Product Description: BEST KNOWN AS THE LEADING HISTORIAN OF FRENCH RAILWAYS, François Caron has also conducted significant research on other aspects of economic development in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, such as electricity, water and steam power, the theory of innovation, and the structure of enterprise...read more

A Fresh and Important New Way to Understand Why We BuyWhy did the RAZR ultimately ruin Motorola? Why does Wal-Mart dominate rural and suburban areas but falter in large cities? Why did Starbucks stumble just when it seemed unstoppable?The answer lies in the ever-present tension between fidelity (the quality of a consumer’s experience) and convenience (the ease of getting and paying for a product). In Trade-Off, Kevin Maney shows how these conflicting forces determine the success, or failure, of new products and services in the marketplace. He shows that almost every decision we make as consumers involves a trade-off between fidelity and convenience–between the products we love and the products we need. Rock stars sell out concerts because the experience is high in fidelity-–it can’t be replicated in any other way, and because of that, we are willing to suffer inconvenience for the experience. In contrast, a downloaded MP3 of a song is low in fidelity, but consumers buy music online because it’s superconvenient. Products that are at one extreme or the other–those that are high in fidelity or high in convenience–-tend to be successful. The things that fall into the middle-–products or services that have moderate fidelity and convenience-–fail to win an enthusiastic audience. Using examples from Amazon and Disney to People Express and the invention of the ATM, Maney demonstrates that the most successful companies skew their offerings to either one extreme or the other-–fidelity or convenience-–in shaping products and building brands.

Product Description: One theme of this volume is whether the complementarity between technology and human capital is a recent phenomenon, or whether it can be traced through history. Different approaches to human capital as well as technology are applied, and besides historical surveys are total factor productivity and patent data employed...read more

Product Description: Jamali grew up in the ancient crossroads city of Peshawar, near the Khyber Pass in the northwestern Himalayas. At age 13, he was sent to a British military academy from which he was expelled at age 16. He went to live in primitive and austere conditions in the Rajasthan desert for five years, and from there he went to Kafiristan, a tiny valley high in the Himalayas...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Features 15 contributors who argue that technical change can fruitfully be interpreted as an institutionally-structured learning process. These essays show that the analysis of knowledge-generating institutions provides insights into the pace, direction and persistence of technological change.

A historical overview of technology charts the ebb and flow of technological creativity throughout civilization, from ancient Greece to modern Japan, identifying the economic factors behind creativity

A historical overview of technology charts the ebb and flow of technological creativity throughout civilization, from ancient Greece to modern Japan, identifying the economic factors behind creativity

Product Description: First published in 2007. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Product Description: The First Industrial Revolution of the eighteenth century brought fundamental changes in the allocation of people, resources, and energy. In the Second Industrial Revolution, the revolutionary impact of automobiles, photography, electric power, and industrial chemicals made the United States a foremost world power...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)