100 Best Operations Research Books of All Time

We've researched and ranked the best operations research books in the world, based on recommendations from world experts, sales data, and millions of reader ratings. Learn more

Featuring recommendations from Tim Cook, Jeff Bezos, Walter Isaacson, and 63 other experts.
1

The Goal

A Process of Ongoing Improvement

Written in a fast-paced thriller style, 'The Goal' contains a serious message for all managers in industry and explains the ideas which underline the Theory of Constraints developed by the author. less

Jeff BezosEncourages companies to identify the biggest constraints in their operations and then structure their organizations to get the most out of those constraints. (Source)

Kevin SystromAbout basically manufacturing and supply chain management. It sounds really boring, but I promise you it’s really good. (Source)

Chris GowardHere are some of the books that have been very impactful for me, or taught me a new way of thinking: [...] The Goal. (Source)

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2
The definitive story of Amazon.com, one of the most successful companies in the world, and of its driven, brilliant founder, Jeff Bezos.

Amazon.com started off delivering books through the mail. But its visionary founder, Jeff Bezos, wasn't content with being a bookseller. He wanted Amazon to become the everything store, offering limitless selection and seductive convenience at disruptively low prices. To do so, he developed a corporate culture of relentless ambition and secrecy that's never been cracked. Until now. Brad Stone enjoyed unprecedented access to current and...
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Doug McMillon[I read and give this book because] you need to understand what you’re up against. (Source)

Santiago BasultoI love to read biographies and stories of companies. Hatching Twitter is a really good book, and if you’re into that sort of books, bios of Steve Jobs (by Isaacson) or Jeff Bezos are great too. (Source)

Tracy DiNunzioIt's a great book and especially for people starting out. (Source)

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3
Even the smartest among us can feel inept as we fail to figure out which light switch or oven burner to turn on, or whether to push, pull, or slide a door. The fault, argues this ingenious—even liberating—book, lies not in ourselves, but in product design that ignores the needs of users and the principles of cognitive psychology. The problems range from ambiguous and hidden controls to arbitrary relationships between controls and functions, coupled with a lack of feedback or other assistance and unreasonable demands on memorization. The Design of Everyday Things shows that good, usable... more

Marius Ciuchete Pauneval(ez_write_tag([[250,250],'theceolibrary_com-large-mobile-banner-2','ezslot_5',164,'0','1'])); Question: Was there a moment, specifically, when something you read in a book helped you? Answer: Yes there was. In fact, I can remember two separate sentences from two different books: The first one comes from “The Design of Everyday Things” by Don Norman. It says: “great design will help... (Source)

Grey BakerI mainly read to decompress and change my state of mind, so it’s hard to point to an insight I read that helped me. Reading fiction has pulled me out of a bad mood more times than I can count, though, and always reenergises me to attack problems that had stumped me again. That said, I read and loved Norman Norman’s “The Design of Everyday Things”, and it’s helped me think through design problems... (Source)

Kaci LambeThese three books are about how people actually use design in their lives. They helped me understand this very basic idea: There are no dumb users, only bad designers. Take the time to create based on how your design will be interacted with. Test it. Iterate. That's how you become a good designer. (Source)

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4
From Brian Greene, one of the world’s leading physicists and author the Pulitzer Prize finalist The Elegant Universe, comes a grand tour of the universe that makes us look at reality in a completely different way.

Space and time form the very fabric of the cosmos. Yet they remain among the most mysterious of concepts. Is space an entity? Why does time have a direction? Could the universe exist without space and time? Can we travel to the past? Greene has set himself a daunting task: to explain non-intuitive, mathematical concepts like String Theory, the Heisenberg...
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Recommended by Walter Isaacson, Sean M Carroll, and 2 others.

Walter IsaacsonThis is the clearest explanation of Newton and Einstein available, and Greene does it with a great sense of humour and wonderful visual thought experiments. (Source)

Sean M CarrollIt covers issues that don’t get attention in other places, such as the nature of time, the nature of space and really gives you a profound understanding of the universe. (Source)

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5
John Boyd may be the most remarkable unsung hero in all of American military history. Some remember him as the greatest U.S. fighter pilot ever -- the man who, in simulated air-to-air combat, defeated every challenger in less than forty seconds. Some recall him as the father of our country's most legendary fighter aircraft -- the F-15 and F-16. Still others think of Boyd as the most influential military theorist since Sun Tzu. They know only half the story.

Boyd, more than any other person, saved fighter aviation from the predations of the Strategic Air Command. His manual of...
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Recommended by Ryan Holiday, and 1 others.

Ryan HolidayBoyd was probably the greatest post-WWII military strategist; he developed the F-15 and F-16, revolutionized ground tactics in war and covertly designed the US battle plans for the Gulf War. He shunned wealth, fame, and power all to accomplish what he felt needed to be accomplished. Coram captures his essence in a way that no other author has touched. (Source)

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7

Accelerate

Building and Scaling High-Performing Technology Organizations

Does technology actually matter? And how can we apply technology to drive business value? For years, we've been told that the performance of software delivery teams doesn't matter--that it can't provide a competitive advantage to our companies. Through four years of groundbreaking research, Dr. Nicole Forsgren, Jez Humble, and Gene Kim set out to find a way to measure software delivery performance--and what drives it--using rigorous statistical methods. This book presents both the findings and the science behind that research. Readers will discover how to measure the performance of their... more
Recommended by Kirk Borne, and 1 others.

