Through a series of studies, the overarching aim of this book is to investigate if and how the digitalization/digital transformation process affects various welfare services provided by the public sector, and the ensuing implications thereof. Ultimately, this book seeks to understand if it is conceivable for digital advancement to result in the creation of private/non-governmental alternatives to welfare services, possibly in a manner that transcends national boundaries. This study also investigates the possible ramifications of technological development for the public sector and the Western welfare society at large. This book takes its point of departure from the 2016 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) report that targets specific public service areas in which government needs to adopt new strategies not to fall behind. Specifically, this report emphasizes the focus on digitalization of health care/social care, education, and protection services, including the use of assistive technologies referred to as "digital welfare." Hence, this book explores the factors potentially leading to whether state actors could be overrun by other non-governmental actors, disrupting the current status quo of welfare services. The book seeks to provide an innovative, enriching, and controversial take on society at large and how various aspects of the public sector can be, and are, affected by the ongoing digitalization process in a way that is not covered by extant literature on the market. This book takes its point of departure in Sweden given the fact that Sweden is one of the most digitalized countries in Europe, according to the Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI), making it a pertinent research case. However, as digitalization transcends national borders, large parts of the subject matter take on an international angle. This includes cases from several other countries around Europe as well as the United States.

Coping with complexities is an everyday reality for private, public and third sectors that face intricate, overlapping, obscuring and ever-changing challenges. Developments in technology and systems of value creation are driving a new need to understand, facilitate and manage complexity. The book proposes design and design research as a solution to respond to the complexities associated with the intensifying and rapid changes in societies, technological fields and environments. A four-step design process for managing complexities is introduced in the four parts of this book, spanning from design research in the field to practice-based contexts. This publication collates high-level research and the latest scholarship on this topic, while many of the case studies described herein draw on rich experiences and applications in practice. The ways designers work to overcome complexities through design, and the methods and frameworks presented in the chapters, provide critical insights and form an important scholarly contribution in this subject area.

This book offers a new understanding of innovation in the built environment. The ways meaning of innovation is constructed has important implications for policymakers, project managers, academics and students. Through a longitudinal research study into innovation in firms and projects, the book addresses some key themes, challenges and concerns that practitioners face when managing innovation in the built environment. It examines the key drivers for innovation in the construction, engineering and infrastructure firms and projects. In particular, the questions of how and why innovation becomes recognised and sustained over time are explored. Different theoretical perspectives are considered to explain different aspects of innovation. This includes sensemaking, organisational and individual identity, storytelling and narration. The book has practical implications for how organisational activities become labelled as 'innovation' and for what purpose. It shares some lived stories of innovation as mobilised by practising managers. The connectivity between the formal narratives of innovation at the policy level and the lived narratives of innovation articulated by practitioners is explored. Combining the theory with practice, this book presents an insightful view on the implications of innovation in the business world today.

Transformation and Your New EHR offers a robust communication and change leadership approach to support electronic health record (EHR) implementations and transformation journeys. This book highlights the approach and philosophy of communication, change leadership, and systems and process design, giving readers a practical view into the successes and failures that can be experienced throughout the evolution of an EHR implementation.

Already in just a decade of existence, cryptocurrencies have been the world's best-performing financial asset, outperforming stocks, bonds, commodities and currencies. This comprehensive yet concise book will enable the reader to learn about the nuts and bolts of cryptocurrencies, including their history, technology, regulations and economics. Additionally, this book teaches sound investment strategies that already work along with the spectrum of risks and returns. This book provides a plain-language primer for beginners worldwide on how to confidently navigate the rapidly evolving world of cryptocurrencies. Beginning by cutting to the chase, the author lists the common burning questions about cryptocurrency and provides succinct answers. Next, he gives an overview of cryptocurrency's underlying technology: blockchain. He then explores the history of cryptocurrency and why it's attracted so much attention. With that foundation, readers will be ready to understand how to invest in cryptocurrency: how cryptocurrency differs from traditional investments such as stocks, how to decide which cryptocurrency to invest in, how to acquire it, how to send and receive it, along with investment strategies. Additionally, legal issues, social implications, cybersecurity risks and the vocabulary of cryptocurrency are also covered, including Bitcoin and the many alternative cryptocurrencies. Written by a journalist-turned-professor, this book's appeal lies in its succinct, informative and easy-to-understand style. It will be of great interest to anyone looking to further their understanding of what cryptocurrency is, why it's a big deal, how to acquire it, how to send and receive it, and investment strategies.

