339 results for "Innovation"

The gifts of Athena

Mokyr, Joel
The growth of technological and scientific knowledge in the past two centuries has been the overriding dynamic element in the economic and social history of the world. Its result is now often called the knowledge economy. But what are the historical origins of this revolution and what have been its mechanisms? In The Gifts of Athena , Joel Mokyr constructs an original framework to analyze the concept of "useful" knowledge. He argues that the growth explosion in the modern West in the past two centuries was driven not just by the appearance of new technological ideas but also by the improved access to these ideas in society at large--as made possible by social networks comprising universities, publishers, professional sciences, and kindred institutions. Through a wealth of historical evidence set in clear and lively prose, he shows that changes in the intellectual and social environment and the institutional background in which knowledge was generated and disseminated brought about the Industrial Revolution, followed by sustained economic growth and continuing technological change. Mokyr draws a link between intellectual forces such as the European enlightenment and subsequent economic changes of the nineteenth century, and follows their development into the twentieth century. He further explores some of the key implications of the knowledge revolution. Among these is the rise and fall of the "factory system" as an organizing principle of modern economic organization. He analyzes the impact of this revolution on information technology and communications as well as on the public's state of health and the structure of households. By examining the social and political roots of resistance to new knowledge, Mokyr also links growth in knowledge to political economy and connects the economic history of technology to the New Institutional Economics. The Gifts of Athena provides crucial insights into a matter of fundamental concern to a range of disciplines including economics, economic history, political economy, the history of technology, and the history of science.
Princeton University Press 2002 359 pages

Favorites of fortune: technology, growth, and economic development since the Industrial Revolution

Patrice L. R. Higonnet,David S. Landes,Henry Rosovsky
A galaxy of distinguished international economists and historians pit economic history against the shaky assumptions of the classical economic theory of natural growth. Their explanations consider the factors of technology, entrepreneurialism, and paths to economic growth, but each reflects an ideological wave of explanation that has marked the last two hundred years.
Harvard University Press 1991-01 558 pages

Pharmaphobia: how the conflict of interest myth undermines American medical innovation

Stossel, Thomas P.
For millennia, human survival depended on our innate abilities to fight pathogens and repair injuries. Only recently has medical science prolonged longevity and improved quality of life. Physicians and academic researchers contribute to such progress, but the principal contributor is private industry that produces the tools – drugs and medical devices – enabling doctors to prevent and cure disease. Heavy regulation and biology’s complexity and unpredictability make medical innovation extremely difficult and expensive. Pharmaphobia describes how an ideological crusade, stretching over the last quarter century, has used distortion and flawed logic to make medical innovation even harder in a misguided pursuit of theoretical professional purity. Bureaucrats, reporters, politicians, and predatory lawyers have built careers attacking the medical products industry, belittling its critical contributions to medical innovation and accusing it of non-existent malfeasance: overselling product value, flaunting safety and corrupting physicians and academics who partner with it. The mania has imposed “conflict-of-interest” regulations limiting or banning valuable interactions between industry and physicians and researchers and diverting scarce resources from innovation to compliance. The victims are patients suffering from cancer, dementia, and other serious diseases for which new treatments are delayed, reduced, or eliminated as a result of these pointless regulations. With breathtaking detail, Thomas Stossel shows how this attack on doctors who work with industry limits medical innovation and inhibits the process of bringing new products into medical care.
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers 2017-11-17 352 pages

Heimlich's maneuvers: my seventy years of lifesaving innovation

Heimlich, Henry J.
" Here, in his own words, is the story of one of the twentieth century's most creative medical innovators, Dr. Henry Heimlich. The thoracic surgeon is best known for having developed the Heimlich Maneuver, the world's easiest-to-learn and most universally known method to save people from choking to death on food or foreign objects. But many don't know about Dr. Heimlich's other life-saving inventions. He is the inventor of the Heimlich Chest Drain Valve, which saved thousands of lives during the Vietnam War, and the Heimlich MicroTrach, which provides a remarkably efficient way for people to take oxygen. In the present decade, Dr. Heimlich has turned his attention to two devastating illnesses for which medicine has not yet found a cure--cancer and HIV. He describes his research and its promise, as well as the controversy and resistance his new ideas have generated from the medical establishment. Interweaving the author's personal life with riveting stories of his numerous medical breakthroughs, this rich memoir provides insights into the workings of a creative mind and the machinations of the American medical system."
Prometheus Books 2014 253 pages