Kirk BorneFantastic accomplishment! Congratulations @nicolefv on your outstanding #DevOps book ... I love that: “The Science of Lean” ... that works also for #DataOps and Lean Analytics. https://t.co/i9gPhKL0dt https://t.co/DNJpuJtER0 (Source)

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8

Integrating Renewables in Electricity Markets

Operational Problems

This book provides up-to-date analytical tools to address challenging operational problems in renewable energy production facilities, such as wind- and solar-based generation units. It includes many illustrative examples. less

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9
Extremes Values, Regular Variation and Point Processes is a readable and efficient account of the fundamental mathematical and stochastic process techniques needed to study the behavior of extreme values of phenomena based on independent and identically distributed random variables and vectors. It presents a coherent treatment of the distributional and sample path fundamental properties of extremes and records. It emphasizes the core primacy of three topics necessary for understanding extremes: the analytical theory of regularly varying functions; the probabilistic theory of point processes... more

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10
The author, a diocesan director of marriage and family life, answers the questions about human sexuality and marriage that he always encounters in the numerous adult audiences he addresses. He provides thoughtful responses that present Catholic Church teaching in a fresh, thoroughly appealing, and convincing manner. 

Foreword by Charles J. Chaput.
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Don't have time to read the top Operations Research books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.

Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:

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  • Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
11

Introductory Management Science

Decision Modeling with Spreadsheets

Suitable for a management science or operations research course which takes a spreadsheet approach, this text introduces readers to the key ideas of modelling and management decision making. The book offers a conceptual foundation for all topics and the role of spreadsheet modelling techniques in th larger context of business decision-making. less

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12
Practical Financial Optimization is a comprehensive guide to optimization techniques in financial decision making. This book illuminates the relationship between theory and practice, providing the readers with solid foundational knowledge. Focuses on classical static mean-variance analysis and portfolio immunization, scenario-based models, multi-period dynamic portfolio optimization, and the relationships between classes of models Analyizes real world applications and implications for financial engineers Includes a list of models and a section on notations that includes a glossary of... more

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13
Data Science gets thrown around in the press like it's magic. Major retailers are predicting everything from when their customers are pregnant to when they want a new pair of Chuck Taylors. It's a brave new world where seemingly meaningless data can be transformed into valuable insight to drive smart business decisions.

But how does one exactly do data science? Do you have to hire one of these priests of the dark arts, the "data scientist," to extract this gold from your data? Nope.

Data science is little more than using straight-forward steps to process raw data into...
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15
A Perspective on Two Decades of Rapid Modeling It is an honor for me to be asked to write a foreword to the Proceedings of the 1st Rapid Modeling Conference. In 1987, when I coined the term Rapid Modeling to denote queuing modeling of manufacturing systems, I never imagined that two decades later there would be an international conference devoted to this topic! I am delighted to see that there will be around 40 presentations at the conference by leading researchers from aroundthe world, and about half of these presentationsare represented by written papers published in this book. I... more

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16

Convex Optimization

Convex optimization problems arise frequently in many different fields. A comprehensive introduction to the subject, this book shows in detail how such problems can be solved numerically with great efficiency. The focus is on recognizing convex optimization problems and then finding the most appropriate technique for solving them. The text contains many worked examples and homework exercises and will appeal to students, researchers and practitioners in fields such as engineering, computer science, mathematics, statistics, finance, and economics. less

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17
Peter Seibel interviews 16 of the most interesting computer programmers alive today in Coders at Work, offering a brand-new companion volume to Apress’s highly acclaimed best-seller Founders at Work by Jessica Livingston. As the words "at work" suggest, Peter Seibel focuses on how his interviewees tackle the day–to–day work of programming, while revealing much more, like how they became great programmers, how they recognize programming talent in others, and what kinds of problems they find most interesting.

Hundreds of people have suggested names of programmers to interview on the...
more
Recommended by Santiago Basulto, Vicki Boykis, and 2 others.

Santiago BasultoFounders at Work and Coders at Work are really good ones too. They’re filled with interesting and inspiring stories. (Source)

Vicki BoykisIt’s about how those people got into programming and how they think about it. It’s a very conversational book that really helps you to learn the culture of this industry you’re coming into, and some of its terminology. (Source)

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18
In the 1950s, a method called Material Requirements Planning (or “MRP”) changed the world of manufacturing forever. But times have changed—customer tolerance times are shorter, product variety and complexity has increased, and supply chains have spread around the world.  MRP is dramatically failing in this “New Normal.”
 
Demand Driven Material Requirements Planning (DDMRP), Version 3 presents a practical, proven, and emerging method for supply chain planning and execution that effectively brings the 1950s concept into the modern era. The foundation of DDMRP is based upon...
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19
Practical data design tips from a data visualization expert of the modern age Data doesn't decrease; it is ever-increasing and can be overwhelming to organize in a way that makes sense to its intended audience. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could actually visualize data in such a way that we could maximize its potential and tell a story in a clear, concise manner? Thanks to the creative genius of Nathan Yau, we can. With this full-color book, data visualization guru and author Nathan Yau uses step-by-step tutorials to show you how to visualize and tell stories with data. He explains... more
Recommended by Roger D. Peng, and 1 others.

