Grassroots Innovation Movements

Grassroots Innovation Movements PDF Author: Adrian Smith
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131745118X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
Innovation is increasingly invoked by policy elites and business leaders as vital for tackling global challenges like sustainable development. Often overlooked, however, is the fact that networks of community groups, activists, and researchers have been innovating grassroots solutions for social justice and environmental sustainability for decades. Unencumbered by disciplinary boundaries, policy silos, or institutional logics, these ‘grassroots innovation movements’ identify issues and questions neglected by formal science, technology and innovation organizations. Grassroots solutions arise in unconventional settings through unusual combinations of people, ideas and tools. This book examines six diverse grassroots innovation movements in India, South America and Europe, situating them in their particular dynamic historical contexts. Analysis explains why each movement frames innovation and development differently, resulting in a variety of strategies. The book explores the spaces where each of these movements have grown, or attempted to do so. It critically examines the pathways they have developed for grassroots innovation and the challenges and limitations confronting their approaches. With mounting pressure for social justice in an increasingly unequal world, policy makers are exploring how to foster more inclusive innovation. In this context grassroots experiences take on added significance. This book provides timely and relevant ideas, analysis and recommendations for activists, policy-makers, students and scholars interested in encounters between innovation, development and social movements.

Grassroots Innovation Movements

Grassroots Innovation Movements PDF Author: Adrian Smith
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131745118X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 241

Get Book

Book Description
Innovation is increasingly invoked by policy elites and business leaders as vital for tackling global challenges like sustainable development. Often overlooked, however, is the fact that networks of community groups, activists, and researchers have been innovating grassroots solutions for social justice and environmental sustainability for decades. Unencumbered by disciplinary boundaries, policy silos, or institutional logics, these ‘grassroots innovation movements’ identify issues and questions neglected by formal science, technology and innovation organizations. Grassroots solutions arise in unconventional settings through unusual combinations of people, ideas and tools. This book examines six diverse grassroots innovation movements in India, South America and Europe, situating them in their particular dynamic historical contexts. Analysis explains why each movement frames innovation and development differently, resulting in a variety of strategies. The book explores the spaces where each of these movements have grown, or attempted to do so. It critically examines the pathways they have developed for grassroots innovation and the challenges and limitations confronting their approaches. With mounting pressure for social justice in an increasingly unequal world, policy makers are exploring how to foster more inclusive innovation. In this context grassroots experiences take on added significance. This book provides timely and relevant ideas, analysis and recommendations for activists, policy-makers, students and scholars interested in encounters between innovation, development and social movements.

Grassroots Innovation Movements

Grassroots Innovation Movements PDF Author: Adrian Smith
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1317451198
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
Innovation is increasingly invoked by policy elites and business leaders as vital for tackling global challenges like sustainable development. Often overlooked, however, is the fact that networks of community groups, activists, and researchers have been innovating grassroots solutions for social justice and environmental sustainability for decades. Unencumbered by disciplinary boundaries, policy silos, or institutional logics, these ‘grassroots innovation movements’ identify issues and questions neglected by formal science, technology and innovation organizations. Grassroots solutions arise in unconventional settings through unusual combinations of people, ideas and tools. This book examines six diverse grassroots innovation movements in India, South America and Europe, situating them in their particular dynamic historical contexts. Analysis explains why each movement frames innovation and development differently, resulting in a variety of strategies. The book explores the spaces where each of these movements have grown, or attempted to do so. It critically examines the pathways they have developed for grassroots innovation and the challenges and limitations confronting their approaches. With mounting pressure for social justice in an increasingly unequal world, policy makers are exploring how to foster more inclusive innovation. In this context grassroots experiences take on added significance. This book provides timely and relevant ideas, analysis and recommendations for activists, policy-makers, students and scholars interested in encounters between innovation, development and social movements.

Grassroots Innovation

Grassroots Innovation PDF Author: Anil K Gupta
Publisher: Random House India
ISBN: 8184007795
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
A moral dilemma gripped Professor Gupta when he was invited by the Bangladeshi government to help restructure their agricultural sector in 1985. He noticed how the marginalized farmers were being paid poorly for their otherwise unmatched knowledge. The gross injustice of this constant imbalance led Professor Gupta to found what would turn into a resounding social and ethical movement—the Honey Bee Network—bringing together and elevating thousands of grassroots innovators. For over two decades, Professor Gupta has travelled through rural lands unearthing innovations by the ranks—from the famed Mitti Cool refrigerator to the footbridge of Meghalaya. He insists that to fight the largest and most persistent problems of the world we must eschew expensive research labs and instead, look towards ordinary folk. Innovation—that oft-flung around word—is stripped to its core in this book. Poignant and personal, Grassroots Innovation is an important treatise from a social crusader of our time.

