Need, Speed, and Greed: How the New Rules of Innovation Can Transform Businesses, Propel Nations to Greatness, and Tame the World's Most Wicked Problems

World-renowned economist Vijay V. Vaitheeswaran provides a deeply insightful, brilliantly informed guide to the innovation revolution now transforming the world. With echoes of Clayton Christensen’s The Innovator’s Dilemma, Tim Brown’s Change by Design, and Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel, Vaitheeswaran’s Need, Speed, and Greed introduces readers to the go-getters, imagineers, and visionaries now reshaping the global economy. Along the way, Vaitheeswaran teaches readers the skills they must develop to unleash their own inner innovator and reveals why America and other wealthy, privileged societies must embrace a path of inclusive growth and sustainability—or risk being left behind by history.

This essential guide reveals the new rules for winning in the age of disruptive innovation:

• Wicked Problems, Wiki Solutions: Discover how bottom-up, networked approaches can tame this century’s greatest challenges, from pandemics to climate change.
• Frugal Engineering: Understand the existential threat—and historic opportunity—posed by resourceful innovators in China and India who are mastering the art of doing more with less.
• Open Innovation: Learn why the smartest people in your business no longer work for you, and how to harness their ideas before your competitors do.
• Sustainable Capitalism: Explore how greed can be harnessed for good, rewarding entrepreneurs and corporations for solving socially important problems.

Over the past few decades, globalization and Googlization have kicked off the first phase of an innovation revolution more profound and more powerful than any economic force since the arrival of Europeans on North American shores half a millennium ago. These developments have brought us such advances as the Web, social networking, 24/7 connectivity, and global markets.

But the benefits of all this progress have not been shared fairly among all. It is true that the elites of Mumbai are closer today to the elites of Manhattan than they were two decades ago, but what about Kansas? The hard-working salarymen of the developed world are not getting wealthier, but the economic elites who have mastered the new rules of global innovation are. Even as rural women in Africa and Asia have seen their lives transformed by mobile phones and the Internet, the middle classes and blue-collar workers in prosperous countries everywhere have been squeezed by the new global realities. And as the first phase of the innovation revolution gives way to a much greater transformation, America and other rich societies must find a path to inclusive growth or else risk being left behind by history.

All this leads to the central political and economic question of our age: How can the extraordinary benefits of the innovation revolution be shared more equitably among all of society? In Need, Speed, and Greed, global correspondent for the Economist Vijay V. Vaitheeswaran answers that question, offering the essential insider’s guide to this new world of innovation. Drawing on the best of the academic and field work in this emerging area, Need, Speed, and Greed inspires and empowers readers to improve their lives, their work, and perhaps even the world.

“The perfect primer for the postindustrial age….an insightful assessment of the changing global economy, complete with recommendations for how companies can thrive in a perpetually disruptive environment….[An] exemplary narrative.” - Kirkus Reviews

“Need, Speed, and Greed is an absorbing and deeply insightful guide to the wild new landscape of global innovation. It is a must-read for strategists and entrepreneurs alike. - Paul Saffo, Managing Director of Foresight at Discen Analytics

“A great Atlas for worlds known and unknown” - Juan Enriquez, Managing Director of Excel Venture Management, author of Homo Evolutis and As the Future Catches You