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Explains how companies must pinpoint business strategies to a few critically important choices, identifying common blunders while outlining simple exercises and questions that can guide day-to-day and long-term decisions.
Winning at competitive games requires a results-oriented mindset that many players are simply not willing to adopt. This book walks players through the entire process: how to choose a game and learn basic proficiency, how to break through the mental barriers that hold most players back, and how to handle the issues that top players face. It also includes a complete analysis of Sun Tzu's book The Art of War and its applications to games of today. These foundational concepts apply to virtually all competitive games, and even have some application to "real life." Trade paperback. 142 pages.
"Many parents work more hours outside of the home and their lives are crowded with more obligations than ever before; many children spend their evenings and weekends trying out for all-star teams, traveling to regional and national tournaments, and eating dinner in the car while being shuttled between activities. In this vivid ethnography, based on almost 200 interviews with parents, children, coaches and teachers, Hilary Levey probes the increase in children's participation in activities outside of the home, structured and monitored by their parents, when family time is so scarce. As the parental "second shift" continues to grow, alongside it a second shift for children has emerged--especially among the middle- and upper-middle classes--which is suffused with competition rather than mere participation. What motivates these particular parents to get their children involved in competitive activities? Parents' primary concern is their children's access to high quality educational credentials--the biggest bottleneck standing in the way of, or facilitating entry into, membership in the upper-middle class. Competitive activities, like sports and the arts, are seen as the essential proving ground that will clear their children's paths to the Ivy League or other similar institutions by helping them to develop a competitive habitus. This belief, motivated both by reality and by perception, and shaped by gender and class, affects how parents envision their children's futures; it also shapes the structure of children's daily lives, what the children themselves think about their lives, and the competitive landscapes of the activities themselves"--
A new and updated edition of the picture book about the woman called "The Jackie Robinson of tennis." Although stars like Serena Williams cite Althea Gibson as an inspiration, Gibson's story is not well-known to many young people today. Growing up tough and rebellious in Harlem, Althea took that fighting attitude and used it to go after her goals of being a tennis champion, and a time when tennis was a game played mostly by wealthy white people in country clubs that excluded African Americans. In 1956, she became the first Black American to win a major championship when she won at The French Open. When she won the celebrated Wimbledon tournament the following year, Gibson shook hands with the Queen of England. Not bad for a kid from the streets of Harlem. With determination and undeniable skill, Althea Gibson become a barrier-breaking, record-setting, and world-famous sportswoman. This new and updated edition of this inspirational biography contains recent information on the impact of Gibson's legacy.
Classic Strategies for Unapologetic Winners “It” is a strategy so powerful and an execution-driven mind-set so relentless that companies use it to gain more than just competitive advantage ¿ they achieve an industry dominance that is virtually unassailable and that competitors often try to explain away as unfair. In their “hardball manifesto,” authors George Stalk and Rob Lachenauer of the leading strategy consulting firm The Boston Consulting Group show how hardball competitors can build or maintain an enviable competitive edge by pursuing one or more of the classic “hardball strategies”: unleash massive and overwhelming force, exploit anomalies, devastate profit sanctuaries, raise competitors’ costs, and break compromises. Based on twenty-five years of experience advising and observing a range of companies, the authors argue that hardball competitors can gain extreme competitive advantage ¿ neutralizing, marginalizing, or even destroying competitors ¿ without violating their contracts with customers or employees, and without breaking the rules. A clear-eyed paean to the timeless strategies that have driven the world’s winning companies, Hardball Strategy redefines and reinterprets the meaning of competition for a new generation of business players.
In this era of big media franchises, sports branding has crossed platforms, so that the sport, its television broadcast, and its replication in an electronic game are packaged and promoted as part of the same fan experience. Editors Robert Alan Brookey and Thomas P. Oates trace this development back to the unexpected success of Atari's Pong in the 1970s, which provoked a flood of sport simulation games that have had an impact on every sector of the electronic game market. From golf to football, basketball to step aerobics, electronic sports games are as familiar in the American household as the televised sporting events they simulate. This book explores the points of convergence at which gaming and sports culture merge.
WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER From Michael Dell, renowned founder and chief executive of one of America’s largest technology companies, the inside story of the battles that defined him as a leader In 1984, soon-to-be college dropout Michael Dell hid signs of his fledgling PC business in the bathroom of his University of Texas dorm room. Almost 30 years later, at the pinnacle of his success as founder and leader of Dell Technologies, he found himself embroiled in a battle for his company’s survival. What he’d do next could ensure its legacy—or destroy it completely. Play Nice But Win is a riveting account of the three battles waged for Dell Technologies: one to launch it, one to keep it, and one to transform it. For the first time, Dell reveals the highs and lows of the company's evolution amidst a rapidly changing industry—and his own, as he matured into the CEO it needed. With humor and humility, he recalls the mentors who showed him how to turn his passion into a business; the competitors who became friends, foes, or both; and the sharks that circled, looking for weakness. What emerges is the long-term vision underpinning his success: that technology is ultimately about people and their potential. More than an honest portrait of a leader at a crossroads, Play Nice But Win is a survival story proving that while anyone with technological insight and entrepreneurial zeal might build something great—it takes a leader to build something that lasts.
Packed with time-tested techniques and real-life case studies, this work and life field guide is based on the famous training program of the same name. Now you can put this powerful resource to work in your search for fulfillment in your professional and personal life.
Playing to Win is a handbook for women who want to be successful. Karren Brady did it. At 23 she took over as Managing Director of Birmingham City Football Club, becoming the youngest ever female Managing Director of a UK PLC when it floated in 1997. Although the club was the "football equivalent of a rubbish dump" and women were barely even seen on the terraces in the early 90s, Karren Brady persuaded her backers to acquire the club and single-mindedly revolutionised it, clearing the debt, taking Birmingham City into the Premier League and transforming it into a viable business. How did she do it? How did a 23-year-old woman with little previous experience at this level of management walk into a man?s world and achieve such success? In Playing to Win, she reveals her secrets and shares with other women the techniques they can adopt to succeed in their own lives, on their own terms. Her ten motivational rules are self-help classics: ambition, determination, courage, charm, hard work, attitude, humour, confidence, focus and communication. Playing to Win shows women how to grow in each of these areas and achieve the success they dream of. And like all great self-help, her principles apply across all areas of experience - work and personal life. Playing to Win is a handbook for success in any situation. Moving from Karren?s story, how she has transformed a business and maintained a full and stable personal life, to a chapter-by-chapter study of the ten principles successful women need to adopt, Playing to Win is essential reading for women who want to have it all.
Roulette is a percentage game, and winning occasionally is simple. The aim is to win consistently. After watching, listening, and playing all over the world, Brett Morton distilled a wealth of information—and began to understand why he had been losing so often. Each spin of the wheel is a new and usually random event. Every spin is a fight against the casino’s advantages. It was a challenge to debunk the theorists, especially those who had never played. His research and hard work proved he was right—winning consistently is possible. Morton explains the methods to use, rates many of the well-known systems, but above all brings a clear and refreshing vision to this exciting game.
