How Do I Produce Prosperity

Manufacturing’s central role in global innovation Companies compete on the decisions they make. For years—even decades—in response to intensifying global competition, companies decided to outsource their manufacturing operations in order to reduce costs. But we are now seeing the alarming long-term effect of those choices: in many cases, once manufacturing capabilities go away, so does much of the ability to innovate and compete. Manufacturing, it turns out, really matters in an innovation-driven economy. In Producing Prosperity, Harvard Business School professors Gary Pisano and Willy Shih show the disastrous consequences of years of poor sourcing decisions and underinvestment in manufacturing capabilities. They reveal how today’s undervalued manufacturing operations often hold the seeds of tomorrow’s innovative new products, arguing that companies must reinvest in new product and process development in the US industrial sector. Only by reviving this “industrial commons” can the world’s largest economy build the expertise and manufacturing muscle to regain competitive advantage. America needs a manufacturing renaissance—for restoring itself, and for the global economy as a whole. This will require major changes. Pisano and Shih show how company-level choices are key to the sustained success of industries and economies, and they provide business leaders with a framework for understanding the links between manufacturing and innovation that will enable them to make better outsourcing decisions. They also detail how government must change its support of basic and applied scientific research, and promote collaboration between business and academia. For executives, policymakers, academics, and innovators alike, Producing Prosperity provides the clearest and most compelling account yet of how the American economy lost its competitive edge—and how to get it back.

What can prosperity possibly mean in a world of environmental and social limits? The publication of Prosperity without Growth was a landmark in the sustainability debate. Tim Jackson’s piercing challenge to conventional economics openly questioned the most highly prized goal of politicians and economists alike: the continued pursuit of exponential economic growth. Its findings provoked controversy, inspired debate and led to a new wave of research building on its arguments and conclusions. This substantially revised and re-written edition updates those arguments and considerably expands upon them. Jackson demonstrates that building a ‘post-growth’ economy is a precise, definable and meaningful task. Starting from clear first principles, he sets out the dimensions of that task: the nature of enterprise; the quality of our working lives; the structure of investment; and the role of the money supply. He shows how the economy of tomorrow may be transformed in ways that protect employment, facilitate social investment, reduce inequality and deliver both ecological and financial stability. Seven years after it was first published, Prosperity without Growth is no longer a radical narrative whispered by a marginal fringe, but an essential vision of social progress in a post-crisis world. Fulfilling that vision is simply the most urgent task of our times.

Winner of Balsillie Prize for Public Policy Winner of Donner Prize A challenge to prevailing ideas about innovation and a guide to identifying the best growth strategy for your community. Across the world, cities and regions have wasted trillions of dollars on blindly copying the Silicon Valley model of growth creation. Since the early years of the information age, we've been told that economic growth derives from harnessing technological innovation. To do this, places must create good education systems, partner with local research universities, and attract innovative hi-tech firms. We have lived with this system for decades, and the result is clear: a small number of regions and cities at the top of the high-tech industry but many more fighting a losing battle to retain economic dynamism. But are there other models that don't rely on a flourishing high-tech industry? In Innovation in Real Places, Dan Breznitz argues that there are. The purveyors of the dominant ideas on innovation have a feeble understanding of the big picture on global production and innovation. They conflate innovation with invention and suffer from techno-fetishism. In their devotion to start-ups, they refuse to admit that the real obstacle to growth for most cities is the overwhelming power of the real hubs, which siphon up vast amounts of talent and money. Communities waste time, money, and energy pursuing this road to nowhere. Breznitz proposes that communities instead focus on where they fit in the four stages in the global production process. Some are at the highest end, and that is where the Clevelands, Sheffields, and Baltimores are being pushed toward. But that is bad advice. Success lies in understanding the changed structure of the global system of production and then using those insights to enable communities to recognize their own advantages, which in turn allows to them to foster surprising forms of specialized innovation. As he stresses, all localities have certain advantages relative to at least one stage of the global production process, and the trick is in recognizing it. Leaders might think the answer lies in high-tech or high-end manufacturing, but more often than not, they're wrong. Innovation in Real Places is an essential corrective to a mythology of innovation and growth that too many places have bought into in recent years. Best of all, it has the potential to prod local leaders into pursuing realistic and regionally appropriate models for growth and innovation.

Tired of picking between car payments or light bill payments? How about the simple things, like groceries or entertainment? No matter what the situation is, everything costs money. Today, money is a valuable resource, and God knows it. In his new and exciting book, Kent Jr. will reveal the different steps he took to get Gods attention and share the wisdom he has to get results.

