Creating Better Futures: Scenario Planning As a Tool for A Better Tomorrow
by James A. Ogilvy
6 customers reviewed this article averaging 4.5

Isbn-13: 9780195146110

As a founder and managing director of Global Business Network, James Ogilvy helped develop the technique of scenario planning, which has become an integral part of strategic thinking in both business and government. Now Ogilvy shows how we can use this cutting-edge method for social change in our own neighborhoods. In Creating Better Futures, Ogilvy presents a profound new vision of how the world is changing–and how it can be changed for the better. Ogilvy argues that self-defined communities,…

Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness
by Richard H. Thaler
52 customers reviewed this article averaging 4.0

Isbn-13: 9780300122237

Every day, we make decisions on topics ranging from personal investments to schools for our children to the meals we eat to the causes we champion. Unfortunately, we often choose poorly. The reason, the authors explain, is that, being human, we all are susceptible to various biases that can lead us to blunder. Our mistakes make us poorer and less healthy; we often make bad decisions involving education, personal finance, health care, mortgages and credit cards, the family, and even the planet itself. Thaler…

Blindside: How to Anticipate Forcing Events and Wild Cards in Global Politics
by Francis Fukuyama
1 customers reviewed this article averaging 4.0

Isbn-13: 9780815729907

A host of catastrophes, natural and otherwise, as well as some pleasant surprises–such as the sudden end of the cold war–have caught governments and societies unprepared in recent decades. September 11 is only the most obvious example among many unforeseen events that have changed, even redefined, our lives. We have every reason to expect more surprises in future. Certain kinds of unanticipated scenarios–particularly those of low probability and high impact–have the potential to escalate…

Kuhn: Philosopher of Scientific Revolutions (Key Contemporary Thinkers)
by Wes Sharrock

Isbn-13: 9780745619286

Thomas Kuhn’s shadow hangs over almost every field of intellectual inquiry. His book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions has become a modern classic. His influence on philosophy, social science, historiography, feminism, theology, and (of course) the natural sciences themselves is unparalleled. His epoch-making concepts of ‘new paradigm’ and ’scientific revolution’ make him probably the most influential scholar of the twentieth century. Sharrock and Read take the reader through Kuhn’s…

In a world that is confronted with climate change, instant wars, collapsing banks, global terrorism and an oil price that is jumping up and down, the old ways of doing things just don’t work anymore. ICT has enabled us to link everything together. A digital layer of connections has merged with our old infrastructures of trains, plains and boats creating a network that has simply become to large and complex to grasp. We can no longer take the machine apart to understand its parts. Are we just going to pretend nothing is wrong, sit down and brace for impact?  Dealing with that kind of complexity has to be done bottom-up, believing in adaptiveness, self learning and letting go of control. We need new tools, new ideas, a new generation and above all, new leadership. But how are you to define a strategy in such an age of uncertainty? For a study on the Future of Work FreedomLab partnered once more with ViNT , the institute that explores the impact of new technologies.

Africa’s Silk Road: China and India’s New Economic Frontier
by Harry G. Broadman

Isbn-13: 9780821368350

China and India’s new-found interest in trade and investment with Africa - home to 300 million of the globe’s poorest people and the world’s most formidable development challenge - presents a significant opportunity for growth and integration of the Sub-Saharan continent into the global economy. Africa’s Silk Road finds that China and India’s South-South commerce with Africa is about far more than natural resources, opening the way for Africa to become a processor of commodities and a competitive…

Africa is a developing region, trying to climb from the bottom up. Many regions on the African continent are suffering from extreme climates, environmental degradation, colonial trauma, language barriers, HIV, illiteracy, poverty, famine, artificial borders, dictators and armed conflicts. But at the same time, Africa is also a continent of tremendous unleashed potential of natural resources, human capital and economic activities. For several years in a row now, Africa is the fastest growing region in the roll-out of ICT infrastructure, especially mobile. In FreedomLab’s new study into this continent we sketch a thorough picture on the status quo of many of the aspects of the African growth dynamics. And we’ll discuss the hurdles as well as the tremendous opportunities.

A New Deal for the World: America’s Vision for Human Rights
by Elizabeth Borgwardt
3 customers reviewed this article averaging 5.0

Isbn-13: 9780674025363

In a work of sweeping scope and luminous detail, Elizabeth Borgwardt describes how a cadre of World War II American planners inaugurated the ideas and institutions that underlie our modern international human rights regime. Borgwardt finds the key in the 1941 Atlantic Charter and its Anglo-American vision of “war and peace aims.” In attempting to globalize what U.S. planners heralded as domestic New Deal ideas about security, the ideology of the Atlantic Charter–buttressed by FDR’s “Four Freedoms”…