This volume presents new scholarship on the value and valuing of craft production in ancient societies around the Mediterranean. Ancient economic history, especially when approached archaeologically, has typically - and with good reason - focused upon the objects that were produced by craftspeople, their form and style, and their distribution. Typological approaches necessary for sorting and analysing large bodies of material evidence have also prioritized the final form of artefacts. Yet it was first and foremost the craftspeople behind these items who were responsible for an item's functionality, its purpose, and its value, and these roles have in recent years received fresh attention in anthropological and sociological studies. The contributions gathered in this volume revolve around the role of makers, their handling of materials, and their place in networks of production and consumption, whilst at the same time remembering that craftspeople were never lone forces but depended on wider networks of supplies, colleagues, and consumers, as well as more ephemeral considerations such as aesthetics and religious value. Through this approach, the volume sheds new light not only on a range of crafts and materials from the ancient world, but also on the value of making and the making of value in ancient Mediterranean societies.

Who really creates wealth in our world? And how do we decide the value of what they do? At the heart of today's financial and economic crisis is a problem hiding in plain sight. In modern capitalism, value-extraction - the siphoning off of profits, from shareholders' dividends to bankers' bonuses - is rewarded more highly than value-creation: the productive process that drives a healthy economy and society. We misidentify takers as makers, and have lost sight of what value really means. Once a central plank of economic thought, this concept of value - what it is, why it matters to us - is simply no longer discussed. Yet, argues Mariana Mazzucato in this penetrating and passionate new book, if we are to reform capitalism - to radically transform an increasingly sick system rather than continue feeding it - we urgently need to rethink where wealth comes from. Who is creating it, who is extracting it, and who is destroying it? Answers to these questions are key if we want to replace the current parasitic system with a type of capitalism that is more sustainable, more symbiotic: that works for us all. The Value of Everything will reignite a long-needed debate about the kind of world we really want to live in.

Making Value, Making Meaning explores the concept of techné--the application of a thorough and masterful knowledge of a specific field--as an analytic tool useful for understanding how the production process created value and meaning for objects and public monuments in complex societies of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica and the Andes.

Economic, technological, and political shifts as well as changing business strategies have driven firms to unbundle production processes and disperse them across countries. Thanks to these changes, developing countries can now increase their participation in global value chains (GVCs) and thus become more competitive in agriculture, manufacturing and services. This is a paradigm shift from the 20th century when countries had to build the entire supply chain domestically to become competitive internationally. For policymakers, the focus is on boosting domestic value added and improving access to resources and technology while advancing development goals. However, participating in global value chains does not automatically improve living standards and social conditions in a country. This requires not only improving the quality and quantity of production factors and redressing market failures, but also engineering equitable distributions of opportunities and outcomes - including employment, wages, work conditions, economic rights, gender equality, economic security, and protecting the environment. The internationalization of production processes helps with very few of these development challenges. Following this perspective, Making Global Value Chains Work for Development offers a strategic framework, analytical tools, and policy options to address this challenge. The book conceptualizes GVCs and makes it easier for policymakers and practitioners to discuss them and their implications for development. It shows why GVCs require fresh thinking; it serves as a repository of analytical tools; and it proposes a strategic framework to guide policymakers in identifying the key objectives of GVC participation and in selecting suitable economic strategies to achieve them.

Today, more people want to know how to make a meaningful difference to what they care about. But for that, traditional approaches to learning often fall short. In this book, we offer a theoretical and practical way forward. We introduce the concept of social learning spaces for developing both new capabilities and a sense of agency. We provide a rich framework for focusing on the value of social learning spaces: how to generate this value, monitor it, and learn iteratively through the process. The book is a useful extension and refinement of 'communities of practice' for those familiar with the theory. For those who are not, the chapters will lay out a new way to approach learning. This volume is written to serve the needs of readers across fields, including researchers, educators, and leaders in business, government, healthcare, and international development.

A bold, urgent argument on the misplacement of value in financial markets and how we can and need to maximize value for the many, not few. As an economist and former banker, Mark Carney has spent his life in various financial roles, in both the public and private sector. VALUE(S) is a meditation on his experiences that examines the short-comings and challenges of the market in the past decade which he argues has led to rampant, public distrust and the need for radical change. Focusing on four major crises-the Global Financial Crisis, the Global Health Crisis, Climate Change and the 4th Industrial Revolution-- Carney proposes responses to each. His solutions are tangible action plans for leaders, companies and countries to transform the value of the market back into the value of humanity.

Our newly digital world is generating an almost unimaginable amount of data about all of us. Such a vast amount of data is useless without plans and strategies that are designed to cope with its size and complexity, and which enable organisations to leverage the information to create value. This book is a refreshingly practical, yet theoretically sound roadmap to leveraging big data and analytics. Creating Value with Big Data Analytics provides a nuanced view of big data development, arguing that big data in itself is not a revolution but an evolution of the increasing availability of data that has been observed in recent times. Building on the authors’ extensive academic and practical knowledge, this book aims to provide managers and analysts with strategic directions and practical analytical solutions on how to create value from existing and new big data. By tying data and analytics to specific goals and processes for implementation, this is a much-needed book that will be essential reading for students and specialists of data analytics, marketing research, and customer relationship management.