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Focusing on practical management, the authors introduce a method for implementing data technology innovations and transforming business models towards advanced operations. They emphasize the importance of aligning strategic options, structures, and methods during the early stages of transformation. By carefully combining use cases, the book guides readers in achieving comprehensive business objectives and fostering a system of business model innovation essential for successful Advanced Operations implementation.

The Vessantara Jātaka is the tale of Buddha’s last life, before he was reborn as the historical Buddha 2,500 years ago. In this earlier existence as Prince Vessantara he demonstrated evidence of the highest virtue that constitutes an enlightened one: generosity. Vessantara gave away everything dear to him – in the climactic scene even his wife and children. In North-East Thailand the Vessantara tale is celebrated annually as Bun Phra Wet; pha Phra Wet – ‘Vessantara cloths’ – form the visual framework for this festival: hand-painted scrolls, which can reach lengths of up to one hundred metres. Devotion presents, for the very first time, a selection of six full-length Vessantara scrolls and and explores a contemporary multimedia celebration of an ancient Buddhist text.

For over 2000 years and until just a few decades ago artists travelled throughout India, using painted picture scrolls to spread stories from the great Indian epics Mahabharata and Ramayana, as well as a wealth of stories about regional Gods and heroes and moral tales, amongst the most illiterate rural population. These artists were the creators and bearers of an art form which spread from India across East and South-East Asia, as well as in a westerly direction as far as North Africa and southern Europe. In the hands of the painters and singers, the picture scrolls became a portable cinema, projection screens for mythical knowledge and an incentive to listen to the songs whilst looking at the scrolls. In the same way that other oral art forms have dwindled and lost significance, the picture scroll artists also lost their public and their income. However, in the east of India – in West Bengal and Jharkhand – two closely related but distinctive picture scroll traditions have been upheld: the patua and the jadopatia. Political changes, technical innovations and social turmoil brought both these traditions face to face with the necessity to develop new survival strategies too. Whilst the patua rose to the challenge, the jadopatia failed – their tradition is coming to an end.