New Growth

From Frederick Douglass to Angela Davis, “natural hair” has been associated with the Black freedom struggle. In New Growth Jasmine Nichole Cobb traces the history of Afro-textured coiffure, exploring it as a visual material through which to reimagine the sensual experience of Blackness. Through close readings of slave narratives, scrapbooks, travel illustrations, documentary films, and photography as well as collage, craft, and sculpture, from the nineteenth century to the present, Cobb shows how the racial distinctions ascribed to people of African descent become simultaneously visible and tactile. Whether examining Soul Train’s and Ebony’s promotion of the Afro hairstyle alongside styling products or how artists such as Alison Saar and Lorna Simpson underscore the construction of Blackness through the representation of hair, Cobb foregrounds the inseparability of Black hair’s look and feel. Demonstrating that Blackness is palpable through appearance and feeling, Cobb reveals the various ways that people of African descent forge new relationships to the body, public space, and visual culture through the embrace of Black hair.

This book is in the first place meant to provide basic information for the many Pakeha who interact with Maori as spouses, friends, work colleagues and service providers to help them understand a family type different from their own. It is also a contribution to the debate about the causes of current problems affecting Maori families, and suggests strategies for handling them more effectively.

Henry Chesbrough - the Harvard professor and a worldwide expert for Open innovation - has stated that "most innovations fail. And companies that don’t innovate die." In Germany only less than 0.5 % ideas pursuing by industrial companies has led to a success. The question being addressed is how companies can drive innovations effectively and efficiently to create new growth opportunities, particularly in this difficult time due to the global economic crisis. These challenges could be captured by driving radical innovations using open innovation methodology. Radical innovations can create new markets and huge growth potential for the business meanwhile breakthrough innovations can be developed faster and cheaper via open innovation approach. The aim of this study is to provide a deep insight into radical innovation and open innovation management based on a thorough literature research and evaluation. Thereby basic concepts of the both innovation models are explored and compared with other innovation types, e.g. incremental and closed innovations. Moreover, the Christensen’s model of disruptive innovation and Chesbrough’s theory about open innovation are explained into details. In addition, opportunities and challenges as well as managing concept of radical and open innovations are analyzed and illuminated with concrete examples and cases, amongst others the eco-friendly Light Emitting Diode (LED). Beside technology and market breakthroughs, other aspects like future market trend, key success factors and strategies for capturing sustainable growth of disruptive LED technologies in the lighting industry are studied. It could be stated that companies should drive intensively open innovation and boost the outside-in and inside-out processes for creating new breakthroughs in LED technologies. Increased involving customers, suppliers and the outside scientific world into internal R&D, strengthened collaboration within the LED supply chain and intensified out-licensing of own technologies help companies to accelerate the innovation process and create new markets. Besides driving forceful innovation management companies should boost their new product development by exploitation of government supports which have been increased due to the current global climate change problems.

The existence of significant differences in the organization of the US and European financial markets prompts a number of important questions. Firstly, is it possible to determine the type of institutions that are more conducive to growth? Secondly, did the financial markets play a key role in securing the growth and prosperity of the US during the 1990s? A third issue is the effect of the recent changes in the organization of the financial markets. The last issue addressed relates to the effects on investment and growth of the different corporate governance structures that prevail in the various countries. By exploring the differences between the financial markets in the US and Europe this book helps the reader assess the role of financial markets in securing investment and growth.

China’s change to a new model of growth, now called the ‘new normal’, was always going to be hard. Events over the past year show how hard it is. The attempts to moderate the extremes of high investment and low consumption, the correction of overcapacity in the heavy industries that were the mainstays of the old model of growth, the hauling in of the immense debt hangover from the fiscal and monetary expansion that pulled China out of the Great Crash of 2008 would all have been hard at any time. They are harder when changes in economic policy and structure coincide with stagnation in global trade and rising protectionist sentiment in developed countries, extraordinarily rapid demographic change and recognition of the urgency of easing the environmental damage from the old model. China’s economy has slowed and there are worries that the authorities will not be able to contain the slowdown within preferred limits. This year’s Update explores the challenge of the slowdown in growth and the change in economic structure. Leading experts on China’s economy and environment review change within China’s new model of growth, and its interaction with ageing, environmental pressure, new patterns of urbanisation, and debt problems at different levels of government. It illuminates some new developments in China’s economy, including the transformational potential of internet banking, and the dynamics of financial market instability. China’s economic development since 1978 is full of exciting change, and this year’s China Update is again the way to know it as it is happening.

This book tries to portray the link between economic inequality and long-run growth via human capital and the major take of the book is to analyze the growth panorama through the lens of the ‘idea’ or ‘knowledge’ generation’ which is eventually considered as the ‘engine of growth’ being fueled by productivity enhancement through the innovations of new technologies. But this is not the end of the story as it involves enormous controversies. Simply the controversy started with the basic question --- why are some countries richer than other countries? To put it in another way, why growth is a miracle, why it is not driven homogeneously for economies, or whether the economies would converge or not? Another issue is predominantly crucial, that is, economic inequality in the process of economic expansion. In this context, the present book has given emphasis in explaining the selective growth theories starting from classical foundation to new growth theories including their inner implications in the passage of history of economic growth. In consequence, the vast landscape of theoretical contours about political philosophies and model analyses of economic growth including diverse generic versions of the said link between economic expansion and distribution are explained, and, the most important feature of the textbook is that the link is explored by focusing on a single factor, human capital. The prime emphasis of the present textbook is to look at the link between growth, inequality and human capital accumulation and their resultant outcomes in a new way as New Look by substantiating the issue through empirical analyses relating to the Indian States. The whole journey of the book consists of the political philosophy, models and empirics, the trio, without which the all-around venture of economic theories would become incomplete. For this reason, the whole perspective of empirical analysis is done to keep in mind the necessities of the learners such that they should not feel awkward with a set of data. It is, in that context, the empirical and structural issues are taken up to make the issues distinctively clearer with the presumption that the whole perspective would become, then, more delightful and easy to digest.

Attempts to explain the process of long-run economic growth through endogenous forces such as human capital, knowledge spillover, and information technology. Reviews economic issues in new growth theory, and discusses its empirical evidence and usefulness in national policy making. Analyzes the dynamic and disequilibrium models as applied to recent international growth and discusses their policy implications, and empirically illustrates the various phases of growth in technology-intensive sectors such as flexible manufacturing and the semiconductor and telecommunications industries. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR