The enduring legacy of one of America's most decorated composers is the basis of the Marvin Hamlisch International Music Awards, aimed at recognizing and enabling the next generation of music composition talent through a worldwide annual competition.

DIGITALSPEC will continue to support TSA I&A with communications and correspondence services, acting as the Executive Secretariat for I&A.

With teams in Lebanon, United States, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Kuwait, Eurisko Mobility successfully implements Work From Home strategy in order to keep delivering enterprise mobile, web, IoT products to local and international clients

ThinkWay Introduces Virtual Strategy Sprints to Get Businesses Going Again

Buckley

The world's leading health care apparel company, with a portfolio of iconic and emerging brands, has a new name and website, www.Careismatic.com.

Pre-registration is now open worldwide ahead of its launch in March

Amazon's Smart Ring launch marks the beginning of a new era for Smart Rings - they are now mainstream, and the market growth will accelerate. Haltian's Smart Ring whitepaper analyzes the market and helps companies define their go-to-market strategy!

The publication challenges you to start rethinking your strategies during today's economic phase, and highlights the importance of staying true to your vision in both good and bad economic times.

CPI Consulting CEO for over 30 years reveals success strategies for "Planning the Life You Desire ~ Living the Life You Deserve: Creating & Achieving Goals That Matter Most"

In this whitepaper, authors explore the idea that the equipment fleet is a strategic asset and should be managed as one.

Medical illustrators around the world are creating accurate visualizations and public education materials of SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19.

The market 'has been driven by sentiment recently' — and is overvalued, warns one veteran strategist.

Visual content demonstrates the best way to protect an accident injury case

This week, we highlight three new titles from the ASPA Series in Public Administration and Public Policy.

Market disruptions, climate change, and health pandemics lead the growing list of challenges faced by today’s leaders. These issues, along with countless others that do not make the daily news, require novel thinking and collaborative action to find workable solutions. However, many administrators stumble into collaboration without a strategic orientation.

Using a practitioner-oriented style, Strategic Collaboration In Public And Non-Profit Administration: A Practice-Based Approach To Solving Shared Problems provides guidance on how to collaborate more effectively, with less frustration and better results.

Linking collaboration theory to effective practice, this book offers essential advice that fosters shared understanding, creative answers, and transformation results through strategic collaborative action. With an emphasis on application, it uses scenarios, real-world cases, tables, figures, tools, and checklists to highlight key points.

The appendix includes supplemental resources such as collaboration operating guidelines, a meeting checklist, and a collaboration literature review to help public and nonprofit managers successfully convene, administer, and lead collaboration. The book presents a framework for engaging in collaboration in a way that stretches current thinking and advances public service practice.

A guidebook through the minefield of government contracting and procurement, Government Contracting: Promises and Perils describes the dangerous practices commonly applied in the development and management of government contracts and provides advice for avoiding the sort of errors that might compromise their ability to protect the public interest.

It includes strategies for increasing profits for government contractors, rather than incurring burdensome costs, through compliance with government mandated subcontracting and financial management systems.

Drawing from his in-depth investigation of government agencies across the country, the author examines present-day scenarios that regularly lead public servants and government committees to manage contracts with tools that are less than optimal and to select contractors that may not be the best qualified. He then delineates practical processes, contracting documents, and contract management tools to mitigate detrimental outcomes and alternative approaches to supplant the imperfect methodologies.

The author includes a CD-ROM with the book that provides a number of practical tools that you can apply as well as examples of contracts and templates that are the best he discovered during his research. The book also outlines an approach for performing advance contract planning, conducting contract negotiations, and administering contracts useful when planning for the management of the contracting process throughout the contracting cycle, negotiating a contract that protects the interest of all contracting parties, and ensuring successful contractor performance.

Filling a gap in project management literature, Managing Public Sector Projects: A Strategic Framework for Success in an Era of Downsized Government supplies managers and administrators—at all levels of government—with expert guidance on all aspects of public sector project management.

From properly allocating risks in drafting contracts to dealing with downsized staffs and privatized services, this book clearly explains the technical concepts and the political issues involved.

In line with the principles of Total Quality Management (TQM) and the PMBOK^® (Project Management Body of Knowledge), David S. Kassel establishes a framework those in the public sector can follow to ensure the success of their public projects and programs. He supplies more than 30 real-life examples to illustrate the concepts behind the framework—including reconstruction projects in Iraq, the Big Dig project in Boston, local sewer system and library construction projects, and software technology.

This authoritative resource provides strategic recommendations for effective planning, execution, and maintenance of public projects. It also:

• Highlights the differences between managing projects in the public sector versus the private sector
• Explains how to scrutinize costs, performance claims, and the backgrounds of prospective contractors
• Presents key safeguards that should be included in all contracts with contractors, consultants, suppliers, and other service providers
• Details the basics of project cost estimation, design and scheduling, and how to hold contractors responsible for meeting established project standards

In an age of downsized government and in the face of a general distrust of public service, this book is a dependable guide for avoiding management practices that are common to projects that fail and for adopting the practices common to projects that succeed in terms of cost, schedule, and quality.

