From technology giants to major airlines to government agencies, the landscape is littered with the shells of once-promising enterprises that failed to partner technology and business. Their lost opportunities and billions wasted provide a much-needed wake-up call to businesses. In this forward-thinking guide, author Faisal Hoque adopts that call to teach readers how to capture and leverage the power of business-technology convergence. The Power of Convergence provides the framework and mechanisms for uniting business and technology, seeding horizontal collaborations and partnering opportunities, and capturing strategic possibilities created through convergence. Readers will also discover the importance of not only laying the groundwork for the role of technology in business, but also institutionalizing operational practices to pave the way for continued success. No technology should be developed or deployed without a full vision of how it serves the greater needs of the company. Rather, technology should be so tightly intertwined with strategy that the two drive each other, with each at the ready when market opportunity materializes--however suddenly. With compelling examples of successes and failures at organizations from Ford Motor Company to the FBI, The Power of Convergence provides business leaders with the tools they need to overcome the business/technology disconnect and utilize these both to achieve sustainable results.

“What the future fortunes of [Gramsci’s] writings will be, we cannot know. However, his permanence is already sufficiently sure, and justifies the historical study of his international reception. The present collection of studies is an indispensable foundation for this.” —Eric Hobsbawm, from the preface Antonio Gramsci is a giant of Marxian thought and one of the world's greatest cultural critics. Antonio A. Santucci is perhaps the world's preeminent Gramsci scholar. Monthly Review Press is proud to publish, for the first time in English, Santucci’s masterful intellectual biography of the great Sardinian scholar and revolutionary. Gramscian terms such as “civil society” and “hegemony” are much used in everyday political discourse. Santucci warns us, however, that these words have been appropriated by both radicals and conservatives for contemporary and often self-serving ends that often have nothing to do with Gramsci’s purposes in developing them. Rather what we must do, and what Santucci illustrates time and again in his dissection of Gramsci’s writings, is absorb Gramsci’s methods. These can be summed up as the suspicion of “grand explanatory schemes,” the unity of theory and practice, and a focus on the details of everyday life. With respect to the last of these, Joseph Buttigieg says in his Nota: “Gramsci did not set out to explain historical reality armed with some full-fledged concept, such as hegemony; rather, he examined the minutiae of concrete social, economic, cultural, and political relations as they are lived in by individuals in their specific historical circumstances and, gradually, he acquired an increasingly complex understanding of how hegemony operates in many diverse ways and under many aspects within the capillaries of society.” The rigor of Santucci’s examination of Gramsci’s life and work matches that of the seminal thought of the master himself. Readers will be enlightened and inspired by every page.

Kabbalah and psychoanalysis are conceptions about the nature of reality. The former is over two thousand years old. The latter has been formalized less than a hundred years ago. Nonetheless they are parallel journeys of discovery that have forever altered not only what we see, but the very nature of seeing itself. The purpose of this study is to explore how Kabbalah and psychoanalysis converge and diverge, complement and conflict with each other, in order to amplify their impact and enable mankind to gain a greater understanding of reality.

An influential policy thinker and "muse of the Asian Century" ("Foreign Policy") illuminates the contours of our new global civilization, and shows why power must shift to reflect the new reality.

An Economist Best Book of the Year A Financial Times Best Economics Book of the Year A Fast Company “7 Books Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella Says You Need to Lead Smarter” Between 1820 and 1990, the share of world income going to today’s wealthy nations soared from twenty percent to almost seventy. Since then, that share has plummeted to where it was in 1900. As the renowned economist Richard Baldwin reveals, this reversal of fortune reflects a new age of globalization that is drastically different from the old. The nature of globalization has changed, but our thinking about it has not. Baldwin argues that the New Globalization is driven by knowledge crossing borders, not just goods. That is why its impact is more sudden, more individual, more unpredictable, and more uncontrollable than before—which presents developed nations with unprecedented challenges as they struggle to maintain reliable growth and social cohesion. It is the driving force behind what Baldwin calls “The Great Convergence,” as Asian economies catch up with the West. “In this brilliant book, Baldwin has succeeded in saying something both new and true about globalization.” —Martin Wolf, Financial Times “A very powerful description of the newest phase of globalization.” —Larry Summers, former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury “An essential book for understanding how modern trade works via global supply chains. An antidote to the protectionist nonsense being peddled by some politicians today.” —The Economist “[An] indispensable guide to understanding how globalization has got us here and where it is likely to take us next.” —Alan Beattie, Financial Times

Go beyond simple alignment to maximize the role, impact, and value of technology in your organization. From technology giants to major airlines to government agencies, the landscape is littered with the shells of once-promising enterprises that failed to do one thing: Converge their impressive technology initiatives with their business strategies. With countless opportunities lost and billions wasted, these examples provide a much-needed wake up call that it is time to institutionalize a set of repeatable management practices to uccessfully run an organization. The Power of Convergence makes the caseùand lays the groundworkùfor a new understanding of the role of technology in business. No technology should be developed or deployed without a full vision of how it advances business goals, addresses customer needs, or both. Beyond that, technology should be so tightly intertwined with strategy that the two drive each other, with each at the ready when market opportunity materializesùhowever suddenly. With compelling examples of successes and failures at organizations from Ford Motor Company to the FBI, The Power of Convergence provides the framework and mechanisms for uniting business and technology, seeding horizontal collaborations and partnering opportunities, and capturing strategic possibilities created through convergence.

Once, there were infinite Earths. Untold timelines. Innumerable Elseworlds. Then there came a Crisis…a Zero Hour…a Flashpoint. Worlds lived. Worlds died. Now they all must fight for their future! The evil alien intelligence known as Brainiac has stolen 50 doomed cities from throughout time and space and brought them to a place beyond the Multiverse-a sentient planet of his own design, a world with the power of a god. As heroes and villains from dozens of worlds battle each other for their very existence, it’s up to a ragtag band of warriors from a slain Earth to put an end to this threat that bends the Multiverse to its will. Reality itself hangs in the balance… This is it! The entire DC Universe from the dawn of time through the New 52 stars in CONVERGENCE - an unprecedented event that brings together your favorite characters from every era and series. Whether familiar or forgotten, none of them will ever be the same! Existence comes to end, and a beginning, with writers JEFF KING (USA’s White Collar), SCOTT LOBDELL (SUPERMAN: DOOMED) and DAN JURGENS (BATMAN BEYOND), and artists CARLO PAGULAYAN (Incredible Hulk), STEPHEN SEGOVIA (GREEN LANTERN: NEW GUARDIANS), ANDY KUBERT (DAMIAN: SON OF BATMAN) and ETHAN VAN SCIVER (GREEN LANTERN: REBIRTH). Collects CONVERGENCE #0-8.

Convergence of the life sciences with fields including physical, chemical, mathematical, computational, engineering, and social sciences is a key strategy to tackle complex challenges and achieve new and innovative solutions. However, institutions face a lack of guidance on how to establish effective programs, what challenges they are likely to encounter, and what strategies other organizations have used to address the issues that arise. This advice is needed to harness the excitement generated by the concept of convergence and channel it into the policies, structures, and networks that will enable it to realize its goals. Convergence investigates examples of organizations that have established mechanisms to support convergent research. This report discusses details of current programs, how organizations have chosen to measure success, and what has worked and not worked in varied settings. The report summarizes the lessons learned and provides organizations with strategies to tackle practical needs and implementation challenges in areas such as infrastructure, student education and training, faculty advancement, and inter-institutional partnerships.