This poses the problem of American civic fracture and failing civic attachment, and points to renewed civics as the remedy.

The multi-contingency model frames organizational design as a continuous executive task shaped by globalization, digitalization, AI, sustainability, and shifting societal expectations. It identifies nine interdependent components – goals and scope, strategy, environment, configuration, leadership, climate, task design and agents, coordination and control, and incentives and people – whose alignment drives performance. Extending traditional contingency theory, it integrates insights from economics, information processing, and organizational theory, viewing organizations as systems that manage complexity by balancing information-processing demand and capacity. This can mean reducing demand (e.g., modularization, predictive tools) or increasing capacity (e.g., AI, lateral communication, skilled talent). Examples from Microsoft, Aarhus University, Danish healthcare, Uber, and luxury fashion brands show how design adapts to digital innovation, sustainability, and agility. A seven-step method supports the model: getting started, strategic positioning, structuring, defining agents and leadership dynamics, setting coordination and incentives, finalizing architecture, and implementing change.

This chapter explores strategy as a key driver of organizational design, emphasizing that structure should align with strategic intent. It introduces four strategic archetypes: reactors (no clear strategy), defenders (efficiency-focused), prospectors (innovation-driven), and analyzers (balancing both). It also discusses digital business strategy, showing how AI and digitalization reshape decision-making, operations, and innovation. Sustainable strategy is introduced, integrating economic, environmental, and social goals (People, Planet, Profit) to enhance resilience and competitiveness. The chapter concludes with strategy misfits – misalignments between strategy and goals – and the need to adjust one or the other. It ends by addressing how the environment influences strategic choices.

This concluding chapter offers some final reflections on the nature of knowledge about ethnicity in Kenya. I argue that if the nature of this knowledge is purposefully vague and makes ethnic categories polyvalent, then the best way to protect against problematic uses of ethnic knowledge is vigilance. This is far less satisfying and reassuring than law or rights as a framework for governing the risks of diversity, but it is far more appropriate, and I briefly consider what this might look like. Finally, I look forward to the digitisation of Kenya’s population register and aspirations to establish a population knowledge architecture so sophisticated that it could render numerous registers interoperable and ultimately replace even the census. I reflect on the nature of ethnic classification in such an architecture and argue that it would lose all the qualities that have made it amenable to solidaristic and pluralistic purposes thus far, while amplifying all its dangers.

The ’Introduction’ lays the intellectual foundation for the book by situating mind-altering substances within the broader arc of human cultural, neurological, and technological evolution. It argues that altered states of consciousness — whether chemically, behaviourally, or digitally induced — are not peripheral but central to the human experience. The chapter outlines how the search for transcendence, novelty, and meaning has driven innovations in medicine, ritual, and technology across millennia. It introduces the concept of ’experiential adaptation’ to describe how societies continually modify consciousness in response to environmental, social, and symbolic pressures. The introduction also maps out the interdisciplinary methodology of the book, drawing from anthropology, neuroscience, history, digital media studies, and future forecasting. It prepares the reader to navigate a narrative that stretches from Palaeolithic natural and artificial, healthy and pathological, sacred and simulated.

In modernity, large-scale group-based identity formation has arisen chiefly through religion, nation, and/or a political state. The digital transformation of society, however, has changed group-based identity formation. This chapter explores the connection between the evolving nature of identity formation with a parallel evolution in the social construct of money. We associate the power to create money (and taxation) with the sovereign state. In this way identity, money, and tax come together. What happens when they come apart? Identity may become attached to the creation of private money, raising the normatively unappealing prospect of ‘private taxation’. This chapter proposes a different path that would allow individual taxpayers to elect to allocate some fraction of payments on domestic tax liabilities (calculated under typical domestic tax rules) to the state of their choosing, in virtue of which they would receive a one-to-one credit offsetting domestic tax liability. Such a mechanism would allow taxpayers to ’vote’ directly with their tax dollars, thereby allowing individuals to associate with non-geographically proximate groups through the civic duty to pay taxes – but within the framework of fiat currency and sovereign state taxation.

The venture capital ecosystem in Africa is thriving. With multiple large investor rounds and exits in the 2020s, the continent transitioned from having not a single unicorn in 2016 to seven start-ups worth over US$1 billion in less than a decade, while five unicorns were born in 2021 alone. Even though many start-ups on the continent gain traction organically, the current paradigm is no substitute for finding a competitive regional strategy that offers a sustainable flow of successful scale ups that then obtain unicorn status. There is a vast difference in institutional structure, resources and capabilities between African countries and what is found elsewhere. Africa faces different sets of challenges that require a unique approach to venture creation. Reforms capable of strengthening existing policy frameworks, skills development initiatives and a financing architecture that supports entrepreneurship along the entire value chain will be critical in the African context. This chapter situates policy innovation in the context of Africa’s bubbling venture capital ecosystem as a key contributor to unicorn emergence.

On the basis of the previous chapters, we summarise the dimensions along which unicorns from developed and emerging economies differ, recognising the relative strengths of the constituent elements of the entrepreneurial ecosystems of China, India, MENA, Africa, Latin America, Southeast Asia, Central and Eastern Europe and Russia as described in this book. This overview serves as a point of departure for researchers and policymakers in further assessing and understanding the transformational potential of unicorns for countries of the Global South. We offer a list of conjectures that require additional data, analysis and validation to find an answer to the overarching question: Will unicorns from emerging economies be able to materialise into significant and tangible economic and social improvements?

This chapter explores the evolving unicorn landscape in China, from the ‘established’ disruptors of the 2010s to the more recent breed of unicorns, reflecting the changes in the domestic and global business environment. We use short case studies to review the innovation strategies of Chinese companies and show the respective roles of the incumbents and the new start-ups and innovators in China’s innovation ecosystem.

This chapter examines the evolution of China’s innovation system over the past thirty-five years, detailing how government policies, R&D investment, and strategic international engagement have spurred a remarkable surge in patent activity and technological advancement. It outlines the transition from a weak, planned economy to one where domestic enterprises dominate innovation, emphasizing the shift from quantity-focused utility model patents to an increasing quality of invention patents. The analysis highlights the role of FDI and regional dynamics in boosting local innovation while comparing domestic and foreign patenting trends. Key external challenges are discussed, including the impacts of the Belt and Road Initiative, the Sino-US trade war and technology decoupling, and the disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Looking forward, the chapter proposes future directions in sectors such as electric vehicle batteries, semiconductors, and digital startups, stressing that achieving sustained independent innovation will require enhanced basic research, collaborative international efforts, and a move beyond reliance on government policy alone.

A panoramic view of the digital era and how AI affects today's teaching, introducing the opportunities and simultaneous challenges that technology brings.

This chapter provides a detailed account of the implementation of digital solutions in supply chains. It first presents four elements of sales & operations planning (S&OP): demand planning, supply planning, supply–demand consolidation, and profit and loss (P&L) analysis. Next, it details all crucial aspects of sales and operations execution (S&OE) such as demand forecasting, supply management, inventory management, and order and fulfillment management. Finally, it shows five classes of digital applications and links them to S&OP and S&OE.