The design of innovation: lessons from and for competent genetic algorithms

Goldberg, David E.
7 69 6 A DESIGN APPROACH TO PROBLEM DIFFICULTY 71 1 Design and Problem Difficulty 71 2 Three Misconceptions 72 3 Hard Problems Exist 76 4 The 3-Way Decomposition and Its Core 77 The Core of Intra-BB Difficulty: Deception 5 77 6 The Core of Inter-BB Difficulty: Scaling 83 7 The Core of Extra-BB Difficulty: Noise 88 Crosstalk: All Roads Lead to the Core 8 89 9 From Multimodality to Hierarchy 93 10 Summary 100 7 ENSURING BUILDING BLOCK SUPPLY 101 1 Past Work 101 2 Facetwise Supply Model I: One BB 102 Facetwise Supply Model II: Partition Success 103 3 4 Population Size for BB Supply 104 Summary 5 106 8 ENSURING BUILDING BLOCK GROWTH 109 1 The Schema Theorem: BB Growth Bound 109 2 Schema Growth Somewhat More Generally 111 3 Designing for BB Market Share Growth 112 4 Selection Press ure for Early Success 114 5 Designing for Late in the Day 116 The Schema Theorem Works 6 118 A Demonstration of Selection Stall 7 119 Summary 122 8 9 MAKING TIME FOR BUILDING BLOCKS 125 1 Analysis of Selection Alone: Takeover Time 126 2 Drift: When Selection Chooses for No Reason 129 3 Convergence Times with Multiple BBs 132 4 A Time-Scales Derivation of Critical Locus 142 5 A Little Model of Noise-Induced Run Elongation 143 6 From Alleles to Building Blocks 147 7 Summary 148 10 DECIDING WELL 151 1 Why is Decision Making a Problem? 151
Kluwer Academic Publishers 2002-06-30 248 pages

Culture crash: the killing of the creative class

Timberg, Scott
"Change is no stranger to us in the twenty-first century. All of us must constantly adjust to an evolving world, to transformation and innovation. But for many thousands of creative artists, a torrent of recent changes has made it all but impossible to earn a living. A persistent economic recession, social shifts, and technological change have combined to put our artists-from graphic designers to indie-rock musicians, from architects to booksellers-out of work. This important book looks deeply and broadly into the roots of the crisis of the creative class in America and tells us why it matters. Scott Timberg considers the human cost as well as the unintended consequences of shuttered record stores, decimated newspapers, music piracy, and a general attitude of indifference. He identifies social tensions and contradictions-most concerning the artist's place in society-that have plunged the creative class into a fight for survival. Timberg shows how America's now-collapsing middlebrow culture-a culture once derided by intellectuals like Dwight Macdonald-appears, from today's vantage point, to have been at least a Silver Age. Timberg's reporting is essential reading for anyone who works in the world of culture, knows someone who does, or cares about the work creative artists produce"--
Yale University Press 2015-01-01 310 pages

My affair with art house cinema: essays and reviews

Lopate, Phillip
"Phillip Lopate is a lifelong movie-lover-and an award-winning essayist-so it was perhaps inevitable that he would write so much on film. Coming of age, cinematically speaking, in the early 1960s, Lopate immersed himself in the films of the French New Wave, the Italian Neorealists, and directors such as Satyji Ray and Akira Kurosawa, and American independent filmmakers like John Cassavettes and Shirley Clarke. The formal qualities and innovation he found in many of those films along with their emotional intensity have continued to set the bar for Lopate's viewing and his interest in what he terms, art house cinema as well as classic Hollywood films given new life in retrospectives. In My Affair with Art House Cinema, Phillip Lopate writes about those movies that have most captivated him over the past twenty-five years upon rewatching or watching for the first time. He discusses films by leading global contemporary filmmakers such as Olivier Assayas, Youssef Chahine, Claire Denis, Abbas Kiarostami, David Lynch, Richard Linklater, Lena Dunham, David Cronenberg, Jafar Panahi, Hong Sang-soo Hou Hsaio-hsien, and Chantal Akerman. He also returns to the works of older filmmakers ranging from Godard and Ozu to John Ford and Alfred Hitchcock. Throughout these essays, Lopate's critiques and celebration of a wide variety of films convey the excitement and appreciation for the visceral pleasures and profound insight that movies offer"--
Columbia University Press 2024 404 pages

