Bücher der Reihe Management for Professionals

This book takes a practice approach to studying platform business models. Drawing from the growing academic literature as well as the practice world, this book intends to provide a framework for analysing platform business firms. Leveraging on the early literature on network economics (that was largely analytical) and the popular writing about new organizations, this book takes a strategic perspective. It answers the five big strategy questions about platform business firms: a. What are platform business models, and how are they different from others; b. How do platform business firms operate, and what value do they create? To whom and how; c. What are those resources that platforms possess and leverage to create and sustain their competitive advantage over others; d. Why and how are they successful? Why do they perform differently from others? What metrics of performance should we use to study and analyse their performance; e. Is this business model sustainable? What determines the longevity of such firms? What are the regulatory and social challenges that these platform business firms face? How do regulators and the larger society manage the disproportionate power distribution among such firms?The book is strategic in nature and highlights the resources defining the strategies of successful platform business firms. In doing so, it provides a field guide for entrepreneurs and managers embarking on building a platform, by providing a portfolio of decisions to make. Though the frameworks could be generalized, the book focuses on platform businesses, rather than societal platforms. With a few extensions, it is possible that these frameworks could be easily applied to non-profit and or social enterprises as well.

This book continues from author¿s first SMA publication in 2018 (also by Springer) and discusses the new roles of SMA in the new network economy. Emerging digital technologies have revolutionized the business world with groundbreaking rules and innovative business models. New knowledge and information technologies have inspired new business ideas and created more information platforms at a lower cost, yet highly efficient in the market. The new business transformation also encourages more inter-organizational cooperation to cope with rapid changes. All these novelties add challenges to corporate individuals in managing businesses beyond their organizations, in particular financial professionals (e.g., CFO) who are experts in the team. Therefore, SMA is assigned a new role in the new network economy. Similarly, SMA calls for major updates and revisions. This urges author to write this book to meet the new demand. The author has selected important topics that are particularly pertinent to the new Internet economy. These topics include how to make decisions under business uncertainty, how to value businesses in general, Internet stocks and intangible assets in particular. Business collaboration and integration are usual means to acquire synergy value. How does SMA help deliver the best results? How are business models and information platforms built as sense-making revenue models, even though these platforms never charge for services? How is market power and brand value measured? How does trust supplement control in new network organizations? Finally, how is value created, captured, and allocated in a fair manner? The book goes through detailed examinations of each topic with cases, examples, and illustrations as required.

This book explores how cultural and social influences affect consumer decision making with a focus on uncertainty avoidance, rituals, and external threats. Indeed, uncertainty avoidance can exert significant influence on consumer behavior. For example, consumers in a culture with high uncertainty avoidance may show less positive attitudes towards new products than those in a culture with low uncertainty avoidance. Prior cultural research has mainly focused on how individualism/collectivism or power distance belief influences consumer attitudes and behaviors at an individual level, while seldom does research investigate the effect of uncertainty avoidance on consumption. This book examines how uncertainty avoidance affects superstitious consumption as well as its underlying mechanism and boundary condition. Rituals, as a component of culture, can affect consumer behaviors. However, few studies have shedded light on how repeating rituals can affect consumers¿ willingness to use the products involved in the ritual. Consumer behavior is complex. Consumers are surrounded with various external threats such as health, economic, and informational threats, while prior research has primarily focused on health threats. Beyond this, inter-client conflicts, as a special type of social threat, can also affect consumption experience. In all, this book aims to examine how uncertainty avoidance, rituals and external threats influence consumer attitudes and behaviors. In this book, new research models would be developed. This book enriches our understanding on how cultural and social influences affect consumer decision making and provides insights for both researchers and practitioners in marketing.

This book examines users¿ digital content contribution and consumption behavior from a social perspective. Digital content is everywhere¿from search results on search engines to posts on social media. Incentivizing users to contribute abundant content and motivating users to engage in and pay for digital content are vital for online platforms, especially those relying on digital content generated by users. This book develops a theoretical framework to incorporate social influence, including social presence, social interaction, social comparison, social loafing, and social relationships, in users¿ digital content contribution and consumption decisions. Further, using a large volume of data from online platforms, the author empirically studies the role of social interaction in digital content provision and monetization from the supply side. Also, regarding the digital content demand side, this book explores how to boost content consumption via social motives and social norms. The bookenriches the understanding of social influence in digital content contribution and consumption and provides practical suggestions for digital platforms¿ mechanism design.

