Think Tank #11

Think Tank #11
Author: Matt Hawkins
Publisher: Image Comics
Total Pages: 32
Release: 2013-12-04
Genre: Comics & Graphic Novels
ISBN:

ÒOUTBREAK,Ó Part Three. World War III is imminent! And the only person stepping forward to prevent it is the slacker genius Dr. David Loren! Can a lab rat who has never even fired a handgun stop a weapon of mass destruction?

Think Tank

Think Tank
Author: David J. Linden
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 399
Release: 2018-04-24
Genre: Science
ISBN: 030023547X

Essays that explore quirky, counterintuitive aspects of brain function and “make us realize that what goes on in our minds is nothing short of magical” (Scientific American). Neuroscientist David J. Linden approached leading brain researchers and asked each the same question: “What idea about brain function would you most like to explain to the world?” Their responses make up this one-of-a-kind collection of popular science essays that seeks to expand our knowledge of the human mind and its possibilities. The contributors, whose areas of expertise include human behavior, molecular genetics, evolutionary biology, and comparative anatomy, address a host of fascinating topics ranging from personality to perception, to learning, to beauty, to love and sex. The manner in which individual experiences can dramatically change our brains’ makeup is explored. Professor Linden and his contributors open a new window onto the landscape of the human mind and into the cutting-edge world of neuroscience with a fascinating, enlightening compilation that science enthusiasts and professionals alike will find accessible and enjoyable. “Scientists who can effectively communicate science are rare, but here are forty of the best, describing with clarity and enthusiasm the latest in brain research and its impact on our lives.” —Gordon M. Shepherd, co-editor of Handbook of Brain Microcircuits

What Should Think Tanks Do?

What Should Think Tanks Do?
Author: Andrew Dan Selee
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 129
Release: 2013-07-31
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0804789290

Think tanks and research organizations set out to influence policy ideas and decisions—a goal that is key to the very fabric of these organizations. And yet, the ways that they actually achieve impact or measure progress along these lines remains fuzzy and underexplored. What Should Think Tanks Do? A Strategic Guide for Policy Impact is the first practical guide that is specifically tailored to think tanks, policy research, and advocacy organizations. Author Andrew Selee draws on extensive interviews with members of leading think tanks, as well as cutting-edge thinking in business and non-profit management, to provide concrete strategies for setting policy-oriented goals and shaping public opinion. Concise and practically-minded, What Should Think Tanks Do? helps those with an interest in think tanks to envision a well-oiled machine, while giving leaders in these organizations tools and tangible metrics to drive and evaluate success.

Think Tanks in America

Think Tanks in America
Author: Thomas Medvetz
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 339
Release: 2012-09-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 0226517292

Over the past half-century, think tanks have become fixtures of American politics, supplying advice to presidents and policy makers, expert testimony on Capitol Hill, and convenient facts and figures to journalists and media specialists. But what are think tanks? Who funds them? What kind of “research” do they produce? Where does their authority come from? And how influential have they become? In Think Tanks in America, Thomas Medvetz argues that the unsettling ambiguity of the think tank is less an accidental feature of its existence than the very key to its impact. By combining elements of more established sources of public knowledge—universities, government agencies, businesses, and the media—think tanks exert a tremendous amount of influence on the way citizens and lawmakers perceive the world, unbound by the more clearly defined roles of those other institutions. In the process, they transform the government of this country, the press, and the political role of intellectuals. Timely, succinct, and instructive, this provocative book will force us to rethink our understanding of the drivers of political debate in the United States.

Wall Street's Think Tank

Wall Street's Think Tank
Author: Laurence H. Shoup
Publisher: Monthly Review Press
Total Pages: 369
Release: 2019-03-22
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1583677542

Traces the expansive influence of The Council of Foreign Relations in advancing Wall Street's foreign policy agendas and U.S. influence abroad The Council on Foreign Relations is the most influential foreign-policy think tank in the United States, claiming among its members a high percentage of government officials, media figures, and establishment elite. For decades it kept a low profile even while it shaped policy, advised presidents, and helped shore up U.S. hegemony following the Second World War. In 1977, Laurence H. Shoup and William Minter published the first in-depth study of the CFR, Imperial Brain Trust, an explosive work that traced the activities and influence of the CFR from its origins in the 1920s through the Cold War. Now, Laurence H. Shoup returns with this long-awaited sequel, which brings the story up to date. Wall Street’s Think Tank follows the CFR from the 1970s through the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union to the present. It explains how members responded to rapid changes in the world scene: globalization, the rise of China, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the launch of a “War on Terror,” among other major developments. Shoup argues that the CFR now operates in an era of “Neoliberal Geopolitics,” a worldwide paradigm that its members helped to establish and that reflects the interests of the U.S. ruling class, but is not without challengers. Wall Street’s Think Tank is an essential guide to understanding the Council on Foreign Relations and the shadow it casts over recent history and current events.

Henry Reed's Think Tank

Henry Reed's Think Tank
Author: Keith Robertson
Publisher: Yearling Books
Total Pages: 192
Release: 1988-10-01
Genre: Business enterprises
ISBN: 9780440401049

When Henry and Midge set themselves up as consultants for the residents of Grover's Cornver, they get into a lot of trouble themselves before eventually solving the problems presented to them.