Roger D. PengThis book is about how best to present data to other people, what are the tools that you can use, and the types of visualizations that you can make. (Source)

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20

Numerical Optimization

Numerical Optimization presents a comprehensive and up-to-date description of the most effective methods in continuous optimization. It responds to the growing interest in optimization in engineering, science, and business by focusing on the methods that are best suited to practical problems.

For this new edition the book has been thoroughly updated throughout. There are new chapters on nonlinear interior methods and derivative-free methods for optimization, both of which are used widely in practice and the focus of much current research. Because of the emphasis on practical...
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Don't have time to read the top Operations Research books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.

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  • Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
  • Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
21
A fun and stunningly illustrated introduction to the art of linear optimization

Linear optimization is a powerful modeling method for discovering the best solution to a problem among a set of available alternatives. It is one of today's most important branches of mathematics and computer science--and also a surprisingly rich medium for creating breathtaking works of art. Opt Art takes readers on an entertaining tour of linear optimization and its applications, showing along the way how it can be used to design visual art.

Robert Bosch provides a lively and...
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22

Schaum's Outline of Operations Research

Confusing Textbooks? Missed Lectures? Not Enough Time?

Fortunately for you, there's Schaum's Outlines. More than 40 million students have trusted Schaum's to help them succeed in the classroom and on exams. Schaum's is the key to faster learning and higher grades in every subject. Each Outline presents all the essential course information in an easy-to-follow, topic-by-topic format. You also get hundreds of examples, solved problems, and practice exercises to test your skills.

This Schaum's Outline gives you

Practice problems with full...
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23
The market-leading textbook for the course, Winston's OPERATIONS RESEARCH owes much of its success to its practical orientation and consistent emphasis on model formulation and model building. It moves beyond a mere study of algorithms without sacrificing the rigor that faculty desire. As in every edition, Winston reinforces the book's successful features and coverage with the most recent developments in the field. The Student Suite CD-ROM, which now accompanies every new copy of the text, contains the latest versions of commercial software for optimization, simulation, and decision analysis. less

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24

Structured Analytic Techniques For Intelligence Analysis

Richards J. Heuer Jr. and Randolph H. Pherson turn a lifetime of expertise toward formalizing, adapting, and standardizing a set of 50 of the most robust analytic techniques in use in intelligence analysis today. This ready reference showcases current and cutting-edge best practices and represents a significant leap forward in depth, detail, and utility from existing handbooks.

Logically organized and richly illustrated, Structured Analytic Techniques makes it easy to navigate, reference, and put the tools to use right away. Each technique...
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25

Execution

The Discipline of Getting Things Done

"Execution may very well be the best business book of the year, and one of the most useful to have come around in a long time. This smart and pithy book focuses on a simple though vexing challenge: How can the leaders of an organization exhort their people to deliver on the most important goals?....It's rare to find a book like this that blends smart practice with intelligent articulation of how to get things done. Do yourself a favor. Buy it." --The Boston Globe

"Making all of the moving parts of an organization function smoothly together is just plain...

more
Recommended by Faisal Amin, and 1 others.

Faisal Amin‘Execution’ by Lawrence Bossidy and Ram Charan is a book that talks about decentralization and the fact that you are supposed to relinquish control to get things done. However, It’s one of the key learnings that most startups fail to understand. Luckily, the book has taught me great things about entrepreneurship. (Source)

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26
Suitable for advanced undergraduates and graduate students, this text surveys the classical theory of the calculus of variations. Topics include static systems, control systems, additional constraints, the Hamilton-Jacobi equation, and the accessory optimization problem. Emphasis throughout the text is placed upon methods and principles, which are illustrated by worked problems and sets of exercises. 1975 edition.
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27
"This book is useful, actionable, and actually fun to read! If you want to get your team aligned around real, measurable goals, Radical Focus will teach you how to do it quickly and clearly." - Laura Klein, Principal, Users Know

An actionable business book in the form of a fable.

Radical Focus tackles the OKR movement and better goal setting through the powerful story of Hanna and Jack's struggling tea startup. When the two receive an ultimatum from their only investor, they must learn how to employ Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) with radical focus to get the...
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Recommended by Dan Olsen, Laura Klein, and 2 others.

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28
This practical guide provides more than 150 recipes to help you generate high-quality graphs quickly, without having to comb through all the details of R's graphing systems. Each recipe tackles a specific problem with a solution you can apply to your own project, and includes a discussion of how and why the recipe works.

Most of the recipes use the ggplot2 package, a powerful and flexible way to make graphs in R. If you have a basic understanding of the R language, you're ready to get started.


Use R's default graphics for quick exploration of data
Create a...
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29
The classic survey design reference, updated for the digital age For over two decades, Dillman's classic text on survey design has aided both students and professionals in effectively planning and conducting mail, telephone, and, more recently, Internet surveys. The new edition is thoroughly updated and revised, and covers all aspects of survey research. It features expanded coverage of mobile phones, tablets, and the use of do-it-yourself surveys, and Dillman's unique Tailored Design Method is also thoroughly explained. This invaluable resource is crucial for any researcher seeking to... more
Recommended by Jakob Nielsen, and 1 others.

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30
Simulation-Based Optimization: Parametric Optimization Techniques and Reinforcement Learning introduce the evolving area of static and dynamic simulation-based optimization. Covered in detail are model-free optimization techniques - especially designed for those discrete-event, stochastic systems which can be simulated but whose analytical models are difficult to find in closed mathematical forms.

