The Innovation-Friendly Organization

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Anna Simpson: “This book explores five cultural traits – Diversity, Integrity, Curiosity, Reflection, and Connection – that encourage the birth and successful development of new ideas, and shows how organizations that are serious about innovation can embrace them.

Innovation – the driver of change and resilience – It is totally dependent on culture, the social environment which shapes how ideas emerge and evolve. Ideas need to breathe, and culture determines the quality of the air. If it’s stuffy and lacks flow, then no idea, however brilliant, will live long enough to fulfil its potential.

Creating these innovation-friendly conditions is one of the key challenges facing organizations today, and one that is especially difficult for them – focused as they are on efficiency and control. Innovation, Anna Simpson argues, begins with diversity of thought and attitude: the opposite of conformity and standardisation.

Likewise, with ongoing pressures to deliver results before yesterday, how can organizations allow sufficient space for the seemingly aimless process of following interesting possibilities and pondering on the impact of various options?Anna Simpson shows how large organizations can adapt their culture to enable the exchange of different perspectives; to support each person to bring their whole self to their work; to embrace the aimlessness that fosters creative experimentation; to take the time to approach change with the care it deserves, and – lastly – to develop the collective strength needed to face the ultimate ‘sledgehammer test’….(More)”.

Managing for Social Impact: Innovations in Responsible Enterprise

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book edited by Mary J, Cronin and , Tiziana C. Dearing: “This book presents innovative strategies for sustainable, socially responsible enterprise management from leading thinkers in the fields of corporate citizenship, nonprofit management, social entrepreneurship, impact investing, community-based economic development and urban design. The book’s integration of research and practitioner perspectives with focused best practice examples offers an in-depth, balanced analysis, providing new insights into the social issues that are most relevant to organizational stakeholders. This integrated focus on sustainable social innovation differentiates the book from academic research monographs on stakeholder theory and practitioner guides to managing traditional Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programs.

Managing for Social Impact features 15 contributed chapters written by thought leaders, industry analysts, and managers of global and local organizations who are engaged with innovative models of sustainable social impact. The editors also provide a substantive introductory chapter describing a new strategic framework for enhancing the Return on Social Innovation (ROSI) through four pillars of social change: Open Circles, Focused Purpose Sharing, Mutuality of Success, and a Persistent Change Perspective….(More)”.

Citizen Empowerment and Innovation in the Data-Rich City

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book edited by C. Certomà, M. Dyer, L. Pocatilu and F. Rizzi: “… analyzes the ongoing transformation in the “smart city” paradigm and explores the possibilities that technological innovations offer for the effective involvement of ordinary citizens in collective knowledge production and decision-making processes within the context of urban planning and management. To so, it pursues an interdisciplinary approach, with contributions from a range of experts including city managers, public policy makers, Information and Communication Technology (ICT) specialists, and researchers. The first two parts of the book focus on the generation and use of data by citizens, with or without institutional support, and the professional management of data in city governance, highlighting the social connectivity and livability aspects essential to vibrant and healthy urban environments. In turn, the third part presents inspiring case studies that illustrate how data-driven solutions can empower people and improve urban environments, including enhanced sustainability. The book will appeal to all those who are interested in the required transformation in the planning, management, and operations of data-rich cities and the ways in which such cities can employ the latest technologies to use data efficiently, promoting data access, data sharing, and interoperability….(More)”.

Code-Dependent: Pros and Cons of the Algorithm Age

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

 and  at PewResearch Center: “Algorithms are instructions for solving a problem or completing a task. Recipes are algorithms, as are math equations. Computer code is algorithmic. The internet runs on algorithms and all online searching is accomplished through them. Email knows where to go thanks to algorithms. Smartphone apps are nothing but algorithms. Computer and video games are algorithmic storytelling. Online dating and book-recommendation and travel websites would not function without algorithms. GPS mapping systems get people from point A to point B via algorithms. Artificial intelligence (AI) is naught but algorithms. The material people see on social media is brought to them by algorithms. In fact, everything people see and do on the web is a product of algorithms. Every time someone sorts a column in a spreadsheet, algorithms are at play, and most financial transactions today are accomplished by algorithms. Algorithms help gadgets respond to voice commands, recognize faces, sort photos and build and drive cars. Hacking, cyberattacks and cryptographic code-breaking exploit algorithms. Self-learning and self-programming algorithms are now emerging, so it is possible that in the future algorithms will write many if not most algorithms.