Knowledge Intensive Business Services (KIBS) are becoming more and more relevant both for their innovative content and as innovation boosters for manufacturing firms and, with this scenario in mind, this book first offers an in-depth analysis of what innovation in KIBS is and its performance outcomes, and then synthesizes what we know about KIBS firms' innovation models, as well as their specific peculiarities and limitations. This book examines the recent trends in innovation, service design and development in KIBS, starting from a review of the extant literature, explaining the role and specific traits of innovation in KIBS. Then, it progresses our knowledge about KIBS and about how new technologies are offering unique opportunities to use and share their knowledge, within and across boundaries. The book also includes several cases that show how, at the micro level, firms can effectively design their services and boost their innovation performance, by overcoming some of the traditional limits of innovation in services. While KIBS literature traditionally emphasizes that innovative and performing KIBS firms rely on tight client-provider interactions with service customization, recent research suggests that alternative modes of innovation are viable for performing KIBS firms: KIBS firms can develop mass customization strategies, ease interactions with clients via ICT interfaces and leverage on focused collaborations with expert clients. Particularly, the digitalization and ICT technologies are fostering platform and modular architectural designs of KIBS, as in the software and web design services. The book seeks a broader understanding of innovation in KIBS in the digital era and will be an essential guide for both academics and practitioners interested in KIBS innovation and design.

The Frugal Innovation and Bottom of the Pyramid Markets series comprises four volumes, covering theoretical perspectives, themes and various aspects of interest across four key geographical regions where BOP markets are located - South America, Asia, Africa and more engineered countries. BOP always addresses the poorest people or socioeconomic order or groups within a country, society, region or continent, thus, this series contributes a profound understanding of BOP markets across the most important geographical areas around the world and presents valuable insights on how the private sector can work together with other stakeholders to develop and operationalize economically viable business models in BOP markets, all the while contributing to sustainable development. Private actors such as multinationals, SMEs and entrepreneurs have a critical role to play in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals agenda as laid down by United Nations in September 2015. Yet, BOP markets face unique challenges and the private sector alone cannot orchestrate sustainable value creation activities. Each volume presents several theoretical strands that highlight the diverse approaches and solutions to developing BOP markets further. Frugal, reverse and inclusive innovations can foster (sustainable) development and provide new business models and value streams that other countries can also benefit from. A variety of stylistic elements, such as research work, interviews and roundtable discussions, offer a wide and vivid impression of ongoing challenges and fruitful solutions.

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This volume contains the edited technical presentations of PROLMAT 2006, the IFIP TC5 international conference held on June 15-17, 2006 at the Shanghai University in China. The papers collected here concentrate on knowledge strategies in Product Life Cycle and bring together researchers and industrialists with the objective of reaching a mutual understanding of the scientific - industry dichotomy, while facilitating the transfer of core research knowledge to core industrial competencies.

Sustainable Entrepreneurship is nowadays considered as a discipline at the cross-roads of many others. This book describes recent cases, techniques and tools proposed for leaders, entrepreneurs, and practitioners who are involved and responsible for making strategic decisions in their companies and aiming at sustainable development. This book highlights the use of new business models/methods that can be employed by organizations and researchers to save millions of dollars, to enhance the economic growth, as well as to resolve environmental and social issues, via sustainable networks, renewal energy distribution, and social/green entrepreneurship. It will provide a comprehensive discussion of practical techniques, like Machine Learning, Robotics, Photovoltaic solar energy, in the field of renewable energy, and other digital tools, such as digital marketing, crowdsourcing platforms, and digital currency. Meanwhile, it will enlighten the way for entrepreneurs and decision makers by helping them to learn how to grow their business. The focus will be on how to benefit from these techniques to develop sustainable and renewable energy-based projects, as well as digitalized new ventures. The book walks the reader through the latest emerging trends in digitalization that can support practitioners, managers, entrepreneurs, and researchers to help them appreciate the application of sustainable solutions in various functional domains.

