Asia\u27s Next Tiger?

Vietnam has evolved from one of the worst performing economies in Asia during the early 1980s, to winning the Euromoney Best Managed Economy Award in the \u2790s. Foreign investors, betting that Vietnam was serious about its economic reforms, rushed to penetrate this market. Some succeeded, many failed. Vietnam must now respond to the challenge of rising expectations by foreign investors while delivering increased variety and quality of goods demanded by its people. The transition from a command to a market economy continues to lurch forward, creating a promising but perilous marketing environment. INSETS: Important Political Developments Since 1992;Vietnam: The Bad News;Vietnam: The Good News;Vietnam: The Good News

The adaptive significance of cultural behavior

In this article, I argue that human social behavior is a product of the coevolution of human biology and culture. While critical of attempts by anthropologists to explain cultural practices as if they were independent of the ability of individual human beings to survive and reproduce, I am also leery of attempts by biologists to explain the consistencies between neo-Darwinian theory and cultural behavior as the result of natural selection for that behavior. Instead, I propose that both biological and cultural attributes of human beings result to a large degree from the selective retention of traits that enhance the inclusive fitnesses of individuals in their environments. Aspects of human biology and culture may be adaptive in the same sense despite differences between the mechanisms of selection and regardless of their relative importance in the evolution of a trait. The old idea that organic and cultural evolution are complementary can thus be used to provide new explanations for why people do what they do .Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/44491/1/10745_2005_Article_BF01531215.pd

Anxiety, resistence and disruptive innovations a methodology for measuring receptivity of eye surgeons to disruptive laser technologies

Attempting to measure receptivity to new innovations based on subjective methods is fraught with challenges. This is especially true in medical markets, where new technologies offer a possible way out to control increased patient demands, rising costs, and the ethical needs to treat a broader range of patients with more predictability and safety. Based on the literature on adoption of technology in the dental field, quantitative measurement of physiological changes, such as blood pressure, heart rate and blood volume may represent a better way of measuring surgeon resistance or receptivity to new products. This is a study that provides a literature review and conceptual development justifying a pilot study in the eye surgery market conducted in Australia. Results from this ophthalmic study support the theory contained in the literature that it is disruptive technologies that often ‘leapfrog’ or jump ahead in health care markets which are often resistant to innovation