Algorithms are often elegant and incredibly useful tools used to accomplish tasks. They are mostly invisible aids, augmenting human lives in increasingly incredible ways. However, sometimes the application of algorithms created with good intentions leads to unintended consequences. Recent news items tie to these concerns:

Building State Capability: Evidence, Analysis, Action

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Matt Andrews, Lant Pritchett and Michael Woolcock: “Governments play a major role in the development process, constantly introducing reforms and policies to achieve developmental objectives. Many of these interventions have limited impact, however; schools get built but children don’t learn, IT systems are introduced but not used, plans are written but not implemented. These achievement deficiencies reveal gaps in capabilities, and weaknesses in the process of building state capability.

This book addresses these weaknesses and gaps. It provides evidence of the capability shortfalls that currently exist in many countries, analyses this evidence and identifies capability traps that hold many governments back—particularly related to isomorphic mimicry and premature load-bearing. The book then describes a process that governments can use to escape these capability traps. Called PDIA (Problem Driven Iterative Adaptation), this process empowers people working in governments to find and fit solutions to the problems they face. This process is explained in a practical manner so that readers can actually apply tools and ideas to the capability challenges they face in their own contexts. These applications will help readers implement policies and reforms that have more impact than those of the past….(More)”

It takes more than social media to make a social movement

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Hayley Tsukayama in the Washington Post: “President Trump may have used the power of social media to make his way into the White House, but now social media networks are showing that muscle can work for his opposition, too. Last week, more than 1 million marchers went to Washington and cities around the country — sparked by a Facebook post from one woman with no history of activism. This weekend, the Internet exploded again in discussion about Trump’s travel suspension order, and many used social media to get together and protest the decision.

Twitter said that more than 25 million tweets were sent about the order — as compared with 12 million about Trump’s inauguration. Facebook said that its users generated 151 million “likes, posts, comments and shares” related to the ban, less than the 208 million interactions generated about the inauguration. The companies didn’t reveal how many of those were aimed at organizing, but the social media calls to get people to protest are a testament to the power of these platforms to move people.

The real question, however, is whether this burgeoning new movement can avoid the fate of many so others kick-started by the power of social networks — only to find that it’s much harder to make political change than to make a popular hashtag….

Zeynep Tufekci, an associate professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who has written a forthcoming book on the power and fragility of movements borne of social media, found in her research that the very ability for these movements to scale quickly is, in part, why they also can fall apart so quickly compared with traditional grass-roots campaigns….

Now, organizers can bypass the time it takes to build up the infrastructure for a massive march and all the publicity that comes with it. But that also means their high-profile movements skip some crucial organizing steps.

“Digitally networked movements look like the old movements. But by the time the civil rights movement had such a large march, they’d been working on [the issues] for 10 years — if not more,” Tufekci said. The months or even years spent discussing logistics, leafleting and building a coalition, she said, were crucial to the success of the civil rights movements. Other successful efforts, such as the Human Rights Campaign’s efforts to end the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy against allowing gay people to serve openly in the military were also rooted in organization structures that had been developing and refining their demands for years to present a unified front. Movements organized over social networks often have more trouble jelling, she said, particularly if different factions air their differences on Facebook and Twitter, drawing attention to fractures in a movement….(More).”

Forged Through Fire

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by John Ferejohn and Frances McCall Rosenbluth: “Peace, many would agree, is a goal that democratic nations should strive to achieve. But is democracy, in fact, dependent on war to survive?

Having spent their celebrated careers exploring this provocative question, John Ferejohn and Frances McCall Rosenbluth trace the surprising ways in which governments have mobilized armies since antiquity, discovering that our modern form of democracy not only evolved in a brutally competitive environment but also quickly disintegrated when the powerful elite no longer needed their citizenry to defend against existential threats.?

Bringing to vivid life the major battles that shaped our current political landscape, the authors begin with the fierce warrior states of Athens and the Roman Republic. While these experiments in “mixed government” would serve as a basis for the bargain between politics and protection at the heart of modern democracy, Ferejohn and Rosenbluth brilliantly chronicle the generations of bloodshed that it would take for the world’s dominant states to hand over power to the people. In fact, for over a thousand years, even as medieval empires gave way to feudal Europe, the king still ruled. Not even the advancements of gunpowder—which decisively tipped the balance away from the cavalry-dominated militaries and in favor of mass armies—could threaten the reign of monarchs and “landed elites” of yore.?

