Integral Innovation


Book Description

Technology plays a critical role in transforming societies and economies through enhancing efficiency, connectivity and access to resources and services. The challenge remains how to harness technologies to achieve sustainable development without causing harm to human and natural capitals. Professor Odeh Rashed Al-Jayyousi argues that science, technology and innovation (STI) are underpinned by social choices and, hence, a transition to a sustainable green economy is defined by individuals’ and institutions’ decisions on how to use and apply these STI developments. It is, therefore, important to examine closely the ways in which social institutions and processes in the “integral worlds” (the different perspectives of reality) shape the priorities of technologies and the conditions under which their potential benefits can be reaped. He states that in order for technological innovation to provide a guarantee of sustainable economic development, it is necessary that a transfer of technology to developing countries becomes a basic principle of national development policies, and that they, in turn, are open to adopting an explicit long-term application of technological innovation. Integral Innovation: New Worldviews presents a conceptual framework for the evolution of technology and innovation from a historical and cultural perspective. It provides an analysis of the role of innovation and technology in sustainable development and introduces a number of international case studies, which shed light on the social learning processes for knowledge co-creation and innovation culture. It is essential reading for those interested in innovation and technology management.




Integral Research and Innovation


Book Description

The core question underlying Integral Research and Innovation is: 'How can social research be turned into social or indeed "integral" innovation?' Complementing their acclaimed Transformation Management, this second book in the Transformation and Innovation Series explains how the knowledge creation that underpins transformative processes occurs. The authors show how research has to be transformative, rather than just informative if it is to contribute usefully to building integrated and sustainable enterprises. At a time when business practitioners and others responsible for organizational development are desperate for usable knowledge the authors contend that social science research is failing to support business and management generally. Instead, academic researchers engage in esoteric arguments about research methodology which do not contribute usefully to the resolution of real world problems. Drawing on their experience of environments where researchers and practitioners do engage constructively, resulting in research that is active, participative, and genuinely innovative, Professor Lessem and Dr Schieffer are in territory that is far beyond that covered by standard works on research methodology. This is a book not just for academics and researchers wanting to make a meaningful contribution, but also for reflective practitioners from the corporate organizational, and consultancy based worlds who operate in the area of interface between business and management, education, learning, and society, and who need to know how research can be used to make a real difference.




Integral Knowledge Creation and Innovation


Book Description

This work focuses on the creation of new knowledge, and how this has happened throughout all ages, as far back as the time of ancient philosophy to today. A product of integral research, it covers the process of creating new knowledge, leveraging existing knowledge, sometimes resulting in cutthroat innovations. It also includes knowledge systems such as conventional university systems to Mode 2 university concepts, culminating on integral research to innovation. This book will help the reader to realise that the subject of knowledge creation is no longer business as usual. Many innovations have been created for human benefit in general, but such innovations may have benefited only parts of society. The challenge in the world is that, while new innovations may be brilliant, there are sections of society who continue to slip into poverty. Modern innovators must also consider such communities and come up with appropriate interventions. This book will open the eyes of innovators to new possibilities. In addition, the subject of knowledge should not be an elitist affair. One may stand to gain a lot by seeing the knowledge in other people, whatever their station in life. This realisation can enable serious innovators to widen their scope in terms of the sources of existing knowledge which can be improved and reassessed as new knowledge. Such existing knowledge can be identified by engaging the very communities that may be affected by a problem or challenge. Such communities will have had time to interrogate their situations and think of possible solutions to such, though they might not have the economic capacity to implement such solutions. This is always a useful starting point if one is seeking a solution to a community problem. This book will be useful to students interested in the subject of knowledge and innovation, from under-graduate to PhD level. It will also benefit captains of industry, executives and managers who are interested in improving their knowledge improvement cycles in their companies.




Integral Dynamics


Book Description

The theory of integral dynamics is based on the view that the development of individual leaders or entrepreneurs requires the simultaneous development of institutions and societies. It seeks a specific way forward for each society, fundamentally different from, but drawing on, its past. Nearly every natural science has been transformed from an analytically-based approach to a dynamic one: now it is time for society and culture to follow suit locally and globally. Each culture, discipline and person is incomplete and is in need of others in order to develop and evolve. This book sets out a curriculum for a new integral, trans-cultural and trans-disciplinary area of study, inclusive of, but extending beyond, economics and enterprise. It embraces a trans-personal perspective, linking self with community, enterprise and society, and focusing on the vital relationship between local identity and global integrity. For the government policy maker, the enlightened business practitioner, and the student and researcher into economics and enterprise, the new discipline is set out here in complete detail by a multi-national team of Gower's Transformation and Innovation Series authors. Illuminated with examples relating the conceptual to the practical, this is a text, not for a pre-modern, modern, or even post-modern era, but for what has been called our trans-modern age.




