Business & Economics

A new way of seeing the essential systems hidden inside our walls, under our streets, and all around us

Infrastructure is a marvel, meeting our basic needs and enabling lives of astounding ease and productivity that would have been unimaginable just a century ago. It is the physical manifestation of our social contract—of our ability to work collectively for the public good—and it consists of the most complex and vast technological systems ever created by humans.

A soaring bridge is an obvious infrastructural feat, but so are the mostly hidden reservoirs, transformers, sewers, cables, and pipes that deliver water, energy, and information to wherever we need it. When these systems work well, they hide in plain sight. Engineer and materials scientist Deb Chachra takes readers on a fascinating tour of these essential utilities, revealing how they work, what it takes to keep them running, just how much we rely on them—but also whom they work well for, and who pays the costs.

Across the U.S. and elsewhere, these systems are suffering from systemic neglect and the effects of climate change, becoming unavoidably visible when they break down. Communities that are already marginalized often bear the brunt of these failures. But Chachra maps out a path for transforming and rebuilding our shared infrastructure to be not just functional but also equitable, resilient, and sustainable. The cost of not being able to rely on these systems is unthinkably high. We need to learn how to see them—and fix them, together—before it’s too late.

Leading companies invest a lot of resources into competitive intelligence, so why are they still caught off guard by the actions and reactions of their competitors?

In Inside the Competitor’s Mindset, John Horn shares proven techniques to help businesses think like the competition and understand why they act the way they do. The keys to unlocking this mindset are cognitive empathy and a strategic approach to competitive insight that focuses on the “why” of a competitor’s move, and not just on “what happened.”

Inside the Competitor’s Mindset presents a systematic approach to competitive intelligence that starts with three frameworks to get inside the competitor’s mindset, predict their reactions to your moves, and assess whether the competition is getting ready for a spontaneous move of their own. Horn also demonstrates the importance of collecting forward-looking, predictive data; explains how to use war games, Black Hat exercises, mock negotiations, and premortems to build competitive insight; and makes the case for creating a dedicated competitive insight function within the organization.

When every move matters, staying a step ahead of the competition is critical. Inside the Competitor’s Mindset prepares leaders from any industry to be ready when it is time to act (and react) in the competitive market.

A clear, engaging, evidence-based guide to monetizing data, for everyone from employee to board member.

Most organizations view data monetization—converting data into money—too narrowly: as merely selling data sets. But data monetization is a core business activity for both commercial and noncommercial organizations, and, within organizations, it’s critical to have wide-ranging support for this pursuit. In Data Is Everybody’s Business, the authors offer a clear and engaging way for people across the entire organization to understand data monetization and make it happen. The authors identify three viable ways to convert data into money—improving work with data, wrapping products with data, and selling information offerings—and explain when to pursue each and how to succeed.

Key features of the book:
• Grounded in twenty-eight years of academic research,including nine years of research at the MIT Sloan Center for Information Systems Research (MIT CISR)
• Definitions of key terms, self-reflection questions, appealing graphics, and easy-to-use frameworks
• Rich with detailed case studies
• Supplemented by free MIT CISR website resources (cisr.mit.edu)

Ideal for organizations engaged in data literacy training, data-driven transformation, or digital transformation, Data Is Everybody’s Business is the essential guide for helping everybody in the organization—not just the data specialists—understand, get excited about, and participate in data monetization.