Collaborate - The Art of We

In June 1812 the still-infant United States had the audacity to declare war on the British Empire. Fought between creaking sailing ships and armies often led by bumbling generals, the ensuing conflict featured a tit-for-tat "You burned our capital, so we'll burn yours" and a legendary battle unknowingly fought after the signing of a peace treaty.

During the course of the war, the young American navy proved its mettle as the USS Constitution, "Old Ironsides," sent two first-rate British frigates to the bottom, and a twenty-seven-year-old lieutenant named Oliver Hazard Perry hoisted a flag exhorting, "Don't Give Up the Ship," and chased the British from Lake Erie. By 1814, however, the United States was no longer fighting for free trade, sailors' rights, and as much of Canada as it could grab, but for its very existence as a nation. With Washington in flames, only a valiant defense at Fort McHenry saved Baltimore from a similar fate.

Here are the stories of commanding generals such as America's Henry "Granny" Dearborn, double-dealing James Wilkinson, and feisty Andrew Jackson, as well as Great Britain's gallant Sir Isaac Brock, overly cautious Sir George Prevost, and Rear Admiral George Cockburn, the man who put the torch to Washington. Here too are those inadvertently caught up in the war, from heroine farm wife Laura Secord, whom some call Canada's Paul Revere, to country doctor William Beanes, whose capture set the stage for Francis Scott Key to write "The Star-Spangled Banner."

1812: The War That Forged a Nation presents a sweeping narrative that emphasizes the struggle's importance to America's coming-of-age as a nation. Though frequently overlooked between the American Revolution and the Civil War, the War of 1812 did indeed span half a continent -- from Mackinac Island to New Orleans, and Lake Champlain to Horseshoe Bend -- and it paved the way for the conquest of the other half.

During the War of 1812, the United States cast aside its cloak of colonial adolescence and -- with both humiliating and glorious moments -- found the fire that was to forge a nation.

Play Your Best Hand also covers:

• The four employee talent types
• Key challenges of managing knowledge workers-and recommended solutions
• The five talent-based leadership principles and how to apply them

The Definitive Guide to Unstructured Data Management and Analysis--From the World’s Leading Information Management Expert

A wealth of invaluable information exists in unstructured textual form, but organizations have found it difficult or impossible to access and utilize it. This is changing rapidly: new approaches finally make it possible to glean useful knowledge from virtually any collection of unstructured data.

William H. Inmon--the father of data warehousing--and Anthony Nesavich introduce the next data revolution: unstructured data management. Inmon and Nesavich cover all you need to know to make unstructured data work for your organization. You’ll learn how to bring it into your existing structured data environment, leverage existing analytical infrastructure, and implement textual analytic processing technologies to solve new problems and uncover new opportunities. Inmon and Nesavich introduce breakthrough techniques covered in no other book--including the powerful role of textual integration, new ways to integrate textual data into data warehouses, and new SQL techniques for reading and analyzing text. They also present five chapter-length, real-world case studies--demonstrating unstructured data at work in medical research, insurance, chemical manufacturing, contracting, and beyond.

This book will be indispensable to every business and technical professional trying to make sense of a large body of unstructured text: managers, database designers, data modelers, DBAs, researchers, and end users alike.

Coverage includes

• What unstructured data is, and how it differs from structured data
• First generation technology for handling unstructured data, from search engines to ECM--and its limitations
• Integrating text so it can be analyzed with a common, colloquial vocabulary: integration engines, ontologies, glossaries, and taxonomies
• Processing semistructured data: uncovering patterns, words, identifiers, and conflicts
• Novel processing opportunities that arise when text is freed from context
• Architecture and unstructured data: Data Warehousing 2.0
• Building unstructured relational databases and linking them to structured data
• Visualizations and Self-Organizing Maps (SOMs), including Compudigm and Raptor solutions
• Capturing knowledge from spreadsheet data and email
• Implementing and managing metadata: data models, data quality, and more

The actual study of service science is a relatively new field, but one that can open the door to a better understanding of this essential part of our lives. In this invaluable guide, Harry Katzan, Jr., director of the Service Science Institute of Hilton Head, offers a concise, readable examination of how managers can use information about services to construct a better customer environment.

Harry Katzan, Jr. believes that the characteristics of a service process determine its efficacy in solving real-world problems. He disseminates these characteristics and provides a clearer view to help managers pinpoint the exact issues they need to tackle. Informative chapters include:

• Service Concepts


• Service Systems


• Information Services


• Service Management


• Service Business

Currently, most organizations today operate in an "I" paradigm. In this arena, we keep score "I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine." We are taught to control our needs and emotions because they are destructive---logic prevails. We are punished for making mistakes and we hide our thoughts for fear of losing our power or status. In a WE paradigm, things are different.

42 Rules for Creating WE (2nd Edition) offers new insights from thought leaders in neuroscience, organizational development, and brand strategy, introducing groundbreaking practices for bringing the spirit of WE to any organization, team or cause. In the book, readers learn how to:

• Shatter Old Paradigms
• Acknowledging the "I" inside the "WE"
• Understand What Moves People
• Foster Integrity, Candor and Caring
• Create Worlds with Words

Over the last decade, there has been a substantial rise in the number of knowledge-intensive firms - constituted primarily of professionals. The core assets of these businesses are the people themselves. Handle them badly, and they may defect or stall. Successful managers of knowledge-intensive firms must create meaning among and inspire their employees, to ensure high performance. To achieve this, leaders must understand how to target each employee’s ambitions and challenges to facilitate their personal and professional development.

This book examines what sets knowledge-intensive firms apart from other types of organizations, and the resultant organizational and strategic differences in business models, talent management, and client-handling approaches. The authors bring their own complementary perspectives on the subject: one, as the manager of a private consulting firm with a strong research background; another, as a business school professor whose practice-based skills are fundamental to his work; and a third, a world leading commentator on professional service firms acting as a consultant, business school researcher and a manager.

Ejler, Poulfelt and Czerniawska present a new model for transforming the management of knowledge-intensive firms, which is supported throughout with practical examples and cases.

Author and successful innovator Nicholas Webb believes we need a revolution in business excellence founded on innovation. In The Innovation Playbook, you will learn why innovations fail, the five rules of customer connectivity, the power of "real open" innovation and customer co-creation, the secret formula for reducing product and market risk, the magic of Future-casting, and so much more.

• Includes an abundance of anecdotes and examples of successful-and unsuccessful-innovation
• Shares the 56 ways in which innovations fail
• Learn the success secrets of "Innovation Superstars"
• Reduce innovation failure and build speed to market