Key features of this revised and improved Second Edition include:

- Extensive coverage, via step-by-step recipes, of powerful new algorithms...
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  • Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
  • Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
32
NATIONAL BESTSELLER A Pulitzer Prize Finalist and the definitive history of DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency, from the author of the New York Times bestseller Area 51

No one has ever written the history of the Defense Department's most secret, most powerful, and most controversial military science R&D agency. In the first-ever history about the organization, New York Times bestselling author Annie Jacobsen draws on inside sources, exclusive interviews, private...
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33

Security Operations Management

Security Operations Management, 3rd edition, is the latest edition the seminal reference on corporate security management operations for today's security management professionals and students. The book explores the characteristics of today's globalized workplaces, why security has a key role within them, and what the greatest concern are to security practitioners and senior managers. Incorporating the latest security research and best practices, updates to Security Operations Management 3rd edition include explorations of the key skills needed by security managers to... more

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34

Text Mining with R

A Tidy Approach

Much of the data available today is unstructured and text-heavy, making it challenging for analysts to apply their usual data wrangling and visualization tools. With this practical book, you'll explore text-mining techniques with tidytext, a package that authors Julia Silge and David Robinson developed using the tidy principles behind R packages like ggraph and dplyr. You'll learn how tidytext and other tidy tools in R can make text analysis easier and more effective.

The authors demonstrate how treating text as data frames enables you to manipulate, summarize, and...
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35
Lean is the most widespread management philosophy of our time and is currently present in every industry, yet the concept is still vaguely defined and widely misunderstood. This is Lean - Resolving the efficiency paradox was launched in October 2011 and is currently the best-selling management book in Sweden, with 37,000 copies sold in one year. By using clear, concise language and insightful examples, the book has brought greater clarification to the essence of lean and revolutionized top-executives and employees understanding of what lean actually is. less

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36
What is the shortest possible route for a traveling salesman seeking to visit each city on a list exactly once and return to his city of origin? It sounds simple enough, yet the traveling salesman problem is one of the most intensely studied puzzles in applied mathematics--and it has defied solution to this day. In this book, William Cook takes readers on a mathematical excursion, picking up the salesman's trail in the 1800s when Irish mathematician W. R. Hamilton first defined the problem, and venturing to the furthest limits of today's state-of-the-art attempts to solve it. He also explores... more
Recommended by Nick Higham, and 1 others.

Nick HighamThe problem is very hard. Even with the fastest computers and the best algorithms that we have today, we aren’t able to solve it yet. (Source)

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38

The Logic of Scientific Discovery

2014 Reprint of Original 1959 Edition. Exact facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. This book by one of the world's foremost philosophers of science presented a striking new picture of the logical character of scientific discovery--a picture which does full justice to the liberating effect of the Einsteinian revolution in physics and its immense impact upon scientific thought in general. For this new English edition Dr. Popper did his own translation and has written 150 pages of entirely new text. Ernest Nagel considered this work "a first rate... more

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39
From two Toyota insiders--a practical, proven formula for developing a successful Lean culture in any organization

In 1986, Toyota opened a factory in rural Kentucky and unveiled TPS, its revolutionary management system. While most manufacturers and organizations now use Lean methods, the application is almost always superficial and confined within existing management frameworks. Consequently, the groundbreaking transformation that allowed Toyota to flourish against incredible odds has rarely been replicated.

Toyota's Engagement Equation is a...
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Don't have time to read the top Operations Research books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.

Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:

  • Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
  • Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
  • Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
41
Technology/Engineering/Mechanical

Helps you move from theory to optimizing engineering systems in almost any industry

Now in its Fourth Edition, Professor Singiresu Rao's acclaimed text Engineering Optimization enables readers to quickly master and apply all the important optimization methods in use today across a broad range of industries. Covering both the latest and classical optimization methods, the text starts off with the basics and then progressively builds to advanced principles and applications.

This comprehensive text covers...
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42
This textbook provides undergraduate students with an introduction to optimization and its uses for relevant and realistic problems. The only prerequisite for readers is a basic understanding of multivariable calculus because additional material, such as explanations of matrix tools, are provided in a series of asides both throughout the text at relevant points and in a handy appendix. The Basics of Practical Optimization presents step-by-step solutions for five prototypical examples that fit the general optimization model, along with instruction on using numerical methods to solve models and... more

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43
Statistical methods are a key part of of data science, yet very few data scientists have any formal statistics training. Courses and books on basic statistics rarely cover the topic from a data science perspective. This practical guide explains how to apply various statistical methods to data science, tells you how to avoid their misuse, and gives you advice on what's important and what's not.

Many data science resources incorporate statistical methods but lack a deeper statistical perspective. If you're familiar with the R programming language, and have some exposure to...
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44
IDEO, the widely admired, award-winning design and development firm that brought the world the Apple mouse, Polaroid's I-Zone instant camera, the Palm V, and hundreds of other cutting-edge products and services, reveals its secrets for fostering a culture and process of continuous innovation.

There isn't a business in America that doesn't want to be more creative in its thinking, products, and processes. At many companies, being first with a concept and first to market are critical just to survive. In The Art of Innovation, Tom Kelley, general manager of the Silicon Valley...
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Recommended by Seth Godin, and 1 others.