Think Tanks and Civil Societies

Think Tanks and Civil Societies
Author: R. Weaver
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 1006
Release: 2017-09-29
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1351472119

Government and individual policymakers throughout the developed and developing world face the common problem of bringing expert knowledge to bear in government decision making. Policymakers need understandable, reliable, accessible, and useful information about the societies they govern. They also need to know how current policies are working, as well as possible alternatives and their likely costs and consequences. This expanding need has fostered the growth of independent public policy research organizations, commonly known as think tanks. Think Tanks and Civil Societies analyzes their growth, scope, and constraints, while providing institutional profiles of such organizations in every region of the world.Beginning with North America, contributors analyze think tank development past and future, consider their relationship to the general political culture, and provide detailed looks at such examples as the Heritage Foundation and the Institute for Research on Public Policy. A historical and subregional overview of think tanks throughout Europe notes the emphasis on European Union issues and points to a dramatic rise in the number and influence of free market institutes across the continent. Think tanks in Germany, Spain, and France are profiled with respect to national politics and cultures. Advanced industrial nations of northern Asia are compared and contrasted, revealing a greater need for independent policy voices. Moving to countries undergoing economic transition, contributors deal with challenges posed in Russia and the former Soviet bloc and their think tanks' search for influence, independence, and sustainability. Other chapters deal with the developing countries of Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America, finding that the number, quality, and independence of think tanks is largely determined by the degree of democracy in individual nations.

Improving Think Tank Management

Improving Think Tank Management
Author: Raymond Struyk
Publisher: Hillcrest Publishing Group
Total Pages: 463
Release: 2015-05-05
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0986421324

Improving Think Tank Management: Practical Guidance for Think Tanks, Research Advocacy NGOs, and Their Funders demonstrates better management is possible, cost-effective, and rewarding for leaders and funders of think tanks. The book contains contemporary and actionable best practices, case studies, templates, and strategies used by real organizations to improve management. In this comprehensive guide, Raymond Struyk encourages think tank managers to make improvements to increase efficiency and guides them through lowering the costs of making those improvements. The examples shared confront specific issues managers often experience, such as difficulty motivating staff, controlling project costs, assisting project leaders, and becoming more efficient with fundraising.

Good Profit

Good Profit
Author: Charles G. Koch
Publisher: Crown Currency
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2015-10-13
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1101904143

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Learn how to apply the principles of Charles Koch’s revolutionary Market-Based Management® system to generate good profit in your organization, company, and life “This book helps show you the way to good profit—whether you work for an international supermarket chain, a medium-sized regional business, or your own start-up.”—John Mackey, co-founder and co-CEO, Whole Foods Market The technological innovations, extreme politics, civil unrest, cyber attacks, demographic shifts, and global pandemic that have affected all businesses since this book was published have only confirmed Charles Koch’s belief that “the only reason a business should exist (and the only way it can legitimately survive long term) is to create value in a responsible way.” Hence, the principles in Good Profit are more important today than ever before. What exactly does Koch Industries, Inc., do and why is it so remarkably profitable? Koch’s name may not be on your home’s plywood, vehicle’s grille, smartphone’s connectors, or baby’s ultra-absorbent diapers but it makes them all. And Koch’s Market-Based Management® (MBM) system is what drives these innovations and many more. The core objective of MBM is to generate good profit. Good profit results from products and services that customers vote for freely with their dollars. It results from a bottom-up culture where employees are empowered to act entrepreneurially to discover customers’ preferences and the best ways to improve their lives. Drawing on six decades of interdisciplinary studies, experimental discovery, and practical implementation across Koch businesses worldwide, Charles Koch walks the reader through the five dimensions of MBM to show how to apply its framework in any business, industry, or organization of any size. Readers will learn how to: • Craft a vision for how to thrive in spite of increasingly rapid disruption and ever-changing consumer values • Select and retain a workforce possessing both virtue and talent • Create an environment of knowledge sharing that prizes respectful challenges from everyone at every level • Award employees with ownership and decision rights based on their comparative advantages and proven contributions, not job title • Motivate all employees to maximize their contributions by structuring incentives so compensation is limited only by the value they create A must-read for any leader, entrepreneur, or student, as well as anyone who wants a more civil, fair, and prosperous society, Good Profit is one of the greatest management books of all time.

Think Tank Aesthetics

Think Tank Aesthetics
Author: Pamela M. Lee
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 375
Release: 2020-03-17
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0262357038

How the approaches and methods of think tanks—including systems theory, operational research, and cybernetics—paved the way for a peculiar genre of midcentury modernism. In Think Tank Aesthetics, Pamela Lee traces the complex encounters between Cold War think tanks and the art of that era. Lee shows how the approaches and methods of think tanks—including systems theory, operations research, and cybernetics—paved the way for a peculiar genre of midcentury modernism and set the terms for contemporary neoliberalism. Lee casts these shadowy institutions as sites of radical creativity and interdisciplinary practice in the service of defense strategy. Describing the distinctive aesthetics that emerged from such institutions as the RAND Corporation, she maps the multiple and overlapping networks that connected nuclear strategists, mathematicians, economists, anthropologists, artists, designers, and art historians. Lee recounts, among other things, the decades-long colloquy between Albert Wohlstetter, a RAND analyst, and his former professor, the famous art historian Meyer Schapiro; the anthropologist Margaret Mead's deployment of innovative visual aids that recall midcentury abstract art; and the combination of cybernetics and modernist design in an “Opsroom” for the short-lived socialist government of Salvador Allende in 1970s Chile (and its restaging many years later as a work of art). Lee suggests that we think of these connections less as disciplinary border crossings than as colonization of the specific interests of arts by the approaches and methods of the sciences. Hearing the echoes of think tank aesthetics in today's pursuit of the interdisciplinary and in academia's science-infused justification of the humanities, Lee wonders what territory has been ceded in a laboratory approach to the arts.