The world's population continues to grow year after year, putting pressure on all global resources. This book provides examples of how we can deal with all the challenges associated with aspects of population growth in the quest for sustainable development. It presents case studies on different areas of sustainability in the food industry, which includes food production and consumption. The collection of illustrative examples includes cases from agriculture and fisheries, the food refining sector, the supply chain, wholesale and retail channels, and other relevant aspects that enhance our understanding of how sustainability takes place in this global sector. The book will appeal to a wide readership, from practitioners to researchers, teachers and students worldwide.

This book provides a step-by-step guide to implementing lean at SMEs using an approach that has been tested and fine-tuned at over a hundred organizations across India, South East Asia and the Middle East. The book approaches Lean through an implementation project cycle flow and enables the reader to understand the imperative for Lean, how to diagnose current operations, how to plan and deploy Lean and shows a path for long-term sustenance. Diverse situations such as meeting the demand fluctuations, designing a facility, or improving profit margin etc. are included in the case studies from multiple sectors, to ensure that every reader finds a situation similar to their organizational situation. While the publicly available literature on lean offers a large collection of tools and techniques, given each organization¿s unique context, the choice of the right sequence of tools differ. The book offers guidelines in terms of which solutions work in which context, backed by real-cases, which is a big help to the resource constrained SMEs. This book is an equally good resource for the organizations that have already implemented lean, as it provides realistic pointers about sustaining, tackling supply chain uncertainties and going beyond Lean by integrating emerging technologies and management principles. It is an excellent resource for students and researchers studying this area and also for corporates, professionals and industry watchers.

Discover a transformative book that equips aspiring 'researcher entrepreneurs' with invaluable strategies to avoid common start-up mistakes. Unveiling a fresh perspective, it emphasizes that technological researchers already possess critical entrepreneurial traits, merely needing the right approach to succeed. From preparing and setting up a tech start-up to illuminating best practices, this book sets you on the path to triumphant technological entrepreneurship.This essential guide tackles the paradox of start-up failures, even after a very promising start, providing insights into how to overcome internal and external problems and obstacles and secure a thriving future. Tailored for researchers aiming to commercialize their technology by setting up a start-up and for technology transfer strategists supporting academic commercialization, the book ensures clarity by avoiding jargon and employing real-life case studies and exercises. Decision-assisting activities such as a "Commercialization Readiness Index (CRI)" and a "Market-prioritization Decision Matrix" offer valuable tools to help a researcher become a successful entrepreneur.Whether you're a seasoned researcher or an aspiring entrepreneur, this book will empower you to harness your potential, turning visionary ideas into flourishing businesses. Embrace the entrepreneurial journey and embark on a transformational ride towards success in the dynamic world of technological entrepreneurship.

Changes in the environment such as trends, drivers, and influencing factors affect entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship in several ways. The changes of the environmental factors in several dimensions such as political, economic, socio-cultural, technological, ecological, and legal. On the one hand, the environmental changes include risk for existing business models. On the other hand, they include opportunities for new business models, entrepreneurship, intrapreneurship, and new insights in marketing.This book provides empirical and conceptual papers and studies that tackle the challenges and opportunities for entrepreneurship in the digital era. It offers professionals, managers, researchers, lecturers, and students from the fields of entrepreneurship, innovation management, and business development valuable insight into the topic of entrepreneurship in times of digitalization.

This book presents a revolutionary approach to service innovation, combining an interdisciplinary perspective with a robust theoretical framework. Integrating design thinking and systems engineering, it offers a fresh view on evolving service industries. The book is enriched with global case studies, bridging theory and real-world application, making it an essential resource for both professionals and students. It stands out by analyzing new business models and offering both qualitative and quantitative methods for service design, making it a must-read for those seeking to excel in the dynamic service market.

This book is published open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. This open access book offers something for everyone working with market segmentation: practical guidance for users of market segmentation solutions;