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

'Smart' design: greening the Total Product System

About the book: Since the Rio summit in 1992, the paradigm of corporate environmental responsibility has gradually and consistently extended beyond complying with increasingly stringent environmental regulation and taking up the proactive initiatives of a few world-class companies. Research indicates that the business and financial performance of companies may depend directly on socially and environmentally responsible business practices. Many world-class companies now realize that customers and other stakeholders do not distinguish between a company and its suppliers. As a result, greening the supply chain is an innovative idea which is fast gaining attention in the industry. Greening the Supply Chain is a compilation of important chapters written by a diverse set of international authors which incorporates a broad variety of perspectives. Note: Smart car refers to Smart City coupe and Fortwo, and all terms are registered trademarks of MCC (micro compact car)

Adam Smith’s Bourgeois Virtues in Competition

Whether or not capitalism is compatible with ethics is a long standing dispute. We take up an approach to virtue ethics inspired by Adam Smith and consider how market competition influences the virtues most associated with modern commercial society. Up to a point, competition nurtures and supports such virtues as prudence, temperance, civility, industriousness and honesty. But there are also various mechanisms by which competition can have deleterious effects on the institutions and incentives necessary for sustaining even these most commercially friendly of virtues. It is often supposed that if competitive markets are good, more competition must always be better. However, in the long run competition enhancing policies that neglect the nurturing and support of the bourgeois virtues may undermine the continued flourishing of modern commercial society

A Factor Analysis Methodology for Analyzing the Factors that Contribute to Economic Development in the state of Tennessee

Tennessee has been gifted with a good geographic location in Southeastern part of America and with abundant natural resources ready to be harnessed. Big companies such as Fedex, Saturn, etc. have their bases set up in Tennessee since it is accessible by rail, road and air and also because the cost of transportation is very competitive. In spite of the significant advantages, Tennessee has suffered and lost many big companies to neighboring states. Understanding the factors that have shaped the industry’s growth is relevant and quintessential to the design, planning and implementation of policies that support sustainability on a long-term basis for Economic Development of Tennessee. This research is mainly focused on identifying the reasons or factors that help in a) Attracting companies to Tennessee b) Sustaining the existing companies in Tennessee. The research takes us a step ahead by grouping the factors into common factors by using a new pathfinder statistical technique, unique to this type of research that will simplify the task of handling the many factors that influence the corporate decision process. The statistical analysis is further supported with specific discussions of the ideas provided by current industries and Economic Development boards that are located in the State of Tennessee and are focused on attracting new businesses into the state

Constructing female entrepreneurship policy in the UK : is the US a relevant benchmark?

Successive UK governments have introduced a range of policy initiatives designed to encourage more women to start new firms. Underpinning these policies has been an explicit ambition for the UK to achieve similar participation rates as those in the US where it is widely reported that women own nearly half the stock of businesses. The data underlying these objectives are critically evaluated and it is argued that the definitions and measures of female enterprise used in the UK and the US restrict meaningful comparisons between the two. It is suggested that the expansion of female entrepreneurship in the US is historically and culturally specific to that country. UK policy goals should reflect the national socioeconomic context, while drawing upon good practice examples from a range of other countries. The paper concludes by discussing the economic and social viability of encouraging more women in the UK to enter self-employment without fully recognising the intensely competitive sectors in which they are often located