Planning & Forecasting

Crash Proof: How to Profit From the Coming Economic Collapse (Lynn Sonberg Books)

The economic tipping point for the United States is no longer theoretical. It is a reality today. The country has gone from the world's largest creditor to its greatest debtor; the value of the dollar is sinking; domestic manufacturing is winding down - and these trends don't seem to be slowing. Peter Schiff casts a sharp, clear-sighted eye on these factors and explains what the possible effects may be and how investors can protect themselves. For more than a decade, Schiff has not only observed the U.S. economy, but also helped his clients reposition their portfolios to reflect his outlook. What he sees is a nation facing an economic storm brought on by growing federal, personal, and corporate debt, too-little savings, a declining dollar, and lack of domestic manufacturing.
Crash-Proof is an informed and informative warning of a looming period marked by sizeable tax hikes, loss of retirement benefits, double digit inflation, even - as happened recently in Argentina - the possible collapse of the middle class. However, Schiff does have a survival plan that can provide the protection that readers will need in the coming years.

The Secrets of Economic Indicators: Hidden Clues to Future Economic Trends and Investment Opportunities, 2nd Edition

Every day, stocks, bonds, and currencies bounce wildly in response to new economic indicators. Money managers obsess over those statistics, because they provide crucial clues about the future of the economy and the financial markets.

Now you can use these indicators to make smarter investment decisions, just like the professionals do.You don't need an economics degree, or a CPA... just this easy-to-use book.

Former TIME Magazine senior economics reporter Bernard Baumohl has done the impossible: he's made economic indicators fascinating.

Using real-world examples and stories,Baumohl illuminates every U.S. and foreign indicator that matters.Where to find them.What they look like. What the insiders know about their track records. And exactly how to interpret them.

Whether you're an investor,broker, portfolio manager, researcher, journalist,or student, you'll find this book indispensable.Nobody can predict the future with certainty. But The Secrets of Economic Indicators will get you as close as humanly possible.

What the numbers really mean...

...to stocks, bonds, rates, currencies, and you

Ahead of the curve: spotting turning points

Calling recessions and recoveries in time to profit from them

Leading indicators: where's the economy really heading

Decoding initial unemployment claims, housing starts, the yield curve, and other predictors

Beyond the borders

Why foreign indicators are increasingly important—and how to use them

Making sense of indicators in conflict

What to do when the numbers disagree

Finding the data

Free web resources for the latest economic data

Every day, stocks, bonds and currencies bounce around wildly in response to economic indicators like these. They're monitored obsessively by the world's leading money managers. Why? Because they provide crucial, subtle clues about the future of the market -- and of individual investments. Now you can profit from these indicators just like the professionals do. You don't need an economics degree, or a CPA -- just this easy-to-read book. In plain English, renowned economic journalist Bernard Baumohl helps you find the numbers, understand their deepest meanings, and use your knowledge to make fast, smart investment decisions. For each key indicator, Baumohl presents a sample release, insider's information on the indicator's track record, and step-by-step instructions for decoding it. Baumohl covers both US indicators and the foreign indicators that are becoming increasingly important to investors. He answers key questions like: Which indicators are most likely to affect my personal investments or business? How does each indicator affect interest rates and bond prices? Stock prices? The value of the dollar? And what can these reports tell me where the economy's really heading?

The Coming Economic Collapse: How You Can Thrive When Oil Costs $200 a Barrel

Stephen Leeb shows how hard times can be a boon for smart investors. As the world faces an energy crisis of unprecedented scope, renowed economist Stephen Leeb shows how surging oil prices will contribute to an economic collapse. With meticulous research and analysis, Leeb shows that due to strong competition from India and China, prices could soon double, a cost for which most countries and investors are ill-prepared. Now, in this groundbreaking book, Leeb not only shows how this crisis will affect consumers, but how savvy investing can turn these dire times into financial gain.

The Innovator's Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth

In the worldwide bestseller The Innovator's Dilemma, Clayton M. Christensen exposed a crushing paradox behind the failure of many industry leaders. By doing what good companies were supposed to do-focus on pleasing their most profitable customers-leaders were paving the way for their own demise. How? By ignoring "disruptive technologies"-new, cheaper innovations that initially target small customer segments but evolve to displace the reigning product.

Now, Christensen and coauthor Michael E. Raynor cut the Gordian knot of the "innovator's dilemma" with The Innovator's Solution. This groundbreaking book reveals that innovation is not as unpredictable as most managers have come to believe. While the outcomes of past innovations seem random, the process by which innovations are packaged and shaped within companies is very predictable. By understanding and managing the forces that influence this process, companies can shape high-octane business plans that create truly disruptive growth.

