Machine, Platform, Crowd by
We live in strange times. A machine plays the strategy game Go better than any human; upstarts like Apple and Google destroy industry stalwarts such as Nokia; ideas from the crowd are repeatedly more innovative than corporate research labs.MIT's Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson know what it takes to master this digital-powered shift: we must rethink the integration of minds and machines, of products and platforms, and of the core and the crowd. In all three cases, the balance now favors the second element of the pair, with massive implications for how we run our companies and live our lives.In the tradition of agenda-setting classics like Clay Christensen's The Innovator's Dilemma, McAfee and Brynjolfsson deliver both a penetrating analysis of a new world and a toolkit for thriving in it. For startups and established businesses, or for anyone interested in what the future holds, Machine, Platform, Crowd is essential reading.
Innovation and Its Enemies by 
What's Your Digital Business Model? by
Digital transformation is not about technology--it's about change. In the rapidly changing digital economy, you can't succeed by merely tweaking management practices that led to past success. And yet, while many leaders and managers recognize the threat from digital--and the potential opportunity--they lack a common language and compelling framework to help them assess it and guide them in responding. They don't know how to think about their digital business model. In this concise, practical book, MIT digital research leaders Peter Weill and Stephanie Woerner provide a powerful yet straightforward framework that has been field-tested globally with dozens of senior management teams. Based on years of study at the MIT Center for Information Systems Research (CISR), the authors find that digitization is moving companies' business models on two dimensions: from value chains to digital ecosystems, and from a fuzzy understanding of the needs of end customers to a sharper one. Looking at these dimensions in combination results in four distinct business models, each with different capabilities. The book then sets out six driving questions, in separate chapters, that help managers and executives clarify where they are currently in an increasingly digital business landscape and highlight what's needed to move toward a higher-value digital business model. Filled with straightforward self-assessments, motivating examples, and sharp financial analyses of where profits are made, this smart book will help you tackle the threats, leverage the opportunities, and create winning digital strategies.
Data Science for Executives by
We are in the 4th industrial revolution; companies need to figure out how to survive. In this exciting revolution, machine intelligence has had a more unprecedented impact on business than the internet, and it's the only path to corporate survival in the future. In Data Science for Executives, Nir Kaldero dispels the myths and confusion surrounding this game-changing technology and provides practical strategies for harnessing its profitable power. This essential tome provides illuminating case studies, important guiding principles, and effective on-the-ground actions for incorporating machine intelligence into your organization and employing it to enhance your business though the wealth of data that flows into your business. Leaders don't have to be scientists to unlock the power of AI technology that is already radically altering the industrial landscape. If you're ready to meet the challenges of this new revolution, this essential guide will help you take your business to the next level.
The Upstarts by 
How Google Works by 
Hooked by 
The Everything Store by 
Mastering Bitcoin by
Join the technological revolution that's taking the financial world by storm. Mastering Bitcoin is your guide through the seemingly complex world of bitcoin, providing the knowledge you need to participate in the internet of money. Whether you're building the next killer app, investing in a startup, or simply curious about the technology, this revised and expanded second edition provides essential detail to get you started. Bitcoin, the first successful decentralized digital currency, is still in its early stages and yet it's already spawned a multi-billion-dollar global economy open to anyone with the knowledge and passion to participate. Mastering Bitcoin provides the knowledge. You simply supply the passion. The second edition includes: A broad introduction of bitcoin and its underlying blockchain--ideal for non-technical users, investors, and business executives An explanation of the technical foundations of bitcoin and cryptographic currencies for developers, engineers, and software and systems architects Details of the bitcoin decentralized network, peer-to-peer architecture, transaction lifecycle, and security principles New developments such as Segregated Witness, Payment Channels, and Lightning Network A deep dive into blockchain applications, including how to combine the building blocks offered by this platform into higher-level applications User stories, analogies, examples, and code snippets illustrating key technical concepts
Chaos Monkeys by 
Applied Artificial Intelligence by
***Selected as CES 2018 Top Technology Book of the Year *** "Artificial intelligence" is the buzz word of the day. You've no doubt read your fair share of media hype either proclaiming doom and gloom where robots seize our jobs or prophesying a new utopia where AI cures all our human problems. But what does it actually mean for your role as a business leader? Applied Artificial Intelligence is a practical guide for business leaders who are passionate about leveraging machine intelligence to enhance the productivity of their organizations and the quality of life in their communities. If you want to drive innovation by combining data, technology, design, and people to solve real problems at an enterprise scale, this is your playbook. This book does not overload you with details on debugging TensorFlow code nor bore you with generalizations about the future of humanity. Instead, we teach you how to lead successful AI initiatives by prioritizing the right opportunities, building a diverse team of experts, conducting strategic experiments, and consciously designing your solutions to benefit both your organization and society as a whole. This book is focused on helping you drive concrete business decisions through applications of artificial intelligence and machine learning. Written with the combined knowledge of three experts in the field, Applied Artificial Intelligence is the best practical guide for business leaders looking to get true value from the adoption of machine learning technology. If you have questions such as... How do I distinguish true value from AI hype? What are the best business use cases for AI established so far? How do I identify the best business case for AI adoption and evaluate opportunities? Should I build or buy an AI platform? How do I find and recruit top AI talent for my enterprise? How will bringing AI into my business increase revenue or decrease costs? How can I facilitate AI adoption within my company? ... then this handbook provides you with answers.