The Struggle for Accountability

The Struggle for Accountability PDF Author: Jonathan A. Fox
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262561174
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 588

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Book Description
After a history of funding environmentally costly megaprojects, the World Bank now claims that it is trying to become a leading force for sustainable development. For more than a decade, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and grassroots movements have formed transnational coalitions to reform the World Bank and the governments that it funds. The Struggle for Accountability assesses the efforts of these groups to make the World Bank more publicly accountable. The book is organized into four parts. Part I describes the NGOs and grassroots movements that are the book's central focus. Part II presents case studies of four projects that provoked the emergence of transnational advocacy coalitions: Indonesia's Kedung Ombo dam, the Mt. Apo geothermal plant in the Philippines, Brazil's Planaforo Amazon development project, and the remarkable campaign of Ecuador's indigenous people to influence national economic policy that led to their participation in the design of a development loan. Part III looks at the origins and politics of reform in four areas of broader World Bank policy: the rights of indigenous peoples, involuntary resettlement, water resources, and the World Bank's institutional reforms that are supposed to encourage public accountability. In the last section, the editors discuss issues of accountability within transnational coalitions and assess the impact of advocacy campaigns on World Bank projects and policies. Contributors L. David Brown, Jane G. Covey, Jonathan A. Fox, Andrew Gray, Margaret E. Keck, Deborah Moore, Antoinette Royo, Augustinus Rumansara, Leonard Sklar, Kay Treakle, Lori Udall, David A. Wirth.

Grassroots Rising

Grassroots Rising PDF Author: Ronnie Cummins
Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing
ISBN: 1603589759
Category : NATURE
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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Book Description
Grassroots Rising is a passionate call to action for the global body politic, providing practical solutions for how to survive--and thrive--in catastrophic times. Author Ronnie Cummins aims to educate and inspire citizens worldwide to organize and become active participants in preventing ecological collapse. This book offers a blueprint for building and supercharging a grassroots Regeneration Movement based on consumer activism, farmer innovation, political change, and regenerative finance--embodied most recently by the proposed Green New Deal in the US. Cummins asserts that the solution lies right beneath our feet and at the end of our forks through the transformation of our broken food system. Using regenerative agriculture practices that restore our agricultural and grazing lands, we can sequester massive amounts of carbon in the soil. Coupled with an aggressive transition toward renewables, he argues that we have the power to not only mitigate and slow down climate change, but actually reverse global warming. In synergy with the Sunrise Movement and the growing support of a Green New Deal, Grassroots Rising will impact millions of conscious consumers, farmers, and the general public during the crucial 2020 election year and beyond. This book shows that a properly organized and executed Regeneration Revolution can indeed offer realistic climate solutions while also meeting our everyday needs. If you're wondering what you can do to help address the global climate crisis, joining the Regeneration Revolution might be the best first step. " Grassroots Rising] is a 'good news' instructional book for Regeneration, a practical, shovel-ready plan of action for the United States and the world to transition to climate stability, peace, justice, health, prosperity, cooperation, and participatory democracy." --Ronnie Cummins

Mass Flourishing

Mass Flourishing PDF Author: Edmund S. Phelps
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400848296
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 392

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Book Description
In this book, Nobel Prize-winning economist Edmund Phelps draws on a lifetime of thinking to make a sweeping new argument about what makes nations prosper--and why the sources of that prosperity are under threat today. Why did prosperity explode in some nations between the 1820s and 1960s, creating not just unprecedented material wealth but "flourishing"--meaningful work, self-expression, and personal growth for more people than ever before? Phelps makes the case that the wellspring of this flourishing was modern values such as the desire to create, explore, and meet challenges. These values fueled the grassroots dynamism that was necessary for widespread, indigenous innovation. Most innovation wasn't driven by a few isolated visionaries like Henry Ford and Steve Jobs; rather, it was driven by millions of people empowered to think of, develop, and market innumerable new products and processes, and improvements to existing ones. Mass flourishing--a combination of material well-being and the "good life" in a broader sense--was created by this mass innovation. Yet indigenous innovation and flourishing weakened decades ago. In America, evidence indicates that innovation and job satisfaction have decreased since the late 1960s, while postwar Europe has never recaptured its former dynamism. The reason, Phelps argues, is that the modern values underlying the modern economy are under threat by a resurgence of traditional, corporatist values that put the community and state over the individual. The ultimate fate of modern values is now the most pressing question for the West: will Western nations recommit themselves to modernity, grassroots dynamism, indigenous innovation, and widespread personal fulfillment, or will we go on with a narrowed innovation that limits flourishing to a few? A book of immense practical and intellectual importance, Mass Flourishing is essential reading for anyone who cares about the sources of prosperity and the future of the West.