The medical sector has been growing exponentially over the last decade and healthcare services are becoming more complex and costly. In order to continue efficiently and effectively managing patient safety, quality, and the effectiveness of the healthcare systems, new methodologies are needed. This book provides a platform to address this growing need and to improve practice. With the introduction of a new computer platform package for the management of medical organizations and healthcare systems, Modeling a New Computer Framework for Managing Healthcare Organizations aims to improve management techniques and increase overall satisfaction scores of patients, owners, and medical resources. The platform outlined will improve the daily operation of a healthcare system, focusing on the emergency department, and can be used to study the operation flow of a unit for performance optimization. It offers a user-friendly interface and proposed programming language, along with a visual and simple practice to collect and understand statistical outputs. Essential reading for decision makers on different levels in the healthcare organization hierarchy, this book can also be used by management to improve the performance of the organization and decision makers to hire resources, enhance workflows or both. It guides designers and system implementers in a step-by-step approach to make optimal decisions for resource allocation and helps designers and management to detect deficiencies in ongoing processes and fix or enhance them. Soraia Oueida is an instructor in the Department of Computer Engineering at the American University of the Middle East. She is an IEEE member and her research interests include Simulation Modeling, Discrete Mathematics, Petri Net, Workflows, Blockchain, IoT, Industrial Management Systems.

The medical sector has been growing exponentially over the last decade and healthcare services are becoming more complex and costly. In order to continue efficiently and effectively managing patient safety, quality, and the effectiveness of the healthcare systems, new methodologies are needed. This book provides a platform to address this growing need and to improve practice. With the introduction of a new computer platform package for the management of medical organizations and healthcare systems, Modeling a New Computer Framework for Managing Healthcare Organizations aims to improve management techniques and increase overall satisfaction scores of patients, owners, and medical resources. The platform outlined will improve the daily operation of a healthcare system, focusing on the emergency department, and can be used to study the operation flow of a unit for performance optimization. It offers a user-friendly interface and proposed programming language, along with a visual and simple practice to collect and understand statistical outputs. Essential reading for decision makers on different levels in the healthcare organization hierarchy, this book can also be used by management to improve the performance of the organization and decision makers to hire resources, enhance workflows or both. It guides designers and system implementers in a step-by-step approach to make optimal decisions for resource allocation and helps designers and management to detect deficiencies in ongoing processes and fix or enhance them. Soraia Oueida is an instructor in the Department of Computer Engineering at the American University of the Middle East. She is an IEEE member and her research interests include Simulation Modeling, Discrete Mathematics, Petri Net, Workflows, Blockchain, IoT, Industrial Management Systems.

This book provides an authoritative resource on the topic of intelligent robots, artificial intelligence and the ethical implications of these revolutionary innovations. It examines the moral and ethical problems that arise in relation to the development, design and use of intelligent robots, which are capable of autonomous or semi-autonomous decision-making. These problems might relate, for example, to medical robots, driverless cars, intelligent military drones, pedagogical robots, police robots, legal robots and many others. The main question addressed in this book is how we can understand, explain and apply the concept of ethics in relation to intelligent robots and artificial intelligence. In each chapter, the author examines a different aspect of this question. The author also questions how we can ensure that intelligent robots are of service to humans and under what conditions intelligent robots could become more ethical than humans. The book employs an original approach to examining this cutting-edge research question, combining different research areas, and offers a wealth of practical relevance and real-world examples, illustrated through vivid case studies. With its jargon free approach and a dedicated chapter on relevant concepts at the end, this book is also accessible to readers without prior knowledge on intelligent robots and the Fourth Industrial Revolution. By providing a general account of this debate, and of the consequences of the innovations resulting from these trends, the book serves as an important contribution to the discussion and will find a natural readership among scholars and students of the innovation economy and those concerned with the ethical considerations arising in the wake of the Fourth Industrial Revolution