The substantial prosperity that characterizes market economies at the beginning of the twenty-first century is relatively recent in human history. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, economic progress was so slow that people would not have been able to recognize it in their lifetimes, whereas today, economic progress is so much a part of people’s lives that they take it for granted. In this new volume, Randall G. Holcombe argues that economic analysis, as it developed through the twentieth century, relies heavily on concepts of economic equilibrium, and is not descriptive of the dynamic real-world economy that is characterized by economic progress. Even in dynamic settings, economic models focus on income growth, leaving out the entrepreneurial forces that generate economic progress, resulting in the introduction of new goods and services and new production processes. Economic analysis focuses on the forces that lead to an economic equilibrium, not the forces that produce prosperity. This characterization of economic analysis describes a substantial component of economics as it has developed over the past century. However, there are also economists who have analyzed the factors that lead to an entrepreneurial and innovative economy, generating progress rather than equilibrium. This volume does not question the value of past research, but argues that, looking ahead, economics should build on its past to focus on factors that create an entrepreneurial and innovative economy that is characterized by progress and prosperity. This would make economic analysis more consistent with the remarkable progress and prosperity that characterizes the modern economy. This volume lays out a framework for economic analysis that consistently incorporates the real-world factors that produce prosperity.

Overcoming the Never-Enough Mentality to Experience True Kingdom Abundance Prosperity. It's one of the most dividing words in the church. Some pastors use it to tell their congregations that God will make them all rich, rich, rich! Others spurn the word and insist that true Christlikeness is found in forsaking all worldly riches and possessions. The truth is, both are right--and both are wrong. With refreshing honesty, humor, and keen insight, bestselling author and pastor Kris Vallotton mines the Scriptures in an eye-opening study of what the Bible really says about money, poverty, riches, and wealth. And what he finds is sure to shake up what you thought you knew--including these surprising truths: · Jesus was not poor and homeless · Heaven is described in the language of wealth · Poverty is a mindset that holds us back from true wealth · You determine your wealth based on how much, and how well, you love yourself · God wants all his children to be wealthy, though not everyone should be rich Kingdom prosperity begins from the inside out. When you learn to cultivate a mindset of abundance, no matter your circumstances, you will begin to experience the wealth of heaven in every area of your life.

One of Israel’s most successful venture capitalists uses the words and actions of the Hebrew patriarchs to lay the foundations for a modern growth economy based on timeless business principles and values. Entrepreneurs, businessmen, and investors are constantly looking for principles and rules that will pave the way for success. Usually, those at the forefront are successful entrepreneurs from Silicon Valley or legendary Wall Street investors. But the principles of economic growth, wealth creation and preservation were written long before the rise of the modern market economy and its heroes. Michael Eisenberg—one of the most successful venture capitalists in Israel, and one of the first investors in Lemonade, and Wix—reveals in The Tree of Life and Prosperity the eternal principles for successful business, economics, and negotiation hidden in the Torah—and shows their relevance to the modern world we live in.

How have millions of American Christians come to measure spiritual progress in terms of their financial status and physical well-being? How has the movement variously called Word of Faith, Health and Wealth, Name It and Claim It, or simply prosperity gospel come to dominate much of our contemporary religious landscape? Kate Bowler's Blessed is the first book to fully explore the origins, unifying themes, and major figures of a burgeoning movement that now claims millions of followers in America. Bowler traces the roots of the prosperity gospel: from the touring mesmerists, metaphysical sages, pentecostal healers, business oracles, and princely prophets of the early 20th century; through mid-century positive thinkers like Norman Vincent Peale and revivalists like Oral Roberts and Kenneth Hagin; to today's hugely successful prosperity preachers. Bowler focuses on such contemporary figures as Creflo Dollar, pastor of Atlanta's 30,000-member World Changers Church International; Joel Osteen, known as "the smiling preacher," with a weekly audience of seven million; T. D. Jakes, named by Time magazine one of America's most influential new religious leaders; Joyce Meyer, evangelist and women's empowerment guru; and many others. At almost any moment, day or night, the American public can tune in to these preachers-on TV, radio, podcasts, and in their megachurches-to hear the message that God desires to bless them with wealth and health. Bowler offers an interpretive framework for scholars and general readers alike to understand the diverse expressions of Christian abundance as a cohesive movement bound by shared understandings and common goals.