Serf-era and provincial Russia heralded the spectacular turn in cultural history that began in the 1860s. Examining the role of arts and artists in society's value system, Richard Stites explores this dramatic shift in a groundbreaking history of visual and performing arts in the last decades of serfdom. Provincial town and manor house engaged the culture of Moscow and St. Petersburg while thousands of serfs and exserfs created or performed. Against this background, Mikhail Glinka raised Russian music to new levels and Anton Rubinstein struggled to found a conservatory. Long before the itinerants, painters explored town and country in genre scenes of everyday life. Serf actors on loan from their masters brought naturalistic acting from provincial theatres to the imperial stages. Drawing on extensive archival research, Stites's richly detailed book re-visualises the culture of a flamboyant era and offers new perspectives on the origins of Russia's nineteenth-century artistic prowess.

Distilling a set of practical principles from his forty years of experience as a pioneer in the computer industry, the author shows that innovation can be learned and practiced by everyone, that it can offer solutions to everyday problems as well as high-profile ones, and that it provides opportunities to solve business problems while meeting a variety of human needs.

A Proven, Step-by-Step Method for Consistently Creating Revolutionary Products, Services, and Processes When it comes to entering, creating, or dominating markets, disruptive innovation is the most powerful tool you have. Unfortunately, most companies find disruptive innovation difficult to achieve and virtually impossible to replicate. In Innovate the Future, renowned technology innovator David Croslin helps you solve this problem once and for all. Croslin introduces a proven process for consistently creating inventions, technologies, and methods that are truly transformative. Drawing on his unsurpassed experience leading innovation in organizations ranging from start-ups to the Fortune® 20, Croslin identifies structured steps for optimizing the entire innovation lifecycle. Then, using real examples and case studies, he shows how to apply these steps to Innovate from Scratch: Identify a new market, and invent and deliver a successful product Innovate to Dominate: Maintain a position of market dominance Innovate to Conquer: Replace a current leader Innovate to Disrupt: Use new inventions to power your way into emerging markets Innovate the Future is an indispensable resource for anyone who wants to drive more strategic value and profit from innovation: CxOs, strategists, entrepreneurs, R&D leaders, product and line of business leaders, and investors alike.

In this new paperback edition of the classic bestseller, you'll be taken on a hilarious, fast-paced ride through the history of ideas. Author Scott Berkun will show you how to transcend the false stories that many business experts, scientists, and much of pop culture foolishly use to guide their thinking about how ideas change the world. With four new chapters on putting the ideas in the book to work, updated references and over 50 corrections and improvements, now is the time to get past the myths, and change the world. You'll have fun while you learn: Where ideas come from The true history of history Why most people don't like ideas How great managers make ideas thrive The importance of problem finding The simple plan (new for paperback) Since its initial publication, this classic bestseller has been discussed on NPR, MSNBC, CNBC, and at Yale University, MIT, Carnegie Mellon University, Microsoft, Apple, Intel, Google, Amazon.com, and other major media, corporations, and universities around the world. It has changed the way thousands of leaders and creators understand the world. Now in an updated and expanded paperback edition, it's a fantastic time to explore or rediscover this powerful view of the world of ideas. "Sets us free to try and change the world."--Guy Kawasaki, Author of Art of The Start "Small, simple, powerful: an innovative book about innovation."--Don Norman, author of Design of Everyday Things "Insightful, inspiring, evocative, and just plain fun to read. It's totally great."--John Seely Brown, Former Director, Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) "Methodically and entertainingly dismantling the cliches that surround the process of innovation."--Scott Rosenberg, author of Dreaming in Code; cofounder of Salon.com "Will inspire you to come up with breakthrough ideas of your own."--Alan Cooper, Father of Visual Basic and author of The Inmates are Running the Asylum "Brimming with insights and historical examples, Berkun's book not only debunks widely held myths about innovation, it also points the ways toward making your new ideas stick."--Tom Kelley, GM, IDEO; author of The Ten Faces of Innovation

Winner of Balsillie Prize for Public Policy Winner of Donner Prize A challenge to prevailing ideas about innovation and a guide to identifying the best growth strategy for your community. Across the world, cities and regions have wasted trillions of dollars on blindly copying the Silicon Valley model of growth creation. Since the early years of the information age, we've been told that economic growth derives from harnessing technological innovation. To do this, places must create good education systems, partner with local research universities, and attract innovative hi-tech firms. We have lived with this system for decades, and the result is clear: a small number of regions and cities at the top of the high-tech industry but many more fighting a losing battle to retain economic dynamism. But are there other models that don't rely on a flourishing high-tech industry? In Innovation in Real Places, Dan Breznitz argues that there are. The purveyors of the dominant ideas on innovation have a feeble understanding of the big picture on global production and innovation. They conflate innovation with invention and suffer from techno-fetishism. In their devotion to start-ups, they refuse to admit that the real obstacle to growth for most cities is the overwhelming power of the real hubs, which siphon up vast amounts of talent and money. Communities waste time, money, and energy pursuing this road to nowhere. Breznitz proposes that communities instead focus on where they fit in the four stages in the global production process. Some are at the highest end, and that is where the Clevelands, Sheffields, and Baltimores are being pushed toward. But that is bad advice. Success lies in understanding the changed structure of the global system of production and then using those insights to enable communities to recognize their own advantages, which in turn allows to them to foster surprising forms of specialized innovation. As he stresses, all localities have certain advantages relative to at least one stage of the global production process, and the trick is in recognizing it. Leaders might think the answer lies in high-tech or high-end manufacturing, but more often than not, they're wrong. Innovation in Real Places is an essential corrective to a mythology of innovation and growth that too many places have bought into in recent years. Best of all, it has the potential to prod local leaders into pursuing realistic and regionally appropriate models for growth and innovation.

As a girl coming of age during the era of civil rights, Patricia Bath made it her mission to become a doctor. When obstacles like racism, poverty, and sexism threatened this goal, she persevered--brightening the world with a game-changing treatment for blindness. Illustrations.x 10.

Includes 72 ideas on how to implement innovation into the work culture.