Accelerate your real-world, social impact by driving systemic policy changes As Co-Founder of Global Citizen—an international education and advocacy organization with the mission to end extreme poverty worldwide—Michael Sheldrick has worked with governments, businesses, foundations, the artist community, and everyday citizens to distribute over $40 billion around the world over the past decade. Now, in From Ideas to Impact: A Playbook for Influencing and Implementing Change in a Divided World, he delivers an inspiring and insightful discussion on how to implement social impact by driving policy change. This book reveals key characteristics of successful policy entrepreneurs - visionaries bridging the gap between promises and real-world outcomes. They are practical implementers who put impact first, resisting the urge to pursue the instant dopamine boost that comes from simply winning arguments at all costs. They are connectors and networkers who build diverse coalitions and broker win-win solutions to address our current implementation crisis. An indispensable guide for individual changemakers, philanthropists, corporate social responsibility (CSR) practitioners, environmental, social, and governance (ESG) professionals, policymakers, corporate foundations, and higher education students, From Ideas to Impact: A Playbook for Influencing and Implementing Change in a Divided World, features: An overview of pressing challenges to avoid, including an obsession with winning arguments at the expense of results, demands for unwavering tribal loyalty, and a counterproductive aversion to negotiation. An eight-step playbook offering tools to master policy entrepreneurship, foster cooperation, build bridges, and drive policy implementation beyond stagnation, conflict, and polarization. Diverse policy entrepreneurs and examples spanning historical movements like the Transatlantic Slave Trade and FDR’s New Deal to contemporary battles for climate justice, coal community transitions, and grassroots gender equality efforts. At its core, this uplifting book instills hope that change is achievable despite our divisions. It showcases how individuals at all levels pursue systemic policy change through united voices, cooperation, and solidarity. Sheldrick equips readers with the tools to craft impactful narratives that can inspire countless more success stories, reinforcing the idea that we are not prisoners of fate and that actual change begins with us.

Our 16 authors offer you a competitive advantage in the business world and an alternative to that treacherous valley. Dive into the Silicon Valley magic by reading one of our chapters.

Innovation and Scaling for Impact forces us to reassess how social sector organizations create value. Drawing on a decade of research, Christian Seelos and Johanna Mair transcend widely held misconceptions, getting to the core of what a sound impact strategy entails in the nonprofit world. They reveal an overlooked nexus between investments that might not pan out (innovation) and expansion based on existing strengths (scaling). In the process, it becomes clear that managing this tension is a difficult balancing act that fundamentally defines an organization and its impact. The authors examine innovation pathologies that can derail organizations by thwarting their efforts to juggle these imperatives. Then, through four rich case studies, they detail innovation archetypes that effectively sidestep these pathologies and blend innovation with scaling. Readers will come away with conceptual models to drive progress in the social sector and tools for defining the future of their organizations.

Despite enormous investments of time and money, are we making a dent on the social and environmental challenges of our time? What if we could exponentially increase our impact? Around the world, a new generation is looking beyond greater profits, for meaningful purpose. But, unlike business, few social interventions have achieved significant impact at scale. Inspired by the modern innovation practices, popularized by bestseller The Lean Startup, that have fueled technology breakthroughs touching every aspect of our lives, Lean Impact turns our attention to a new goal - radically greater social good. Social change is far more complicated than building a new app. It requires more listening, more care, and more stakeholders. To make a lasting difference, solutions must be embraced by beneficiaries, address root causes, and include an engine that can accelerate growth to reach the scale of the need. Lean Impact offers bold ideas to reach audacious goals through customer insight, rapid experimentation and iteration, and a relentless pursuit of impact. Ann Mei Chang brings a unique perspective from across sectors, from her years as a tech executive in Silicon Valley to her most recent experience as the Chief Innovation Officer at USAID. She vividly illustrates the book with real stories from interviews with over 200 organizations across the US and around the world. Whether you are a nonprofit, social enterprise, triple bottom line company, foundation, government agency, philanthropist, impact investor, or simply donate your time and money, Lean Impact is an essential guide to maximizing social impact and scale.

In Change by Design, Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO, the celebrated innovation and design firm, shows how the techniques and strategies of design belong at every level of business. Change by Design is not a book by designers for designers; this is a book for creative leaders who seek to infuse design thinking into every level of an organization, product, or service to drive new alternatives for business and society.

