Authentic Inclusion(tm): Drives Disruptive Innovation


Book Description

Authentic InclusionTM is the institutional insight that human diversity is at the core of disruptive innovation. It calls for holistic actions across all parts of an institution to respect an individual human’s ability to make a difference not in spite of, but because of their difference. By putting humans first, prosperity can have longevity because principle, purpose, and profit are harmoniously aligned.




Disruptive Technology: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications


Book Description

The proliferation of entrepreneurship, technological and business innovations, emerging social trends and lifestyles, employment patterns, and other developments in the global context involve creative destruction that transcends geographic and political boundaries and economic sectors and industries. This creates a need for an interdisciplinary exploration of disruptive technologies, their impacts, and their implications for various stakeholders widely ranging from government agencies to major corporations to consumer groups and individuals. Disruptive Technology: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications is a vital reference source that examines innovation, imitation, and creative destruction as critical factors and agents of socio-economic growth and progress in the context of emerging challenges and opportunities for business development and strategic advantage. Highlighting a range of topics such as IT innovation, business strategy, and sustainability, this multi-volume book is ideally designed for entrepreneurs, business executives, business professionals, academicians, and researchers interested in strategic decision making using innovations and competitiveness.




Democratizing Innovation


Book Description

The process of user-centered innovation: how it can benefit both users and manufacturers and how its emergence will bring changes in business models and in public policy. Innovation is rapidly becoming democratized. Users, aided by improvements in computer and communications technology, increasingly can develop their own new products and services. These innovating users—both individuals and firms—often freely share their innovations with others, creating user-innovation communities and a rich intellectual commons. In Democratizing Innovation, Eric von Hippel looks closely at this emerging system of user-centered innovation. He explains why and when users find it profitable to develop new products and services for themselves, and why it often pays users to reveal their innovations freely for the use of all.The trend toward democratized innovation can be seen in software and information products—most notably in the free and open-source software movement—but also in physical products. Von Hippel's many examples of user innovation in action range from surgical equipment to surfboards to software security features. He shows that product and service development is concentrated among "lead users," who are ahead on marketplace trends and whose innovations are often commercially attractive. Von Hippel argues that manufacturers should redesign their innovation processes and that they should systematically seek out innovations developed by users. He points to businesses—the custom semiconductor industry is one example—that have learned to assist user-innovators by providing them with toolkits for developing new products. User innovation has a positive impact on social welfare, and von Hippel proposes that government policies, including R&D subsidies and tax credits, should be realigned to eliminate biases against it. The goal of a democratized user-centered innovation system, says von Hippel, is well worth striving for. An electronic version of this book is available under a Creative Commons license.




Principles and Practice of Impact Investing


Book Description

Impact investing is gaining global attention from society, governments and businesses. Increasingly, it is seen as a new paradigm to deal with the economic crisis and curtailed public budgets, an answer to the diversified needs of society. It now ranks high on the policy agenda of governments and international organizations, and private investors are searching for new investment opportunities to channel the liquidity available. This book is the first to look at impact investing as a "refocus" of venture capital to sustain the development of societal impact enterprises. Principles and Practice of Impact Investing collects chapters from international experts on the subject, discussing the foundations of the movement, analysing leading international cases and debating future trends in the field. It also includes interviews with some of the most influential stakeholders of impact investing across the world. The book is an inspirational and practical guide for actors and stakeholders to enable better understanding of impact investing. Taking an international perspective, the chapters primarily deal with mature economies, setting it apart from the existing literature focused on emerging countries. The book will be of interests to practitioners and executives, as well as researchers and MBA students.




Strategic Leadership: Navigating Organizational Success


Book Description

Learn how to navigate organizational success with strategic leadership principles. This book provides insights and practical advice for leaders aiming to drive performance and innovation within their teams and organizations.




Communities in Action


Book Description

In the United States, some populations suffer from far greater disparities in health than others. Those disparities are caused not only by fundamental differences in health status across segments of the population, but also because of inequities in factors that impact health status, so-called determinants of health. Only part of an individual's health status depends on his or her behavior and choice; community-wide problems like poverty, unemployment, poor education, inadequate housing, poor public transportation, interpersonal violence, and decaying neighborhoods also contribute to health inequities, as well as the historic and ongoing interplay of structures, policies, and norms that shape lives. When these factors are not optimal in a community, it does not mean they are intractable: such inequities can be mitigated by social policies that can shape health in powerful ways. Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity seeks to delineate the causes of and the solutions to health inequities in the United States. This report focuses on what communities can do to promote health equity, what actions are needed by the many and varied stakeholders that are part of communities or support them, as well as the root causes and structural barriers that need to be overcome.