With the beginning of the twentieth century, American corporations in the chemical and electrical industries began establishing industrial research laboratories. Some went on to become world-famous not only for their scientific and technological breakthroughs but also for the new union of science and industry they represented. Innovative ideas do not simply appear out of the blue and spread on their own merit. Rather, the laboratory's diffusion takes place in a cultural context that goes beyond corporate capital and technological change. Using discourse analysis as a method to comprehensively capture the organizational field of the early American R&D laboratories from 1870 to 1930, this book uncovers the collective meanings associated with the industrial laboratory. Meanings such as what and where a laboratory is supposed to be, who the scientist is, and what it means to practice science provided cultural resources that made the transfer of the laboratory from academic science into an industrial setting possible by rendering such meanings understandable and operable to big business and organizational entrepreneurs fighting for hegemony in a rapidly evolving market. It analyzes not only the corporations that established laboratories in the United States but also their contexts - economic, political, and especially scientific - showing how "the industrial laboratory" was transformed from an organizational novelty into an expected institution in less than two decades. This book will be of interest to researchers, academics, historians, and students in the fields of organizational change, discourse studies, the management of technology and innovation, as well as business and management history.

This book sets out to explain blockchain for the non-technical expert, to decipher the dense technicalities that dominate the field and to present the opportunities for busy professionals using practical applications and case studies. Presented in a clear and structured way and with documented real-world cases, the book is a practical reference guide that can be used across different industries. It offers both a constructive and critical review of the pain points blockchain is facing today, illustrates the pitfalls as well as the opportunities for business and describes the steps towards overcoming them. It also aims to provide a unique view of both the intersection and synergy of blockchain with other emerging technologies and the wider digital ecosystem, as we see increasingly that blockchain alone won't be able to deliver business solutions. Most important, the book identifies trends and a path for the future of blockchain and its impact on society as a whole. The book is written for business audiences across all sectors. It is not a technical guide to blockchain, but it enables businesspeople to be better informed and prepared to plan ahead and develop strategies using blockchain.

This book offers a conceptual, theoretical, and empirical overview of the role of total quality management (TQM) in Indian higher education from the perspectives of the engineering faculty, students, and alumni. It identifies the critical dimensions to measure the performance of TQM. This volume conceptualizes the service quality of higher education, especially in engineering education, through empirical assessment of the services being provided to major stakeholders like the faculty, the students, and the alumni. It highlights the significance of TQM in creating success stories while discussing the importance of improved productivity and quality in higher education with respect to the quality of engineering educational institutions. Further, the book provides a complete framework for the implementation of TQM in engineering educational institutions. This book will be of interest to students, teachers, and researchers of education and management studies. It will also be useful for educationalists, education administrators, education policymakers and bureaucrats, management professionals, business leaders, and the governing bodies of higher education institutions.

This book argues for a broader approach to sustainable growth in Small Island Developing States (SIDS). Small island states such as those in the Caribbean, Indian Ocean and South Pacific face significant and growing threats from climate change, increasing political and social volatility, and rapidly evolving global trends in technology and tourism. Based on ten years of research, this book looks beyond the Blue Economy of tourism and fisheries and provides a model of how creative industries, innovation networks, creative clusters and digital transformation can give SIDS the foundation for a strong sustainable future. The book provides not only insights into how these emerging digital-creative sectors can drive developing economies but also actionable tools for policy makers, entrepreneurs and academics to deliver increased performance on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and, ultimately, growth and sustainability. This book will be of great interest to scholars and practitioners of economic geography, sustainable development, development studies and the creative industries.

