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Despite increasing efforts to incorporate sustainability in curricula and practices of institutions of higher education, effective implementation remains challenging. The purpose of this study is to present an approach to incorporate sustainability into a practice-oriented research skills course, which was implemented at a small island state university in the Caribbean.

First-year university students followed a four-week course module, starting with the introduction of the sustainable development goals, and culminating in a symposium in which the students present the findings of their research projects to the campus community. Pre-course module and post-course module surveys measured the students’ knowledge and perceptions regarding sustainability. These survey results were also compared with the result of a similar survey held for the university’s employees.

The survey results suggested that following the course module increased students’ knowledge about sustainable development, as well as their support for the university campus and its community putting more emphasis on teaching, practicing and encouraging sustainability. Interestingly, university employees scored significantly higher on the latter component than students, suggesting that in this case a lack of interest of the staff is not a barrier toward a sustainable campus.

The presented course module offers a novel and low-cost approach to introducing sustainability into a broad range of academic curricula, specifically tailored to the needs of institutes of higher education in small island states. The survey results suggest that this type of education may not only ensure reaching academic goals but also increase students’ interest in sustainable development within their local environment.

Universities of Small Island States (SIS) have the potential to fulfill a crucial role in implementing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) but also face barriers to local capacity building. The University of Aruba partly addresses these challenges through the development of The Academic Foundation Year (AFY), a one-year pre-university program aiming to optimally equip students for higher education. This study aims to assess to what extent the program can foster the local embeddedness of the students in ecology, culture and history and an understanding of opportunities and challenges for sustainable development in SIS.

The authors provide examples of how the program incorporates education for sustainable development and how it emphasizes experiential learning. In addition, quantitative survey data and qualitative analysis of focus group meetings are used to reflect on the program’s achievements and its potential for further development.

The survey results suggest that AFY courses not only increase knowledge but also change students’ perceptions regarding sustainability. Indeed, key impacts emerging from the student focus group related to both academic preparation and engagement with sustainability. Reflections by teachers emphasized the importance of experiential learning, an expansive view of the SDGs and preparing students as citizens.

This study highlights that the program could provide a starting point for the development of similar initiatives in other SIS, the common basis being the fostering of sustainability literacy and social adoption of the SDGs.

To study the risks, and benefits, to companies or introducing new products to the market.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the findings in context.

Ahn‐Sook Hwang describes Korean cosmetic company AmorePacific's integrated approach to innovative technology, marketing and management to win market share against domestic and global competition. Patrick Barwise and Seán Meehan say, as products and services become more and more alike, customers aren't looking for “something different”, but something which works well. Anurag Sharma and Nelson Lacey study the new product development process of the US pharmaceutical industry to determine whether or not a steady stream of new product innovations has a beneficial effect on firm performance.

Prompts organizations to ask themselves why they are introducing new products. Introduces the argument that striving to “be better” may be an alternative to a constant search for new products.

Although library costs continue to rise in respect to staff, materials, and general operating expenses, the budgets needed to maintain the expected level of services are not keeping pace. And, in spite of a surge in interest in computing unit costs for budget justification, resource distribution, cost comparison, and forecasting, relatively few organizations have implemented full‐scale cost analyses.

This paper aims to examine the effects of subjective and financial literacy, big five personality traits and emotions (fear, anger, hope and sadness) on risk aversion, risky investment intention and investment choices were investigated. Interactions of these three variables (risk aversion, risky investment intention and investment choices) were also examined.

For this purpose, in January-February 2019, collected data on 446 subjects from Turkey using the internet (341) and face-to-face (105) survey instruments. The authors exploited IBM SPSS Statistics for analysis. ANOVA, t-test and discriminant analysis were performed.

As a result of the analyzes, two personality traits (neuroticism and openness) and two emotions (fear and sadness) were determined as predictors of risk aversion. For risky investment intention, risk aversion, two personality traits (neuroticism and openness) and one of the same and other one different two emotions (fear and anger) were found.

Investment choices can be estimated by objective financial literature, risk aversion and risky investment intention. In addition, individuals’ risk averse or risk taking characteristics differ according to their level of sadness with agreeableness, conscientiousness and neuroticism personality traits. Similarly, have a risky investment intention or have not risky investment intention also differs according to sadness emotions with conscientiousness and openness. Finally, the choice of stocks or bank deposits varies according to subjective financial literacy and extraversion personality trait.

Despite an increasingly explicit professional nature, the futures studies field has suffered an increasing constraining to a collection of specific techniques. The purpose of this paper is to harness the foundational shortcomings of current futures studies methods, namely the lack of a well‐defined underpinning theory and of rigorous, rational, systematic, repeatable, traceable, documentable, and transferable method. It proposes a rigorous theory for futures studies whereby futures can be logically designed.

