What if almost everything you know about creating a culture of innovation is wrong? What if the way you are measuring innovation is choking it? What if your market research is asking all of the wrong questions? It's time to innovate the way you innovate. Stephen Shapiro is one of America's foremost innovation advisrrs, whose methods have helped organizations like Staples, GE, Telefónica, NASA, the U.S. Air Force, and USAA. He teaches his clients that innovation isn't just about generating occasional new ideas; it's about staying consistently one step ahead of the competition. Hire people you don't like. Bring in the right mix of people to unleash your team's full potential. Asking for ideas is a bad idea. Define challenges more clearly. If you ask better questions, you will get better answers. Don't think outside the box; find a better box. Instead of giving your employees a blank slate, provide them with well-defined parameters that will increase their creative output. Failure is always an option. Looking at innovation as a series of experiments allows you to redefine failure and learn from your results. Shapiro shows that nonstop innovation is attainable and vital to building a high-performing team, improving the bottom line, and staying ahead of the pack.
Taking his cue from Philadelphia-born novelist Charles Brockden Brown's Annals of Europe and America, which contends that America is shaped most noticeably by the international struggle between Great Britain and France for control of the world trade market, Stephen Shapiro charts the advent, decline, and reinvigoration of the early American novel. That the American novel "sprang so unexpectedly into published existence during the 1790s" may be a symptom of the beginning of the end of Franco-British supremacy and a reflection of the power of a middle class riding the crest of a new world economic system. Shapiro's world-systems approach is a relatively new methodology for literary studies, but it brings two particularly useful features to the table. First, it refines the conceptual frameworks for analyzing cultural and social history, such as the rise in sentimentalism, in relation to a long-wave economic history of global commerce; second, it fosters a new model for a comparative American Studies across time. Rather than relying on contiguous time, a world-systems approach might compare the cultural production of one region to another at the same location within the recurring cycle in an economic reconfiguration. Shapiro offers a new way of thinking about the causes for the emergence of the American novel that suggests a fresh way of rethinking the overall paradigms shaping American Studies.
Bringing together new accounts of the pulp horror writings of H.P. Lovecraft and the rise of the popular early 20th-century religious movements of American Pentecostalism and Social Gospel, Pentecostal Modernism challenges traditional histories of modernism as a secular avant-garde movement based in capital cities such as London or Paris. Disrupting accounts that separate religion from progressive social movements and mass culture, Stephen Shapiro and Philip Barnard construct a new Modernism belonging to a history of regional cities, new urban areas powered by the hopes and frustrations of recently urbanized populations seeking a better life. In this way, Pentecostal Modernism shows how this process of urbanization generates new cultural practices including the invention of religious traditions and mass-cultural forms.
Techniques for Awakening Your Organization's Innovative Potential in a Global Marketplace That Never Sleeps Praise for Stephen Shapiro's 24/7 Innovation... "Shapiro's ideas provide just enough structure for innovation to grow, but never so much as to stifle it." Thomas H. Davenport, Director of the Accenture Institute for Strategic Change, Distinguished Scholar in Residence at Babson College "24/7 Innovation weaves a compelling picture of what will be needed to win in the new millennium." Steve Stanton, Coauthor, The Reengineering Revolution "Steve's book provides a timely focus on innovation as competitive advantage, and it is well worth your time." Charles Koch, CEO and President, Koch Industries "Steve offers a pragmatic, global, business savvy realism as well as artistic flair to anyone who needs to be an innovator in business." Peter Keen, CEO, Keen Innovations, Coauthor, The eProcess Edge "Steve shows how companies can be innovative everywhere, everyday, by everyone. This is a must read book for anyone who is serious about 24/7 innovation." Dr. Trevor G. Gibbs, Head of Global Clinical Safety and Pharmacovigilance, GlaxoSmithKline In one of the great paradoxes of twenty-first-century business, market leaders must continuously pursue the obsolescence of their own bestselling products. Why? Because they know that beyond their own corporate walls, hungry competitors are "borrowing"and improving on the strengths of those products in order to take their hard-won customer base to the next level of satisfaction. And if they plan to stay on top, leaders know it is up to them to reach that next level first. Whether you are a leader or a pursuer, 24-7 Innovation takes you beyond the rigid policies, prescriptive processes, and fragmented organizational structures that have stifled true innovation for too long. This step-by-step book shows you how to instill a mind-set of continuous innovation at every level of your organization, one that will allow you to achieve and sustain a leadership position in any market. It outlines a lean, action-based framework designed to put your organization in the state of "perpetual innovation" that is necessary for creating sustainable business success. Look to 24/7 Innovation for the latest techniques and strategies to: Create a culture of innovation and inject innovation continuously throughout the execution of each process Implement the Capabilities approach at every level of your organization, and coordinate its five essential components-Strategy, Measurements, Processes, People, and Technology-to consistently interrelate with each other and deliver measurable results Align all stakeholders from customers to shareholders to employees at all levels of an organization Moving far beyond theory, 24/7 Innovation reveals what today's most innovative companies are actually doing right now and provides guidelines to help you replicate these successes in your own organization. It offers a blueprint for creating a truly flexible organization, one that builds upon current successes even as it promotes rapid change and adaptability for maximizing those successes. In today's age of unprecedented access and unlimited competition, constant change is the prerequisite for survival. Let 24/7 Innovation show you how to introduce constant change throughout every level of your organization revolutionary change that is strategic, pervasive, and ultimately overwhelming to your competitors.