This book addresses the rapidly changing citizen roles in innovation, technology adoption, intermediation, market creation, and legitimacy building for low-carbon solutions. It links research in innovation studies, sustainability transitions, and science and technology studies, and builds a new approach for the study of user contributions to innovation and sociotechnical change. Citizen Activities in Energy Transition gives detailed and empirically grounded overall appraisal of citizens' active technological engagement in the current energy transition, in an era when Internet connectivity has given rise to important new forms of citizen communities and interactions. It elaborates a new way to study users in sociotechnical change through long-term ethnographic and historical research and reports its deployment in a major, decade-long line of investigation on user activities in small-scale renewables, addressing user contributions from the early years to the late proliferation stages of small-scale renewable energy technologies (S-RETs). It offers a much-needed empirical and theoretical understanding of the dynamics of the activities in which users are engaged over the course of sociotechnical change, including innovation, adoption, adjustment, intermediation, community building, digital communities, market creation, and legitimacy creation. This work is a must-read for those seeking to understand the role of users in innovation, energy systems change and the significance of new digital communities in present and future sociotechnical change. Academics, policymakers, and managers are given a new resource to understand the "demand side" of sociotechnical change beyond the patterns of investment, adoption, and social acceptance that have traditionally occupied their attention.

The COVID-19 pandemic represents an extraordinary inflection point that caught airlines worldwide unprepared, causing CEOs to recalibrate their business models. This book explains why this unprecedented pandemic is different from the past disruptions experienced by the airline industry during the past 50 years, and what airlines and related businesses now can do to adapt to the dramatically changed marketplace. This book presents two future scenarios: continuous improvements and elastic supply. These are considered in three specific contexts for the rebuilding of the airline business. These contexts, in the order of urgency with respect to change from the status quo, are the following. The first context is for airlines to become better prepared to deal with frequent and deeper disruptions that could be localized or globalized relating to such areas as climate change, geopolitics, and cybersecurity. The second context is to collaborate and integrate within the much broader travel ecosystem, possibly using platforms to innovate on new value systems. The third context, which has always been the case and drives the first two, is for airlines to offer real solutions to people's travel needs, solutions developed with imagination and turbocharged innovation, even as we contemplate new technology airplanes and mobility as a service solutions. This book is recommended reading for all senior-level practitioners of airlines and related businesses, as well as aviation policy makers worldwide.

In 2019, ISO Technical Committee 279 released a new international standard on innovation management system called ISO 56002:2019. The objective of this standard is to provide a framework on how to build an innovation ecosystem that can be sustained over time. Similar to the quality management system that ISO established decades ago, this standard provides instructions related to best practices on how to manage innovation activities, projects, and programs. It does not describe detailed activities within the organization, but rather provides guidance at a general level. It does not prescribe any requirements or specific tools or methods for innovation activities. Essentially, the standard does not provide guidance on how to implement and/or use the standard. The standard basically tells you what to do and document - this powerful book tells you how to do it. The techniques in this book are directed at key tasks across the innovative process, such as maximizing quality, productivity, maintainability, usability, and reliability, while focusing on reducing the product cycle time and costs within the innovative process. Currently, there are no other comprehensive books available on how to fully implement this standard in companies. This book is crucial for managers, business leaders, entrepreneurs, and consultants looking for help to reap the benefits of an innovation management system. This book takes you step by step through the process of developing an innovation ecosystem. In addition, it provides frameworks, tools, methodologies, cases, and best practices so your organization can experience the full value of the standard.

This book makes an important contribution to the recent evolution in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) that are human-centred and socially desirable, environmentally sustainable, and ethically acceptable. It introduces the concept of moral, equitable and environmental limits in the ICT domain and proposes a Slow Tech approach to face the challenges of these limits, laying out a set of principles that can be applied in real-life business settings. With the launch of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and the growing interest in the circular economy, Slow Tech and ICT - A Responsible, Sustainable and Ethical Approach is a timely tool for forward-thinking businesses.

