Innovation Government

The old tools of political analysis are obsolete - they have rusted and are no longer fit for purpose. We've grown lazy, wedded to the assumption that, after ruptures such as Brexit, the pandemic and the rise of the populist Right, things will eventually go 'back to normal'. Award-winning political writer Matthew d'Ancona invites you to think afresh: to seek new ways of challenging political extremism, bombastic populism and democratic torpor on both Left and Right. In this groundbreaking book, he proposes a new way of understanding our era and plots a way forward.

The US Army entered World War II unprepared. Lacking Germany's blitzkrieg approach of coordinated armor and air power, the army was organized to fight two wars: one on the ground and one in the air. Previous commentators have blamed Congressional funding and public apathy for the army's unprepared state. David E. Johnson believes instead that the principal causes were internal: army culture and bureaucracy, and their combined impact on the development of weapons and doctrine.

The history-making development of the Chinese economy has entered a new phase: China is moving aggressively from a strategy of imitation to one of innovation. Driven both by domestic needs and by global ambition, China is establishing itself at the forefront of technological innovation. Western businesses need to prepare for a tidal wave of innovation from China that is about to hit Western markets, and Chinese businesses need to understand the critical importance of innovation in their future.

What if I told you the public sector, so often derided as sluggish and stuffy, was full of innovators waiting to be unleashed? That we don’t need to invent a new solution to every problem, but to scale and spread all the proven innovation 90% of us don’t know about, or see? This book is about how to innovate in the public sector, what has been stopping us so far, and why we must do so. It draws on expert interviews, case studies, and frontline public service experience.

In this book, Nobel Prize-winning economist Edmund Phelps draws on a lifetime of thinking to make a sweeping new argument about what makes nations prosper--and why the sources of that prosperity are under threat today. Why did prosperity explode in some nations between the 1820s and 1960s, creating not just unprecedented material wealth but "flourishing"--meaningful work, self-expression, and personal growth for more people than ever before?

Every Western business leader wants to know more about China in order to enjoy a greater chance of business success in China. They also need to understand how and why Chinese businesses are spreading throughout the world, particularly under the new "One Belt, One Road" initiative. However, few seek advice from those who best know the answers - Chinese business people. In Unlocking the Emperor's Door, we utilize exclusive and unparalleled access to multi-billionaire Li Jinyuan and his multinational Tiens Group as a case study

Best-selling author Newt Gingrich proposes a bold vision ofthe future: America is on the cusp of a renaissance, a new birth of technological and scientific innovation that will dramatically transform the prosperity and quality of life of every American. Our biggest enemy? Special interest groups, powerful lobbyists, and government bureaucrats who aredetermined to squash, control, or prevent these innovations - and permanently change the future of America.

From San Francisco to Shanghai, many of the world's most innovative places are highly unequal, with the benefits going to a small few. Rather than simply asking how we can create more high-tech cities and nations, Innovation for the Masses focuses on places that manage to foster innovation while also delivering the benefits more widely and equally. In this book, economist Neil Lee draws on case studies of Taiwan, Sweden, Austria, and Switzerland to set out how innovation can be successfully balanced toward equity.

Conventional wisdom holds that Western economies are on the threshold of fast-and-furious technological development. Fredrik Erixon and Bjorn Weigel refute this idea, bringing together a vast array of data and case studies to tell a very different story. With expertise spanning academia and the business world, Erixon and Weigel illustrate how innovation is being hampered by existing government regulations and corporate practices.

In this revelatory narrative covering the years 1967 to 2017, Steven Brill gives us a stunningly cogent picture of the broken system at the heart of our society. He shows us how, over the last half century, America’s core values—meritocracy, innovation, due process, free speech, and even...

From four-term Oklahoma City Mayor Mick Cornett, a hopeful and illuminating look at the dynamic and inventive urban centers that will lead the United States in coming years. Oklahoma City. Indianapolis. Charleston. Des Moines. What do these cities have in common? They are cities of modest size...

The next revolution in business will provide for a sustainable future, from founder, CEO and circular economy expert Ron Gonen Our take-make-waste economy has cost consumers and taxpayers billions while cheating us out of a habitable planet. But it doesn’t have to be this way. The Waste-Free...

Our national security increasingly depends on access to the most sophisticated and advanced technology. Yet the next time we set out to capture a terrorist leader, we may fail. Why? The answer lies in a conflict between two worlds. One is the dynamic, global, commercial world with its thriving innovations. The other is the world of national security, in which innovation is a matter of life or death. The conflict is about secrecy. Innovating in a Secret World is a detailed examination of the current trends in often secret national security-related research and development (R&D).

Combining the deft social analysis of Where Good Ideas Come From with the optimistic arguments of Everything Bad Is Good For You, New York Times bestselling author Steven Johnson’s Future Perfect makes the case that a new model of political change is on the rise, transforming everything from...

Solar energy, once a niche application for a limited market, has become the cheapest and fastest-growing power source on earth. What's more, its potential is nearly limitless. But in Taming the Sun, energy expert Varun Sivaram warns that the world is not yet equipped to harness erratic sunshine to meet most of its energy needs. And if solar's current surge peters out, prospects for replacing fossil fuels and averting catastrophic climate change will dim.

The idea of voting is simple, but the administration of elections in ways that ensure access and integrity is complex. In How We Vote, Kathleen Hale and Mitchell Brown explore how election officials work, how ballots are cast and counted, and how jurisdictions try to innovate while also protecting the security of the voting process.

Niccolò Machiavelli famously wrote, "There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things." That's what this book is about - innovation far more audacious than a new way to find a restaurant or a smart phone you can wear on your wrist. Harvard professor Amy Edmondson and journalist Susan Salter Reynolds explore how to bring into being systems that transform human experience and make the world more livable and sustainable.

Everything you've been told about being green is wrong. The quest for a breakthrough battery or a 100-mpg car is a dangerous fantasy. We are consumers, and we like to consume greenly and efficiently. But David Owen argues that our best intentions are still at cross-purposes to our true goal: living sustainably while caring for our environment and the future of the planet. Efficiency, once considered the holy grail of our environmental problems, turns out to be part of the problem - we have little trouble turning increases in efficiency into increases in consumption.

An engaging account of innovation in healthcare and why the results fall short for patients and society. The evolution of the cell phones we carry in our pockets demonstrates that quality can increase while prices fall. Why doesn't healthcare also get better and cheaper? In Why Not Better and Cheaper?, James B. Rebitzer and Robert S. Rebitzer offer an answer to this question. Bringing together research on incentives, social norms, and market competition, they argue that the healthcare system generates the wrong kinds of innovation.

Historically, competition has powered progress under capitalism. Companies with productive new products rise to the top, but sooner or later, competitors come along with better innovations and disrupt the threat of monopoly. Dominant firms like Walmart, Amazon, and Google argue that this process of “creative destruction” prevents them from becoming too powerful or entrenched. But the threat of competition has sharply decreased over the past twenty years, and today’s corporate giants have come to power by using proprietary information technologies to create a tilted playing field.