Prediction Machines by
"What does AI mean for your business? Read this book to find out." -- Hal Varian, Chief Economist, Google Artificial intelligence does the seemingly impossible, magically bringing machines to life--driving cars, trading stocks, and teaching children. But facing the sea change that AI will bring can be paralyzing. How should companies set strategies, governments design policies, and people plan their lives for a world so different from what we know? In the face of such uncertainty, many analysts either cower in fear or predict an impossibly sunny future. But in Prediction Machines, three eminent economists recast the rise of AI as a drop in the cost of prediction. With this single, masterful stroke, they lift the curtain on the AI-is-magic hype and show how basic tools from economics provide clarity about the AI revolution and a basis for action by CEOs, managers, policy makers, investors, and entrepreneurs. When AI is framed as cheap prediction, its extraordinary potential becomes clear: Prediction is at the heart of making decisions under uncertainty. Our businesses and personal lives are riddled with such decisions. Prediction tools increase productivity--operating machines, handling documents, communicating with customers. Uncertainty constrains strategy. Better prediction creates opportunities for new business structures and strategies to compete. Penetrating, fun, and always insightful and practical, Prediction Machines follows its inescapable logic to explain how to navigate the changes on the horizon. The impact of AI will be profound, but the economic framework for understanding it is surprisingly simple.
Machine Learning Systems by 
Weapons of Math Destruction by
Longlisted for the National Book Award New York Times Bestseller A former Wall Street quant sounds an alarm on the mathematical models that pervade modern life -- and threaten to rip apart our social fabric We live in the age of the algorithm. Increasingly, the decisions that affect our lives--where we go to school, whether we get a car loan, how much we pay for health insurance--are being made not by humans, but by mathematical models. In theory, this should lead to greater fairness: Everyone is judged according to the same rules, and bias is eliminated. But as Cathy O'Neil reveals in this urgent and necessary book, the opposite is true. The models being used today are opaque, unregulated, and uncontestable, even when they're wrong. Most troubling, they reinforce discrimination: If a poor student can't get a loan because a lending model deems him too risky (by virtue of his zip code), he's then cut off from the kind of education that could pull him out of poverty, and a vicious spiral ensues. Models are propping up the lucky and punishing the downtrodden, creating a "toxic cocktail for democracy." Welcome to the dark side of Big Data. Tracing the arc of a person's life, O'Neil exposes the black box models that shape our future, both as individuals and as a society. These "weapons of math destruction" score teachers and students, sort résumés, grant (or deny) loans, evaluate workers, target voters, set parole, and monitor our health. O'Neil calls on modelers to take more responsibility for their algorithms and on policy makers to regulate their use. But in the end, it's up to us to become more savvy about the models that govern our lives. This important book empowers us to ask the tough questions, uncover the truth, and demand change. -- Longlist for National Book Award (Non-Fiction) -- Goodreads, semi-finalist for the 2016 Goodreads Choice Awards (Science and Technology) -- Kirkus, Best Books of 2016 -- New York Times, 100 Notable Books of 2016 (Non-Fiction) -- The Guardian, Best Books of 2016 -- WBUR's "On Point," Best Books of 2016: Staff Picks -- Boston Globe, Best Books of 2016, Non-Fiction
DevOps for the Modern Enterprise by
Many organizations are facing the uphill battle of modernizing their legacy IT infrastructure. Most have evolved over the years by taking lessons from traditional or legacy manufacturing: creating a production process that puts the emphasis on the process instead of the people performing the tasks, allowing the organization to treat people like resources to try to achieve high-quality outcomes. But those practices and ideas are failing modern IT, where collaboration and creativeness are required to achieve high-performing, high-quality success.Mirco Hering, a thought leader in managing IT within legacy organizations, lays out a roadmap to success for IT managers, showing them how to create the right ecosystem, how to empower people to bring their best to work every day, and how to put the right technology in the driver¿s seat to propel their organization to success.But just having the right methods and tools will not magically transform an organization; the cultural change that is the hardest is also the most impactful. Using principles from Agile, Lean, and DevOps as well as first-hand examples from the enterprise world, Hering addresses the different challenges that legacy organizations face as they transform into modern IT departments.
