"Do you really understand what business value is? Information technology can and should deliver business value. But the Agile literature has paid scant attention to what business value means—and how to know whether or not you are delivering it. This problem becomes ever more critical as you push value delivery toward autonomous teams and away from requirements “tossed over the wall” by business stakeholders. An empowered team needs to understand its goal! Playful and thought-provoking, The Art of Business Value explores what business value means, why it matters, and how it should affect your software development and delivery practices. More than any other IT delivery approach, DevOps (and Agile thinking in general) makes business value a central concern. This book examines the role of business value in software and makes a compelling case for why a clear understanding of business value will change the way you deliver software. This book will make you think deeply about not only what it means to deliver value but also the relationship of the IT organization to the rest of the enterprise. It will give you the language to discuss value with the business, methods to cut through bureaucracy and strategies for incorporating Agile teams and culture into the enterprise. Most of all, this book will startle you into new ways of thinking about the cutting-edge of Agile practice and where it may lead."

Offers guidance for artists in financial planning, copyright protection, the preparation of a portfolio, and sale of works to art dealers, museums, and other markets.

More than two millennia ago the famous Chinese general Sun Tzu wrote the classic work on military strategy, The Art of War. Now, in a new edition of Sun Tzu and the Art of Business, Mark McNeilly shows how Sun Tzu's strategic principles can be applied to twenty-first century business. Here are two books in one: McNeilly's synthesis of Sun Tzu's ideas into six strategic principles for the business executive, plus the text of Samuel B. Griffith's popular translation of The Art of War. McNeilly explains how to gain market share without inciting competitive retaliation, how to attack competitors' weak points, and how to maximize market information for competitive advantage. He demonstrates the value of speed and preparation in throwing the competition off-balance, employing strategy to beat the competition, and the need for character in leaders. Lastly, McNeilly presents a practical method to put Sun Tzu's principles into practice. By using modern examples throughout the book from Google, Zappos, Amazon, Dyson, Aflac, Singapore Airlines, Best Buy, the NFL, Tata Motors, Starbucks, and many others, he illustrates how, by following the wisdom of history's most respected strategist, executives can avoid the pitfalls of management fads and achieve lasting competitive advantage.

Analyzing the relationship between the arts and business, this book offers an in-depth perspective on the increasingly common art-based strategies adopted by enterprises in various industries, with a focus on luxury sector. Pursuing an exhaustive, systematic, evidence-based and interdisciplinary approach, it explores the limits of potential strategic collaborations between the two fields. In addition, the book provides a structure for this field of inquiry, offering a solid basis for future research and highlighting the benefits of art-based strategies for executives. Each research strand explored in this book is supported by a representative case study.

Drawing on the experience of Sotheby's Institute of Art, this text exposes the realities of the commercial trade in fine art, from its structure to legal issues and wider cultural policy, and including interviews with leading experts in the field.

"This business book is aimed at early career artists and helps to equip them with the practical tools needed to approach their careers, shining light upon some things that are often hidden from view. It has been written as a series of opinion pieces rather than a how-to guide, and covers such topics as how to exhibit and sell your works, as well as things like how to stay motivated, and how to deal with the periods of insecurity that a career in the arts can often create."--Publisher's web site (viewed on November 19, 2020)