Seth GodinI don't know if you can teach this kind of creativity, but you can certainly raise your expectations by seeing how well they do design. (Source)

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45
The Thinker's Toolkit is an invaluable resource for every manager or professional - a unique collection of proven, practical methods for simplifying any problem and making faster, better decisions every time. Thanks to the computer and communications revolutions, businesspeople today are inundated with more data than ever before. But making sense of the information and using it to make smart, profitable decisions has never been tougher. The Thinker's Toolkit comes to the rescue. Using real-life examples and exercises, Morgan Jones explains how to replace seat-of-the-pants decision-making... more

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46
Would you be surprised that road rage can be good for society? Or that most crashes happen on sunny, dry days? That our minds can trick us into thinking the next lane is moving faster? Or that you can gauge a nation s driving behavior by its levels of corruption? These are only a few of the remarkable dynamics that Tom Vanderbilt explores in this fascinating tour through the mysteries of the road.
Based on exhaustive research and interviews with driving experts and traffic officials around the globe, Traffic gets under the hood of the everyday activity of driving to uncover the...
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47
Provides information on deterministic optimization methods. This book presents techniques of modeling real world decision making problems, modeling examples that illustrate the use of modeling techniques, and a variety of problem classes. It includes various types of algorithms with explanations of how each algorithm works, and more. less

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48
Daniel Weinfurter, a successful serial entrepreneur who has started two businesses of his own and played major roles in several others, takes the reader through the most complex and challenging phase of the entrepreneurial journey. By covering topics from leadership to business strategy to smart hiring, he explains how to transform a successful start-up into an enterprise that can succeed past its early days into a much larger, sustainable business.


This book analyzes how notable companies have employed one or more of these strategies to become the successful businesses they...
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49
Principles of Forecasting: A Handbook for Researchers and Practitioners summarizes knowledge from experts and from empirical studies. It provides guidelines that can be applied in fields such as economics, sociology, and psychology. It applies to problems such as those in finance (How much is this company worth?), marketing (Will a new product be successful?), personnel (How can we identify the best job candidates?), and production (What level of inventories should be kept?).
The book is edited by Professor J. Scott Armstrong of the Wharton School, University of...
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50

Practical Optimization

This book is designed to help problem solvers make the best use of optimization software--i.e., to use existing methods most effectively whenever possible, and to adapt and modify techniques for particular problems if necessary. The contents of this book therefore include some topics that are essential for all those who wish to solve optimization problems. In addition, certain topics are treated that should be of special interest in most practical optimization problems. For example, advice is given to users who wish to take an active role in formulating their problems so as to enhance the... more

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Don't have time to read the top Operations Research books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.

Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:

  • Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
  • Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
  • Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
51

A First Course in Optimization Theory

This book introduces students to optimization theory and its use in economics and allied disciplines. The first of its three parts examines the existence of solutions to optimization problems in Rn, and how these solutions may be identified. The second part explores how solutions to optimization problems change with changes in the underlying parameters, and the last part provides an extensive description of the fundamental principles of finite- and infinite-horizon dynamic programming. A preliminary chapter and three appendices are designed to keep the book mathematically self-contained. less

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52

The Pleasures of Counting

In this engaging and readable book, Dr. K�rner describes a variety of lively topics that continue to intrigue professional mathematicians. The topics range from the design of anchors and the Battle of the Atlantic to the outbreak of cholera in Victorian Soho. The author uses relatively simple terms and ideas, yet explains difficulties and avoids condescension. If you are a mathematician who wants to explain to others how you spend your working days, then seek inspiration here. This book will appeal to everyone interested in the uses of mathematics. less

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53

Q.E.D.

Beauty in Mathematical Proof

Q.E.D. presents some of the most famous mathematical proofs in a charming book that will appeal to nonmathematicians and math experts alike. Grasp in an instant why Pythagoras's theorem must be correct. Follow the ancient Chinese proof of the volume formula for the frustrating frustum, and Archimedes' method for finding the volume of a sphere. Discover the secrets of pi and why, contrary to popular belief, squaring the circle really is possible. Study the subtle art of mathematical domino tumbling, and find out how slicing cones helped save a city and put a man on the moon. less

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54

Design Rules

The Power of Modularity

We live in a dynamic economic and commerical world, surrounded by objects of remarkable complexity and power. In many industries, changes in products and technologies have brought with them new kinds of firms and forms of organization. We are discovering news ways of structuring work, of bringing buyers and sellers together, and of creating and using market information. Although our fast-moving economy often seems to be outside of our influence or control, human beings create the things that create the market forces. Devices, software programs, production processes, contracts, firms, and... more

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55

Thinking about America's Defense

An Analytical Memoir 2008

Offers the author's personal overview of analyses of dozens of historic national security issues drawn from his Air Force and RAND careers spanning the latter half of the 20th century. less

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56
The Wiley-Interscience Paperback Series consists of selected books that have been made more accessible to consumers in an effort to increase global appeal and general circulation. With these new unabridged softcover volumes, Wiley hopes to extend the lives of these works by making them available to future generations of statisticians, mathematicians, and scientists. "This text is unique in bringing together so many results hitherto found only in part in other texts and papers. . . . The text is fairly self-contained, inclusive of some basic mathematical results needed, and provides a rich... more

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57
This "brilliant and provocative" (Walter Isaacson) guide shares nine principles to adapt and survive the technological changes shaping our future from the director of the MIT Media Lab and a veteran Wired journalist.