Integral Development


Book Description

Alexander Schieffer and Ronnie Lessem introduce a groundbreaking development framework and process to address the most burning issues that humanity faces. While conventional top-down, outside-in development has reached a cul-de-sac, a new, integral form of development is emerging around the world. Integral Development uniquely articulates this emergent approach, and invites us to fully participate in this process. The integral approach has been researched and framed over decades of in-depth experience in transformative development education and practice all over the world. It uniquely combines four mutually reinforcing perspectives: nature and community; culture and spirituality; science, systems and technology; and enterprise and economics. Conventional development theory and practice has prioritized the latter two perspectives, neglecting the former two. This has caused massive imbalances in today’s world. The four interconnected perspectives allow for a transformative and integrated engagement with core development issues in a way that is locally relevant and globally resonant. Throughout, the practical impact of Integral Development is brought to life through highly innovative cases from around the globe, drawing on the authors` first-hand experience. This makes the book a living demonstration of the power of this pioneering approach. Integral Development shows how individual, organizational and societal developments need to be interconnected to release a society’s full potential. It shifts the responsibility for large-scale development from often-distant experts and organizations to each individual, community, enterprise and institution within the society. It is essential reading - and a call to action - for everyone concerned with the current state of local and global development.




Embodying Integral Development


Book Description

Chapter 10: Emerging: organizational learning and development -- Introduction: grounding individual, enterprise and societal renewal -- MedLabs: an unfolding enterprise story, by Manar Al Nimer -- MedLabs as a developing organization -- Conclusion: pioneering, differentiation and integration -- References -- Chapter 11: Effecting: embodying inter-institutional genealogy -- Introduction: institutionalize development -- Start CSAL with nature and community -- Local-global museum as sanctuary -- Towards a research academy -- Genealogical laboratory -- Conclusion: nature reserve, museum, university, laboratory -- References -- Chapter 12: Navigating: integral society -- Introduction: European Community -- The identity of Slovenia: European sanctuary -- Social science and technology: an emerging research university -- Conclusion: towards an integral economic laboratory -- References -- Epilogue: CARE-ful self-assessment -- ReLational Communal activation GENE -- ReLational Awakening of integral consciousness GENE -- ReLationally innovation driven institutionalized Research GENE -- ReLational Embodiment of integral development GENE -- ReNewing Communal activation GENE -- ReNewed Awakening of integral consciousness GENE -- ReNewed Embodiment of integral development GENE -- ReNewed innovation driven institutionalized Research GENE -- ReaSoned realization of Communal activation GENE -- ReaSoned realization of Awakened integral consciousness GENE -- ReaSoned realization of Innovation driven Research GENE -- ReaSoned Embodiment of integral development GENE -- Index




Integral Economics


Book Description

There are real, and many, alternatives to the economic mainstream. The trouble is, of course, that they are hidden from us. In Integral Economics, Ronnie Lessem and Alexander Schieffer pave the way for a sustainable approach to economics, building on the richness of diverse economic approaches from all over the globe. They introduce the most evolved economic perspectives and bring them into creative dialogue to produce an integral, dynamically balanced approach. They argue that neither individual enterprises nor wider society will be transformed for the better without a new economic perspective. Here, they introduce a comprehensive framework based on the same 'Four Worlds' model that is applied to enterprise and research in their earlier works.




Integral Community


Book Description

Integral Community moves the transformation journey for enterprises and society on from the stages covered in earlier books in Gower's Transformation and Innovation Series, which describe a new macro-economic framework and which have examined alternative development with different local communities, bringing wide cultural perspectives to practical implementation of authentic or integral development. Here, the authors argue that there are two major fields of force prevailing in today's world. The one reflects our common heritage, whereby East and West, North and South are coming ever closer together - the global commons. The other reflects local and national singularity, where the notion of feeding off ancient local heritage and talent is key. They also identify four different culturally laden worldviews as Southern - humanistic, Eastern - holistic, Northern - rational, and Western - pragmatic. The enterprise and social innovation in Africa with which Lessem's co-authors are involved provides an object lesson in the sort of differentiation and integration needed in order to operate, socio-economically, with local identity and global integrity. It provides in this case a 'Southern' worldview background against which to examine communally based self-sufficiency; culturally based developmental economy; knowledge based social economy; and finally, the move towards what the authors describe as a living economy. All illustrated through a rural case, Chinyika, with which they have been intimately involved, whereby 100,000 have become self sufficient over the past five years. Integral Community should be read by academics and students of business, economics, development studies and agriculture, and by policy makers, particularly those concerned with the developing world in general and Africa in particular.




Integral Music


Book Description

An important study of African American contributions to contemporary American poetry. Aldon Nielsen's book Black Chant: Languages of African American Postmodernism (Cambridge University Press, 1997) was a ground-breaking work of scholarship that examined modern and postmodern developments in the work of African American poets since the Second World War and their contributions to both African American culture and American modernism. Integral Music extends the terms of the studies begun in Black Chant through a more in-depth look at the work of key writers and poets in the decades following the Second World War. While Nielsen examines anew such key figures as Amiri Baraka, he also provides the first extended studies of significant but often overlooked figures in African American poetry, such as Russell Atkins and Stephen Jonas. His essay on Bob Kaufman points toward the critical intersection of poetry and jazz in African American letters, as does his essay on performance poet Jayne Cortez. Nielsen's studies in this volume affirm the importance and centrality of African American poets to American intellectual life and international, modernist, and postmodernist poetry today.




Integral Research and Innovation


Book Description

At a time when business practitioners and others responsible for organizational development are desperate for usable knowledge the authors of this book contend that social science research is failing to support business and management. In Integral Research and Innovation, they explain how research has to be transformative, rather than just informative if it is to contribute usefully to building integrated and sustainable enterprises. Drawing on their experience of environments where researchers and practitioners do engage constructively, resulting in research that is active, participative, and genuinely innovative, Professor Lessem and Dr Schieffer are in territory that is far beyond that covered by standard works on research methodology.