SQL QuickStart Guide: the Simplified Beginner's Guide to SQL by
The Ultimate Beginner's Guide To Learning SQL - From Retrieving Data To Creating Databases! *PRINTING ISSUE HAS BEEN CORRECTED* Structured Query Language or SQL (pronounced sequel by many) is the most widely used programming language used in database management and is the standard language for Relational Database Management Systems (RDBMS). SQL programming allows users to return, analyze, create, manage and delete data within a database - all within a few commands. With more industries and organizations looking to the power of data, the need for an efficient, scalable solution for data management is required. More often than not, organizations implement a Relational Database Management System in one form or another. These systems create long-term data "warehouses" that can be easily accessed to return and analyze results, such as, "Show me all of the clients from Canada that have purchased more than $20,000 in the last 3 years." This "query," which would have taken an extensive amount of hands-on research to complete prior to the use of database, can now be determined in seconds by executing a simple SELECT SQL statement on a database. SQL can seem daunting to those with little to zero programming knowledge and can even pose a challenge to those that have experience with other languages. Most resources jump right into the technical jargon and are not suited for someone to really grasp how SQL Actually Works. That's why we created this book. Our goal here is simple: show you exactly everything you need to know to utilize SQL in whatever capacity you may need in simple, easy to follow concepts. Our book provides Multiple Step-by-Step Examples of how to master these SQL concepts to ensure you know what you're doing and why you're doing it every step of the way. This book will allow you to successfully go from knowing absolutely nothing about SQL to being able to quickly retrieve and analyze data from multiple tables. Step-by-step we will Walk You Through the Fundamentals of Understanding How a Relational Database is Structured to how to execute Complex SELECT Statements to return large datasets from your database. Here Is A Preview Of What You'll Learn... What are Relational Databases and How are They Structured! Why Knowing SQL Is Important To Almost Any Database! The Fundamentals of SQL Programming Syntax! How To Retrieve Any Type of Data You May Need Within Your Database! The Important Differences in SQL Syntax Across Database Programs! The Top Mistakes to AVOID That Those New To SQL Make! Our Personal Guarantee We are so confident that methods outlined in this book will help you learn SQL that we're willing to let you try the book risk-free. If you are not fully satisfied with the product, simply let us know and we will provide a 100% full refund. That's right, a 100% Money-Back Guarantee! What reason do you have to not give this book a try? Scroll Up & Click The "Add To Cart" Icon On The Right Side Right Now! ClydeBank Media LLC All Rights Reserved
Data Analysis Using SQL and Excel by
A practical guide to data mining using SQL and Excel Data Analysis Using SQL and Excel, 2nd Edition shows you how to leverage the two most popular tools for data query and analysis--SQL and Excel--to perform sophisticated data analysis without the need for complex and expensive data mining tools. Written by a leading expert on business data mining, this book shows you how to extract useful business information from relational databases. You'll learn the fundamental techniques before moving into the "where" and "why" of each analysis, and then learn how to design and perform these analyses using SQL and Excel. Examples include SQL and Excel code, and the appendix shows how non-standard constructs are implemented in other major databases, including Oracle and IBM DB2/UDB. The companion website includes datasets and Excel spreadsheets, and the book provides hints, warnings, and technical asides to help you every step of the way. Data Analysis Using SQL and Excel, 2nd Edition shows you how to perform a wide range of sophisticated analyses using these simple tools, sparing you the significant expense of proprietary data mining tools like SAS. Understand core analytic techniques that work with SQL and Excel Ensure your analytic approach gets you the results you need Design and perform your analysis using SQL and Excel Data Analysis Using SQL and Excel, 2nd Edition shows you how to best use the tools you already know to achieve expert results.
Quirky by 
The Inevitable by