Mapping Motivation for Top Performing Teams is the final volume in a series of books that are all linked to the author's Motivational Map toolkit. Each book builds on a different aspect of personal, team and organisational development. This book, using the Motivational Map, the Team Motivational Map, as well as the Organisation Motivational Map, is a practical guide to understanding how team dynamics and success are hugely influenced by motivational factors, which are not usually taken into account. The book is a deeper exploration of team mapping which occurs in Chapter 6 of Mapping Motivation (2015), Chapter 6 of Mapping Motivation for Engagement (with Steve Jones, 2019), and Chapter 6 of Mapping Motivation for Leadership (with Jane Thomas, 2020). But whereas these chapters only touched on specific aspects of team dynamics, this book covers the issues more comprehensively; it also attempts to avoid replication of materials, although there are bound to be small overlaps. It covers not only how motivations affect team productivity and how this can be boosted through targeted Reward Strategies, but also how 'mapping' provides profounder insights into the four key characteristics of top performing teams: the clear remit, vital interdependency, strong belief, and real accountability. How Motivational Maps covers these areas, we believe to be original, eye-opening and effective in the management of change. Further, as always with Motivational Maps, its language and metrics raise self-awareness at an individual and team level, and so can help resolve conflicts through its common and non-judgmental language. Managing teams is the key skill of managers: thus this book is a handbook for managers everywhere who wish to excel at management, for without bringing their teams on board (i.e. motivating their teams), they are not effectively managing.

This volume discusses entrepreneurship education in Europe on the basis of in-depth case studies of related activities at twenty higher education institutions. Based on a model of entrepreneurship education, the analysis addresses curricular and extra-curricular teaching, as well as the institutional and stakeholder context of delivering entrepreneurship education within higher educational institutions. The book offers both insightful entrepreneurship teaching practices and a discussion of potential organizational drivers and barriers. Accordingly, it provides a valuable resource for researchers, instructors, and managers of entrepreneurship education alike.

Today, it is not uncommon for practices and hospitals to be on their second or third EHR and/or contemplating a transition from the traditional on-premise model to a cloud-based system. As a follow-up to Complete Guide and Toolkit to Successful EHR Adoption ( (c)2011 HIMSS), this book builds on the best practices of the first edition, fast-forwarding to the latest innovations that are currently leveraged and adopted by providers and hospitals. We examine the role that artificial intelligence (AI) is now playing in and around EHR technology. We also address the advances in analytics and deep learning (also known as deep structured or hierarchical learning) and explain this topic in practical ways for even the most novice reader to comprehend and apply. The challenges of EHR to EHR migrations and data conversions will also be covered, including the use of the unethical practice of data blocking used as a tactic by some vendors to hold data hostage. Further, we explore innovations related to interoperability, cloud computing, cyber security, and electronic patient/consumer engagement. Finally, this book will deal with what to do with aging technology and databases, which is an issue rarely considered in any of the early publications on healthcare technology. What is the proper way to retire a legacy system, and what are the legal obligations of data archiving? Though a lot has changed since the 2011 edition, many of the fundamentals remain the same and will serve as a foundation for the next generation of EHR adopters and/or those moving on to their second, third, fourth, and beyond EHRs.

In the absence of a widely accepted and common definition of social enterprise (SE), a large research project, the "International Comparative Social Enterprise Models" (ICSEM) Project, was carried out over a five-year period; it involved more than 200 researchers from 55 countries and relied on bottom-up approaches to capture the SE phenomenon. This strategy made it possible to take into account and give legitimacy to locally embedded approaches, thus resulting in an analysis encompassing a wide diversity of social enterprises, while simultaneously allowing for the identification of major SE models to delineate the field on common grounds at the international level. These SE models reveal or confirm an overall trend towards new ways of sharing the responsibility for the common good in today's economies and societies. We tend to consider as good news the fact that social enterprises actually stem from all parts of the economy. Indeed, societies are facing many complex challenges at all levels, from the local to the global level. The diversity and internal variety of SE models are a sign of a broadly shared willingness to develop appropriate although sometimes embryonic-responses to these challenges, on the basis of innovative economic/business models driven by a social mission. In spite of their weaknesses, social enterprises may be seen as advocates for and vehicles of the general interest across the whole economy. Of course, the debate about privatisation, deregulation and globalised market competition-all factors that may hinder efforts in the search for the common good-has to be addressed as well. The second of a series of four ICSEM books, Social Enterprise in Latin America will serve as a key reference and resource for teachers, researchers, students, experts, policy makers, journalists and other categories of people who want to acquire a broad understanding of the phenomena of social enterprise and social entrepreneurship as they emerge and develop across the world.