The number one problem in our world today is effective energy management--the energy that fuels our buildings and propels our vehicles as well as our human energy. But if individuals, governments, and corporations take action now, we can have a bright energy future. In Beyond Light Bulbs, Susan Meredith helps readers move beyond the gloom, doom, and overwhelm of global warming and the energy crisis. She offers hopeful and helpful advice for actions we can all take to improve our future. Straightforward and clear, the book offers a complete an comprehensive overview of energy in layman's terms, while giving concrete examples of how you can contribute and benefit.

Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. The story of the compact disc is also the story of the end of physical media. It is the story of how the quest for perfection laid the grounds for the death of a great industry. For in the passage from analogue media, like records and tapes, to digital formats, like CDs, something changed in the nature of media and in the relationship we have with music. Music became code, a sequence of 1s and 0s, a flow of pure information. The material structure of the medium itself was always supposed to disappear. But the physical has proved to possess an uncanny knack for returning. Today the CD is a zombie medium, still popular amongst certain avant-garde record labels and Japanese consumers. Against all the odds, the spectre endures. Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.

Governments today are confronted with a complex array of interconnected problems, increased citizen expectations, and fiscal constraints. Furthermore, they must operate in a context of fast-paced technological, geopolitical, economic, social, and environmental change. Existing policies and ...

Using case studies, such as the use of candlelight and energy saving lightbulbs in Denmark, this book unravels light's place at the heart of social life. In contrast to common perception of light as a technical and aesthetic phenomenon, Mikkel Bille argues that there is a cultural and social logic to lighting practices. By empirically investigating the social role of lighting in people's everyday lives, Mikkel Bille reveals how and why people visually shape their homes. Moving beyond the impact of its use, Bille also comments on the politics of lighting to examine how ideas of pollution and home act as barriers for technological fixes to curb energy demand. Attitudes to these issues are reflective of how human perceptions and practices are central to the efforts to cope with climate change. This ethnographic study is a must-read for students of anthropology, cultural studies, human geography, sociology and design.

Leading Learning and Teaching in Higher Education brings together contemporary ideas on leadership, engagement and student learning into a practical solutions-based resource designed for those undertaking the challenge of leading a university-level teaching module, programme or suite of programmes, particularly through periods of transformation or change. It encourages both first time academic leaders and those who have held teaching leadership roles for some time to review and formalise their development in a systematic, simple way and acts as a framework for navigating the opportunities and challenges involved in inspiring shared purpose, strong commitment and innovation in higher education teaching. With a clear focus on the energy of leadership rather than the practice of management, and with a strong emphasis on collaborative engagement running throughout, this books offers: Insightful guidance which is not bound to subject-specific requirements, making it relevant across the spectrum of course offerings at any one institution. An enabling, people-focussed foundation for leadership. Tools and frameworks which can be readily applied or adapted for the reader. A focus on core elements of teaching leadership, such as design, delivery, assessment and building a programme team. A flexible and pragmatic approach to leadership which avoids a definitive approach, instead encouraging a dynamic method of engaging leadership. Values that assert that leadership and learning go hand-in-hand. A wide-ranging discussion of leadership theories, ideas and values related to the university context. This book puts forward a multifaceted model of programme leadership and links this to a scaffolding of key attributes, skills and qualities that fit the environment of leading learning and teaching in the university. Particularly interested readers will be those beginning to lead teaching in a university setting as well as those who have been leading programme teams and the wider provision of teaching for some time wanting to enhance their skills and perspective.

La 4è de couv. indique : "Marketing An Introduction introduces students at all levels, undergraduate, postgraduate and professional courses, to marketing concepts. It focuses on how to build profitable customer relationships by encouraging students to apply concepts to real commercial practice through numerous case studies from around the world. Now updated with the last ideas in digital marketing such as big data, analytics and social marketing as well as up-to-date case studies from a range of consumer and industrial brands including Netflix, Aldi, Spotify, Phillips, Renault and Airbus 380, this fourth edition combines the clarity and authority of the Kotler brand within the context of European marketing practice. Marketing An Introduction makes learning and teaching marketing more effective, easier and more enjoyable. The text's approachable style and design are well suited to cater to the enormous variety of students taking introductory marketing classes."

The U.S. economy is the envy of the world, and the key to its success is technological innovation. In this fascinating and in-depth account reported from three continents, Robert Buderi turns the spotlight on corporate research and the management of innovation that is helping drive the economy's robust growth. Here are firsthand communiqués from inside the labs of a reborn IBM, resurgent GE and Lucent, research upstarts Intel and Microsoft, and other leading American firms -- as well as top European and Japanese competitors. It was only a few years ago that competitiveness experts -- U.S. well-wishers and naysayers alike -- concluded that America had lost its business and technological edge. The nation's companies, they asserted, couldn't match the development and manufacturing efficiency of overseas rivals. Yet now the nation is humming along, riding an unparalleled wave of innovation. Buderi tells us this turnaround has come on many fronts -- in marketing, sales, manufacturing, and the creation of start-up companies. But Engines of Tomorrow deals with a central element that has gone largely unexamined: corporate research. It's the research process that provides the technologies that spur growth. Research is behind the renaissance of IBM, the stunning growth of Lucent, and much of the steamrolling American recovery. Focusing on the fast-moving communications-computer-electronics sector, Buderi profiles some of the world's leading thinkers on innovation, talks with top inventors, and describes the exciting technologies coming down the pike -- from information appliances to electronic security and quantum computing. In the process, he examines the vital strategic issues in which central labs play a determining role, including: How IBM's eight labs around the world figure in Lou Gerstner's plans to achieve consistent double-digit growth -- and to join GE as a $100 billion concern. Why Xerox's famed Palo Alto Research Center is vying to resuscitate its company's lagging fortunes by sending anthropologists into the field to study the hidden ways people really work. What Hewlett-Packard will do without its original instrument business, recently spun off as Agilent Technologies. The business was central to HP Labs' MC2 philosophy of merging research expertise in measurement, computation, and communication -- and its departure removed a lot that was unique about HP. How the November 1999 federal court finding that Microsoft operates a monopoly hinders the Seattle giant's acquisition plans and makes it increasingly vital for nine-year-old Microsoft Research to lead the way in innovating from within. Could this be the next great lab for the twenty-first century? With authority and undaunted optimism about the underlying vitality of the research process, Buderi discusses these issues and reveals the future of some of the world's best and most powerful companies.