The incredibly wealthy, however, were not well equipped to handle the massive labor classes produced by industrialization. As we learn, the Napoleonic Wars stoked genuine, bottom-up nationalism and pulled splintered societies back together as “commoners” stepped up to fight for their freedom. Soon after, Hitler and Stalin perfectly illustrated the military limitations of dictatorships, a style of governance that might be effective for mobilizing an army but not for winning a world war. This was a lesson quickly heeded by the American military, who would begin to reinforce their ranks with minorities in exchange for greater civil liberties at home.?

Like Francis Fukuyama and Jared Diamond’s most acclaimed works, Forged Through Fire concludes in the modern world, where the “tug of war” between the powerful and the powerless continues to play out in profound ways. Indeed, in the covert battlefields of today, drones have begun to erode the need for manpower, giving politicians even less incentive than before to listen to the demands of their constituency. With American democracy’s flanks now exposed, this urgent examination explores the conditions under which war has promoted one of the most cherished human inventions: a government of the people, by the people, for the people. The result promises to become one of the most important history books to emerge in our time….(More)”

Digital Governance and E-Government Principles Applied to Public Procurement

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book edited by Rajesh Kumar Shakya: “Public procurement is vulnerable on many levels. Therefore, to increase protection and improve efficiency, governments across the globe are looking to introduce electronic-based infrastructures.

Digital Governance and E-Government Principles Applied to Public Procurement is an essential reference publication for the latest research on the implementation and impact of public reforms through e-Procurement. Featuring coverage on a broad range of topics and perspectives, such as anti-corruption, acquisitions costs, and governance structures, this book is ideally designed for academicians, practitioners, professionals, and researchers seeking current research on the regulation of the public sector through digital approaches…. (More) (Table of Contents)”

 

Numbers and the Making of Us: Counting and the Course of Human Cultures

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Cover: Numbers and the Making of Us in HARDCOVERBook by Caleb Everett: “Carved into our past, woven into our present, numbers shape our perceptions of the world and of ourselves much more than we commonly think. Numbers and the Making of Us is a sweeping account of how numbers radically enhanced our species’ cognitive capabilities and sparked a revolution in human culture. Caleb Everett brings new insights in psychology, anthropology, primatology, linguistics, and other disciplines to bear in explaining the myriad human behaviors and modes of thought numbers have made possible, from enabling us to conceptualize time in new ways to facilitating the development of writing, agriculture, and other advances of civilization.

Number concepts are a human invention—a tool, much like the wheel, developed and refined over millennia. Numbers allow us to grasp quantities precisely, but they are not innate. Recent research confirms that most specific quantities are not perceived in the absence of a number system. In fact, without the use of numbers, we cannot precisely grasp quantities greater than three; our minds can only estimate beyond this surprisingly minuscule limit.

Everett examines the various types of numbers that have developed in different societies, showing how most number systems derived from anatomical factors such as the number of fingers on each hand. He details fascinating work with indigenous Amazonians who demonstrate that, unlike language, numbers are not a universal human endowment. Yet without numbers, the world as we know it would not exist….(More)”.

Citizen Science in the Digital Age: Rhetoric, Science, and Public Engagement

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by James Wynn: “…highlights scientific studies grounded in publicly gathered data and probes the rhetoric these studies employ. Many of these endeavors, such as the widely used SETI@home project, simply draw on the processing power of participants’ home computers; others, like the protein-folding game FoldIt, ask users to take a more active role in solving scientific problems. In Citizen Science in the Digital Age: Rhetoric, Science, and Public Engagement, Wynn analyzes the discourse that enables these scientific ventures, as well as the difficulties that arise in communication between scientists and lay people and the potential for misuse of publicly gathered data.

Wynn puzzles out the intricacies of these exciting new research developments by focusing on various case studies. He explores the Safecast project, which originated from crowd-sourced mapping for Fukushima radiation dispersal, arguing that evolving technologies enable public volunteers to make concrete, sound, science-based arguments. Additionally, he considers the potential use of citizen science as a method of increasing the public’s identification with the scientific community, and contemplates how more collaborative rhetoric might deepen these opportunities for interaction and alignment. Furthermore, he examines ways in which the lived experience of volunteers may be integrated with expert scientific knowledge, and also how this same personal involvement can be used to further policy agendas.

Precious few texts explore the intersection of rhetoric, science, and the Internet. Citizen Science in the Digital Age fills this gap, offering a clear, intelligent overview of the topic intended for rhetoric and communication scholars as well as practitioners and administrators in a number of science-based disciplines. With the expanded availability of once inaccessible technologies and computing power to laypeople, the practice of citizen science will only continue to grow. This study offers insight into how—given prudent application and the clear articulation of common goals—citizen science might strengthen the relationships between scientists and laypeople….(More)”