The world is more complex and volatile today than at any other time in our history. The tools of our modern existence are getting faster, cheaper, and smaller at an exponential rate, transforming every aspect of society, from business to culture and from the public sphere to our most private moments. The people who succeed will be the ones who learn to...
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Recommended by Seth Godin, George Raveling, and 2 others.

Seth GodinJoi Ito and Jeff Howe have a new book called Whiplash. Joi's the head of MIT's Media Lab and an extraordinary thinker. Jeff brings the ideas and the lessons of the Lab to life. This is a big think, well worth a deep dive. (Source)

George RavelingThe good Lord helped me discover this book. (Source)

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58

Variational Analysis

From its origins in the minimization of integral functionals, the notion of variations has evolved greatly in connection with applications in optimization, equilibrium, and control. This book develops a unified framework and provides a detailed exposition of variational geometry and subdifferential calculus in their current forms beyond classical and convex analysis. Also covered are set-convergence, set-valued mappings, epi-convergence, duality, and normal integrands. less

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59

The Tyranny of Metrics

How the obsession with quantifying human performance threatens our schools, medical care, businesses, and government

Today, organizations of all kinds are ruled by the belief that the path to success is quantifying human performance, publicizing the results, and dividing up the rewards based on the numbers. But in our zeal to instill the evaluation process with scientific rigor, we've gone from measuring performance to fixating on measuring itself. The result is a tyranny of metrics that threatens the quality of our lives and most important institutions. In this timely and...
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Recommended by Sanjay Bakshi, and 1 others.

Sanjay BakshiA student recommended this book by @jerryzmuller which I liked a lot. It has some great examples on perverse incentives resulting in unintended consequences from measuring stuff and making the data public. https://t.co/SfnVmhlmWO (Source)

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60
The definitive history of the military's decades-long investigation into mental powers and phenomena, from the author of Pulitzer Prize finalist The Pentagon's Brain and international bestseller Area 51.

This is a book about a team of scientists and psychics with top secret clearances.

For more than forty years, the U.S. government has researched extrasensory perception, using it in attempts to locate hostages, fugitives, secret bases, and downed fighter jets, to divine other nations' secrets, and even to predict future threats to...
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Don't have time to read the top Operations Research books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.

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61
This book is intended to be a teaching aid for students of the courses in Operations Research and Mathematical Optimization for scientific faculties. Some of the basic topics of Operations Research and Optimization are considered: Linear Programming, Integer Linear Programming, Computational Complexity, and Graph Theory. Particular emphasis is given to Integer Linear Programming, with an exposition of the most recent resolution techniques, and in particular of the branch-and-cut method. The work is accompanied by numerous examples and exercises. less

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63
A complete and accessible introduction to the real-world applications of approximate dynamic programming With the growing levels of sophistication in modern-day operations, it is vital for practitioners to understand how to approach, model, and solve complex industrial problems. Approximate Dynamic Programming is a result of the author's decades of experience working in large industrial settings to develop practical and high-quality solutions to problems that involve making decisions in the presence of uncertainty. This groundbreaking book uniquely integrates four distinct disciplines--Markov... more

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64
Concentrating on building and interpreting mathematical programmes as models for operational research and management science, this book discusses linear, integer and separable programming. 20 practical problems are given, each with discussion, possible model formulations and optimal solutions. less

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65
Introduction to Algorithmic Marketing is a comprehensive guide to advanced marketing automation for marketing strategists, data scientists, product managers, and software engineers. It summarizes various techniques tested by major technology, advertising, and retail companies, and it glues these methods together with economic theory and machine learning. The book covers the main areas of marketing that require programmatic micro-decisioning - targeted promotions and advertisements, eCommerce search, recommendations, pricing, and assortment optimization.
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66
Your organizational transformation begins here! Comprehensive, detailed, and easy to read and understand, How to Succeed with Continuous Improvement takes you through a real-life case study of one organization's journey to a world-class continuous improvement process.

Joakim Ahlstrom--one of the world's most respected continuous improvement experts--serves as your coach. He first helps you decide whether you want to embark on the continuous improvement journey and takes you through the entire process step by step, all the way through generating remarkable business results...
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67

Optimal Control and Estimation

Graduate-level text provides introduction to optimal control theory for stochastic systems, emphasizing application of basic concepts to real problems.
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68

Data Reduction And Error Analysis For The Physical Sciences

This book is designed as a laboratory companion, student textbook or reference book for professional scientists. The text is for use in one-term numerical analysis, data and error analysis, or computer methods courses, or for laboratory use. It is for the sophomore-junior level, and calculus is a prerequisite. The new edition includes applications for PC use. less

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69
The field of Operations Research (OR) covers a wide range of mathematical topics. Because it is so broad, results and formulas relevant to the field are widely scattered in different texts and journals and can be hard to find. As the field continues to grow, OR practitioners and students need a convenient, one-stop source for the results relevant to their work. The Operations Research Calculations Handbook meets that need. It contains more than 300 results in a single, concise volume. Organized by topic and listed in a convenient summary format, it allows readers to have frequently used... more

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70
The secrets to improving operations while maintaining the highest quality

How do you operate at maximum efficiency with minimum cost? Manager's Guide to Operations Management addresses one of the most pressing business issues of our time by offering easy-toimplement advice on creating the most effective, streamlined operations possible. This quick-reference guide explains how to:

Improve your production processes
Boost quality using the Six Sigma approach
Manage supply chains and inventory
Forecast, plan, and schedule efficiently
With...
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Don't have time to read the top Operations Research books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.

