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In an economic sense, urbanization is a process of transformation of rural economy to modern economy. It is measured by the increase in urban population to total population. In India, urbanization is increasing over the last 100 years. In 1911, urbanization in India was 10.29% which reached to 31.16% in 2011. In 2018, the urban population of India was 460.78 million or 34% of the total population. In the present world, economic growth of an economy is highly dependent on the growth of Information and Communication technology (ICT). The Indian Information Technology (IT) industry also has created an important place in the global IT market. The objective of this chapter is to search for a relationship between urbanization and development of the ICT sector in India. Secondary time series data of urbanization of India have been analyzed for census years from 1951 to 2011. The data on ICT have been taken for the period 2014–2015. The data have been collected from Internet and Mobile Association of India, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, Cellular Operations Association of India, and District Information System of Education. For analyzing the development of ICT sector in India the variables taken are e-infrastructure, telephone density per 100 persons, mobile subscribers per 100 persons, mobile subscribers with Internet, schools with computers, and e-participation. Hypothetically, growth of urbanization is expected to develop the ICT sector. From the analysis it comes out that apart from some exceptions, the relatively economically developed and urbanized states of India are found to have a developed ICT sector. Whereas in relatively less urbanized states the development of ICT sectors are not up to the mark.

From Europe moving forward into Asia, the Silk Road has the Gulf Cooperation Countries (GCC) on the way. These countries alphabetically include: “Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.” While these countries have long been dependent on oil for development, they are currently planning to reduce this dependence and consider innovation as an important mean for future development. This chapter explores the past progress of innovation in the GCC countries; and highlights future directions ahead. In this respect two end countries of the Silk Road, Italy and China, are also considered. The chapter views innovation from the wide angle of the Global Innovation Index, which has 7 main dimensions, consisting of 21 sub-dimensions, which are refined into 81 international indicators. An approach for looking into the current state, the past progress, and the future directions of innovation in the countries concerned is developed and followed using available data. Although the outcome is based on the currently available data, the approach can be re-used for newer data providing continuous benefits to directing future development.

This chapter studies Digital (or Electronic) Government in Latin American (LatAm) countries from a comparative perspective. It analyzes a group of countries with a significant degree of economic diversity and public administration heterogeneity. This chapter presents data about the development of the Information Society in Latin America, regarding the diffusion of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and the Internet in the countries of the region and taking into account the digital divide phenomenon. It also analyzes Digital Government from a regional perspective, pinpointing intergovernmental institutions and international organizations devoted to design and define, and, in some cases, implement, shared perspectives and a common agenda within this region. This overview is brought forward by a comparative approximation to the development of e-Government readiness in LatAm countries, using data from the United Nations reports. Additionally, this chapter analyzes sectional e-Government dimensions, including digital public administration national agendas, electronic public service delivery websites, interoperability initiatives, social media technologies, open data and open government strategies, and the future of technology in public sector of the region. Therefore, this chapter is important to understand the role of ICTs as one of the most recent sources of innovation and reform in public administrations Latin America.

This chapter explains how cocreation can be supported by establishing platforms, which provide knowledge, resources, and opportunities for local actors to come together in cocreation arenas. Platforms make it easy for local actors to connect, interact, and engage in productive joint activity. The chapter provides an overview of different types of platforms and describes their distinctive organizing logic, which includes mediating the relationship between different stakeholders, scaffolding their joint action, and leveraging their capacity for change. The chapter identifies important platform dynamics, such as attractor and amplifier effects, synergy, scaling, and social learning, that enable them to successfully support cocreation. Finally, the chapter discusses how platforms themselves can be designed to enhance these dynamics.

Introduction: The rapid technological changes have significantly decentralised the economy and social life in the last 20 years. The transformation into the digital environment and its socio-economic consequences may experience numerous issues depending on the level of development of countries. The experience of developed countries shows that digitalisation delivers a positive impact on economic development (because of increased labour productivity, transparency and reduction of the shadow economy). In fact, on the other side, economic development represent the improvement of people’s well-being.

However, it is, furthermore, the fact that delays in the process of transformation into the digital environment will lead to economic decline and as a result, social problems. Many current studies focus on the social consequences and benefits of digitalisation. In many cases, the social consequences of digitalisation (unemployment and income inequality) are exaggerated. The authors believe that the economic and social benefits (measurable and non-measurable) of digitalisation are enormous. Examples could be introduced as the emergence of new intelligent professions and specialties, the comfort of jobs and life, the ability to get the products, information and knowledge from anywhere in the world.

The history of the development of society shows that people have always been interested in the ‘comfort’ of life. It is the acceleration of digitalisation in recent years that has stated a significant place in this process.

Objective: To adequately assess the relationship between digitalisation and the comfort of life, the improvement of welfare (income, secure life and satisfaction) and to indicate the social benefits of digitalisation on a scientific basis.

Method: To identify measurable and unmeasurable factors and benefits of technological change on human life, to assess the impact of digitalisation on economic growth, income, labour productivity, intellectual development, knowledge capital and health care.

Findings: Although digitalisation will endure a number of social consequences in the short and medium term, but the well-being of people will be improved and life will be turned on more delightful, and incomes increased in the long term.

As the Web 2.0 induces changes in human relationships, several implications across issues and domains of socio-economic life follow; politics is one of them. In the context of Web 2.0, social media have established themselves as a part of citizen’s daily routine. Hence, social media have a direct impact on politics today. This chapter examines this phenomenon and its implications for politics by tracing and examining the recent initiative launched by Rede Globo aimed at collecting citizens’ views and visions on Brazil’s future. “The Brazil I Want” project sought to encourage citizens to publish videos featuring their visions and views of Brazil’s future. Thousands of citizens used this opportunity to express their concerns and hopes related to the future of their cities and their country. This chapter seeks to make sense of it in two ways. First, it explores to what extent and how social media can serve as source of information. Here the concepts and tools of big data and data mining are employed. Second, it inquiries into what people currently think about their country. By bringing these two research perspectives together, this chapter argues that effective ways of resolving issues and concerns the citizens thus voiced exist to the benefit of the efficiency of the policymaking process and the society’s wellbeing.

In this study, the authors unpack the micro-level processes of knowledge accumulation (experiential learning) and knowledge application (problem solving) to examine how task allocation structures influence organizational learning. The authors draw on untapped potential of the classical garbage can model (GCM), and extend it to analyze how restrictions on project participation influence differentiation and integration of organizational members’ knowledge and consequently organizational efficiency in solving the diverse, changing problems from an uncertain task environment. To isolate the effects of problem or knowledge diversity and experiential learning, the authors designed three simulation experiments to identify the most efficient task allocation structure in conditions of (1) knowledge homogeneity, (2) knowledge heterogeneity, and (3) experiential learning. The authors find that free project participation is superior when the members’ knowledge and the problems they solve are homogenous. When problems and knowledge are heterogeneous, the design requirement is on matching specialists to problem types. Finally, the authors found that experiential learning creates a dynamic problem where the double duty of adapting the members’ specialization and matching the specialists to problem types is best solved by a hierarchic structure (if problems are challenging). Underlying the efficiency of the hierarchical structure is an adaptive role of specialized members in organizational learning and problem solving: their narrow but deep knowledge helps the organization to adapt the knowledge of its members while efficiently dealing with the problems at hand. This happens because highly specialized members reduce the necessary scope of knowledge and learning for other members during a certain period of time. And this makes it easier for the generalists and for the organization as a whole, to adapt to unforeseen shifts in knowledge demand because they need to learn less. From this nuanced perspective, differentiation and integration may have a complementary, rather than contradictory, relation under environmental uncertainty and problem diversity.