Drawing on years of in-depth research and using new theories tested in hundreds of companies across many industries, the authors identify the processes that create successful innovations, and show managers how to tailor their strategies to the changing circumstances of a dynamic world.

Comprehensive yet practical, The Innovator's Solution is an actionable prescription for innovation-driven, profitable growth.

"A good business book makes managers stop and think. A great business book teaches managers how to stop and think. This is a great book. It is hard to imagine an executive team that would not benefit from devoting an entire day to discussing it."

-Geoffrey Moore, Chairman and Founder, TCG Advisors, and author, Crossing the Chasm and Living on the Fault Line

"In The Innovator's Solution, Christensen and Raynor address the holy grail of all organizations: how to generate growth and sustain it over long periods. Avoiding the temptation to provide simplistic formulas, they guide the reader through carefully constructed frameworks that teach how to think about the issues that limit-and provide-growth to organizations."

-Dr. Andrew S. Grove, Chairman of the Board, Intel

"Christensen and Raynor have done a superb job of creating a framework for helping to understand the industry dynamics and for planning your own growth alternatives."

-Pekka Ala-Pietilä, President, Nokia Corporation

"Singapore, as a small nation, needs to be innovative and sensitive to disruptive changes more than other countries. Christensen and Raynor have provided an excellent framework to reduce the randomness of the innovation process. This framework will help in our effort to nurture an environment conducive for enterprises to create and capitalize on disruptive innovations."

-Teo Ming Kian, Chairman, Singapore Economic Development Board

"The Innovator's Solution goes directly to the heart of why large companies have failed to sustain innovation. Christensen and Raynor have a deep insight into the challenges that innovative companies face, and they propose practical, realistic solutions to the dilemmas of innovation. This book will be extremely useful to all managers who are committed to using innovation to sustain their growth."

-Bill George, former Chairman and CEO, Medtronic, Inc.

The Coming China Wars: Where They Will Be Fought and How They Can Be Won, Revised and Expanded Edition

Rich Dad's Advisors®: The ABC's of Writing Winning Business Plans: How to Prepare a Business Plan That Others Will Want to Read -- and Invest In (Rich Dad's Advisors)

Learn how to prepare and utilize the most important document for any organizationthe business plan. Whether one is just starting out or is already in business and needs to refocus efforts, this practical guide will clearly instruct how to prepare a winning business plan. This book will become a valued resource for entrepreneurs and business owners on their path towards future success.

Seeing What's Next: Using Theories of Innovation to Predict Industry Change

When a disruptive innovation is launched, it changes the entire industry and every firm operating within in

This book argues that it is possible to predict which companies will win and which will lose in a specific situation—and provides a practical framework for doing so.

Most books on innovation—including Christensen’s previous two books—approached innovation from the inside-out, showing firms how they can create innovations inside their own companies. This book is written from an “outside-in” perspective, showing how executives, investors, and analysts can assess the impact of a new innovation on the firms they have a vested interest in.

Strategy Maps: Converting Intangible Assets into Tangible Outcomes

More than a decade ago, Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton introduced the Balanced Scorecard, a revolutionary performance measurement system that allowed organizations to quantify intangible assets such as people, information, and customer relationships. Then, in The Strategy-Focused Organization, Kaplan and Norton showed how organizations achieved breakthrough performance with a management system that put the Balanced Scorecard into action.

Now, using their ongoing research with hundreds of Balanced Scorecard adopters across the globe, the authors have created a powerful new tool-the "strategy map"-that enables companies to describe the links between intangible assets and value creation with a clarity and precision never before possible.

Kaplan and Norton argue that the most critical aspect of strategy-implementing it in a way that ensures sustained value creation-depends on managing four key internal processes: operations, customer relationships, innovation, and regulatory and social processes. The authors show how companies can use strategy maps to link those processes to desired outcomes; evaluate, measure, and improve the processes most critical to success; and target investments in human, informational, and organizational capital.

Providing a visual epiphany for executives everywhere who can't figure out why their strategy isn't working, Strategy Maps is a blueprint any organization can follow to align processes, people, and information technology for superior performance.

The Strategy-Focused Organization: How Balanced Scorecard Companies Thrive in the New Business Environment

In their previous book, The Balanced Scorecard, Robert Kaplan and David Norton unveiled an innovative "performance management system" that any company could use to focus and align their executive teams, business units, human resources, information technology, and financial resources on a unified overall strategy--much as businesses have traditionally employed financial management systems to track and guide their general fiscal direction. In The Strategy-Focused Organization, Kaplan and Norton explain how companies like Mobil, CIGNA, and Chemical Retail Bank have effectively used this approach for nearly a decade, and in the process present a step-by-step implementation outline that other organizations could use to attain similar results. Their book is divided into five sections that guide readers through development of a completely individualized plan that is created with "strategy maps" (graphical representations designed to clearly communicate desired outcomes and how they are to be achieved), then infused throughout the enterprise and made an integral part of its future. In several chapters devoted to the latter, for example, the authors show how their models have linked long-term strategy with day-to-day operational and budgetary management, and detail the "double loop" process for doing so, monitoring progress, and initiating corrective actions if necessary. --Howard Rothman

In today's business environment, strategy has never been more important. Yet research shows that most companies fail to execute strategy successfully. Behind this abysmal track record lies an undeniable fact: many companies continue to use management processes-top-down, financially driven, and tactical-that were designed to run yesterday's organizations.