The dominant animal: human evolution and the environment

Ehrlich, Paul R.
In humanity’s more than 100,000 year history, we have evolved from vulnerable creatures clawing sustenance from Earth to a sophisticated global society manipulating every inch of it. In short, we have become the dominant animal. Why, then, are we creating a world that threatens our own species? What can we do to change the current trajectory toward more climate change, increased famine, and epidemic disease? Renowned Stanford scientists Paul R. Ehrlich and Anne H. Ehrlich believe that intelligently addressing those questions depends on a clear understanding of how we evolved and how and why we’re changing the planet in ways that darken our descendants’ future. The Dominant Animal arms readers with that knowledge, tracing the interplay between environmental change and genetic and cultural evolution since the dawn of humanity. In lucid and engaging prose, they describe how Homo sapiens adapted to their surroundings, eventually developing the vibrant cultures, vast scientific knowledge, and technological wizardry we know today. But the Ehrlichs also explore the flip side of this triumphant story of innovation and conquest. As we clear forests to raise crops and build cities, lace the continents with highways, and create chemicals never before seen in nature, we may be undermining our own supremacy. The threats of environmental damage are clear from the daily headlines, but the outcome is far from destined. Humanity can again adapt—if we learn from our evolutionary past. Those lessons are crystallized in The Dominant Animal. Tackling the fundamental challenge of the human predicament, Paul and Anne Ehrlich offer a vivid and unique exploration of our origins, our evolution, and our future.
Island Press 2008-06-30 428 pages

Inside the California food revolution: thirty years that changed our culinary consciousness

Goldstein, Joyce Esersky
"In this authoritative and immensely readable insider's account, celebrated cookbook author and former chef Joyce Goldstein traces the development of California cuisine from its early years in the 1970s to the present, when farm-to-table, foraging, and fusion cuisine are part of the national vocabulary. Goldstein's interviews with almost two hundred chefs, purveyors, artisans, winemakers, and food writers bring to life an era when cooking was grounded in passion, bold innovation, and a dedication to "flavor first." The author shows how the counterculture movement in the West gave rise to a restaurant culture that was defined by open kitchens, women in leadership positions, and the presence of a surprising number of chefs and artisanal food producers who lacked formal training. California cuisine challenged the conventional kitchen hierarchy and dominance of French technique in fine dining, she explains, leading to a more egalitarian restaurant culture and informal food scene. In weaving the author's view of California food culture with profiles of those who played a part in its development-from Alice Waters to Bill Niman to Wolfgang Puck-Inside the California Food Revolution demonstrates that, in addition to access to fresh produce, the region also shared a distinctly Western culture of openness, creativity, and collaboration. Wonderfully detailed and engagingly written, this book elucidates as never before how the inspirations that emerged in California went on to transform the eating experience throughout the U.S. and the world. "--
University of California Press 2013-09-06 348 pages

Between authority and interpretation: on the theory of law and practical reason

Raz, Joseph
In this book Joseph Raz develops his views on some of the central questions in practical philosophy: legal, political, and moral. The book provides an overview of Raz's work on jurisprudence and the nature of law in the context of broader questions in the philosophy of practical reason. The book opens with a discussion of methodological issues, focusing on understanding the nature of jurisprudence. It asks how the nature of law can be explained, and how the success of a legal theory can be established. The book then addresses central questions on the nature of law, its relation to morality, the nature and justification of authority, and the nature of legal reasoning. It explains how legitimate law, while being a branch of applied morality, is also a relatively autonomous system, which has the potential to bridge moral differences among its subjects. Raz offers responses to some critical reactions to his theory of authority, adumbrating, and modifying the theory to meet some of them. The final part of the book brings together for the first time Raz's work on the nature of interpretation in law and the humanities. It includes a new essay explaining interpretive pluralism and the possibility of interpretive innovation. Taken together, the essays in the volume offer a valuable introduction for students coming for the first time to Raz's work in the philosophy of law, and an original contribution to many of the current debates in practical philosophy.
Oxford University Press 2010-09-09 413 pages