This paper envisages the futures design activity as an extension and a generalization of decision theories and problem solving. The process is made comprehensible and interpretable thanks to a co‐generation referencing between two spaces named Concepts and Knowledge. It works by undertaking a formal mathematical approach on undecidable root concepts, bearing no logical status, by logically expanding them until a validable proposition in the knowledge space is reached. The paper is based on the concept‐knowledge theory (C‐K theory) from Ecole des Mines ParisTech, explains why it is needed, illustrates it and uses it on two illustrative futures studies examples.

The proposed research opens a new method for designing futures based on the C‐K theory that has the intrinsic capacity of constructing radical innovations for futures scenarios. While setting clear departure from, for example, brainstorming techniques or Delphi‐based methods, it offers a systematic method for designing futures that rests upon solid theoretical foundation that explains the nonsense or contradictions in producing futures.

While the C‐K theory is fully supported by a scientific basis founded on mathematics and is in widening use in domain‐specific industrial sectors at large, it is still being expanded both theoretically and epistemologically. The theory is not aimed at choosing or formulating suitable or appropriate root concepts, this being the role of domain professionals. Its implementation, however coherent, is only as extensive and covering the problematic at hand as the implementers are congruous to the application domain.

The proposed research can help futurists to develop new breakthrough plans, solutions and alternatives with essential and novel benefits: to help control the rationale of a futures scenario development, to control the degree of innovation (e.g. change, reform, progress, create …) to reach, and to bring to decision makers and policy‐makers the traced explanation of different design paths.

The benefits of the C‐K approach are detailed and elements founding further theoretical research are provided, including possible developments of C‐K theory specifically helpful for futurists. The research offers a collective design method for revisiting futures sciences by defining, understanding and developing creative futures alternatives that can collectively mobilize stakeholders. Workshops with stakeholders remain necessary, with experienced coaches catalyzing its field implementation.

The paper pushes the edge of the discussion on philosophical, ontological and epistemological grounds and supplies a theoretical underpinning for futures studies at large. The research is inherited from the creative power of modern mathematics as developed and proven by the C‐K theory, a powerful approach for discussing design phenomena. The author argues that it constitutes a suitable and useful asset for futures scientists insofar as to imagine, understand, develop, manipulate, and assess creative futures alternatives. The paper introduces and discusses the notion of futuron, which can be seen as a “logical quantum particle of future”.

Once in a while, you should take stock of your personal computing environment. What is on your system? How did it get there? What do you actually use? How did you arrive at your hardware configuration, and does it still meet your needs? You may find that you can free up some disk space in the process; at the very least, you'll understand your situation better. The author goes through this exercise both as an example of what it can show and because full disclosure is important for this series of articles. You need to know the background for the advice that appears here. The author discloses his current computing environments, how they got that way, and what that may mean. He also points out the real limits within which he operates as a PC commentator. When you go through the software on your system, you should check to see whether it represents ethical computing. The author offers a few notes on ethical issues related to software. The author also provides notes from PC literature for January‐June 1992.

As is obvious to most of us, we live in a time when one way of life is being replaced by another. We live at a time where we as a society are on the THRESHOLD between two distinctly different ways of life. We live in a time where the collapse of one system and the replacement of it by another is going on. This collapse and replacement of one system by another can be referred to as CLIMACTERIC. The replacement of our way of life over the Climacteric‐Threshold is vaguely apparent to each of us, though, each of us views it from a different perspective. This article deals with some of the factors involved as a consumer society person crosses the threshold turning into a conservator society person.

Organization Distributed Being From “The Death of Hierarchical Organization” by Patrick B. Marren, senior consultant with the Futures Group. Essay to be included in 1997 Handbook of Business Strategy, Faulkner & Gray, New York. The mechanistic model of business assumed that businesses were essentially machines, and people, money, and information, as well as “hard assets,” were the components of the machine. It also assumed that management, as “operator” of the machine, could centrally control its components. These assumptions provided a fairly good approximation of reality for a very long time (indeed, the very idea of “reengineering” depends on them). But now it is apparent that the central assumptions of this model are very questionable. What could replace it?

This study aims to integrate social embeddedness with learning society philosophy to explore how grassroots associations of Indigenous women tourism entrepreneurs can leverage their social network to co-create value.

A critical feminist perspective considers the intersectional experiences of Indigenous women tourism entrepreneurs from the rural Manasalu region of Nepal. Twenty-one semi-structured interviews with local tourism stakeholders were carried out. Hermeneutics in tandem with Indigenous methods of analysis ensured consideration of Indigenous ontologies and social locations beyond being merely theoretically driven.

A paradox of Indigenous women’s empowerment emerged where several efforts for empowerment presented themselves as a double-edged sword. Individuals’ social capital and social support for the sustenance and stability of grassroots associations ensure collective and continuous learning through a value-creation framework.

Collective self-reflection and self-determination for knowledge creation and sharing amongst social ties shed new light on the role of an Indigenous standpoint on value creation.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that captures how the intersectionality of Indigenous women entrepreneurs in grassroots associations use their social capital through contesting, leveraging and learning to transform their social network into a value network.