The world continues to ride a wave of turmoil, challenging leaders like never before. New laws, competitive markets and the need to respond to the demands of corporate boards and stockholders unnerve even the most senior of leaders resulting in progressively shorter tenures of those in leadership positions. The modern leader needs to be increasingly resilient and their leadership must be entirely relevant to their organizations and the industry. Phoenix Leadership for Business: An Executive's Strategy for Relevance and Resilience provides a brand new, innovative concept, that of the Phoenix Leader, with proven strategies and approaches to evolve your leadership approach to one that is flexible, powerful and effective. This book utilizes the strong metaphor of a Phoenix and identifies all of the necessary techniques that leaders need to improve profitability, resource management and organizational success thus improving their relevance to the company. This book introduces a new paradigm created by Val Gokenbach for leadership in complex organizations and provides effective strategies that will guide leaders in the business field. Val possesses a doctoral degree in Management and organizational leadership and over 40 years of experience as a healthcare executive. She is also a leadership consultant, professor, executive coach and author on leadership topics. You, as a business leader, will learn to reinvent yourself by putting her proven concepts into effect to become a Phoenix in your organization.

How can tech-forward companies, institutions and non-profits stay relevant long term in today’s fast changing global economy? Written for leaders seeking proven strategies, this book by a veteran business advisor and leadership coach explains what large organizations can learn from family enterprises, and vice versa. When survival is threatened by disruption, or growth has stalled, the book shows why seasoned leaders and rising leaders from both family and non-family organizations should join forces for mutual benefit of combining innovation and long term thinking. Florence Tsai advances the field of family business studies with new evolutionary models, organizational frameworks, and case studies of dozens of leading family companies, including IBM, Corning, and New York Times. The book addresses growing problems of disruption—challenges best addressed by seasoned and rising leaders working together, since they have complimentary skills. Seniors bring stability and judgment, while rising leaders understand new markets and introduces innovative ideas. The world’s best family enterprises are masters of survival; what they can learn from non-family companies is how to stay nimble when change is accelerating at rates never seen before. Non-family organizations facing trust gaps can learn from successful family enterprises’ laser focus on stakeholder engagement. Families like Levi Strauss or Hermès have built trusted brands for generations. Facing disruption, Tsai explains how non-family organizations can insert long term thinking into the DNA of your organization by observing how enterprising families with enduring competitive advantages accomplish it. Strategies include how to develop future-forward mindsets supportive of innovation culture; how to nurture rising leaders who are intrapreneurs, entrepreneurs, and portfolio builders and prepare them to lead in their thirties. Phoenixes rising are the next-generation leaders who lead their family enterprise through intentional transformation in response to inevitable changes and yield successful growth. The book describes this mechanism in detail. Legendary Phoenixes profiled in this book include Irénée du Pont in the U.S., whose tech innovation at Eleutherian Mills transformed the gun powder industry; David René de Rothschild in France, who rebuilt a banking business from scratch; and John Elkann of Fiat in Italy, who led the Agnelli family through a succession crisis to emerge stronger. Stories of successful next generation innovators include John D. Rockefeller, Jr. in the U.S., Cristina Stenbeck of AB Kinnevik in Sweden; and Mikkel Vestergaard, inventor of LifeStraw, in Switzerland. With insights drawn from more than a decade of working closely with leading business families and advising the Chairmen and CEOs of their companies, the author argues that if we want to be guided by their long term success, it’s the pioneer spirit of the family leaders, plus the enterprising culture of the families themselves, not so much their products or their famous companies, that we should pay attention to. Written for the hackers and for the master architects, Phoenix Rising spotlights principled wealth creation and the shared value that comes from doing good while doing good business, engaging partners and stakeholders sustainably, for the lasting benefit of oneself and society.

In the corporate world, complacent companies run the risk of extinction. In this guide, James Belasco and Jerre Stead propose that management must identify and focus on long-term future goals to propel a business into the future.

'. . . very interesting and thought-provoking. . . The cases are detailed and the scholarship is impressive. . . Academics and practitioners working in either knowledge management or strategic management will find plenty here of value, as would research or dissertation students.' - John S. Edwards, Knowledge Management Research and Practice

Whether touted for its burgeoning economy, affordable housing, and pleasant living style, or criticized for being less like a city than a sprawling suburb, Phoenix, by all environmental logic, should not exist. Yet despite its extremely hot and dry climate and its remoteness, Phoenix has grown into a massive metropolitan area. This exhaustive study examines the history of how Phoenix came into being and how it has sustained itself, from its origins in the 1860s to its present status as the nation’s fifth largest city. From the beginning, Phoenix sought to grow, and although growth has remained central to the city’s history, its importance, meaning, and value have changed substantially over the years. The initial vision of Phoenix as an American Eden gave way to the Cold War Era vision of a High Tech Suburbia, which in turn gave way to rising concerns in the late twentieth century about the environmental, social, and political costs of growth. To understand how such unusual growth occurred in such an improbable location, Philip VanderMeer explores five major themes: the natural environment, urban infrastructure, economic development, social and cultural values, and public leadership. Through investigating Phoenix’s struggle to become a major American metropolis, his study also offers a unique view of what it means to be a desert city.

