Inside the innovation matrix : finding the hidden human dimensions [book]

Edited by: Australian Business Foundation

Chapters include: "Innovation in winning organisations in Australia: myths and realities", "How intangible networks can boost the innovation odds", "The heroes of innovation? Scientists and technologists in Australian business".

WiFi Is on the Way - WiFi mobile phones soon may get a nod of approval from China's telecom industry regulator (journal article)
By Lan Xinzhen
from Beijing Review, 9 October 2008
At present, China's telecom regulator prohibits phone calls made via the Internet or the browsing of Web pages via a mobile phone in wireless network-covered areas. But signs that the government will relax the restrictions have surfaced now that China Telecom Corp. Ltd. will offer a wireless fidelity (WiFi) phone to users on a pre-test basis, starting this month, before a full-scale product launch.

Projects Queensland [CD ROM / journal]

Author: Queensland. Dept of Infrastructure & Planning

"Outlines 603 projects with total values of more than $30 million. The publication lists all the projects under study, committed to and under construction, as well as those that were completed between April 2007 & June 2008." - introduction.

Playing by new rules - the milk powder scandal leads to more food inspections and throws the domestic dairy industry into an uproar (journal article)
by Yuan Yuan
from Beijing Review, October 2008, pp 16-17
The scandal illuminated existing problems in China's dairy industry and food safety system. Milk farmers sell their product at a relatively low price to milk providers, who then sell it to milk companies at a higher price. To boost their profits, some milk providers diluted the milk with water and added melamine, which made the milk appear rich in protein in order to pass nutrition tests.

Doing business 2009 : comparing regulation in 181 economies [book]

Authors: World Bank; International Finance Corporation

"Provides a quantitative measure of regulations for starting a business, dealing with construction permits, employing workers, registering property, getting credit, protecting investors, paying taxes, trading across borders, enforcing contracts and closing a business - as they apply to domestic small and medium-size enterprises." - page v.

Strategic management tools and public sector management (journal article)
by Wil Williams and Duncan Lewis
from Public Management Review, Vol. 10 No. 5, 2008 , pp. 653 - 671
This article highlights the applicability and effectiveness of two well established strategic management tools, value chain and stakeholder analyses, in the context of seven public sector strategic consultancy projects. The article provides a strong justification for the use of both models, when used independently, but particularly in conjunction, as powerful strategic analytical frameworks that can significantly encourage and illuminate strategic discourses in public sector organizations.

Policy without parliament : the growth of regulation in Australia [book]

Author: Chris Berg, Institute of Public Affairs

"Looks at the rapid growth in regulation-making, and the recent institutional changes in Australia's regulatory agencies." - [page 1].

Y : attract, manage, retain, the best Generation Y talent [DVD]

Presenter: Peter Sheahan

A four DVD training package including exercise booklets that covers what makes Gen Y different, and how your organisation can attract and keep the best and brightest from this age group.

A World of chance : betting on religion, games, Wall Street [book]

Authors: Reuven Brenner, Gabrielle A. Brenner & Aaron Brown

Looks at the social history of gambling, as well as the role it has played in politics and public finance.

Is Google making our e-learning stupid? (journal article)
by Tom Kuhlmann
from Training and Development in Australia, October 2008, pp. 20-21
"(The) article raises some issues that could impact how we design our e-learning courses. Our learners are being conditioned to prcess online content in a certain way. It impacts how they see, retrieve and process information ... this needs to be a consideration as we design our e-learning courses."
Contact the library for a copy of this article

Group genius : the creative power of collaboration [book]

Author: Robert Keith Sawyer

Argues that the true story of innovation is not that of the "lone genius" but of collaboration within groups, and shows how to tap into an organisation's reserves of creativity.

2008 PwC EM20 Index
Source: Price Waterhouse Coopers
In its second year, the PricewaterhouseCoopers EM20 Risk & Reward Index (the PwC EM20 Index), explores the attractiveness of various emerging markets as investment destinations both from risk and reward angle.
Produced by the PwC Emerging Markets Group in conjunction with our Macroeconomics Team, this year's PwC EM20 Index shows that the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) continue to offer interesting opportunities for investment – all four appear in both the Manufacturing and Services Indices. However, the results of our modelling also indicate a range of other locations that can offer attractive alternatives. This year's highlights include the emergence of South East Europe as an attractive destination for both manufacturing and services businesses

Innovation and Venture Capital Exits (journal article)
by Armin Schwienbacher

from The Economic Journal, Vol. 118, No. 533, 2008, pp. 1888-1916

This article analyses how start-ups financed by venture capital choose their innovation strategy based on the investor's exit preferences and thereby form different outcomes in the product market. It considers innovation choices and venture capital exits (IPO vs trade sale) in a setting in which entrepreneurs derive private benefits from staying independent, which is better guaranteed under an IPO. The entrepreneur has incentives to distort the innovation strategy in order to induce the venture capitalist to bring the company public. The analysis generates a number of empirical implications for the link between innovation, valuation, venture capital exit routes and market structure.

