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This chapter considers some of the limit points of contemporary relations between International Large-Scale Assessments, learning analytic platforms, and theories of mind circulating in contemporary comparative and transnational educational policy discourses. First, aspects of the rise of Big Data and predictive analytics are historicized, with particular attention to how emergent notions of concepts like an intelligent educational economy paradoxically seem to offer unprecedented opportunities for personalizing education that increasingly rely on efforts to construct, universalize, and predict transnational benchmarks. Then, the chapter pursues how such efforts to universalize measures and predict changes have located the mind as a primary target for solving social problems through educational reform. More specifically, the emergence and circulation of the perceptron in the United States during the 1950s and 1960s is suggested as one example of how efforts to model the human mind as a neuro-dynamic learning system became entangled with efforts to produce universal, mobile, and adaptive neuro-dynamic learning systems targeting the transnational optimization of human minds.

Uzbekistan easily gets 300 days of sunshine a year, and is a natural choice for development of solar technologies and their implementation. Central Asia is working together to solve critical water problems including contamination and dry wells. This chapter addresses the need to find solutions for rural populations living in the shadow of the Aral Sea disaster, with poor quality drinking water and limited infrastructure. With assistance from generous government funding, the Institute for Solar Energy is developing new point-based solar desalinization and pumping technologies. Preliminary designs are promising and government support for raw materials mining and wafer production are growing. Domestic R&D and production ensures cost-effective dissemination options. The Institute houses both research and project management for all solar technologies and expects to field test prototypes within 2–3 years. Solar energy is a growing sector in the economy of Uzbekistan.

We examine how the organizational identity of established firms affects their strategic outcomes during the emergence phase of a new market. Drawing on cognitive theories of analogical learning, we build theory about how the established identities of producers influence the fluency with which consumers make sense of novel products, and hence affect valuations. We illustrate this theory through an empirical study of consumer evaluations of de alio entrants during the emergence of the digital camera industry.

Cross-boundary cooperation with shared goals and values involving the poor has been argued as an indispensable means for inclusive business (IB) success. Cooperation may become dynamic, especially when exploratory and creative attempts with effective cooperative learning among partners can be realized. Even so, not many companies have reported successful in building the cooperation. One case, providing clean, affordable drinking water to the poor in Tanzanian rural villages, suggests that a delegated and grassroots-based approach in cooperation with a highly trustworthy local partner can successfully promote cooperative learning and transfer know-how in both operations and management. This approach also stimulates local and self-initiated activities for expanding water facilities and generating local businesses in an area where employment is scarce. Deviation from mainstream-institution-based operations and management is one example of institutional interconnections that enable the rural poor to self-manage projects and stimulate self-initiated business activities, consequently contributing to rural development and sustainable development goals.