Commercial Services Books

This book is a quality overview covering most facets of long term care facility development. As with any broad coverage, there will be information that does not apply to your project, and areas that you will need other sources to complete the picture. But the authors of this book know their stuff.

Written by architects and planners for same; but accessible to the lay reader. A good tool for those interested in developing long term care facilities and senior-oriented communities.

Commercial Bank Financial Management is considered as an informative and a comprehensive guide for both experts in the field and novice alike. Although it is a good read, I find the content of the book is a little bit out-of-date. There is not enough information on electronic banking persective as it is very important in today's banking world.

This article may be useful if you do a scientific research dedicated to Business Incubators. I have used it for my own research. However, the most useful article that I've found is "Business incubators and new venture creation: an assessment of incubating models" by Rosa Grimaldi, and Alessandro Grandi, published in Technovation, Volume 25, Issue 2 , February 2005, Pages 111-121, also available on amazon. Another useful article is "Incubators as a small business support in Russia: contrast of university-related U.S. incubators with the Zelenograd Scientific and Technology Park", by Garry D. Bruton, published by Journal of Small Business Management - January 1, 1998. I also recommend the book "Incubators: A Realist's Guide to the World's New Business Accelerators by Colin Barrow.

The emphasis of this study, "A comparative study of two European business incubators", is on the identification and analysis of effective management practices in the management of Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) support arrangements. complement the analysis. Two cases of SME support arrangements are compared: one in Finland and one in Sweden. Through the comparison of these two, the present study strives to draw a distinction between context-specific good practices and more universally applicable good practices. The cases analyzed in the empirical study are the SMIL (Foundation for Small Business Development in Linkoping) in Sweden and Spinno in Espoo, Finland. SMIL is an SME stimulation arrangement for technology-based SMEs in the Linkoping region. Spinno is a development-oriented business incubator program geared to stimulate the emergence of technology-based SMEs from universities in the Helsinki metropolitan region.

The mission of SMIL is to promote the growth and development of SMEs in the Linkoping region. Consequently, the bulk of its activities are geared to existing SMEs in the region, and take the form of business stimulation services. SMIL offers a range of both informal and formal activities. The informal activities include breakfast, lunch, and evening meetings. The formal activities are comprised of a range of training programs for competence development. The contents of the programs and activities are mostly designed to meet the needs of the participating firms. SMIL offers three types of formal business support programs, tailored to different stages in the growth and development.

The mission of the Spinno program is to catalyze the emergence of new knowledge-intensive firms from research institutes and higher education institutions (HIEs) in the Helsinki metropolitan region. Spinno seeks to accomplish this mission by organizing two annual training and consulting programs for aspiring new entrepreneurs. The bulk of the applications to the Spinno program come from participating research institutions and HIEs, but corporate spin-offs are also accepted into the program. During its six years of existence, Spinno has processed over 230 applications, of which some 150 have been accepted to the program. Of these, 100 have subsequently established a new firm. The core activity of Spinno is to maintain a six-month training and consulting pipeline for selected aspiring entrepreneurs.

For each of the case studies, the authors give a brief description, history and context, scope, objective and services, and a conclusion. Then the authors give contextual differences, similarities in management practices, configurational differences between Spinno and SMIL, conclusions, and management practice similarities between Spinno and SMIL.

Kazarian has written the classic text for designing any type of foodservice establishment. Examples of different types of foodservice production areas are included. Does not go into detail on purchasing equipment. I have used it to plan foodservices and as a textbook.

Zacher and Sutton have gathered together all of the necessary ingredients for understanding international regime theory. I found the section on communications particularly important. My one suggestion would be to summarize some of the material into tables to make the interrelationships between institutions more understandable. Also, visual timelines would be a great addition. I highly recommend this text.

I've heard of architects entering into the health care market thinking that the field was wide open and , "hey, it's just a design job like any other!". Well, yes it is but nope, it's not. The clearest guide through the basics is the "Guidelines for Design and Construction of Hospital and Health Care Facilities", developed by the A.I.A. and the only way to get started with efficiency. Realistic scope is laid out for you to find your way to the starting line. Yes, that's right, I said the "starting line". I'm writing this review in July of 2000 and the edition now available is from 1996-97. Remember 1996? That was when Y2K was a joke about to explode some time in the distant future, MRI's were a new and painful diagnostic technology and hospitals were just giving way to medical centers in function but not yet in form. That's the down side of this primer. It's got the basics to a high degree but not the latest-up-to-date on much of anything. You might say that there might be an exception with morgues because, hey, how much can they change? Surprisingly, however, even morgues are on the move. Last week a national expose has cast a light on the issue of the mistakes of doctors being hidden by inadequate autopsy follow-through and a new light has been shined on the in-house, acute care morgue facilities. Health care is fast moving and faster now than ever and this book won't help you to catch up. It will, however, give you the vernacular associated with the medical worlds discribed in the contents. It will associate building types with concomitant health care venues, and it will point you clearly and directly to the awareness that this specialty is largely functionly driven design. It will not adequately discuss inovation, potential space/healing relationships, ancient western or feng shui centered approaches to healing spaces or the like. It will caution you to know your place in the scheme of things: doctors heal and architects manage the space for that to happen. So, yes, it is a rather narrow venue. It is a primer not an exhaustive reference of the history and potentials to contribute to the general welfare and common good by being on a health care management team. So,yes, if your expectations are to gain entrance into a function driven, high liability architectural enterprise, this is the foundational resource for you. It is not intended, I'm sure, to be entertaining or an easy read but you will pull it off the shelf regularly to review the basics and know the language of the medium. Good luck.

The chapter on the transformational room offers generous descriptions and anaylsis of reseach based concepts. Verderber and Fine clasify the maternity suite as such a room, they also provide a great BRIEF history of birthing centers in the U.S. The book seems well thought out and thorough.

Most Marketing books are too generic to be immediately relevant to most designers. In contrast "How to Market Design Consultancy Services" provides a step by step guide to getting it right when communicating the value of your design consultancy to clients. If you have ever had a cold call go wrong or wondered why clients behave in unpredicted ways, this book is for you. It provides a clear road map to being better at communicating the value of design to non designers.

If you are setting up a design consultancy this book is a must.

This book, as with all Linton books, is a great resource for any designer. It is geared more toward a larger firm though, in which case there is probably a marketing team involved or hired for marketing endeavors. To a marketer, or even an experienced designer, Marketing for Architects and Designers is a beginner's view of marketing and should be followed up with some of the recommended texts at the back of this book.

I am interested in the issue of monpsony and I was surprised to see that there aren't so many of them. After looking ans searching I traced this book and found out that it summerizes the issue very good and gives you a basic information on the subject. the problem is that things have rapidly changed in last 8 years and the book must be updated.