Capital Ideas: How to Generate Innovation in the Public Sector

Offers suggestions for and examples of how to stimulate innovation in government, including identifying priorities, allowing for creative and entrepreneurial solutions, funding innovation, improving incentives, changing cultures, and scaling what works

Capital Ideas - Winning State Funding for Transportation: Lessons from Recent Successes

In 2015, Congress will once again debate transportation funding at the federal level. It would be in the best interests of the nation for them to fix the perpetual shortfalls in the Highway Trust Fund and set the country on a path toward a 21st century infrastructure. It is important to note that all of the states that have acted thus far, and those working to do so this year or beyond, are doing so in expectation of ongoing federal support. Governors and legislators have acted because states face growing needs and static or falling revenues. The situation has been made worse by federal funding that has remained flat as costs have risen, and could grow disastrously worse should Congress reduce federal support in the upcoming renewal of the national program. Regardless of what happens in Washington, states know that Congress will never appropriate enough support to close the gap needed to address maintenance backlogs and build for the future. Governors and legislators recognize that they can be leaders on this issue, working across party lines, generating new funding mechanisms, and creating new coalitions in support of transportation investment. The strategies and examples discussed in this report are intended to be a helpful guide for those emerging leaders as they navigate the unique context of their own individual states to pass transportation revenue legislation, and in turn, set an example for others to follow in the future

The Road Less Traveled: Funders' Advice on the Path to Nonprofit Sustainability

(With apologies to Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken, 1920.) As part of the Capital Ideas symposium co-hosted by the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations at Harvard University and the Nonprofit Finance Fund in March, 2007, an online survey was conducted about funder practices that support nonprofit sustainability. This article highlights the survey findings and the advice that funders offered from their own experiences as paths to greater nonprofit strength. Rather than a qualitative analysis of funding initiatives, this article presents guidance to the field from the field, as funders grappling with how best to strengthen the long term health of their grantees reflect on their works in progress. This article then goes a step further by annotating these lessons learned with the additional perspective offered from just four of the ten draft funding principles that have evolved from the Capital Ideas symposium with the hope of encouraging more funders to consider these principles and practices in their own work. The Capital Ideas survey generated 48 profiles of funding approaches, practices and strategies that support nonprofit organizational capacity building, long term financial health and or programmatic improvement. The lessons funders learned from those initiatives informed ten funding principles that were introduced at the Capital Ideas symposium on March 15, 2007 at Harvard University. Four of those draft principles, outlined below, offered concepts that resonated throughout the profiles and are offered as key steps for funders to consider as they reflect upon their own giving practices. These principles include: Understand when youre building or buying, and fund accordingly. Actively pool resources when more funds are required to achieve results. Minimize the transaction costs for grantees and funders of applying for and reporting on grants. Fund at the organizational rather than the programmatic level, even when your primary interest is in one program. This publication is Hauser Center Working Paper No. 40. The Hauser Center Working Paper Series was launched during the summer of 2000. The Series enables the Hauser Center to share with a broad audience important works-in-progress written by Hauser Center scholars and researchers

Towards a comprehensive partnership between the EU and New Zealand

A history of substantial flows of people, goods, capital, ideas, and institutions binds the European Union (EU) and New Zealand. In October 2016, the comprehensive character of bilateral relations was reaffirmed with the signing of a Partnership Agreement on Relations and Cooperation (PARC). This treaty-level agreement will serve as a framework for future joint endeavours in a number of areas and may also pave the way for a free-trade agreement (FTA)

Making regional cooperation work for South Asia's poor

South Asia has attracted global attention because it has experienced rapid GDP growth over the last two decades. What is not so well known is that South Asia is the least integrated region in the world. South Asia has opened its door to the rest of the world but it remains closed to its neighbors. Poor market integration, weak connectivity, and a history of friction and conflict have resulted in two South Asias. The first South Asia is dynamic, growing rapidly, highly urbanized, and is benefiting from global integration. The second South Asia is rural, land locked, full of poverty, and lagging. The divergence between the two South Asias is on the rise. Policy makers in South Asia have realized that countries and regions can not grow in isolation. The unique geography of South Asia-distance and density--has the potential to raise growth through increased flow of labor, capital, ideas, technology, goods and services within the region and with the rest of the world. Most lagging regions, in terms of both per capita income and poverty incidence, in South Asia are either land-locked or located in the border areas. Regional cooperation and market integration will unlock the development of these lagging regions in South Asia.Transport Economics Policy&Planning,Economic Theory&Research,Achieving Shared Growth,Rural Poverty Reduction,Population Policies

Globalization process and its impact on Kosovo’s tourism development

Unlike modernization, globalization is a process somewhat independent from the will of its adhering participants. This thesis represents Robertson sociologist giving a description based on which capital, ideas and cultural codes, with the help of new communication tools, expand worldwide. With rapid development of media and mass electronic communications is eliminated the importance of space and leads to shrinking (narrowing) of time and space which is a serious threat to national cultural identities. Fukuyama in his apology of liberal democracy warns "final political neutralization of nationalism" in terms of overall centralization and linguistic unity of the world

City networks in cyberspace and time : using Google hyperlinks to measure global economic and environmental crises

Geographers and social scientists have long been interested in ranking and classifying the cities of the world. The cutting edge of this research is characterized by a recognition of the crucial importance of information and, specifically, ICTs to cities’ positions in the current Knowledge Economy. This chapter builds on recent “cyberspace” analyses of the global urban system by arguing for, and demonstrating empirically, the value of Web search engine data as a means of understanding cities as situated within, and constituted by, flows of digital information. To this end, we show how the Google search engine can be used to specify a dynamic, informational classification of North American cities based on both the production and the consumption of Web information about two prominent current issues global in scope: the global financial crisis, and global climate change