Readers under pressure such as MBA students and executives want short chapters rich in essential insights. In writing this book, I kept five principles constantly in mind. First, individual chapters must be short. Second, the book must put insight before unnecessary mathematics. Third, each topic should nevertheless reflect the state of the art. Fourth, the book should not distract the reader with nonessentials. Most importantly, the book should be useful throughout. Writing to these tight specifications is both arduous and rewarding. One has to believe that the reader will benefit.
The book primarily is about financial management and, as its title implies, real options are an integral, subsidiary theme. Real options are opportunities available to management permitting them to adapt the enterprise to changing needs. Understanding the value of real options is essential to corporate financial management. Examples in several chapters demonstrate why failure to assess the value of real options leads to mistaken investment decisions. A distinctive feature of this book is showing how to conduct real options analysis without higher mathematics.