The Entrepreneurial Society

The Entrepreneurial Society
Author: David B. Audretsch
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 248
Release: 2007-07-02
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0190293101

Previous generations enjoyed the security of lifelong employment with a sole employer. Public policy and social institutions reinforced that security by producing a labor force content with mechanized repetition in manufacturing plants, and creating loyalty to one employer for life. This is no longer the case. Globalization and new technologies have triggered a shift away from capital and towards knowledge. In today's global economy, where jobs and factories can be moved quickly to low-cost locations, the competitive advantage has shifted to ideas, insights, and innovation. But it is not enough just to have new ideas. It takes entrepreneurs to actualize them by championing them to society. Entrepreneurship has emerged as the proactive response to globalization. In this book, award-winning economist David B. Audretsch identifies the positive, proactive response to globalization--the entrepreneurial society, where change is the cutting edge and routine work is inevitably outsourced. Under the managed economy of the cold war era, government policies around the world supported big business, while small business was deemed irrelevant and largely ignored. The author documents the fundamental policy revolution underway, shifting the focus to technology and knowledge-based entrepreneurship, where start-ups and small business have emerged as the driving force of innovation, jobs, competitiveness and growth. The role of the university has accordingly shifted from tangential to a highly valued seedbed for coveted new ideas with the potential to create not just breathtaking new ventures but also entire new industries. By understanding the shift from the managed economy and the emergence of the entrepreneurial society, individuals, businesses, and communities can learn how to proactively harness the opportunities afforded by globalization in this new entrepreneurial society.

High Technology, Productivity and Networks

High Technology, Productivity and Networks
Author: Patrizio Bianchi
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2008-04-30
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0230583725

Progress in telecommunications and infrastructure, coupled with liberalization in international organizations, has introduced a number of new competitors to existing SMEs. This book analyzes strategic aspects of SME development that may help to promote growth: high-tech development, productivity increase, and strengthening of linkages.

Ibss: Economics: 2001

Ibss: Economics: 2001
Author: Compiled by the British Library of Political and Economic Science
Publisher: Psychology Press
Total Pages: 708
Release: 2002-12
Genre: Economics
ISBN: 9780415284011

IBSS is the essential tool for librarians, university departments, research institutions and any public or private institution whose work requires access to up-to-date and comprehensive knowledge of the social sciences.

Thinking in Systems

Thinking in Systems
Author: Donella Meadows
Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2008-12-03
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1603581480

The classic book on systems thinking—with more than half a million copies sold worldwide! "This is a fabulous book... This book opened my mind and reshaped the way I think about investing."—Forbes "Thinking in Systems is required reading for anyone hoping to run a successful company, community, or country. Learning how to think in systems is now part of change-agent literacy. And this is the best book of its kind."—Hunter Lovins In the years following her role as the lead author of the international bestseller, Limits to Growth—the first book to show the consequences of unchecked growth on a finite planet—Donella Meadows remained a pioneer of environmental and social analysis until her untimely death in 2001. Thinking in Systems is a concise and crucial book offering insight for problem solving on scales ranging from the personal to the global. Edited by the Sustainability Institute’s Diana Wright, this essential primer brings systems thinking out of the realm of computers and equations and into the tangible world, showing readers how to develop the systems-thinking skills that thought leaders across the globe consider critical for 21st-century life. Some of the biggest problems facing the world—war, hunger, poverty, and environmental degradation—are essentially system failures. They cannot be solved by fixing one piece in isolation from the others, because even seemingly minor details have enormous power to undermine the best efforts of too-narrow thinking. While readers will learn the conceptual tools and methods of systems thinking, the heart of the book is grander than methodology. Donella Meadows was known as much for nurturing positive outcomes as she was for delving into the science behind global dilemmas. She reminds readers to pay attention to what is important, not just what is quantifiable, to stay humble, and to stay a learner. In a world growing ever more complicated, crowded, and interdependent, Thinking in Systems helps readers avoid confusion and helplessness, the first step toward finding proactive and effective solutions.

The Politics Industry

The Politics Industry
Author: Katherine M. Gehl
Publisher: Harvard Business Press
Total Pages: 331
Release: 2020-06-23
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1633699242

Leading political innovation activist Katherine Gehl and world-renowned business strategist Michael Porter bring fresh perspective, deep scholarship, and a real and actionable solution, Final Five Voting, to the grand challenge of our broken political and democratic system. Final Five Voting has already been adopted in Alaska and is being advanced in states across the country. The truth is, the American political system is working exactly how it is designed to work, and it isn't designed or optimized today to work for us—for ordinary citizens. Most people believe that our political system is a public institution with high-minded principles and impartial rules derived from the Constitution. In reality, it has become a private industry dominated by a textbook duopoly—the Democrats and the Republicans—and plagued and perverted by unhealthy competition between the players. Tragically, it has therefore become incapable of delivering solutions to America's key economic and social challenges. In fact, there's virtually no connection between our political leaders solving problems and getting reelected. In The Politics Industry, business leader and path-breaking political innovator Katherine Gehl and world-renowned business strategist Michael Porter take a radical new approach. They ingeniously apply the tools of business analysis—and Porter's distinctive Five Forces framework—to show how the political system functions just as every other competitive industry does, and how the duopoly has led to the devastating outcomes we see today. Using this competition lens, Gehl and Porter identify the most powerful lever for change—a strategy comprised of a clear set of choices in two key areas: how our elections work and how we make our laws. Their bracing assessment and practical recommendations cut through the endless debate about various proposed fixes, such as term limits and campaign finance reform. The result: true political innovation. The Politics Industry is an original and completely nonpartisan guide that will open your eyes to the true dynamics and profound challenges of the American political system and provide real solutions for reshaping the system for the benefit of all. THE INSTITUTE FOR POLITICAL INNOVATION The authors will donate all royalties from the sale of this book to the Institute for Political Innovation.

