Rating: 
Summary: a good conceptual practitioner's guide but has many errors
Review: Although this book has so many misprints , I found this book useful for the "hints" it provides, as a valuation software developer and equity analyst , I always try to find the hints behind the formulas and implementations, not the exactly implementation methods . From this point of view, this book is good for a "Conceptual Practitioner's Guide", it tried to capture all the necessary parts in real options , but because it is focus on "practioners" , it did not explain deep enough for financial quants . But I think no one book is good enough for directly implementation because generally , there are many intended "coincidences" within examples to prevent the competitors from copying it , if you directly follow the procedures and details described in one book(even if it's a bible-type textbook) without doing some "micro-engineering"(that means you must trace every formula in a mathematical way, and find the possible adjustments) , I can be sure that you will run into many traps and you don't know it at all.
Rating: 
Summary: This is a ?partial? practioners giude
Review: Be warned! This is a "partial" work.
Mr. Copeland's work is great and insightful (once you download 26 pages of errata and keep it close by). He starts off with NPV and builds up to "rainbow" options. The detail is comprehensive and the chapter end questions are challenging. And this is my beef. You have to pay The Monitor Group an additional $US 30.00 for the solutions to the problems. This is not what I would call "a parishioners guide" but another example of an American corporate rip-off!.Due to the fact that the errata was the longest I have come across, that the editing was generally so poor, and the solutions are an additional charge, I feel that Texere owes me a complete parishioners guide to real options. By using Real option analysis or NPV, the additional costs in time and money can not justify an investment in this book. A real sunk cost for me. Mr. Copeland, do not let your name go on such a poorly finished product again.
Rating:
Summary: Delivers on content, but fails badly on presentation
Review: Content : A
The book enables the reader to understand the world of real options without having to take a course on stochastic calculus, which is good because otherwise Real Options would be too hard to sell to management. The book is rich on examples and presents the building blocks of almost every combination imaginable. More case studies though would have been a big plus. Presentation : F
You absolutely should not read the book without first [knowing] the corrections.... There are so many errors everywhere - in formulas, calculations and text (a total of 177 for 350 pages of relevant content !!) - that I could only shake my head in disbelief. Quite obviously, nobody has made even a half-baked attempt to proof-read the book.
Rating: 
Summary: Not a true practitioner's guide
Review: I read an article on this book before publication and was excited about getting a copy. Past works on real options analysis(ROA) have been heavy on theory, but low on application. However, as I read through this book I was disappointed in how the content was presented. First, the good points. The book is more application-oriented than other books on the subject thus far. The book is thorough in its discussion of real options analysis, and demonstrates how to estimate volatility, which has been poorly explained by other authors. The book provides lots of case studies and examples. Finally, the methodology is simple to follow. Now, the bad points. Enough has been written about the book's errors in other reviews. Also, the solutions should have been provided for free. The most disappointing part is the authors' claim that this is a "practitioners" guide and that ROA will eventually replace NPV in corporate valuation. If you are a financial engineer or quant-jock for an I-Bank, Consultancy or Treasury group, then it is a practitioner's guide. Otherwise, the book is written above the level of the industry financial analyst, particularly beginners. The authors' use Everett Roger's five attributes of innovation that determine its rate of adoption. One attribute is low complexity for easy understanding and implementation. This book is very complex and it's no wonder why ROA has a slow adoption rate among corporations. Bottomline, the book needs to be rewritten properly from an editorial standpoint. More importantly, Mr. Copeland needs to decide whether he truly wants to bring ROA to the corporate masses or keep it in the hands of a few who can sell their expertise to companies
Rating:
Summary: Not a true practitioner's guide
Review: I read an article on this book before publication and was excited about getting a copy. Past works on real options analysis(ROA) have been heavy on theory, but low on application. However, as I read through this book I was disappointed in how the content was presented. First, the good points. The book is more application-oriented than other books on the subject thus far. The book is thorough in its discussion of real options analysis, and demonstrates how to estimate volatility, which has been poorly explained by other authors. The book provides lots of case studies and examples. Finally, the methodology is simple to follow. Now, the bad points. Enough has been written about the book's errors in other reviews. Also, the solutions should have been provided for free. The most disappointing part is the authors' claim that this is a "practitioners" guide and that ROA will eventually replace NPV in corporate valuation. If you are a financial engineer or quant-jock for an I-Bank, Consultancy or Treasury group, then it is a practitioner's guide. Otherwise, the book is written above the level of the industry financial analyst, particularly beginners. The authors' use Everett Roger's five attributes of innovation that determine its rate of adoption. One attribute is low complexity for easy understanding and implementation. This book is very complex and it's no wonder why ROA has a slow adoption rate among corporations. Bottomline, the book needs to be rewritten properly from an editorial standpoint. More importantly, Mr. Copeland needs to decide whether he truly wants to bring ROA to the corporate masses or keep it in the hands of a few who can sell their expertise to companies
Rating:
Summary: It got me interested enough to learn more...
Review: I'm sorry to say that I'm not really very interested in WHY the author first applied the concept of real options in his work. However, seeing the potential applications in other areas of business made reading a bit more interesting. If you can't (or don't want) the math behind real options, then this book isn't too bad. If, on the other hand, this is the topic for your own dissertation...I'd look elsewhere.
Rating:
Summary: Errors
Review: Is there a list available with all the errors in the book? Does anyone know where to get it?
Rating:
Summary: Innovative ideas that could profit from better presentation
Review: The merit of the book is that it is the first one that tries to bring real options methodology down to the managerial level, and the problems of the book only shows how hard it is to make this sofisticated theory usefull to a broader audience. Simplification usually takes the form of a few strong assumptions, and this book is no exception. But the practitioner should know what these assumptions are so that he know how accurate (or inacurate) is his valuation, but he will not find this information in the book.
Rating:
Summary: Good content marred
Review: The organization, writing style, and content of this book are all good, providing the moderately mathematical practitioner with the material needed to understand the concepts. The book is marred however, with an number of typographical errors that is in my experience unprecedented. While it is difficult to ensure that every formula and number in a work of this sort is correct, this book looks like nobody copyread it. My copy has marks on half the pages, ranging from minor stuff to things that left me scratching my head in an attempt to figure out what the authors meant.
Rating:
Summary: Errors
Review: The phrase, "stochastic differential equations" may not trip off your tongue and you may not initially see the joy of learning that replicating portfolio value = mV + B. Yet Tom Copeland and Vladimir Antikarov guarantee that their book is a practical, everyman's guide to the sometimes serious math world of Real Options Analysis (ROA). Thanks to the availability of personal computers and modeling software, everyone can now use ROA. Before PCs, only doctoral students of finance or economics would have been safe attempting it. Sure, ROA is harder than the traditional valuation methods or Net Present Value (NPV), but real options allow you to understand the full value of an asset by taking into account the factors of flexibility, risk and uncertainty. Company case models, the theory behind ROA and equations are all showcased in the book. This can be a challenging text, but we from getAbstract strongly recommend it to all CFOs and anyone charged with evaluating business strategies.
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