Driving Social Change: How to Solve the World's Toughest Problems - Hardcover

Light, Paul C.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0470922419 ISBN 13: 9780470922415

Publisher: Wiley, 2010

Synopsis

Strategies for long-term social impact

This important new book illustrates how to create the social breakthroughs needed to solve urgent global threats such as poverty, disease, and hunger. It then turns to three alternative, but complementary, paths to social breakthrough: social protecting, social exploring, and social advocacy, providing a detailed map of the journey from initial commitment to a world of justice and opportunity

• Examines the current condition of the social impact infrastructure
• Offers strategies for how to remedy the steady weakening of our social-impact infrastructure
• Provides tactics to build strong social organizations and networks
• Illustrates dynamic methods to respond to constant economic and social change

Author Paul Light believes we should be less concerned about the tools of agitation (social entrepreneurship, social protecting, social exploring, and social advocacy) and more concerned about the disruption and replacement of the status quo. Timely in its urgency, this book describes the revolutionary social impact cycle, which provides a new approach for framing the debate about urgent threats.

About this title

About the Author

PAUL C. LIGHT (New York NY)?is the Paulette Goddard Professor of Public Service at the Wagner School of Public Service at New York University and co-founder (along with Paul Volcker) NYU/Abu Dhabi Center on Global Public Service and Social Impact.?Before joining NYU, Dr. Light served as the Douglas Dillon Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, founding director of its Center for Public Service, and vice president and director of the Governmental Studies Program. He has served previously as director of the Public Policy Program at the Pew Charitable Trusts and associate dean and professor of public affairs at the University of Minnesota's Hubert Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs. Light has written?23 books, including the award-winning Thickening Government and The Tides of Reform. He is also a co-author of a best-selling American government textbook, Government by the People, now in it's 23rd edition.

From the Back Cover

Praise for DRIVING SOCIAL CHANGE

"I commend Paul Light's book to anyone dedicated to social change. His questions deserve answers, his insights demand attention, and his faith in the possible will resonate with the future leaders who are already taking the reins of power needed for solving the world's toughest problems."
CATHERINE B. REYNOLDS, Chairman of the Board, Catherine B. Reynolds Foundation, from the Foreword

A revolutionary look at workable strategies for powerful long-term social impact

As an onslaught of urgent problems threatens the very fabric of the world's social, economic, and political systems, creating change remains a difficult task. Without the full engagement of every possible ally, breakthrough will remain well out of reach.

Driving Social Change demands that we take a second look at the way we understand the change-making process and our role in it.

This landmark volume reveals:

• The underlying assumptions that support our understanding of social entrepreneurship
• Findings and recommendations for steering the conversation on social breakthrough
• Three powerful, often neglected drivers of social breakthrough
• The nine stages of the social breakthrough cycle
• Lessons learned from the successful breakthroughs of the past

Making it clear that social impact involves more than the power of a good idea, Driving Social Change sets social entrepreneurship within the broader effort to address the urgent issues facing our world. It argues that today's battle is not about the one best plan of action, but about creating and harnessing the ordinary heroism across society to create change so desperately needed.

From the Inside Flap

Praise for DRIVING SOCIAL CHANGE

"I commend Paul Light's book to anyone dedicated to social change. His questions deserve answers, his insights demand attention, and his faith in the possible will resonate with the future leaders who are already taking the reins of power needed for solving the world's toughest problems."
—CATHERINE B. REYNOLDS, Chairman of the Board, Catherine B. Reynolds Foundation, from the Foreword

A revolutionary look at workable strategies for powerful long-term social impact

As an onslaught of urgent problems threatens the very fabric of the world's social, economic, and political systems, creating change remains a difficult task. Without the full engagement of every possible ally, breakthrough will remain well out of reach.

Driving Social Change demands that we take a second look at the way we understand the change-making process and our role in it.

This landmark volume reveals:

• The underlying assumptions that support our understanding of social entrepreneurship
• Findings and recommendations for steering the conversation on social breakthrough
• Three powerful, often neglected drivers of social breakthrough
• The nine stages of the social breakthrough cycle
• Lessons learned from the successful breakthroughs of the past

Making it clear that social impact involves more than the power of a good idea, Driving Social Change sets social entrepreneurship within the broader effort to address the urgent issues facing our world. It argues that today's battle is not about the one best plan of action, but about creating and harnessing the ordinary heroism across society to create change so desperately needed.

Edition details

• Publisher: Wiley
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0470922419
• ISBN 13: 9780470922415
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224