The 2012 London Olympics provided some of the best examples of the personal impact of the athletes. The impact for some resulted from leading from the front, for others the impact resulted from following and then choosing their moment to exert their authority. However, the impact for all the competitors resulted from their preparation and their ability to take decisions in the moment. They had to prepare physically, mentally and emotionally. Their performance resulted from their attitude of mind as well as their physical preparedness.Our personal impact flows from clarity about who we are, what we stand for, where we place our priorities, when we choose to act, and understanding why we respond in a particular way. Crucial to personal impact is knowing ourselves and our preferences well, knowing how we contribute effectively, and knowing what our end goals are. Personal impact is all about delivering outcomes. However elegant our attempt at personal impact, if there is no outcome, then our impact may have been irrelevant. A key starting point is what is the outcome you want to achieve after considering realistically, and boldly what might be possible. This book invites you to think through the personal impact you want to have, and gives prompts for thought and practical pointers. The 100 ideas encourage you to think positively about what you are seeking to build, how you intend to be, and what you intend to do and not do. It provides pointers about what you might demonstrate, share, ensure, remember and create.

Drawing the reader's attention with ample real-business examples, the authors discuss corporations as entities that must adapt, generate ideas and act upon new information. The writing team - Arthur K. Yeung, David O. Ulrich, Stephen W. Nason and Mary Ann Von Glinow - delve into learning styles, basing their work on research and material gleaned from a widespread survey of corporations and organizations. They stack up the building blocks necessary for organizational learning, the corporate ability to generate and implement ideas. Although based on scholarly research, the book is concisely written in an easily accessible, conversational tone, and comes to life with corporate case studies. getAbstract recommends this book to managers, executives and owners whose organizations might need to learn a thing or two.

This groundbreaking work by one of the world's foremost theoreticians of culture and scholars of Russian philosophy gives for the first time a systematic examination of the development of Russian philosophy during the late Soviet period. Countering the traditional view of an intellectual wilderness under the Soviet regime, Mikhail Epstein provides a comprehensive account of Russian thought of the second half of the 20th century that is highly sophisticated without losing clarity. It provides new insights into previously mostly ignored areas such as late-Soviet Russian nationalism and Eurasianism, religious thought, cosmism and esoterism, and postmodernism and conceptualism. Epstein shows how Russian philosophy has long been trapped in an intellectual prison of its own making as it sought to create its own utopia. However, he demonstrates that it is time to reappraise Russian thought, now freed from the bonds of Soviet totalitarianism and ideocracy but nevertheless dangerously engaged into new nationalist aspirations and metaphysical radicalism. We are left with not only a new and exciting interpretation of recent Russian intellectual history, but also the opportunity to rethink our own philosophical heritage.

This book explores the idea of grand strategy and offers a full-blown critique--both theoretical and empirical--of the gaps and inconsistencies that weaken modern realist theory. Grand strategy, the authors maintain, is determined as much by domestic politics as by international pressures.

HOW DO I TRANSFORM MY LIFE? The answer is simple: come up with ten ideas a day. It doesn't matter if they are good or bad the key is to exercise your 'idea muscle', to keep it toned, and in great shape. People say ideas are cheap and execution is everything but that is NOT true. Execution is a consequence, a subset of good, brilliant idea. And good ideas require daily work. Ideas may be easy if we are only coming up with one or two but if you open this book to any of the pages and try to produce more than three, you will feel a burn, scratch your head, and you will be sweating, and working hard. There is a turning point when you reach idea number 6 for the day, you still have four to go, and your mind muscle is getting a workout. By the time you list those last ideas to make it to ten you will see for yourself what "sweating the idea muscle" means. As you practice the daily idea generation you become an idea machine.When we become idea machines we are flooded with lots of bad ideas but also with some that are very good. This happens by the sheer force of the number, because we are coming up with 3,650 ideas per year (at ten a day). When you are inspired by an extraordinary idea, all of your thoughts break their chains, you go beyond limitations and your capacity to act expands in every direction. Forces and abilities you did not know you had come to the surface, and you realize you are capable of doing great things. As you practice with the suggested prompts in this book your ideas will get better, you will be a source of great insight for others, people will find you magnetic, and they will want to hang out with you because you have so much to offer. When you practice every day your life will transform, in no more than 180 days, because it has no other evolutionary choice. Life changes for the better when we become the source of positive, insightful, and helpful ideas. Don't believe a word I say. Instead, challenge yourself to try it for the 180 days and see your life transform, in magical ways, in front of your very eyes.