More than half of all Arizonans live in Phoenix, the center of one of the most urbanized states in the nation. This history of the Sunbelt metropolis traces its growth from its founding in 1867 to its present status as one of the ten largest cities in the United States. Drawing on a wide variety of archival materials, oral accounts, promotional literature, and urban historical studies, Bradford Luckingham presents an urban biography of a thriving city that for more than a century has been an oasis of civilization in the desert Southwest. First homesteaded by pioneers bent on seeing a new agricultural empire rise phoenix-like from ancient Hohokam Indian irrigation ditches and farming settlements, Phoenix became an agricultural oasis in the desert during the late 1800s. With the coming of the railroads and the transfer of the territorial capital to Phoenix, local boosters were already proclaiming it the new commercial center of Arizona. As the city also came to be recognized as a health and tourist mecca, thanks to its favorable climate, the concept of "the good life" became the centerpiece of the city's promotional efforts. Luckingham follows these trends through rapid expansion, the Depression, and the postwar boom years, and shows how economic growth and quality of life have come into conflict in recent times.

A committee under the auspices of the Board on Science, Technology, and Economic Policy (STEP), is conducting a study of selected state and regional programs in order to identify best practices with regard to their goals, structures, instruments, modes of operation, synergies across private and public programs, funding mechanisms and levels, and evaluation efforts. The committee is reviewing selected state and regional efforts to capitalize on federal and state investments in areas of critical national needs. Building the Arkansas Innovation Economy: Summary of a Symposium includes both efforts to strengthen existing industries as well as specific new technology focus areas such as nanotechnology, stem cells, and energy in order to better understand program goals, challenges, and accomplishments. As a part of this review, the committee is convening a series of public workshops and symposia involving responsible local, state, and federal officials and other stakeholders. These meetings and symposia will enable an exchange of views, information, experience, and analysis to identify best practice in the range of programs and incentives adopted. Drawing from discussions at these symposia, fact-finding meetings, and commissioned analyses of existing state and regional programs and technology focus areas, the committee will subsequently produce a final report with findings and recommendations focused on lessons, issues, and opportunities for complementary U.S. policies created by these state and regional initiatives. Since 1991, the National Research Council, under the auspices of the Board on Science, Technology, and Economic Policy, has undertaken a program of activities to improve policymakers' understandings of the interconnections of science, technology, and economic policy and their importance for the American economy and its international competitive position. The Board's activities have corresponded with increased policy recognition of the importance of knowledge and technology to economic growth. One important element of STEP's analysis concerns the growth and impact of foreign technology programs.1 U.S. competitors have launched substantial programs to support new technologies, small firm development, and consortia among large and small firms to strengthen national and regional positions in strategic sectors. Some governments overseas have chosen to provide public support to innovation to overcome the market imperfections apparent in their national innovation systems. They believe that the rising costs and risks associated with new potentially high-payoff technologies, and the growing global dispersal of technical expertise, underscore the need for national R&D programs to support new and existing high-technology firms within their borders.

For decades, North American cities racked by deindustrialization and population loss have followed one primary path in their attempts at revitalization: a focus on economic growth in downtown and business areas. Neighborhoods, meanwhile, have often been left severely underserved. There are, however, signs of change. This collection of studies by a distinguished group of political scientists and urban planning scholars offers a rich analysis of the scope, potential, and ramifications of a shift still in progress. Focusing on neighborhoods in six cities—Baltimore, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Toronto—the authors show how key players, including politicians and philanthropic organizations, are beginning to see economic growth and neighborhood improvement as complementary goals. The heads of universities and hospitals in central locations also find themselves facing newly defined realities, adding to the fluidity of a new political landscape even as structural inequalities exert a continuing influence. While not denying the hurdles that community revitalization still faces, the contributors ultimately put forth a strong case that a more hospitable local milieu can be created for making neighborhood policy. In examining the course of experiences from an earlier period of redevelopment to the present postindustrial city, this book opens a window on a complex process of political change and possibility for reform.

This is the second and final volume of the business history of one of the UK's oldest and largest insurance offices, based upon probably the best archive in the business. This volume covers the period from 1870 to the absorption of the Phoenix by Sun Alliance (now Royal and Sun Alliance) in 1984. The Phoenix papers are used to analyse the triumphs and trials, not only of a single insurance venture, but of an entire financial sector in a notably turbulent century. Insurance is concerned with the way people drive, the way they retire, or buy their houses, or invest, or educate their children, or go to war. It follows that a major insurance history also throws light on many aspects of modern British social history. As the great composite offices expanded to offer fire, accident, marine, and life insurance across a single 'counter', so they caught within their dealings an increasingly representative slice of British commercial and social life.