Research and Innovation Forum 2023


Book Description

This book features research presented and discussed during the Research & Innovation Forum (Rii Forum) 2023. As such, this book offers a unique insight into emerging topics, issues and developments pertinent to the fields of technology, innovation and education and their social impact. Papers included in this book apply inter- and multi-disciplinary approaches to query such issues as technology-enhanced teaching and learning, smart cities, information systems, cognitive computing and social networking. What brings these threads of the discussion together is the question of how advances in computer science—which are otherwise largely incomprehensible to researchers from other fields—can be effectively translated and capitalized on so as to make them beneficial for society as a whole. In this context, Rii Forum and Rii Forum proceedings offer an essential venue where diverse stakeholders, including academics, the think tank sector and decision-makers, can engage in a meaningful dialogue with a view to improving the applicability of advances in computer science.




The Sponsor Effect


Book Description

Are you investing in the right people? Many people know the benefit of finding a sponsor--someone who goes beyond traditional mentorship to partner with a junior-level employee to help build their skills, advocate for them when opportunities arise, and open doors. But few realize that being a sponsor is just as important to career growth as finding one. According to new research from economist and thought leader Sylvia Ann Hewlett, senior executives who sponsor rising talent are 53 percent more likely to be promoted than those who don't. Similarly, middle-level managers who have proteges are 167 percent more likely to be given stretch assignments. Well-chosen proteges contribute stellar performance, steadfast loyalty, and capabilities that you, the sponsor, may lack, thus increasing how fast and how far you can go. But how do you find standout proteges, let alone develop them so that they're able to come through for you and your organization? This book has the answers you need. Combining powerful new data and rich examples drawn from in-depth interviews with leaders from companies such as Unilever, Aetna, Blizzard Entertainment, and EY, The Sponsor Effect provides a seven-step playbook for how you can become a successful sponsor. You'll learn to: Identify the right mix of proteges Include those with differing perspectives Inspire your proteges and ignite their ambition Instruct them to develop key skill sets Inspect your picks for performance and loyalty Instigate a deal, detailing the terms of a relationship Invest three ways and reap the rewards Along the way, you'll discover the enormous benefits of investing in these valuable relationships.




Managing Disruptions in Business


Book Description

This volume discusses business disruptions as strategic to gain market competitiveness. It analyzes the convergence of innovation and technology, business practices, public policies, political ideologies, and consumer values to strengthen competitive business practices through disruptions. Bringing together contributions from global experts, the chapters add to knowledge on contemporary business models, business strategies, radical interventions in manufacturing, services, and marketing organizations. Disruptive innovations led by contemporary trends, tend to transform the market and consumers’ landscape. These trends include shifts from closed to open models of innovation, servitization, and moving from conventional manufacturing and marketing paradigms to industry 4.0 business philosophy. Focused on the triadic themes of disruption, innovation, and management in emerging markets, this book serves as a valuable compendium for research in entrepreneurship development, regional business and development, contemporary political ideologies, and changing social values.




Team Creativity and Innovation


Book Description

For the past two decades, creativity and innovation have been viewed by researchers as critical to organizational success and survival. Understanding the factors that facilitate or inhibit creativity and innovation at the individual level has been the focus of much of the research in this area. However, while earlier work on teams considered the working dynamics of the group as a context variable with individual creativity the outcome, research now emphasizes group creativity as the intended, desired outcome. This shift in thought has occurred because many of the problems routinely facing organizations are complex and cannot be solved by a single individual at the helm. Edited by Roni Reiter-Palmon, Team Creativity and Innovation provides readers with a state-of-the-art review of the major concepts and current research related to the demonstrable benefits of team creativity and innovation. In this volume, Reiter-Palmon and contributors explore such topics as team collaboration and communication, trust and psychological safety, team diversity, social networks, conflict, organizational learning, and more as a way to introduce readers to the issues that matter most in today's modern, forward-thinking workplace.