Now that the media is increasingly social, innovation can happen anywhere, says Clay Shirky, author of Here Comes Everybody and a member of Monitor Talent.

The city of Lviv, Ukraine, will begin implementing its new economic development strategy, formulated during the first stage of the regional development project created by the Foundation for Effective Governance (FEG) and Monitor Group in partnership with local authorities.

The project calls for establishing two economic clusters: tourism, and business services including consulting, software services and database and information management, announced Nataliya Izosimova, Managing Director of FEG.

Unless the Indian government makes serious changes to the way it prices and manages water, increased consumption by the nation’s farms, factories and growing population will push drinking water supplies to critical limits by 2050, The New York Times reported citing a new research report from Grail Research, a part of Monitor Group.

Sustainability is here to stay as a central business issue, yet many corporations do not have the right resources or organization to comply with the new demands efficiently or, more importantly, to turn them to business advantage, writes Monitor's Bob Lurie in this post for the Leading Green blog at Harvard Business Review Online. Lurie, director and managing partner at Monitor Group, explains how executives can address these challenges.

In BusinessWeek, Jeffrey F. Rayport writes that web-based entertainment options like Hulu.com give consumers less-costly alternatives to paying for premium cable television shows. "Cable providers are seeing a whole new generation of online users who are perfectly happy to pay $30 for a 'naked' cable modem... but have no need for the $150-a-month premium programming package," Rayport writes. "That means they've got to make the experience of suing a converter box, digital or not, competitive with the video experience online."

In an article in Advertising Age, Thomas Nagle, a partner at Monitor, encourages marketing executives to be innovative during the recession by building on top of their current business capabilities. "The key is to make the most out of capabilities the company already has to generate incremental revenue," Nagle writes.

A Financial Times report about social entrepreneurship cites expertise from Monitor Group to help explain the opportunities and challenges afforded by the vast problems and opportunities in India.

The recent election mandate given to India's ruling Congress Party means the government will have a period of relative stability, giving leaders breathing room to pursue policies for economic growth and social development programs promised to voters, writes Varad Pande of Monitor Group. In an essay in The National based in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (UAE), Pande, a senior consultant in the UAE offices at Monitor Group, analyzes the prospects for the administration of economist Manmohan Singh, India’s  prime minister.

Realizing the vision of a peaceful, prosperous world will require monumental innovation, collaboration, and leadership, Peter Schwartz, futurist, author and partner at Monitor Group, told nearly 1,900 graduates at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.