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  • Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
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71
This practical, applications-oriented text demonstrates the key role of mathematics in optimization and linear systems. It explains effective procedures for performing mathematical tasks that arise in many fields, including operations research, engineering, systems sciences, statistics, and economics.
Readers will learn how to resolve linear independence and find null spaces and factors of matrices, determine existence of restricted solutions to linear equations and inequalities, and resolve definiteness of Hermitian and real symmetric matrices by Gaussian pivoting. Additional topics...
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74
Award-winning business performance improvement and Lean management expert Karen Martin diagnoses a ubiquitous business management and leadership problem--the lack of clarity--and outlines specific actions to dramatically improve organizational performance.

Through her global consulting projects, keynote speeches, and work with thousands of leaders, Karen has seen first-hand how a pervasive lack of clarity strangles business performance and erodes employee engagement. Ambiguity is the corporate default state, a condition so prevalent that "tolerance for ambiguity" has become...
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76

Supply Chain Engineering

Models and Applications

Winner of 2013 IIE/Joint Publishers Book-of-the-Year Award

Emphasizing a quantitative approach, Supply Chain Engineering: Models and Applications provides state-of-the-art mathematical models, concepts, and solution methods important in the design, control, operation, and management of global supply chains. The text provides an understanding of how companies plan, source, make, and deliver their products to create and/or maintain a global competitive advantage. It emphasizes application of operations research models and methods to optimize the various...
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78
The long awaited second edition of Dynamic Optimization is now available. Clear exposition and numerous worked examples made the first edition the premier text on this subject. Now, the new edition is expanded and updated to include essential coverage of current developments on differential games, especially as they apply to important economic questions; new developments in comparative dynamics; and new material on optimal control with integral state equations.The second edition of Dynamic Optimization provides expert coverage on: - methods of calculus of variations - optimal control -... more

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79
Condensing the most important topics in all of clinical research in an easy to understand presentation. The 20 percent of what you need to know in order to be 80 percent proficient!

The authors who have operated various levels of businesses in the clinical research industry since 2005 believe that more practical information pertaining to clinical research needs to be accessible to individuals who are new to the industry or are curious about entering the rewarding world of clinical trials.

This book reads in an easy to understand style and is based on proven methods the...
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80
The Agile Extension to the BABOK(R) Guide (Agile Extension) version 2 describes the benefits, activities, tasks, skills, and practices required for effective agile business analysis with a constant focus on delivering business value.

The Agile Extension version 2:
- Describes the agile mindset and positions agile business analysis beyond software development
- Introduces a 3-tier rolling planning model to help organizations, teams, and practitioners deliver greater business value
- Incorporates the Business Analysis Core Concept Model(TM) (BACCM(TM))
- Details...
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Don't have time to read the top Operations Research books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.

Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:

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  • Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
81
After reading this book, you will be able to answer the following questions:

What is Operations and Supply Chain Management and why is it important? What are the key functions within this field, and how do they interact with one another and the broader business? What are the responsibilities and decisions that managers in each functional area think about? How will disruptions in the Supply Chain impact the business world and our lives going forward? What are the practical applications of the knowledge gained around Supply Chain Operations? Have you ever wondered what your...
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83
Many businesses are based on creating desirable experiences, products and services for users. However in spite of this, companies often fail to consider the end user - the customer - in their planning and development processes. As a result, organizations find themselves spending huge sums of money creating products and services that, quite simply, don't work. User experience research, also known as UX research, focuses on understanding user behaviours, needs and motivations through a range of observational techniques, task analysis and other methodologies.

User Research...
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84
This text illustrates the roles of statistical methods, coordinate transformations, and mathematical analysis in mapping complex, unpredictable dynamical systems. It describes the benefits and limitations of the available modeling tools, showing engineers and scientists how any system can be rendered simpler and more predictable.
Written by a well-known authority in the field, this volume employs practical examples and analogies to make models more meaningful. The more universal methods appear in considerable detail, and advanced dynamic principles feature easy-to-understand examples....
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85

Decision Analysis for Management Judgment

In an increasingly complex world, decision analysis plays a key role in helping managers gain a greater understanding of the situations they face. This updated classic offers unrivalled coverage of the problems associated with unaided managerial decision making and the methods designed to overcome them, all presented and explained in a clear, straightforward manner. The Third Edition is extensively updated and reflects new developments such as 'fast and frugal heuristics' and "structured risk management." A new website will offer links, additional exercises and case studies, and... more

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87
It's the twenty-first century, yet most companies maintain a twentieth century corporate culture. Despite instant communication and collaboration through wireless computers and smartphones, employers needlessly rent or own office space. Bryan Miles has a reality check for you: the future of business is virtual, and it's going to take more than technology upgrades for you to upgrade your workplace environment. In VIRTUAL CULTURE, visionary entrepreneur Bryan Miles champions the benefits of remote working, which will save your company tons of money and create an atmosphere of trust between you... more

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88
Essentials of Operations Management is a brand new concise version of the market-leading text Operations Management. It has been developed forstudents on short courses in operations management – for example, doing an initial course at undergraduate, postgraduate or post-experience level. In these books the author team have set the standards in Operations Management which other textbooks seek to emulate: Expert authorship, an engaging writing style, and an interesting collection of cases combine to communicate the importance of managing operations and processes within a successful organisation. less