RSVP to e-Learning 2.0 (journal article)
By Steve Wexler
From Training, Sep2008, Supplement, pp. 14-21
MANY OF US ARE NEW TO, or grappling with, the concept of e-learning and its myriad approaches to improving performance support. If you haven't been doing this for several years already, you now may be trying to understand how to best apply such things as synchronous learning systems, immersive learning simulations, virtual laboratories, and rapid e-learning development.
So, just as you were getting a handle on all of this, somebody comes along and starts talking about "e-Learning 2.0" and how the best learning interventions are adopting so-called "Web 2.0" approaches to create community-fueled engagement that leads to faster dissemination and assimilation of critical information.

Tax-tariff reform with costs of tax administration (journal article)
by Knud J. Munk
from International Tax and Public Finance Vol. 15, No. 6, December, 2008
As is broadly recognised, the straightforward application of the Diamond–Mirrlees (1971) production efficiency theorem implies that when lump-sum taxation is not available, then it is optimal for the government in a small open economy to rely on taxes on the net demand of households rather than on border taxes to finance its resource requirements. However, the theorem does not hold when taxation is associated with administrative costs. The present paper explores the implications for optimal taxation and for desirable directions of tax-tariff reform of taking into account the costs of tax administration in countries at different levels of economic development. The paper clarifies the reasons for, and lends support to, the criticism by Stiglitz (Presentation to Congress of International Institute of Public Finance, Prague, 2003) of the IMF and the World Bank’s recommendation to developing countries to adopt VAT to replace border taxes.

OUTLOOK 2009 - Recent Forecasts from World Future Society for 2009 and Beyond. (cover story)
from Futurist, Nov/Dec 2008, Vol. 42 No. 6, pp 1-9,
The article highlights various information on the prospective development in the U.S. The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace infers that China's economy will surpass that of the U.S. by 2035 and is believed that workers in Asia are becoming more skilled and educated. On the other hand, it is also believed that tourism is anticipated to nearly double its international tourist arrivals worldwide, from 842 million in 2006 to 1.6 billion in 2020, wherein China will be the greatest source of tourists and the most popular tourist destination. Meanwhile, the internet technology is enabling consumers to disseminate information for product information, rather than simply relying on professional critics.

Network Evolution in Cultural Industries (journal article)
by Udo Staber
from Industry & Innovation, Vol 15, No 5, October 2008 , pages 569 - 578
Most of the research on social networks in cultural industries has taken an actor-centered perspective on individuals and organizations, often based on the (implicit) assumption of relative stability in actor attributes and relationships. This poses problems for an understanding of networks in a cultural context that is characterized by spontaneity, variation, and disequilibrium. To give more credit to processes related to “doing creative work”, I propose an evolutionary framework that focuses on ideas as the unit of analysis and draws attention to the dynamic distribution of ideas in an environment where ideas compete for human attention.

Cultural Events as Potential Drivers of Urban Regeneration: An Empirical Illustration (journal article)
by M. Paiola
from Industry & Innovation, Vol. 15, No 5, October 2008, pages 513 - 529
In this paper the relational dimension of cultural production is explored, with explicit attention to the impact of cultural events on networks and creativity in local contexts. Three qualitative empirical cases are produced, showing that networks have a crucial importance in sustaining spatial proximity-based creativity. Three models of local cultural events are identified and valued qualitatively in terms of their impact on local creativity, concluding that the value of an event in its territory is dependent on the organizational frame of the specific event. In particular, the bottom-up network-based model appears to be able to favour local activation and creativity spanning, thereby leveraging local resources.

From Fashion to Design: Creative Networks in Industrial Districts (journal article)
by Tine Aage and Fiorenza Belussi
from Industry & Innovation, Vol. 15, No 5, October 2008, pages 475 - 491
Creative industries enjoy a great deal of attention in Western economies these days. ...
We present some empirical evidence showing that a complex governance of several fashion sources is required to intercept fashion trends. Fashion emerges in a chaotic environment, as a bottom-up recursive process, partially controlled by fashion firms that scan external information sources and build some interpretative/creative capability developed together with external-to-the-firm agents. Our work uses some empirical data collected through a survey based in the industrial district of Montebelluna, localized in northern Italy, in Treviso. In Montebelluna, several important international producers of sport shoes and sport items are located. Qualitative interviews were conducted during 2004-2005 involving 13 final firms (some of them are leading firms) and 11 designers.

The Penguin history of modern China : the fall and rise of a great power, 1850-2008 [book]

Jonathan Fenby

"China has emerged in the last three decades as an economic powerhouse set to play a major global political role, its future posing one of the great questions for the twenty-first century. Understanding how that transformation came about and what China constitutes today means understanding how the past influences the present." - cover.