Each and every day, social media tools change the way that organizations
interact with their users.

A recent report from the Center For Urban Transportation Research at University of South Florida titled Routes To New Networks: A Guide To Social Media For The Public Transportation Industry (66p. PDF) explains how these new platforms offer not only more personal one-on-one interaction than traditional media, but also represent the essence of niche marketing.

It is undeniable that social media is all the buzz. For some, utilizing new media tools may come as second nature. For others, however, entering the world of social media means taking a giant leap into the world of online communications.

One thing is certain – social media platforms are allowing a new opportunity for transportation providers to directly communicate with their target audiences. Communication is moving in this direction – with or without your organization.

The report analyzes the usefulness of and applications for social networks, written blogs, audio/video blogs, microblogs (e.g. Twitter), photo sharing, video sharing, user-generated content and mobile web content.

The report states that key points to consider when determining which tool(s) to use are:

1) Who is my target audience and what tools are they using?
2) What type of information do I want to communicate?

Content must always resonate with your audience. What can you provide that would be of value?

Earlier this year, the American Public Transportation Association (APTA) published Funding The Public Transportation Needs Of An Aging Population (57p. PDF).

It explains how rapid growth in the number of older people in the United States during the coming decades will lead to greatly increased needs for expanded and enhanced public transportation services. This report:

a) identifies the range of actions that will be needed to expand mobility options for older people, including accessible public transportation services;
b) quantifies the demand for these public transportation services; and
c) estimates the funding that will be needed to provide them.

Needed actions have been identified by means of a review of the extensive literature on this
subject. The actions needed to expand mobility options for older people include:

• Enhancements to fixed-route public transportation operations and planning such as additional bus operator training, incorporating travel needs of older people in route planning and stop placement, and coordination with other agencies and transportation providers
• Enhancements to public transportation vehicles such as low-floor buses, kneeling buses, improved interior circulation, additional stanchions and grab bars, ergonomic seating designed for older riders, and accessibility features either required or encouraged by ADA like lifts and ramps, larger letters on head signs, and stop announcements
• Actions to help older people take advantage of existing services, like presenting information in ways that are easy to read and as clear as possible, information and assistance programs to connect older people with appropriate services, and outreach and training programs
• Expansion of supplementary services including flexible route and community transportation services, ADA complementary paratransit, non-ADA demand-responsive services, taxi subsidy programs, and volunteer driver programs
• Application of universal design strategies at transit facilities, bus stops, and on streets and sidewalks in the immediate vicinity of transit facilities and stops

These are the actions of greatest concern to public transportation agencies, but they are not the
only actions needed.

Other important actions include assuring supportive services to caregivers
who provide transportation, encouraging further development of unsubsidized private
transportation services, increasing the availability of accessible taxicabs, coordinating with non-emergency medical transportation provided under Medicaid and Medicare, and supporting
modifications to automobiles and roadways to increase the safety of older drivers.

Finally, we wanted to take a closer look at U.S. Parking Policies: An Overview Of Management Strategies put out by the Institute For Transportation And Development Policy in New York.

This report highlights best practices in parking management in the United States.

In the last decade, some municipalities have reconsidered poorly conceived parking policies to address a host of negative impacts resulting from private automobile use such as traffic congestion and climate change. Unchecked, these policies have proven to be a major barrier to establishing a balanced urban transportation network.

Many aspects of current parking management in the United States do not work reliably or efficiently for anyone: Motorists find themselves circling for long periods in search of a place to park; retail employees take choice parking locations away from potential customers; developers are compelled to provide more parking than the market requires; and traffic managers encounter difficulty handling traffic generated by new parking as there is often no link between parking price, supply and the amount of available road space.

Finally, the old parking paradigm doesn’t work for the environment, as hidden subsidies encourage over reliance on private car use — a major, growing contributor to global warming and air pollution.

This report identifies core sustainable parking principles and illustrates how smarter parking management can benefit consumers and businesses in time and money savings, while also leading to more livable, attractive communities.

You walk down one aisle of the grocery store to get your favorite cereal. On the dairy aisle, someone sick from COVID-19 coughs. Did your decision to grab your cereal before your milk possibly keep you healthy? How can these unpredictable, near-random choices be included in complex models?

Chris Trimble, Tuck School of Business faculty and coauthor of "Ten Rules for Strategic Innovators: From Idea to Execution."

Pankaj Ghemawat, IESE Business School professor and author of "Redefining Global Strategy: Crossing Borders in a World Where Differences Still Matter."

George Stalk, senior partner at The Boston Consulting Group and author of "Five Future Strategies You Need Right Now."