The creative priority: driving innovative business in the real world

Hirshberg, Jerry
How does your company define creativity? Or does creativity define your company? In this book, Jerry Hirshberg - founder and president of Nissan Design International (NDI) - distills his experience as leader of the world's hotbed of automotive innovation and reveals his strategy for designing an organization around creativity. Rather than championing the traditional treatment of creativity as a vital component in business, Hirshberg shows how creativity can become the fundamental organizing principle of business. In The Creative Priority, Hirshberg describes how NDI produced a culture that fostered innovation, enabling his team to produce such cutting-edge designs as Nissan's Altima, Pathfinder, Quest, and Maxima; Ford's Villager; and Infiniti's J30.
HarperBusiness 1998 261 pages

Jews in Nazi Berlin: from Kristallnacht to liberation

Beate Meyer,Hermann Simon,Chana Schütz
Though many of the details of Jewish life under Hitler are familiar, historical accounts rarely afford us a real sense of what it was like for Jews and their families to live in the shadow of Nazi Germany’s oppressive racial laws and growing violence. With Jews in Nazi Berlin , those individual lives—and the constant struggle they required—come fully into focus, and the result is an unprecedented and deeply moving portrait of a people. Drawing on a remarkably rich archive that includes photographs, objects, official documents, and personal papers, the editors of Jews in Nazi Berlin have assembled a multifaceted picture of Jewish daily life in the Nazi capital during the height of the regime’s power. The book’s essays and images are divided into thematic sections, each representing a different aspect of the experience of Jews in Berlin, covering such topics as emigration, the yellow star, Zionism, deportation, betrayal, survival, and more. To supplement—and, importantly, to humanize—the comprehensive documentary evidence, the editors draw on an extensive series of interviews with survivors of the Nazi persecution, who present gripping first-person accounts of the innovation, subterfuge, resilience, and luck required to negotiate the increasing brutality of the regime. A stunning reconstruction of a storied community as it faced destruction, Jews in Nazi Berlin renders that loss with a startling immediacy that will make it an essential part of our continuing attempts to understand World War II and the Holocaust.
University of Chicago Press 2009-12-15 392 pages

The Religious Revolution The Birth of Modern Spirituality, 1848-1898

Dominic Green
“An incisive study of the Western world’s shift from institutional religion to more personal beliefs in the second half of the nineteenth century . . . This is intellectual history at its most comprehensive and convincing.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review) The late nineteenth century was an age of grand ideas and great expectations fueled by rapid scientific and technological innovation. In Europe, the ancient authority of church and crown was overthrown for the volatile gambles of democracy and the capitalist market. If it was an age that claimed to liberate women, slaves, and serfs, it also harnessed children to its factories and subjected entire peoples to its empires. Amid this tumult, another sea change was underway: the religious revolution. In The Religious Revolution , Dominic Green charts this profound cultural and political shift, taking us on a whirlwind journey through the lives and ideas of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman; of Éliphas Lévi and Helena Blavatsky; of Wagner and Nietzsche; of Marx, Darwin, and Gandhi. Challenged by the industrialization, globalization, and political unrest of their times, these figures found themselves connecting with the religious impulse in surprising new ways, inspiring others to move away from the strictures of religion and toward the thrill and intimacy of spirituality. The modern era is often characterized as a time of increasing secularism, but in this trenchant new work, Green demonstrates how the foundations of modern society were laid as much by spirituality as by science or reason. The Religious Revolution is a narrative tour de force that sweeps across several continents and five of the most turbulent and formative decades in history. Threading together seemingly disparate intellectual trajectories, Green illuminates how philosophers, grifters, artists, scientists, and yogis shared in a global cultural moment, borrowing one another’s beliefs and making the world we know today.
Picador 2023-04-18 464 pages

