Re Reading The Age Of Innovation

The period of 1830–1950 was an age of unprecedented innovation. From new inventions and scientific discoveries to reconsiderations of religion, gender, and the human mind, the innovations of this era are recorded in a wide range of literary texts. Rather than separating these texts into Victorian or modernist camps, this collection argues for a new framework that reveals how the concept of innovation generated forms of literary newness that drew novelists, poets, and other creative figures working across this period into dialogic networks of experiment. The 14 chapters in this volume explore how inventions like the rotary print press or hot air balloon and emergent debates about science, trade, and colonialism evolved new forms and genres. Through their examinations of a wide range of texts and writers—from well-known novelists like Conrad, Dickens, Hardy, and Woolf, to less canonical figures like Charlotte Mew, Elías Mar, and Walter Frances White—the chapters in this collection re-read these texts as part of an age of innovation characterized not by division and divide, but by collaboration and community.

The Killer Questions Your Company Should Be Asking Generating and executing great ideas is the key to staying ahead in a rapidly changing world. It seems so basic. Why is it so hard to actually get right? According to innovation expert Phil McKinney, the real problem is that we're teaching people to ask the wrong questions about their businesses--or none at all. There has to be a better way. In Beyond the Obvious, McKinney will help you use his proven FIRE (Focus, Ideation, Rank, Execution) Method to dig deeper and get back to asking the right questions--the ones all companies must ask to survive. Full of real-world examples, this book will change the way you operate, innovate, and create, and it all begins with battle-tested questions Phil has gathered on note cards throughout his career. Shared for the first time here, these "Killer Questions" include: What are the rules and assumptions my industry operates under? What if the opposite were true? What will be the buying criteria used by my customer in 5 years? What are my unshakable beliefs about what my customers want? Who uses my product in ways I never anticipated? These questions will reframe the way you see your products, your customers, and the way the two interact. Whether you're a company of thousands or a lean startup, Beyond the Obvious will give you the skills and easy-to-follow plan you need to make both the revolutionary changes and nuanced tweaks required for success. Praise for Beyond the Obvious "Human beings are creatures of habit, so getting ourselves and our teams to think beyond the obvious is a challenge we face all the time. Phil McKinney is an innovation expert, and his killer questions and hit-the-spot anecdotes provide a great way to get out in front of opportunities we otherwise won't see." -- Geoffrey Moore, author of Crossing the Chasm and Escape Velocity "I've always believed that asking the right questions is the essence of design. Phil McKinney proves that point with this wonderful set of killer questions that will jumpstart-or greatly enhance- your innovation efforts." -- B. Joseph Pine II, co-author, The Experience Economy & Infinite Possibility. "Product Innovation is a prerequisite to building great brands. Phil's questions are a prerequisite to building innovative products." -- Satjiv S. Chahil, former global marketing chief, Apple"

There isn't a business that doesn't want to be more creative in its thinking, products and processes. In The Art of Innovation, Tom Kelley, partner at the Silicon Valley-based firm IDEO, developer of hundreds of innovative products from the first commercial mouse to virtual reality headsets and the Palm hand-held, takes readers behind the scenes of this wildly imaginative company to reveal the strategies and secrets it uses to turn out hit after hit. Kelley shows how teams: -Research and immerse themselves in every possible aspect of a new product or service -Examine each product from the perspective of clients, consumers and other critical audiences -Brainstorm best when they are focussed, being physical and having fun The Art of Innovation will provide business leaders with the insights and tools they need to make their companies the leading-edge top-rated stars of their industries.

* Our summary is short, simple and pragmatic. It allows you to have the essential ideas of a big book in less than 30 minutes. As you read this summary, you will discover the mechanisms of disruption, as well as strategies to survive and succeed in changing economic sectors. You will also discover that : all sectors today are disrupted by disruptive innovations; thanks to exponential technological advances, new product offerings are more attractive in every way; the innovation processes of existing companies, designed for a progressive installation of new products on the market, are today inadequate; disruptive products are coming on line at an ever-increasing rate, so that success can be followed by a devastating setback; to survive disruption, you have to see demand as the ebb of the market and adapt to it by being extremely flexible. Disruptive innovations today have a disproportionate and devastating effect on companies. Their intervention signals the beginning of a compelling decline for companies. It is impossible to hope to compete with the new entrants by keeping its old models: salvation can only come from questioning and being highly responsive. A disrupted sector is full of potential, but also of dangers. The book "Big Bang Disruption" offers a diagnosis and a method for adapting to it. *Buy now the summary of this book for the modest price of a cup of coffee!

Africa is a laboratory for managerial and societal innovations built out of pragmatic arrangements. Some African companies offer products and services that go beyond the standard practices of their international counterparts, based on original and inventive managerial characteristics. Such success stories outline a new model of management and innovation for companies in the digital era. The African innovations that have emerged over the past ten years are directly linked to a managerial model that perfectly meets the demands of the digital era. These new organizations indicate that good managerial practices and innovation models also come from the Global South and no longer exclusively from the East Coast of the United States. Understanding these dynamics is of great theoretical and practical interest for the many companies struggling to seize the opportunities for growth in Africa.

Despite the prodigious inventiveness of the Middle Ages, the era is often characterized as deeply suspicious of novelty. But if poets and philosophers urged caution about the new, Patricia Clare Ingham contends, their apprehension was less the result of a blind devotion to tradition than a response to radical expansions of possibility in diverse realms of art and science. Discovery and invention provoked moral questions in the Middle Ages, serving as a means to adjudicate the ethics of invention and opening thorny questions of creativity and desire. The Medieval New concentrates on the preoccupation with newness and novelty in literary, scientific, and religious discourses of the twelfth through sixteenth centuries. Examining a range of evidence, from the writings of Roger Bacon and Geoffrey Chaucer to the letters of Christopher Columbus, and attending to histories of children's toys, the man-made marvels of romance, the utopian aims of alchemists, and the definitional precision of the scholastics, Ingham analyzes the ethical ambivalence with which medieval thinkers approached the category of the new. With its broad reconsideration of what the "newfangled" meant in the Middle Ages, The Medieval New offers an alternative to histories that continue to associate the medieval era with conservation rather than with novelty, its benefits and liabilities. Calling into question present-day assumptions about newness, Ingham's study demonstrates the continued relevance of humanistic inquiry in the so-called traditional disciplines of contemporary scholarship.

Welcome to a brand-new way of thinking about branding. The Physics of Brand is an exploration of how brands evolve in time and space. Drawing on experience working with companies such as Patagonia, General Mills, Target, and more, this book provides an exciting new systems approach to branding. By focusing on how brands and people actually interrelate, you'll gain a new perspective on brand growth and interaction. Complete with case studies to illustrate these concepts and Thought Experiments to get you thinking conceptually, The Physics of Brand is your new textbook on brand theory.

Tablet computer ownership on university campuses has tripled in the past year, according to a Pearson Foundation survey in March 2012. At the threshold of the Post-PC era, as students’ expectations change, reference and instruction librarians are responding with new services. In this issue of Library Technology ReportsVirginia Tech librarians Miller, Meir, and Moorfield-Lang offer a collection of first-hand accounts of academic library projects using tablets. Among the projects detailed: Subject matter librarians roving campus to increase access and usage of online resources Librarians partnering with faculty of eight academic departments to use tablets in instruction Industrial design students using library tablets in competitions and design lab work Workshops that put mobile learning into information literacy instruction Tablets as a curriculum component in a first-year undergraduate learning community Cross-departmental library collaboration in planning new services