The Power of NOW

Meet the future head-on with this incisive book that details emerging trends that will affect all businesses as they progress through the 21st century. Today's technology has become vital to the speed and performance of business. The fast-paced, high-stakes world of technology is infiltrating business everywhere, through the extensive use of high-speed networks, powerful desktop computers, the Internet, and integrated information across many systems. Customers are also demanding that everything be done faster, at lower cost without sacrificing quality.

How will your company compete and prosper in the new millennium? How can you raise your company above the ravages of creeping commoditization and gain that crucial, elusive competitive advantage? The answers lie in becoming event-driven. Event-driven companies (those that acquire, deploy, and wisely exploit real-time information) are the most successful at sensing and responding to the events that drive their businesses. They use the power of real-time information to drive the development and delivery of new products and services.

The winning approach presented in this book will benefit any company competing in this age of globalization, emerging technologies, and ever-increasing competition. After reading this book, you will be able to employ the technology to create real-time operations, and you will have the tools, mindset, and organizational structure that enable you to do the right thing at the right time. And the right time is now.

1. The Event-Driven Company
• The Event-Driven Revolution
• The Global Networked Society
• What I Believe
• Event-Driven: The Metamanagement Theory
• How Bechtel Corporation Is Event-Driven
• The Age of Punctuated Equilibrium
• It All Starts with the Customer
• Let's Get Busy
• There Are No Silver Bullets
2. Becoming Event-Driven
• Is Yours an Event-Driven Company?
• Your Company Needs to Change, but How?
• Becoming Event-Driven: The Ultimate IT Upgrade
• Your Dreams for Your Business
• Some Advice about Becoming Event-Driven
3. From the Trading Floor to the Event-Driven Enterprise
• The Event-Driven Warrior
• Trading: The Oldest Human Profession
• 85 Broad Street
• The Way It Was
• How the Trading Floor Eventually Became Event-Driven
4. The Event-Driven IT Architecture
• From the Trading Floor to the Enterprise to the Internet
• Information Is Knowledge Is Power
• The Publish/Subscribe Paradigm
• The Information Bus
• Middleware and Infrastructure Software
• Reliable Multicast/PGM
• How NASDAQ Is Using Multicasting
• Event-Driven Technology Infrastructure
• Management by Exception
5. event-driven.com
• Make the Internet Work for You
• Extend Your Business with a Portal
• How Sticky Is Your Portal?
• Creating an E-Community
• The EIP — Your Showroom for the Twenty-First Century
6. The Event-Driven Philosophy
• "Contemporary" to "Cellular"
• "Industry" to "Ecosystem"
• Knowledge Management in the Event-Driven Company
• All from Column A, All from Column B, All from Column C
• Embedding Your Core Competencies
7. Leadership and Organization
• The Star System
• Compensation, Partnership, and Ownership
• The Mission Statement: Guiding Star
• Tips on How to Lead by Following
8. The Ecosystem: Competitors, Customers, and Partners
• Competitors: A Fine Distraction
• Customers and the Many Markets Inside Each One
• Partners and Allies: Learning from Hollywood
9. Leading the Change to the Event-Driven Company
• Beating the Odds
• Leadership: Beyond Charisma
• Missionaries
• Overcoming Barriers to Change
10. Conclusion
• The Age of the Knowledge Worker
• How Becoming Event-Driven Can Spur Your Company's Productivity
• The New Meaning of Life/Workspace
• The Event-Driven Future

In reality an advert for TIBCO, but it has some very good points.