We find that most Asian economies are not very innovative by international standards, though in line with their level of development. Asian economies mostly obtain their technologies from abroad through FDI or via technological diffusion. However, FDI to Asia has been modest and entrepreneurship limited, largely as a consequence of the connections world. Politicians and business groups have been mutually supportive in erecting barriers to entry. As a result, most innovation has been within business groups or by new firms entering new sectors where existing business groups were absent or had not managed to erect unscalable entry barriers. However, three countries have developed some base for innovation: China, India and South Korea. In each, efforts to construct a supportive ecosystem, including policies for education, science and technology, as well as encouraging returning migrants with knowledge, are reaping dividends. Each has adopted a rather different model which we discuss in detail. Despite these achievements, the power and influence of the connections world in these three countries also remains a serious brake on their ability to innovate in the future.

Asian governments focus on growth but also worry about employment; they need to create many new jobs just to keep employment stable. Moreover, most employment remains in the informal sector. Those jobs are generally fragile, low wage and low productivity. While many of the business groups that figure in the connections world also create productive and well-remunerated jobs, these are limited in number. Boosting formality and, with it, productivity – a clarion call of almost all Asian governments for decades – has largely failed to materialise. Further, the entrenchment of the connections world has also helped ensure that little progress has been made in bringing in more effective responses to employment risk. Neither government nor companies have a strong interest in promoting arms-length methods of dealing with such risk, preferring to rely on discretion. Jobs can be created, and their destruction tempered, as a result of interactions or even haggling between politicians and employers. The bulk of workers found in the informal economy are excluded. And the modernisation of welfare systems – now feasible given the income levels of many Asian countries – remains stalled.

We conclude with an analysis of the constraints that the connections world imposes on Asia’s growth prospects, and the policy options for relaxing them. One is the ability of powerful businesses and families to entrench themselves by virtue of their connections to government and/or politicians. Both parties gain so there is no incentive to change. Because marginal changes are unlikely to be credible, we propose a series of interrelated radical measures to disrupt and refashion the connections world including prohibitions on cross-holdings and inheritance taxation, as well as boosting competition policy and improving political transparency. We also outline some of the main pressure points in Asia going forward. These include the ability to innovate and construct effective entrepreneurial ecosystems and the pressure to create sufficient jobs. There is also the ballooning inequality of income and wealth. High inequality is associated with economic under-performance and susceptibility to political turmoil. Progressive taxes can mollify inequality, but permanent solutions rest in targeting their source: the connections world.

Climate activists across generations and borders demonstrate in the streets, while people also take climate actions via everyday professional efforts at work. In this dispersal of climate actions, the pursuit of personal politics is merging with civic, state and corporate commitment to the point where we are witnessing a rebirth of togetherness and alternative ways of collective organising, from employee activism, activist entrepreneurship, to insider activism, shareholder activism and prosumer activism. By empirically investigating this diffuse configuration of the environmental movement with focus on renewable energy technology, the commercial footing of climate activism is uncovered. The book ethnographically illustrates how activism goes into business, and how business goes into activism, to further trace how an ‘epistemic community’ emerges through co-creation of lay knowledge, not only about renewables, but political action itself. No longer tied to a specific geographical spot, organisation, group or even shared political identity, many politicians and business leaders applaud this affluent climate ‘action’, in their efforts to reach beyond mere climate ‘adaptation’ and speed up the energy transition. Conclusively, climate activism is no longer a civic phenomenon defined by struggles, pursued by the activist as we knew it, but testament of feral proximity and horizontal organising.

Climate activists across generations and borders demonstrate in the streets, while people also take climate actions via everyday professional efforts at work. In this dispersal of climate actions, the pursuit of personal politics is merging with civic, state and corporate commitment to the point where we are witnessing a rebirth of togetherness and alternative ways of collective organising, from employee activism, activist entrepreneurship, to insider activism, shareholder activism and prosumer activism. By empirically investigating this diffuse configuration of the environmental movement with focus on renewable energy technology, the commercial footing of climate activism is uncovered. The book ethnographically illustrates how activism goes into business, and how business goes into activism, to further trace how an ‘epistemic community’ emerges through co-creation of lay knowledge, not only about renewables, but political action itself. No longer tied to a specific geographical spot, organisation, group or even shared political identity, many politicians and business leaders applaud this affluent climate ‘action’, in their efforts to reach beyond mere climate ‘adaptation’ and speed up the energy transition. Conclusively, climate activism is no longer a civic phenomenon defined by struggles, pursued by the activist as we knew it, but testament of feral proximity and horizontal organising.