Tracking Capital introduces new ways to understand the entanglement of cultural forms and practices in economic, social, and ecological crises and struggles. Building on the fundamental insights of world-systems analysis, the book offers readers a series of rubrics, keywords, and concepts—such as zemiperiphery, registration, and commodity chains—to enable more integrated, transdisciplinary methods of literary and cultural study. Throughout, Sharae Deckard, Michael Niblett, and Stephen Shapiro foreground the role of culture in both consolidating and contesting the classism, racism, sexism, and ecocide constitutive of the modern world-system. In the context of capitalism's ongoing bloody war against the poor, the powerless, and the planet, Tracking Capital provides tools with which to diagnose the morbid symptoms of the present, as well as to plot possible steps on the road to a better future.
Capital Volume I is essential reading on many undergraduate courses, but the structure and style of the book can be confusing for students, leading them to abandon the text. This book is a clear guide to reading Marx's classic text, which explains the reasoning behind the book's structure and provides help with the more technical aspects that non-economists may find taxing.Students are urged to think for themselves and engage with Marx's powerful methods of argument and explanation. Shapiro shows that Capital is key to understanding critical theory and cultural production.This highly focused book will prove invaluable to students of politics, cultural studies and literary theory.
Joseph Lieberman's Vice Presidential nomination and Presidential candidacy are neither the first nor last words on signal Jewish achievements in American politics. Jews have played an important role in American government since the early 1800s at least, and in view of the 2004 election, there is no political office outside the reach of Jewish American citizens. For the first time, Jews in American Politics: Essays brings together a complete picture of the past, present, and future of Jewish political participation. Perfect for students and scholars alike, this monumental work includes thoughtful and original chapters by leading journalists, scholars, and practitioners. Topics range from Jewish leadership and identity; to Jews in Congress, on the Supreme Court, and in presidential administrations; and on to Jewish influence in the media, the lobbies, and in other arenas in which American government operates powerfully, if informally. In addition to the thematically unified essays, Jews in American Politics: Essays concludes with an invaluable roster of Jews in key governmental positions from Ambassadorships and Cabinet posts to federal judges, state governors, and mayors of major cities. Both analytical and anecdotal, the essays in Jews in American Politics offer deep insight into serious questions about the dilemmas that Jews in public service face, as well as humorous sidelights and authoritative reference materials never before collected in one source. The story of the rich tradition of Jewish participation in American political life provides an indispensable resource for any serious follower of American politics, especially in election year 2004.
Spies! Special Missions! Codes and Ciphers! History comes to life with 19 stories of ingenuity and intrigue from World War II. Discover the secrets behind some of the real-life deceptions that turned the tide of World War II. Meet double-crossing secret agents like Arthur Owens (code-named Snow), who spied for both the Nazis and the British! Witness airborne assaults by daredevils such as Otto “Scarface” Skorzeny, “the most dangerous man in Europe.” Smash through “unbreakable” barriers like the A-3 Scrambler, the American encryption system used to communicate with British allies! Each spellbinding true story is packed with information sidebars, archival photographs, and full-color maps, allowing the reader to go behind the scenes of World War II and learn the secrets that outwitted the enemy.
“Playful and (un)deadly serious . . . chew[s] through a near-exhaustive array of films, television, literature, culture, music and even cocktails.”—Times Literary Supplement They have stalked the horizons of our culture, wreaked havoc on moribund concepts of dead and not dead, threatened our sense of identity, and endangered our personal safety. Now zombies have emerged from the lurking shadows of society’s fringes to wander the sacred halls of the academy, feasting on tender minds and hurling rot across our intellectual landscape. It is time to unite in common cause, to shore up defenses, firm up critical and analytical resources, and fortify crumbling lines of inquiry. Responding to this call, Brain Workers from the Zombie Research Center poke and prod the rotting corpus of zombie culture trying to make sense of cult classics and the unstoppable growth of new and even more disturbing work. They exhume “zombie theory” and decaying historical documents from America, Europe, and the Caribbean in order to unearth the zombie world and arm readers with the brain tools necessary for everyday survival. Readers will see that zombie culture today “lives” in shapes as mutable as a zombie horde—and is often just as violent. “An intelligent and highly engaging collection that will appeal to legions of zombie fans, to students in the humanities, and to scholars working in fields that have already been affected by or are now preparing for the zombie apocalypse. It blends entertaining, illuminating, and accessible readings of zombies and zombie culture with unique interventions made from authoritative positions of expertise.”—Julian Murphet, author of Faulkner’s Media Romance
50 Studies Every Pediatrician Should Know presents key studies that have shaped the current clinical practice of pediatrics. Selected using a rigorous methodology, the studies cover topics including: allergy immunology, behavioral, cardiology, dermatology, endocrinology, ENT, general pediatrics, hematology, infectious disease, neonatology, nephrology, neurology, oncology, ophthalmology, orthopedics, and pulmonary. For each study, a concise summary is presented with an emphasis on the results and limitations of the study, and its implications for practice. An illustrative clinical case concludes each review, followed by brief information on other relevant studies. This is one of the only books of its kind to present a collection of the most influential clinical trials in pediatrics that are detailed enough to be used on rounds, but still easily digestible.
