Innovation Explosion

How both entrepreneurs and nations can develop, harness, and utilize intellect, science, and technology to maximize innovation and growth.

Financial technology—or fintech—is gaining in popularity globally as a way of making financial services more efficient and accessible. In rapidly developing China, fintech is taking off, catering to markets that state-owned banks and an undersized financial sector do not serve amid a backdrop of growing consumption and a large, tech-savvy millennial generation. It is becoming increasingly likely that some of China’s fintech firms will change the way the world does business. In China’s Fintech Explosion, Sara Hsu and Jianjun Li explore the transformative potential of China’s financial-technology industry, describing the risks and rewards for participants as well as the impact on consumers. They cover fintech’s many subsectors, such as digital payment systems, peer-to-peer lending and crowdfunding, credit card issuance, internet banks, blockchain finance and virtual currencies, and online insurance. The book highlights the disruption of traditional banking as well as the risks of fintech and regulatory technology. Hsu and Li describe major companies including Alipay and Tencent, developer of WeChat Pay and a wealth-management business, and other leading fintech firms such as Creditease, Zhong An Insurance, and JD Finance. Offering expert analysis of market potential, risks, and competition, as well as case studies of firms and consumer behavior, China’s Fintech Explosion is a must-read for anyone interested in one of the world’s breakout sectors.

Greater racial diversity is good news for America's future Race is once again a contentious topic in America, as shown by the divisive rise of Donald Trump and the activism of groups like Black Lives Matter. Yet Diversity Explosion argues that the current period of profound racial change will lead to a less-divided nation than today's older whites or younger minorities fear. Prominent demographer William Frey sees America's emerging diversity boom as good news for a country that would otherwise face declining growth and rapid aging for many years to come. In the new edition of this popular Brookings Press offering, Frey draws from the lessons of the 2016 presidential election and new statistics to paint an illuminating picture of where America's racial demography is headed—and what that means for the nation's future. Using the U.S. Census, national surveys, and related sources, Frey tells how the rapidly growing "new minorities"—Hispanics, Asians, and multiracial Americans—along with blacks and other groups, are transforming and reinvigorating the nation's demographic landscape. He discusses their impact on generational change, regional shifts of major racial groups, neighborhood segregation, interracial marriage, and presidential politics. Diversity Explosion is an accessible, richly illustrated overview of how unprecedented racial change is remaking the United States once again. It is an essential guide for political strategists, marketers, investors, educators, policymakers, and anyone who wants to understand the magnitude, potential, and promise of the new national melting pot in the twenty-first century.

Innovation is nowadays a question of life and death for many of the economies of the western world. Yet, due to our generally reductionist scientific paradigm, invention and innovation are rarely studied scientifically. Most work prefers to study its context and its consequences. As a result, we are as a society, lacking the scientific tools to understand, improve or otherwise impact on the processes of invention and innovation. This book delves deeply into that topic, taking the position that the complex systems approach, with its emphasis on ‘emergence’, is better suited than our traditional approach to the phenomenon. In a collection of very coherent papers, which are the result of an EU-funded four year international research team’s effort, it addresses various aspect of the topic from different disciplinary angles. One of the main emphases is the need, in the social sciences, to move away from neo-darwinist ‘population thinking’ to ‘organization thinking’ if we want to understand social evolution. Another main emphasis is on developing a generative approach to invention and innovation, looking in detail at the contexts within which invention and innovation occur, and how these contexts impact on the chances for success or failure. Throughout, the book is infused with interesting new insights, but also presents several well-elaborated case studies that connect the ideas with a substantive body of ‘real world’ information.

The central theme of this book is that integration issues must be confronted and managed in order to capture value from technological innovation. It provides a comprehensive introduction to the basic principles of technology management

This new book uses extensive and multifaceted data and sophisticated data analysis to explore product innovation in the financial services sector. Merging academic and critical analysis with practical recommendations for companies, this book provides a full and rich account of how new products are brought to market, considering both successes and failures. Providing insight into the organization of product innovation processes in the financial services sector and setting up guidelines for the improvement of these processes, it is essential reading for those in banking, finance and insurance sectors with an interest in innovation studies.

Technology in the world today has contributed to promote organisational competitiveness and national development. But most developing countries have not substantially benefited from science and technology, hence their underdevelopment and poverty. They could not harness and manage their scientific and technological innovations and use their human and material resources to meet basic needs of their people, reduce socio-economic inequalities, create employment opportunities and improve national security. The achievement of these is considered in this book to be dependent on provisions of conducive environments for effective human resource management for scientific and technological innovations. Human resource management concepts and practices were used to evolve frameworks and processes for the generation, acquisition, adoption, and transfer of technology, depending on the objectives of different countries and organisations.

A guide on how to attain desired business results explains how leaders can create consistent and effective solutions and outlines rules for accelerating work while revitilizing an enterprise.

Far from setting down hard and fast rules for organizational innovativeness, the authors introduce the concept of situational innovativeness recognizing that depending on the strategic objectives, conditions, and business environment companies face, managers have to be able to react accordingly, i.e. to choose a relevant combination of innovative management role-composition. Using the anecdotal form, the authors demonstrate how examined managerial traits and characteristics contribute to success, but also how certain traits carried out to excess or in an inflexible manner can signal the beginning of potential failure.

Innovation Leadership: Creating the Landscape of Healthcare focuses on the unique skills related to leading the innovation process in healthcare. This unique text relates leadership skills and attributes necessary to guide organizations and people through the process of innovation in a way that ensures successful innovation outcomes. This contributed text provides a variety of iewpoints on leadership in light of the various formats and tool-sets necessary to assure successful innovation.