The Collected Poems of Delmore Schwartz

Delmore Schwartz
The first complete collection of the poetry of Delmore Schwartz, “the most underrated poet of the twentieth century" (John Berryman). When Delmore Schwartz published his first short story, “In Dreams Begin Responsibilities,” in Partisan Review in 1937, he became an instant literary celebrity. After the appearance of his first book (by the same name), he was inundated with praise. The famed poet Allen Tate wrote to him, “Your poetic style is beyond any doubt the first real innovation that we’ve had since Eliot and Pound,” and T. S. Eliot himself wrote Schwartz a letter asking him to compose more poetry. The brilliant start of his career is matched perhaps only by its tragic end, a lonely death after an extended period of alcoholism, depression, and derangement. Today, more than fifty years after his death in 1966, Schwartz is often remembered for the tragedy of his life rather than for the innovation and sad brilliance of his greatest work. This book brings together all of Schwartz’s poetry for the first time, from his groundbreaking debut collection to his unpublished late work, which he kept writing until his death. Accompanied by Ben Mazer’s illustrative notes and introduction, The Collected Poems of Delmore Schwartz offers readers the long-awaited opportunity to rediscover one of the most influential and original poets of the twentieth century. As Mazer writes in his introduction, “It is the poems that count now. And it is the glory of the poems that survives here, awaiting new life.”
Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2026-04-07 736 pages

The Modern Language of Architecture

Bruno Zevi
Frank Lloyd Wright called Bruno Zevi ?the most penetrating architectural critic of our time,? and one could ask for no better proof than Zevi?s masterpiece, The Modern Language of Architecture . In it, Zevi sets forth seven principles, or ?antirules,? to codify the new language of architecture created by Le Corbusier, Gropius, Mies van der Rohe, and Wright. In place of the classical language of the Beaux Art school, with its focus on abstract principles of order, proportion, and symmetry, he presents an alternative system of communication characterized by a free interpretation of contents and function, an emphasis on difference and dissonance, a dynamic of multidimensional vision, and independent interplay of elements, an organic marriage of engineering and design, a concept of living spaces that are designed for use, and an integration of buildings into their surroundings. Anticipating the innovations of postmodern architecture, Zevi argues forcefully for complexity and against unity, for decomposition dialogue between architecture and historiography, finding elements of the modern language of architecture throughout history, and discussing the process of architectural innovation. Sumptuously illustrated, and written in a clear, accessible manner, The Modern Language of Architecture will long remain one of the classics of architectural criticism and history.
Van Nostrand Reinhold 1981 241 pages

The permanent revolution: apostolic imagination and practice for the 21st century church

Hirsch, Alan
"A new brand of apostolic ministry for today's world The Permanent Revolution is a work of theological re-imagination and re-construction that draws from biblical studies, theology, organizational theory, leadership studies, and key social sciences. The book elaborates on the apostolic role rooted in the five-fold ministry from Ephesians 4 (apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, and teacher), and its significance for the missional movement. It explores how the apostolic ministry facilitates ongoing renewal in the life of the church and focuses on leadership in relation to missional innovation and entrepreneurship.The authors examine the nature of organization as reframed through the lens of apostolic ministry. Shows how to view the world through a biblical perspective and continue the "permanent revolution" that Jesus started Outlines the essential characteristics of apostolic movement and how to restructure the church and ministry to be more consistent with them Alan Hirsch is a leading voice in the missional movement of the Christian West This groundbreaking book integrates theology, sociology, and leadership to further define the apostolic movement"--Provided by publisher.
Jossey-Bass 2012-02-28 326 pages

American innovations

Galchen, Rivka
In one of the intensely imaginative stories in Rivka Galchen's American Innovations, a narrator's furniture walks out on her. In another, the narrator feels compelled to promise to deliver a takeout order that has incorrectly been phoned in to her. In a third, the petty details around a property transaction detail the complicated pains and loves of a family. The stories in this unusual collection also have secret lives in conversation with earlier stories. As in the tradition of considering Wallace Stevens's "Anecdote of the Jar" as a response to John Keats' "Ode on a Grecian Urn," Galchen's "The Lost Order" covertly recapitulates James Thurber's "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty," while "The Region of Unlikeness" is a smoky and playful mirror to Jorge Luis Borges's "The Aleph." The title story, "American Innovations," reimagines Nikolai Gogol's "The Nose." Alternately realistic, fantastical, witty and lyrical, these are all deeply emotional tales, written in exuberant, pitch-perfect prose and shadowed by the darkly marvellous and the marvellously uneasy. Whether exploring the tensions in a mother-daughter relationship or the finer points of time travel, Galchen takes great risks, proving that she is a writer like none other today.
HarperCollins 2014-05-06 175 pages