Solve Problems That Matters is the 90-day program helping you take a human-centred approach to design, build, and launch your social enterprise idea - and build momentum to solve problems that matter.

Do you want to harness the power of science, technology, and innovation to change the world? Do you want to channel your passion and education to pursue a life-long career improving the human condition? Regardless of where you are in your career today, what should be your next step? Sign up for Peace Corps? Pursue graduate school? Take on a corporate job? Join a nonprofit? Launch your own social enterprise? Should you focus on energy, health or food security? Should you stay in New York or move to Nairobi? The number of choices is daunting! Solving Problems That Matter (and Getting Paid for It) stitches together a mosaic of perspectives, experiences, and actionable insights to illuminate the smorgasbord of career pathways in social innovation and global sustainable development. 54 expert briefs penned by leaders from USAID, Peace Corps, MIT, Engineers Without Borders, FHI 360, and other organizations offer practical insights into a myriad of topics such as: How do different kinds of organizations work? How do you find your first impact-focused job? What are the pros and cons of PhD, MBA, MPH and MPA degrees? How do salaries and benefits work when placed in a developing country? 100 STEM innovators from the World Bank, UNICEF, Gates Foundation, Google, and dozens of social ventures, government agencies, nonprofits, academia, and corporations share their career profiles with you. Turn to any page to read an enlightening and inspiring inside story of a social innovator's role and responsibilities, career trajectory, and lessons learned along the way. Read Solving Problems That Matter (and Getting Paid for It) to let 165 of today's most inspiring game-changers help you find your passion, make informed career decisions, and propel you into the exciting world of social innovation and global sustainable development."

How to take advantage of technology, data, and the collective wisdom in our communities to design powerful solutions to contemporary problems The challenges societies face today, from inequality to climate change to systemic racism, cannot be solved with yesterday's toolkit. Solving Public Problems shows how readers can take advantage of digital technology, data, and the collective wisdom of our communities to design and deliver powerful solutions to contemporary problems. Offering a radical rethinking of the role of the public servant and the skills of the public workforce, this book is about the vast gap between failing public institutions and the huge number of public entrepreneurs doing extraordinary things--and how to close that gap. Drawing on lessons learned from decades of advising global leaders and from original interviews and surveys of thousands of public problem solvers, Beth Simone Noveck provides a practical guide for public servants, community leaders, students, and activists to become more effective, equitable, and inclusive leaders and repair our troubled, twenty-first-century world.

Solving complex problems and selling their solutions is critical for personal and organizational success. For most of us, however, it doesn’t come naturally and we haven’t been taught how to do it well. Research shows a host of pitfalls trips us up when we try: We’re quick to believe we understand a situation and jump to a flawed solution. We seek to confirm our hypotheses and ignore conflicting evidence. We view challenges incompletely through the frameworks we know instead of with a fresh pair of eyes. And when we communicate our recommendations, we forget our reasoning isn’t obvious to our audience. How can we do it better? In Cracked It!, seasoned strategy professors and consultants Bernard Garrette, Corey Phelps and Olivier Sibony present a rigorous and practical four-step approach to overcome these pitfalls. Building on tried-and-tested (but rarely revealed) methods of top strategy consultants, research in cognitive psychology, and the latest advances in design thinking, they provide a step-by-step process and toolkit that will help readers tackle any challenging business problem. Using compelling stories and detailed case examples, the authors guide readers through each step in the process: from how to state, structure and then solve problems to how to sell the solutions. Written in an engaging style by a trio of experts with decades of experience researching, teaching and consulting on complex business problems, this book will be an indispensable manual for anyone interested in creating value by helping their organizations crack the problems that matter most.