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89
As the market-leading textbook on the subject, Project Management: The Managerial Process is distinguished by its balanced treatment of both the technical and behavioral issues in project management as well as by its coverage of a broad range of industries to which project management principles can be applied. It focuses on how project management is integral to the organization as a whole. The text not only delivers the tools and processes is essential to successful project management but also an understanding that the effectiveness of these tools and methods are shaped and determined... more

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90

Operations Management

Stevenson's Operations Management features integrated, up-to-date coverage of current topics and industry trends, while preserving the core concepts that have made the text the market leader in this course for over a decade. Stevenson's careful explanations and approachable format support students in understanding the important operations management concepts as well as applying tools and methods with an emphasis on problem solving. Through detailed examples and solved problems, short cases and readings on current issues facing businesses, and auto-gradable end of chapter problems and... more

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Don't have time to read the top Operations Research books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.

Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:

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91
Gerard Cachon and Christian Terwiesch, Matching Supply with Demand: An Introduction to Operations Management, 3e is the most authoritative, cutting-edge book for operations management MBAs. The book demands rigorous analysis on the part of students without requiring consistent use of sophisticated mathematical modeling to perform it. When the use of quantitative tools or formal modeling is indicated, it is only to perform the necessary analysis needed to inform and support a practical business solution. The guiding principle in the development of Matching Supply with Demand has been "real... more

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92

Online Stochastic Combinatorial Optimization

Online decision making under uncertainty & time constraints represents one of the most challenging problems for robust intelligent agents. This book presents a different framework, online stochastic optimization, to address this challenge. It offers online stochastic algorithms implementing the framework, & shows many applications. less

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93
This revised and expanded version of "Analysis for Improving Performance" provides the tools for doing the crucial - yet often overlooked - upfront analyses essential to the success of any performance improvement effort. Human resource development expert Richard A. Swanson's step-by-step method allows program developers and managers to: assess an organization's real business needs and the status of its supporting systems; analyze necessary worker skills, knowledge, and attitudes; specify performance requirements and evaluation standards; and produce a viable and comprehensive performance... more

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94

What Is Lean Six SIGMA

A quick introduction on how to use Lean Six Sigma to improve your workplace, meet your goals, and better serve your customers.

Lean Six Sigma combines the two most important improvement trends of our time: making work better (using Six Sigma) and making work faster (using Lean principles). In this plain-English guide, you'll discover how this remarkable quality improvement method can give you the tools to identify and eliminate waste and quality problems in your own work area.

Packed with diagrams, cartoons, and real-life examples, What is Lean...
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95

Pricing and Revenue Optimization

This is the first comprehensive introduction to the concepts, theories, and applications of pricing and revenue optimization. From the initial success of "yield management" in the commercial airline industry down to more recent successes of markdown management and dynamic pricing, the application of mathematical analysis to optimize pricing has become increasingly important across many different industries. But, since pricing and revenue optimization has involved the use of sophisticated mathematical techniques, the topic has remained largely inaccessible to students and the typical... more

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96

Lean Strategy

A groundbreaking and revolutionary book that will transform how lean is understood, practiced, and used within organizations

A lean strategy is about gaining a competitive edge by offering better quality products at competitive prices and making a sustainable profit by eliminating waste through engaging employees in discovering deeper ways to think about their own jobs and smarter ways of working together. In its current form, lean has been radically effective, but its true powers have yet to be harnessed.

Lean Strategy harnesses...
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97

Combinatorial Optimization

Theory and Algorithms

This comprehensive textbook on combinatorial optimization places specialemphasis on theoretical results and algorithms with provably goodperformance, in contrast to heuristics. It is based on numerous courses on combinatorial optimization and specialized topics, mostly at graduate level. This book reviews the fundamentals, covers the classical topics (paths, flows, matching, matroids, NP-completeness, approximation algorithms) in detail, and proceeds to advanced and recent topics, some of which have not appeared in a textbook before. Throughout, it contains complete but concise proofs, and... more

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99

Competing Against Time


Today, time is the cutting edge. In fact, as a strategic weapon, contend George Stalk, Jr., and Thomas M. Hout, time is the equivalent of money, productivity, quality, even innovation. In this path-breaking book based upon ten years of research, the authors argue that the ways leading companies manage time— in production, in new product development, and in sales and distribution— represent the most powerful new sources of competitive advantage.
With many detailed examples from companies that have put time-based strategies in place, such as Federal Express, Ford, Milliken, Honda,...
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Tim CookCook loves this book so much that he often gives out copies of the same to his colleagues and recommends this book to the hires. (Source)

John SculleyThe best opportunities always come from changing the ground rules. "Competing Against Time "is a provocative and well-researched book with some insightful ideas for competing in the 1990s. (Source)

Donald PetersenIn "Competing Against Time" George Stalk and Tom Hout make a compelling case, supported by extensive research, that a new, time-driven paradigm differentiates successful companies from the "also rans." Through the use of numerous examples, the authors demonstrate that customers seek "the most value for the least cost in the least elapsed time," and that customers are willing to pay a premium for... (Source)

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100

Simulation Modeling & Analysis

This second edition of Simulation Modeling and Analysis includes a chapter on "Simulation in Manufacturing Systems" and examples. The text is designed for a one-term or two-quarter course in simulation offered in departments of industrial engineering, business, computer science and operations research. less

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Don't have time to read the top Operations Research books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.

Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:

  • Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
  • Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
  • Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.