The goal of this research monograph is to derive the analytic continuation and functional equation of the L-functions attached by R.P. Langlands to automorphic representations of reductive algebraic groups. The first part of the book (by Piatetski-Shapiro and Rallis) deals with L-functions for the simple classical groups; the second part (by Gelbart and Piatetski-Shapiro) deals with non-simple groups of the form G GL(n), with G a quasi-split reductive group of split rank n. The method of proof is to construct certain explicit zeta-integrals of Rankin-Selberg type which interpolate the relevant Langlands L-functions and can be analyzed via the theory of Eisenstein series and intertwining operators. This is the first time such an approach has been applied to such general classes of groups. The flavor of the local theory is decidedly representation theoretic, and the work should be of interest to researchers in group representation theory as well as number theory.
An influential classic of American gothic and urban literature, Charles Brockden Brown's "Arthur Mervyn; Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793" (1799-1800) memorialises the epic Philadelphia Yellow Fever epidemic of 1793 and connects it to the upheavals of the revolutionary era and the murderous financial networks of Atlantic slavery. This edition of Brown's widely-read novel offers selections from key contemporary texts -- including Richard Allen and Absalom Jones' Narrative (1794) defending the city's Free Black community, Godwin's Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793), Laurence Sterne's Sentimental Journey (1768), 1790s abolitionist tracts by members of Brown's circle, and popular poetry on the slave trade and imperial commerce -- as well as excerpts from Brown's own writings on slavery, race, and the uses of history in fiction.
As the principles and practices of democracy continue to spread ever more widely, it is hard to imagine a corner of the globe into which they will not eventually penetrate. But the euphoria of democratic revolutions is typically short-lived, and usually followed by disgruntlement and even cynicism about the actual operation of democratic institutions. It is widely accepted that democracy is a good thing. However democrats have much work to do in improving the performance of democratic institutions. The essays in this volume focus on this difficult and vital challenge: how can we improve the design of democratic institutions? How can public deliberation in democracies be enhanced? How can elections be reformed so as to dampen the excessive influence of special interests, especially those with money? How can democratic institutions be reformed so they can deal with issues that transcend the boundaries of the nation-state? And finally, how can democratic practices better take account of the internal plurality of societies that are ethnically or otherwise divided? Contributors: Brooke Ackerly, Ian Ayres, Geoffrey Brennan, John Ferejohn, Alan Hamlin, Russell Hardin, Donald Horowitz, Stephen Macedo, Philip Petit, Philippe C. Schmitter, Ian Shapiro, Philippe Van Parjis, Iris Marion Young.
To many, an association between Jews and sports seems almost oxymoronic--yet Jews have been prominent in boxing, basketball, and fencing, and some would argue that hurler Sandy Koufax is America's greatest athlete ever. In Jews, Sports, and the Rites of Citizenship, Jack Kugelmass shows that sports--significant in constructing nations and in determining their degree of exclusivity--also figures prominently in the Jewish imaginary. This interdisciplinary collection brings together the perspectives of anthropologists and historians to provide both methodological and regional comparative frameworks for exploring the meaning of sports for a minority population.
Blasphemous ... highly offensive" ... and VERY funny!Herodotus Shapiro has had an unbelievably bad week. His wife left him. The IRS is after him for thousands of dollars. His home/bookstore burned down. On his way to take refuge at his brother's place, he got a speeding ticket. And now his car has broken down in the middle of the desert in front of a large mansion. What more can go wrong?But now his world takes a turn for the weird. The mansion has a snowman on the front lawn--in the desert, in July. The house, which is bigger on the inside than on the outside, is owned by Polly, the most preternaturally beautiful young woman he's ever met. Polly is an acrobat, a gourmet chef, a psychologist, an international financial consultant, a physicist and a woman of who-knows how many other incredible talents. She has an unbelievable library, an art collection of all the world's great masterpieces, and a print of a previously unknown Marx Brothers film. Her toilet paper is actually silk.And she seems to have some mysterious plans for him ....
Thank you for visiting our website. Would you like to provide feedback on how we could improve your experience?
This site does not use any third party cookies with one exception — it uses cookies from Google to deliver its services and to analyze traffic.Learn More.