Now, the creators of the revolutionary performance management tool called the Balanced Scorecard introduce a new approach that makes strategy a continuous process owned not just by top management, but by everyone. In The Strategy-Focused Organization, Robert Kaplan and David Norton share the results of ten years of learning and research into more than 200 companies that have implemented the Balanced Scorecard. Drawing from more than twenty in-depth case studies-including Mobil, CIGNA, Nova Scotia Power, and AT&T Canada-Kaplan and Norton illustrate how Balanced Scorecard adopters have taken their groundbreaking tool to the next level. These organizations have used the scorecard to create an entirely new performance management framework that puts strategy at the center of key management processes and systems.

Kaplan and Norton articulate the five key principles required for building Strategy-Focused Organizations: (1) translate the strategy to operational terms, (2) align the organization to the strategy, (3) make strategy everyone's everyday job, (4) make strategy a continual process, and (5) mobilize change through strong, effective leadership. The authors provide a detailed account of how a range of organizations in the private, public, and nonprofit sectors have deployed these principles to achieve breakthrough, sustainable performance improvements.

Presenting a practical, proven framework steeped in rich case study experience, The Strategy-Focused Organization helps solve a universal management problem-not just how to formulate strategy, but how to make it work. Building on one of the most revolutionary business ideas of our time, this important book shows how today's leaders can shape their own companies to meet the challenges and reap the rewards of a new competitive era.

Robert S. Kaplan is the Marvin Bower Professor of Leadership Development at Harvard Business School. David P. Norton is President of Balanced Scorecard Collaborative, Inc.

The creators of the revolutionary performance management tool called the Balanced Scorecard introduce a new approach that makes strategy a continuous process owned not just by top management, but by everyone. In The Strategy-Focused Organization, Robert Kaplan and David Norton share the results of ten years of learning and research into more than 200 companies that have implemented the Balanced Scorecard. Drawing from more than twenty in-depth case studies--including Mobil, CIGNA, and AT&T Canada--Kaplan and Norton illustrate how Balanced Scorecard adopters have taken their groundbreaking tool to the next level. These organizations have used the scorecard to create an entirely new performance management framework that puts strategy at the center of key management processes and systems. Kaplan and Norton articulate the five key principles required for building strategy-focused organizations: 1) translate the strategy into operational terms, 2) align the organization to the strategy, 3) make strategy everyone's everyday job, 4) make strategy a continual process, and 5) mobilize change through strong, effective leadership. The authors provide a detailed account of how a range of organizations in the private, public, and nonprofit sectors have deployed these principles to achieve breakthrough, sustainable performance improvements.

Rich Dad's Prophecy: Why The Biggest Stock Market Crash in History is Still Coming...and How You Can Prepare Yourself and Profit From It!

The #1 New York Times bestselling authors of the Rich Dad Poor Dad series deliver a financial plan to help Baby Boomers survive an impending economic crash. Anyone with a 401K knows that investing in mutual funds is not safe, or so claim Kiyosaki and Lechter. Even worse, they warn that a devastating economic crash is imminent because Baby Boomers will soon be required by law to drain trillions of dollars stashed in 401Ks, IRAs, SEPs, and other mutual-fund savings accounts as they start to retire. In short, the country's financial system won't withstand the drain, and relying on a 401K and Social Security will mean financial disaster. Here, Kiyosaki and Lechter provide a financial roadmap for readers to prosper during these troubled times.

This is a "Gloom and Boom" book.First the bad news: Between the years of 2007 and 2012-just a few years from now-the vast majority of Baby Boomers will be on the verge of retirement-and they'll be looking to cash in on their hefty retirement plans. Quite frankly, the country is not prepared to handle this major drain of cash reserves, and there's every chance that peoples' lifelong savings will dramatically lose their value.And now, the good news:Sensing this financial crisis in the offing, Kiyosaki and Lechter provide a detailed financial plan to help forward-thinking people prepare for the worst-and they urge that one's planning start NOW. They go over a variety of alternative ways of generating wealth through other forms of investments, including real estate development, self-employment, and investing in other companies. Warns Kiyosaki: "I think we've all learned from this past year that mutual funds are NOT the answer to accumulating long-term wealth."