Mark Gordon, founding partner of Vantage Partners and coauthor of "The Point of the Deal: How to Negotiate When Yes Is Not Enough."

Rohit Deshpande, Harvard Business School professor.

Adam Werbach, global CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi S and author of "Strategy for Sustainability: A Business Manifesto."

Michael Watkins, cofounder of Genesis Advisers and author of the HBR article "Picking the Right Transition Strategy."

Dick Beatty, professor of human resource management at Rutgers University and coauthor of "The Differentiated Workforce."

Cesare Mainardi, managing director of Booz & Company and coauthor of "Cut Costs, Grow Stronger."

Walter Kiechel, former managing editor at Fortune magazine and author of "The Lords of Strategy: The Secret Intellectual History of the New Corporate World."

Bob Sutton, Stanford University professor and author of "The No Asshole Rule."

Chris Zook, partner at Bain & Company and co-head of the firm's global strategy practice.

Andrew Zolli, director of PopTech and coauthor of "Resilience: Why Things Bounce Back."

Nilofer Merchant, author of "11 Rules for Creating Value in the Social Era."

Ben Casnocha and Chris Yeh, coauthors of the HBR article "Tours of Duty: The New Employer-Employee Compact."

Sandeep Baliga and Jeff Ely, professors at the Kellogg School of Management and Northwestern University.

Frank Cespedes, HBS professor and author of "Aligning Strategy and Sales," explains how to get the front line on board.

Renée Mauborgne of INSEAD explains how a landmark idea is evolving. She is coauthor, along with W. Chan Kim, of "Blue Ocean Strategy, Expanded Edition (2015)."

Paul Leinwand, co-author of the book "Strategy That Works," explains how successful companies solve this thorny problem.

Raffaella Sadun, a professor at Harvard Business School, explains why seemingly common-sensical management practices are so hard to implement. After surveying thousands of organizations across the world, she found that only 6% of firms qualified as highly well-managed — and that managers mistakenly assumed they were all above average. She is a co-author of “Why Do We Undervalue Competent Management?” in the September–October 2017 issue of Harvard Business Review.

Joshua Gans, a professor at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, advises against trying to commercialize a new technology or product before considering all the strategic options. He talks through some questions entrepreneurs should ask themselves — like, collaborate or compete? — and outlines a framework he and his fellow researchers have found to work best for startups. Gans is the coauthor of the article “Do Entrepreneurs Need a Strategy?”

Sunil Gupta, a professor at Harvard Business School, argues that many companies are still doing digital strategy wrong. Their leaders think of "going digital" as either a way to cut costs or to attract customers with a flashy new app. Gupta says successful digital strategy is more complicated than that. He recommends emulating the multi-faceted strategies of leading digital companies. Gupta's the author of “Driving Digital Strategy: A Guide to Reimagining Your Business."

Disclosure: The links in this post are affiliate links, meaning, at no additional cost to you, I will earn a commission  if you click through and make a purchase. It’s how I get paid! Thank you!! Registration is now open!  … Continue reading →

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The Situation Samantha Rudolph and her husband, Jared, received an Arch Grant in 2015 to take their company, Babyation, founded on their proprietary redesign of an improved breast pump, to the next level. Fantastically, a cadre of vendors comes with the award—St. Louis companies that volunteer their time and talents to help startups navigate everything...

The post Collaboration and Strategic Startup Advice: the Perfect Fit for Babyation appeared first on Anders CPA.

The Situation Cheree Berry Paper (CBP), one of the nation’s premier custom stationery and graphic design firms, has designed wedding invitations for first families and delivered paper possibilities to Hollywood’s most sought-after stars. They have expanded from a one-person shop to a team of more than 20 women in just over a decade so they are...

The post Strategic Guidance Leads to Growth for Cheree Berry appeared first on Anders CPA.

NECA's legislative top three for the week of January 17, 2020

How an organization responds to CCPA and future-proofs itself against additional laws will dictate how well it will perform for years to come

One of the most impactful innovations in IT is the democratization of the application development process

The business world has evolved in recent years as more companies have opted for an increasingly distributed and mobile workforce through the widespread adoption of collaboration and conferencing technologies

The end of the year is fast approaching whether we are ready or not! There are several tax savings strategies that you can utilize to reduce the taxes you will be paying for the 2019 tax year.
Bunch Itemized Deductions… Read More

The post 2019 Year-End Tax Planning Strategies appeared first on Anders CPAs.

Good news came for taxpayers with large estates when the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) was passed. The TCJA doubled the estate and gift tax lifetime exemption, from $5.49 million per taxpayer to $11.18 million per taxpayer. For 2019,… Read More

The post How Portability Can be a Valuable Estate Planning Tax Strategy appeared first on Anders CPAs.

The time saved on travel can now be used to upskill or learn about a new sector or industry that you previously did not cater to. Having a sound knowledge of your clients’ business makes you stand out amongst your competition.