The disrupters: Lessons for low-carbon innovation from the new wave of environmental pioneers

We need disruptive forms of innovation 13 cheaper, easier-to-use alternatives to existing products or services, often produced by non-traditional players for previously ignored customers. This report tells the stories of eight such "disrupters" and draws wider lessons for low-carbon innovation. Its recommendations include: 1. Government should provide an enabling policy framework within which low-carbon innovation ca

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The Roles that Change in the Controls and the Evolution of Trust Play in a Successful Joint Venture

The purpose of this study was to explore the roles that changes in formal and informal controls play in the evolution of trust over the lifecycle of a successful joint venture. While leaders often form joint ventures to manage risk and uncertainty and gain a competitive advantage in the market place, forming a joint venture presents a new set of risk and uncertainty to be managed with partner organizations. Because trust generally does not previously exist among organizations that form a joint venture, leaders may use formal and informal controls to shape attitudes and behaviors towards desired goals and outcomes (Gulati & Nickerson, 2008). In this study, I sought to better understand how the uses of controls change and how trust evolved over the lifecycle of a successful joint venture. To gain this knowledge, I conducted an interpretive case study of a joint venture formed by three health care organizations in the Midwest United States. Results from interviews with executive administrators, department administrators, and physicians of all three parties resulted in identification of the following formal and informal controls. Formal controls: financial reward system, organizational structure, and selection and placement of people Informal controls: compelling vision/mission, relationships, and buy-in/support These controls had both a positive and negative impact on the evolution of trust over the lifecycle of the joint venture. Leaders made adjustments to formal controls over the lifecycle that resulted in an overall positive impact on trust. While trust changed as relationships changed, trust did not change as the compelling vision/mission and buy-in/support remained strong and steady over the lifecycle of the joint venture

MOOCs and Foucault’s Heterotopia: On Community and Self-Efficacy

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) present challenges for individual student self-efficacy and relational communities of learners. Faucault’s concept of the “heterotopia” is examined as a lens of the no-place place by which barriers between the individual and the community are called into question as seemingly disparate concepts. Contextually mitigated with Freire’s “problem-posing” and Siemens’ “connectivism,” it is further argued that self-efficacy and relational community are congruous and dependent entities which provide insight to the future of digital architecture

An Adaptable Model for Improving Accessibility and Success Rates for First-Generation and Low-Income Students.

As evidenced by leading educational research, today’s nontraditional student constitutes the majority of the college student population (Choy, 2002). Higher education institutions have an ethical, intellectual, and financial responsibility to consider and meet the unique needs of nontraditional students. Often such a mandate is met with words of agreement, but implementing institutional measures to assess and address these needs are a completely different challenge altogether (Watson, 2009; Brock, 2010). There are numerous demographic and socio-economic variables that may qualify a student as nontraditional (Giancola, Munz, & Trares, 2008). For the purposes of this analysis, “nontraditional” refers to individuals who are first-generation and lowincome students. Refining the analysis based on these two groups helps focus the educational model to more directly address the needs of this student population. Furthermore, it is important to highlight that nontraditional students often have needs as unique as the individuals themselves and therefore it is unfair to generalize about a “one-size-fits-all” model of assessing and tackling their educational obstacles (Kasworm, 2008). Patience, innovation, and creativity are needed institutionally to drive the model of educational success. In the age of “big data” and predictive analytics, modeling is a powerful tool to identify and examine the early warning signs of educational obstacles in the nontraditional student population (Campbell, DeBlois, & Oblinger, 2007). There are four central themes that drive our proposed model: (1) the importance of formalized student advising, (2) early detection of obstacles along with subsequent interventions, (3) individualized attention to specific obstacles, and (4) identifying educational obstacles by which an institution may enact change as well as personal obstacles which an institution has very little – if any – control, save that of perhaps supportive counseling

La evolución del logotipo en el programa de mano Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

El presente artículo analiza, desde una perspectiva multidisciplinar, la evolución del logotipo de una de las principales productoras y distribuidoras de Hollywood, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, durante sus llamados “años dorados” (1931-1941), utilizando el programa de mano como fuente primaria de la investigación. Tras un minucioso estudio, el programa de mano se revela como un peculiar método de publicidad cinematográfica que, rebasando los límites de su función originaria, se puede convertir en modelo de expresión artística, coyuntural elemento propagandístico, archivo visual de imágenes perdidas o auténtico objeto de culto para coleccionistas.This article analyze, from an interdisciplinary perspective, the course of the advertising emblem of one of Hollywood´s main producers and distributors, MGM, during the socalled Golden Years (1931/1941) using the program as a primary source of investigation. After a detailed study, the program reveals itself as a peculiar method of cinema advertising which, exceeding the limits of its original function, can become a model of art expression, structural advertising element, a visual file of lost images or real cult object for collectors