand and seize the opportunities for building profitable, sustainable enterprises.

The breakthrough concepts of Pattern Breakers come from the observations of Mike Maples Jr., a seasoned venture capitalist, who noticed something strange. Start-ups like Twitter, Twitch, and Lyft had achieved extraordinary success despite their disregard for “best practices.” In contrast, other startups deemed highly promising often failed, even when they seemed to do everything right. Seeking answers, Maples and coauthor Peter Ziebelman set out to discover the hidden forces that drive extraordinary start-up success.

In The Attacker's Advantage, Charan reveals the upside of uncertainty for those leaders who are nimbly positioned to anticipate the catalysts of disruption and embrace change. He updates and adapts the principles of his previous best sellers to address the current turbulent business environment, cutting through the veil of complexity to concentrate on the new customer needs and expectations and providing the tools for corporate leaders to take their companies to a higher level.

In their eagerly awaited book, Kim and Spear bring to light a new theory of high-achieving organizations. They examine how companies solve the most important problems better, faster, and easier than their competitors by quickly and regularly closing the gap between aspirations and real-world success. This book teaches companies that are struggling to perform how to achieve the continual greatness seen in the best of the best.

In this expanded second edition, The Zig Zag Principle continues to offer a proven strategy for achieving business goals through strategic flexibility and resourceful planning. Building on the original's foundational concepts—assessing resources, adapting to change, and leveraging multiple opportunities—this edition integrates contemporary insights and real-world examples, including a fresh look at the impact of artificial intelligence.

Even the best competitive strategies mean nothing if they can't be executed. Yet many organizations struggle when they move from defining a strategy to implementing it. Somehow, all the careful planning falls to the side, and leaders are left wondering how to pick up the pieces. The HBR Guide to Executing Your Strategy is here to help. This book offers leaders and managers tips and advice for how to take even the most detailed strategy and apply it throughout their organizations.