One of the business world's most highly regarded innovators offers her ideas on how to close the innovation gap.

Named one of the "Best Books on Innovation, 2008" by BusinessWeek magazine Does innovation come about by luck or hard work? Is it a flash of inspiration or the result of careful management? Are innovators born or taught? In Closing the Innovation Gap, Judith Estrin provides the answers to these and other questions critical to our future. A technology pioneer and business leader, Estrin describes what will be required to reignite the spark of innovation in business, education, and government--ensuring our long-term success in the global economy. Innovation does not occur in a vacuum. It grows from the interplay of three drivers of creative change--research, development, and application. Estrin calls this dynamic the “Innovation Ecosystem,” explaining how these communities work together to create sustainable innovation. Closing the Innovation Gap covers: America's role as the primary driver of global innovation after World War II--explaining what worked, the subsequent decline, and how to regain traction The fundamentals required to nurture innovation, including five simple but important values for transforming your organization into a force for productive change How you can ensure that your business benefits from a thriving “Innovation Ecosystem” Examples from both established companies, start-ups, and research labs that illustrate the power of innovation in providing a decisive business advantage and foundation for growth Leaders in business and public service “must think beyond short-term financial results and understand the impact of globalization and an accelerated pace of change on future economic growth,” says Estrin. With Closing the Innovation Gap as your guide, business leaders will gain key insights into identifying their needs, asking the right questions, testing new ideas, and successfully leading their organization to the frontiers of twenty-first-century innovation.

The aim of this volume is to further develop the relationship between culture and manifold phenomena of creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship in order to promote further and better understanding how, why, and when these phenomena are manifested themselves across different cultures. Currently, cross-cultural research is one of the most dynamically and rapidly growing areas. At the same time, creativity, inventiveness, innovation, and entrepreneurship are championed in the literature as the critical element that is vital not just for companies, but also for the development of societies. A sizable body of research demonstrates that cultural differences may foster or inhibit creative, inventive, innovative and entrepreneurial activities; and each culture has its own strengths and weaknesses in these regards. Better understanding of cultural diversity in these phenomena can help to build on strengths and overcome weaknesses. Cross-cultural studies in this field represent a comparatively new class of interdisciplinary research. This is a field where cultural, sociological, psychological, historical, economic, management, technology and business studies closely intersect. In this book, a global team of researchers representing Europe, Asia, and the Americas review, analyze, structure, systematize and discuss various concepts, assumptions, speculations, theories, and empirical research which focus on the effect of national cultures on creativity, invention, innovation, and entrepreneurship. They argue that national culture is not only an extremely important determinant of innovation and business development, but also demonstrate that some aspects relating to these phenomena may be universal among all cultures, thereby identifying those factors that may easily be transferred across cultures from those that are unique to their specific context.

The Future of Creative Work provides a unique overview of the changing nature of creative work, examining how digital developments and the rise of intangible capital are causing an upheaval in the social institutions of work. It offers a profound insight into how this technological and social evolution will affect creative professions.

This important book delivers a critical wake-up call: a fierce global race for innovation advantage is under way, and while other nations are making support for technology and innovation a central tenet of their economic strategies and policies, America lacks a robust innovation policy. What does this portend? Robert Atkinson and Stephen Ezell, widely respected economic thinkers, report on profound new forces that are shaping the global economy—forces that favor nations with innovation-based economies and innovation policies. Unless the United States enacts public policies to reflect this reality, Americans face the relatively lower standards of living associated with a noncompetitive national economy.The authors explore how a weak innovation economy not only contributed to the Great Recession but is delaying America's recovery from it and how innovation in the United States compares with that in other developed and developing nations. Atkinson and Ezell then lay out a detailed, pragmatic road map for America to regain its global innovation advantage by 2020, as well as maximize the global supply of innovation and promote sustainable globalization.

The triple helix of university–industry–government interactions is a universal model for the development of the knowledge-based society, through innovation and entrepreneurship. It draws from the innovative practice of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) with industry and government in inventing a regional renewal strategy in early 20th-century New England. Parallel experiences were identified in “Silicon Valley,” where Stanford University works together with industry and government. Triple helix is identified as the secret of such innovative regions. It may also be found in statist or laissez-faire societies, globally. The triple helix focuses on “innovation in innovation” and the dynamic to foster an innovation ecosystem, through various hybrid organizations, such as technology transfer offices, venture capital firms, incubators, accelerators, and science parks. This second edition develops the practical and policy implications of the triple helix model with case studies exemplifying the meta-theory, including: • how to make an innovative region through the triple helix approach; • balancing development and sustainability by “triple helix twins"; • triple helix matrix to analyze regional innovation globally; and • case studies on the Stanford's StartX accelerator; the Ashland, Oregon Theater Arts Clusters; and Linyi regional innovation in China. The Triple Helix as a universal innovation model can assist students, researchers, managers, entrepreneurs, and policymakers to understand the roles of university, industry, and government in forming and developing “an innovative region,” which has self-renewal and sustainable innovative capacity.

This title explores the way in which public and private policy have played in enabling and sustaining swift innovation in a variety of industries, from agriculture and the life sciences to information technology.