Innovative Business Practices

Innovative Business Practices
Author: Alkis Thrassou
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 403
Release: 2013-07-16
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1443849936

This second decade of the millennium finds the world changing at a once unimaginable pace. Businesses, tangled in the interwoven threads of galloping globalization, technological advances, cultural diversity, economic recession and deep-rooted human social evolution, struggle to keep up with incessant changes; consequently and inexorably experiencing severe difficulties and disorientation. Executives, much bewildered, habitually turn to conventional, time-honoured strategies and practices, which increasingly fail to offer the much-sought answers and means to survival, competitiveness and growth. We are currently experiencing a business era of turbulence and dynamic change – an era that inherently rejects conventionality and orthodox business theory to reward businesses embracing agility, reflex-style adaptability, innovation and creativity. This turbulence is, however, not a parenthesis or even a pattern, but the new reality in which each business must reinvent and redefine itself. This is a new reality of stakeholders that shift focus from the external to the internal, from the tangible to the intangible, and from fact to perception. This book presents research and paradigms that transcend classical theory in order to examine how business practice is positively affected by these conditions. Across a multitude of sectors and organisational types, scholars of different business specialisations set the theoretical foundations of contemporary thinking and present their practical implementations.

Staying Lean

Staying Lean
Author: Peter Hines
Publisher: CRC Press
Total Pages: 208
Release: 2011-02-11
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1439883823

The first edition of this highly acclaimed publication received a Shingo Research and Professional Publication Prize in 2009. Explaining how to create and sustain a Lean business, it followed Cogent Power’s first two Lean Roadmaps along their journey. Since then, much has changed. Several members of Cogent Power’s senior management have moved on, steel prices have declined, and the credit crisis has sparked an unstable global economy. Set against these developments, Staying Lean: Thriving, Not Just Surviving, Second Edition reports on Cogent Power’s response to these issues—detailing how they worked through their third Lean Roadmap. It also: Guides readers with readily reproducible advice and an easy-to-follow model for sustaining Lean improvements Presents a case study of a successful multinational Lean implementation Covers a six-year Lean transformation from start to finish, illustrating the application of three distinct roadmaps Focusing on how to sustain change, the new edition of this bestselling reference, illustrates the experience of a multi-national company that successfully implemented Lean in its manufacturing and commercial operations. Based on a model of sustainable change, the text defines by example the elements of successful Lean management that are often difficult to emulate as well as the more visible features of process management.

Results

Results
Author: Bruce A. Pasternack
Publisher: Crown Business
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2005-10-18
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0307337316

Every company has a personality. Does yours help or hinder your results? Does it make you fit for growth? Find out by taking the quiz that’s helped 50,000 people better understand their organizations at OrgDNA.com and to learn more about Organizational DNA. Just as you can understand an individual’s personality, so too can you understand a company’s type—what makes it tick, what’s good and bad about it. Results explains why some organizations bob and weave and roll with the punches to consistently deliver on commitments and produce great results, while others can’t leave their corner of the ring without tripping on their own shoelaces. Gary Neilson and Bruce Pasternack help you identify which of the seven company types you work for—and how to keep what’s good and fix what’s wrong. You’ll feel the shock of recognition (“That’s me, that’s my company”) as you find out whether your organization is: • Passive-Aggressive (“everyone agrees, smiles, and nods, but nothing changes”): entrenched underground resistance makes getting anything done like trying to nail Jell-O to the wall • Fits-and-Starts (“let 1,000 flowers bloom”): filled with smart people pulling in different directions • Outgrown (“the good old days meet a brave new world”): reacts slowly to market developments, since it’s too hard to run new ideas up the flagpole • Overmanaged (“we’re from corporate and we’re here to help”): more reporting than working, as managers check on their subordinates’ work so they can in turn report to their bosses • Just-in-Time (“succeeding, but by the skin of our teeth”): can turn on a dime and create real breakthroughs but also tends to burn out its best and brightest • Military Precision (“flying in formation”): executes brilliant strategies but usually does not deal well with events not in the playbook • Resilient (“as good as it gets”): flexible, forward-looking, and fun; bounces back when it hits a bump in the road and never, ever rests on its laurels For anyone who’s ever said, “Wow, that’s a great idea, but it’ll never happen here” or “Whew, we pulled it off again, but I’m tired of all this sprinting,” Results provides robust, practical ideas for becoming and remaining a resilient business. Also available as an eBook From the Hardcover edition.