One of the most difficult things for organizations is to solve problems collaboratively. People spend too much time trying to solve problems by themselves, sit quietly in meetings, or push their ideas on others. It is only when we gather people and help them think together that they can start solving the critical and often very complex problems that face our organizations and our world. Solve problems together is a practical book focused on the three keys to leading meetings that matter: collaboration, complexity, and clarity. You will get tools and methods to: - Create a collaborative atmosphere where people share their perspective, listen with an open mind, and resolve tough topics. - Lead complex discussions and problem-solving. - Get clear outputs and decisions from all your meetings. - Assess and plan your meetings to make sure they have real impact. - Lead larger meetings where everyone participates. The book will also give you step-by-step guides for leading the most common types of meetings, improve your distributed meetings, and how you can change your meetings rooms to improve collaboration. -- Marcus Degerman helps organizations solve problems together. Learning is his biggest passion. He is always looking for new books to read, courses to take, and opportunities to help other people learn. He works as a coach and consultant where he helps organizations focus, simplify, and improve collaboration. He is an appreciated speaker and trainer on organizational collaboration, agile ways of working, and leading meetings that matter.

Teaches problem-solving style for students in introductory college science and engineering courses.

Engineering professor Barbara Oakley knows firsthand how it feels to struggle with math. In her book, she offers you the tools needed to get a better grasp of that intimidating but inescapable field.

Every person in every function of every organization is involved in solving problems. They show up in your email inbox, in meetings, in your own work. They are strategic and tactical, mundane and breakthrough, easy and difficult. Most organizations want to, and need to, improve their people's problem-solving efforts, and so they offer them tools, templates, and training. Yet this is not where the leverage for impact is found. People Solve Problems: The Power of Every Person, Every Day, Every Problem explores the real leverage to improve your problem solving. In the first section of the book, we explore the problem with problem solving, including both the value and limits of tools and templates. We also explore the marriage of problem solving and standards. Building on that start, People Solve Problems is built on four primary domains. After setting up the challenge, we start by exploring People-Centered Capabilities. These capabilities are tool agnostic, equally applicable to any chosen problem-solving method or no method at all. This includes a wide range of capabilities from creating problem statements to integrating intuition into problem solving. Next, we cover Problem-Solving Culture. These chapters outline the culture needed in the organization or the personal behaviors you must master to be successful in problem solving. The behaviors explored range from deliberately learning through problem solving to building transparency, vulnerability, and trust. In the third section, we dive into Success through Coaching. Problem solving is unlike other practices, training is incredibly insufficient, and coaching is the major driver of success. This section addresses the why, who, when, where, and of course the important how of coaching. Finally, we explore the Role of the Leader, whether the CEO or a team leader, in building an environment where problem solving can thrive. The leader must be the architect of their problem-solving systems, a shaper of culture, and a framer of problems. Problem-solving effectiveness is critical to success for both the problems you already know about and those you have not yet experienced. People Solve Problems will you help you, and those you lead, to be more effective now and in the future.

'Never before has there been so many and such dreadful weapons in so many irresponsible hands.' - Karl Popper, from the Preface All Life is Problem Solving is a stimulating and provocative selection of Popper's writings on his main preoccupations during the last twenty-five years of his life. This collection illuminates Popper's process of working out key formulations in his theory of science, and indicates his view of the state of the world at the end of the Cold War and after the collapse of communism.

The way we solve problems is broken'we're trapped by techniques and assumptions of a prior era.? Challenges are emerging at an ever-accelerating rate'and we struggle to find the imaginative answers we crave. And, even when we do, biology and culture conspire to obstruct our progress.? Thinking Wrong: How to Conquer the Status Quo and Do Work That Matters teaches you how to use our radical problem solving system to reliably produce surprising, ingenious, and seemingly magical answers to your most wicked questions. The book provides you with the new language, frameworks, and tools you'll need to conquer the status quo and drive change.Inside? Think Wrong, designers and innovators John Bielenberg, Mike Burn, and Greg Galle show how pioneering teams have cultivated ways to challenge both their brains and the culture at large. These game-changers learned to think wrong, and so can the rest of us.An introduction offers the fundamental groundwork of? Think Wrong. The subsequent chapters present six practices developed by the authors?Be Bold, Get Out, Let Go, Make Stuff, Bet Small, and Move Fast. Using first hand case studies of success, and offering Think Wrong Drills that readers may use,? Think Wrong? is a field guide for applying this highly effective problem-solving system to challenges big and small. In addition to the drills provided in the book, Think Wrong readers are provided access to free online resources.