Study of Tao Xingzhi's View on Life Education

Tao Xingzhi is one of the most famous educators in modern China. The concept of life education is one of the most important components of his education ideological system. It is a comprehensive system ranging from the education content and methods to the purpose of education. The concept of "life is education" and "society are school" are its core point. The goal, content, the method of life education have been elaborated. These educational theories are still shining today, and still have important reference value for China's current educational innovation, cultural innovation and the implementation of the strategy of strengthening educational power.

Coordinating the Overall Situation at China and Abroad

This report explains Coordinating the overall situation at China and abroad during 20 years. Considering the importance of domestic and foreign situations, China needs to adopt a global perspective, strengthen strategic thinking, grasp development opportunities, and respond to risks and challenges in the context of changes in the international situation. The report also put forward the requirements of enterprise innovation, through the courage to change, the courage to innovate and never fossilized, never stagnant efforts, not to be afraid of any risks, not to be confused by any interference of the firm will, promote the theoretical innovation, institutional innovation, cultural innovation.

Dreamworld or Dystopia?

The Nordic Model was originally understood as a compromise between Western and Soviet systems. The Soviet Union has been gone for a generation, but the Nordic Model survives. Much of this has to do with the Model's change from an economic to a largely cultural model. In particular the Model has come to emphasize human (especially women's) rights; environmental consciousness; and cultural innovation. While these each contain an element of fantasy, they retain sufficient substance to provide encouragement to 'progressive' circles in the United States, United Kingdom, and other countries. Important in its own right, the Nordic Model provides a fascinating case study of the transmission of goods and ideas between different regions, and the ability of a small and out of the way region to maintain its own identity in a globalized world.

Globalization processes in the modern city

The pace of urbanization at the beginning of the XXI century is accelerating. For large cities, the processes of globalization are becoming significant. Globalization has become one of the powerful factors that determine the formation of both visual-architectural, and cultural-behavioral and economicpolitical spheres of city life. Globalization creates and sets the general trends of behavioral patterns of society, determining their frames of unified processes at the global and regional levels. Ukrainian sociological thought lacks a reception of Western discourses of the city's globalization. The article analyzes a number of theses of modern Western scholars on globalization and urbanization. The interdependence of globalization processes, communication and urbanization is revealed: along with the acceleration of communication processes, globalization, which affects urbanization, is also accelerating. The potential of globalization phenomena in transformational-urban processes is understood: socio-economic, sociopolitical, socio-cultural. Emphasis is placed on the fact that the globalization of the world economy with the simultaneous erosion of national sovereignty of modern states, fragmentation of social and class structure, value transformation in the direction of strengthening the individualistic orientation of mass consciousness, commercialization of higher education forms a new configuration where the most successful and urbanized cities become centers of technological, economic and cultural innovation. The processes of unification and interdependence, which are clearly traced at all levels of globalization practices, especially in the life of cities, are considered. The world is unifying, which causes both positive and negative receptions in social and scientific discourses. The article focuses on the sociological interpretation of the city in the context of urbanism as a way of life (Urbanism as a Way of Life): the influence of urban lifestyle on the transformation of gender roles, the potential of universal inclusion in everyday life – a big city should be tolerant and multicultural.

The role of innovation in our accelerating future

According to the original idea, a sustainable future is expected to keep humanity and our habitat on Earth free from drastic, catastrophic changes, while also allowing ideology-free progress with beneficial scientific, technological, and cultural advancements of society. Changes in human society have occurred throughout history, sometimes rather slowly, some other times with dramatical speed, even by revolutions. Nevertheless, in our recent past many processes have accelerated to levels never experienced earlier, achieved primarily through a staggering range of scientific and technological advances, followed by cultural changes, some of which have not been anticipated. This was a consequence of associated better living standards for many, which also resulted in a major population growth on our planet. Although a pandemic like Covid-19 or other major international events may temporarily reduce the pace of some global changes, as of now, such events do not appear to cause major slowdowns of fundamental changes in the main trends. Therefore, while facing an accelerating future, there is today a much more urgent need for purpose-focused innovations and for their most important sources: real, nature-based science, and truth-committed scientists and technologists. Ramifications for culture and society in general are also essential. More action would be required to counter the cultural pandemic of the information-avalanche of trendy simplicities dressed up as “know-it-all” excuses, used by many in our society. Their intent is to skip the effort needed for real, science-based education and for logic-respecting thinking with responsibility. Especially, in the age of WWW and Internet, it would be highly important to formulate reasonable expectations for a code of “Internet-Integrity”, as a Cultural Innovation, that would help to provide better focus on truthfulness and fact-based understanding of nature, society, and culture in our rapidly evolving Information Age. In turn, such a “Cultural Innovation” could also lead to a more broadly-based participation, hence more successes in the development of new, purpose-focused technological innovations, and at a deeper level, in the enhanced, further development of their scientific foundations.

Digital transition and public administration in Italy: the experience of the Italian National Social Security Institution − INPS

The innovation and modernization processes of national public administrations feature prominently in the process of digital transition that the whole Europe is going through. In Italy, the National Institute of Social Security (Istituto Nazionale della Previdenza Sociale, INPS) has historically always been at the forefront in terms of digital skills and the use of Information Technology for the provision of social security services, constituting a model of excellence in the landscape of public administrations both in Italy and Europe. INPS is currently facing a strategic challenge: that of constituting the driving force for the digital transition of the Italian public sector. To meet this challenge, the Italian Social Security Institute has equipped itself with an ICT Plan that represents a marked discontinuity with respect to past plans and which deserves, as a result of its innovative character, to be analyzed in detail. In particular, the ICT Strategic Plan of INPS for the three-year period of 2020−2022 aims to introduce a paradigm shift towards the digitization of the public services that the Social Security Institute offers to the whole country, planning a radical technological, organizational and cultural innovation, an enabling prerequisite for creating a new model service for citizens, businesses and other public administrations.

Universities as Arts and Cultural Anchors

Economic developers commonly refer to universities as anchor institutions because they are large, rooted regional economic drivers that are sites of development, incubation, entrepreneurship, workforce readiness, and knowledge transfer. But most anchor research speaks generally about the university or focuses on STEM and not on arts and culture. Our study asks: what is the role of universities in anchoring arts and cultural innovation in the regional creativity ecology, and how are university leaders identifying, communicating, and investing as arts and cultural anchors? Through a qualitative comparative case analysis of four public universities in the Intermountain West combined with target interviews of field innovators and a synthesis of transdisciplinary literature, we deepen the concept of the university arts and cultural anchor and map a theoretical and practical shift from a traditional to contemporary form of anchoring. We identify four stages of anchor readiness, and we propose a pilot assessment tool for university leaders to determine their anchor stage based on awareness and investment. Our applied research helps universities move from being an arts patron to an arts entrepreneur, investor, innovator, and catalyst.

Application of RBF model in the relationship between organisational innovation and organisational performance of HEM enterprises

With the increasing dynamics of the environment, the organisational innovation of high-end equipment manufacturing (HEM) enterprises has attracted more attention. This paper introduces a radial basis function (RBF) neural network to establish a model of the effect of organisational innovation on organisational performance (OP). Organisational innovation includes five dimensions: strategic innovation, structural innovation, cultural innovation, institutional innovation and process innovation. Through the modelling results, we know that all dimensions of organisational innovation have an effect on performance. According to the degree of impact, they are strategic innovation, structural innovation, process innovation, cultural innovation and institutional innovation.