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Risk Intelligence: Learning to Manage What We Don't Know | 
| Author: David Apgar
Publisher: Harvard Business School Press
Category: Book
List Price: $29.95
Buy New: $3.99
You Save: $25.96 (87%)
New (40) Used (14) from $1.95
Avg. Customer Rating:  7 reviews
Sales Rank: 158327
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 210
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.1 x 1
ISBN: 1591399548
Dewey Decimal Number: 658.155
EAN: 9781591399544
ASIN: 1591399548
Publication Date: August 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Too many executives think risk management is strictly for technical specialists. In Risk Intelligence: Learning to Manage What We Dont Know, David Apgar challenges this misconception. The author explains how to raise the quality of your risk analysisthus enhancing your "risk IQ"by applying four simple rules: 1) Recognize which risks are learnableand reduce their uncertainty by discovering more about them. 2) Identify risks you can learn about the fastest. The higher your learning speed, the more a project is worth pursuing. 3) Take on risky projects one at a timelearning about the risks underlying each before moving to the next. 4) Build networks of business partners, suppliers, and customers who can collectively manage new ventures risks by playing distinct roles. The book provides two tools for improving your risk IQthe Risk Intelligence Audit and the Risk Scorecardand concludes with a 10-step action plan for systematically raising your managerial and organizational risk IQ. Your reward? Smarter business decisions over time.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 2 more reviews...
 Not much substance June 19, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Very disappointed in this book. First of all, if you're looking for anything that quantitatively explains risk identification or management look elsewhere. Second, I found most of what the book refers to as risk identification to be completely lacking in academic rigor. Most of his assertions about how to identify your risk intelligence or your ability to rank projects in terms of risk profiling completely subjective. Lastly, if you're working at a small company this book is not for you. In my opinion if this book was written for anyone it was for someone who is juggling multiple projects in the context of a much larger organization.br /br /Waste of time.
 Needs more work May 12, 2008
2 out of 5 found this review helpful
At work, I am doing software development planning. So I need a clear understanding of Risk Intelligence. So I bought this book. br /br /The writer's argument is that all risk falls into two categories one is what is knowable and therefore can be learned, and the other unknowable so difficult to prepare. So what you should do is your projects as you learn! br /br /As I went on, reading this book. I found it full of current examples that are at best dubious to prove his point. For example the US planners' miscalculation in Saddam's Iraq was not the WMD, but later in trying to create a secular democracy in a post-Saddam Iraq and underestimating the Muslim fundamentalist response. Nor were the Japanese clever planners so more advanced in alternatives to oil that gave them an advantage when the oil crunch occurred. It was because Japanese are generally smaller than Americans, so their cars are smaller. When the oil crunch occurred, they were already making smaller so more fuel efficient cars and during the crisis they kept making them. Another example quoted is the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. If as the writer states the US had warned the Indians in time, it would have made little difference as the public, the police, the coastguard and the military in India had no procedures to act on this information. I was there and saw in India the local authorities had no idea of what to do. This became an important discussion in India after the event which the writer should have read up about before quoting it in his book.br /br /I was willing to put all of this aside. I know my market and I know its competition so I wanted to see what this book could help me in my risk intelligence. I found little. br /br /I kept thinking what is unknowable often occurs in the project that we think we know. This doubt is the nature of life. br /br /At the end I went though the step-by-step format hoping to get something. But I found it wanting. I know my market, I know my competition knows the market. Say something they know a little better then us. Does that give me a 1 or 2 to them? I do not know from reading the book. br /br /Also many reasons go into assigning projects for example resources, the companies current needs, the clients needs etc. Risk analysis is one of many. I cannot order the projects as he suggests. br /br /It maybe a good book for a university course but it needs much work and less politics before a manager like me can get some value out of it.br /
Risky Business February 14, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Risk management is a vital function for most rationally managed organizations. Any competent business plan or project proposal will include a section on risk mitigation. So what is risk? In essence it is anything that will hinder or prevent an organization from achieving its goals or purpose. Clearly then it is in an organization's interest to reduce the probability that a risk will occur through what is called `risk mitigation'. There are numerous methodologies to achieve this some good others more problematic. Yet effective risk mitigation can mean the difference between profit or loss and success or failure. It is far from a trivial matter.br /br /Which brings us to this rather provocatively titled book, "Risk Intelligence", that provides a unique contribution to risk mitigation. Although Apgar does not say so, he uses the term `intelligence' in both its meanings namely, cognitive ability and processed information. He usefully divides risk into two categories `learnable' and `random' by which he means risks whose probable occurrence can be assessed and risks that may be equally probable but that cannot be assessed accurately. Apgar believes that a number of factors, such as previous experiences, can combine to enable individuals and organizations to understand some risks better than others and that for them such risks are what he calls learnable. He correctly notes that if a specific risk is understood it cannot be predicted, but its probability can be assessed. Such risk `knowledge' can give an organization a competitive edge in most situations. As with so many things once somebody actually thinks them up, the concept of `risk intelligence' seems obvious. But Apgar is to be congratulated for first articulating and explaining such a useful idea.br /br /Of course, `risk intelligence' is not the only factor in risk mitigation. Apgar would no doubt be the first to point out that other factors such as reserve capacities, process flexibility, and realistic alternatives provide the resiliency essential to successful risk management. br /br /
 Risk Intelligence is enthusiastically recommended for business leaders November 5, 2006
11 out of 16 found this review helpful
Written by David Apgar, a managing director of the Corporate Executive Board best-practices research organization which serves senior executives at over 2,500 institutions worldwide, Risk Intelligence: Learning To Manage What We Don't Know openly challenges the common presumption that risk management and related business judgments is a matter solely for technical specialists. Risk Intelligence teaches the reader how to distinguish learnable risks from random risks in business decisions, how to score one's own risk intelligence, how to conduct a solid risk strategy audit, how to build networks that can adapt dynamically to risk, and much more. Written in plain terms with clear examples, Risk Intelligence is enthusiastically recommended for business leaders seeking to sharpen their flexibility and adaptability when confronting unknown threats.
Highly recommended September 19, 2006
2 out of 10 found this review helpful
Apgar's focus on learnable risks offers some very useful frameworks for applying risk management concepts to a real-word competitive business environment.
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