The Politics of Green Transformations

The Politics of Green Transformations PDF Author: Ian Scoones
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317601114
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 245

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Book Description
Multiple ‘green transformations’ are required if humanity is to live sustainably on planet Earth. Recalling past transformations, this book examines what makes the current challenge different, and especially urgent. It examines how green transformations must take place in the context of the particular moments of capitalist development, and in relation to particular alliances. The role of the state is emphasised, both in terms of the type of incentives required to make green transformations politically feasible and the way states must take a developmental role in financing innovation and technology for green transformations. The book also highlights the role of citizens, as innovators, entrepreneurs, green consumers and members of social movements. Green transformations must be both ‘top-down’, involving elite alliances between states and business, but also ‘bottom up’, pushed by grassroots innovators and entrepreneurs, and part of wider mobilisations among civil society. The chapters in the book draw on international examples to emphasise how contexts matter in shaping pathways to sustainability Written by experts in the field, this book will be of great interest to researchers and students in environmental studies, international relations, political science, development studies, geography and anthropology, as well as policymakers and practitioners concerned with sustainability.

Alternative Pathways in Science and Industry

Alternative Pathways in Science and Industry PDF Author: David J. Hess
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262263149
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 345

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Book Description
In Alternative Pathways in Science and Industry, David Hess examines how social movements and other forms of activism affect innovation in science, technology, and industry. Synthesizing and extending work in social studies of science and technology, social movements, and globalization, Hess explores the interaction of grassroots environmental action and mainstream industry and offers a conceptual framework for understanding it. Hess proposes a theory of scientific and technological change that considers the roles that both industry and grassroots consumers play in setting the research agenda in science and technology, and he identifies "alternative pathways" by which social movements can influence scientific and technological innovation. He analyzes four of these pathways: industrial opposition movements, organized against targeted technologies (as in the campaign against nuclear energy); technology- and product-oriented movements, which press for alternatives (as does the organic food movement); localism, which promotes local ownership (as in "buy-local" campaigns); and access pathways, which support a more equitable distribution of resources. Within each pathway, Hess examines reforms in five different areas: agriculture, energy, waste and manufacturing, infrastructure, and finance. The book's theoretical argument and empirical evidence demonstrate the complex pattern of incorporation (of grassroots innovations) and transformation (of alternative ownership structures and the alternative products themselves) that has characterized the relationship of industry and activism. Hess's analysis of alternative pathways to change suggests ways economic organizations could shift to a more just and sustainable course in the twenty-first century.

November Project: The Book

November Project: The Book PDF Author: Brogan Graham
Publisher: Rodale
ISBN: 1623366291
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
November Project: The Book is the story of how two irreverent, way-outside-the-box fitness fanatics are flipping the fitness industry on its head and literally making the world a better place, one city at a time. No facility. No machines. Just two dudes and a tribe of thousands. Welcome to November Project’s world takeover. What started 4 years ago as a simple monthlong workout pact between two former Northeastern University oarsmen in Boston has grown into an international fitness phenomenon. November Project espouses free, public, all-weather, outdoor group sweats that turn strangers into friends and connect everyone to the city in which they live. It’s been described as everything from flashmob fitness to “the fight club of running clubs” and a cult. But November Project prides itself on defying categories. In November Project: The Book, Brogan Graham (a.k.a. BG) and Bojan Mandaric, in their own spicy, big-hearted words, chronicle, along with tribe member and writer Caleb Daniloff, their fitness movement’s genesis, evolution, operations, membership, “secret sauce,” and future—and along the way, show you how you can get fit and societally engaged. The book also includes illustrated workouts; the keys to meaningful civic engagement; information on using your city as a gym; advice on starting an NP tribe; tips on growing, sustaining, and invigorating membership through social media; and thoughts on the collective power of community.

Entrepreneurial Marketing

Entrepreneurial Marketing PDF Author: Robert D. Hisrich
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN: 178811132X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
One key for success for an entrepreneur is to obtain sales (revenue) and profits as quickly as possible upon launching the venture. Entrepreneurial Marketing focuses on this and the essential elements of success in order to achieve these needed sales and revenues and then grow the company. The authors build a comprehensive, state-of-the-art picture of entrepreneurial marketing issues, providing major theoretical and empirical evidence that offers a clear, concise view of the field.Through an international approach that combines both theoretical and empirical knowledge on entrepreneurship and marketing, this book informs and enhances an entrepreneurs' creativity, their ability to bring innovations to the market and their willingness to face risk and change the world. Key components addressed include: identifying and selecting the market, determining the consumer needs cost-effectively, executing the basic elements of the marketing mix (product, price, distribution, and promotion) and competing successfully in the domestic and global markets by implementing a sound marketing plan. Numerous illustrative examples bring the content to life. The mix of theoretical content, examples, empirical analyses and case studies, make this book an excellent resource for students, professors, researchers, practitioners, and policymakers all over the world.