The strategies adopted by our governments and public officials can lead to significant change in citizens' lives -smoking bans, carbon markets, even the reunification of a country like Germany. Equally, strategic failure can result in highly visible disasters, such as the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. This book is about how strategies take shape, and how money, people, technologies, and public commitment can be mobilized to achieve important goals. It considers the common mistakes made, and how these can be avoided. Written by Geoff Mulgan, a former head of policy for the UK prime minister, and advisor to governments round the world, it is packed with examples and shaped by the author's practical experience. The author's central point is that we as citizens deserve governments that pay more attention to the long-term, rather than to tomorrow's opinion poll or newspaper editorial. The evidence shows that those governments that have learned how to be strategic have helped to make their citizens healthier, richer and happier. The book is essential reading for anyone involved in running public organizations-from hospitals and schools to national government departments and local councils-but also for anyone interested in how government really works.

The Art of Public Strategy: Mobilizing Power and Knowledge for the Common Good

Business & Money

MULGAN, Geoff

Management & Leadership

Oxford University Press

The recent economic crisis was a dramatic reminder that capitalism can both produce and destroy. It's a system that by its very nature encourages predators and creators, locusts and bees. But, as Geoff Mulgan argues in this compelling, imaginative, and important book, the economic crisis also presents a historic opportunity to choose a radically different future for capitalism, one that maximizes its creative power and minimizes its destructive force.
 In an engaging and wide-ranging argument, Mulgan digs into the history of capitalism across the world to show its animating ideas, its utopias and dystopias, as well as its contradictions and possibilities. Drawing on a subtle framework for understanding systemic change, he shows how new political settlements reshaped capitalism in the past and are likely to do so in the future. By reconnecting value to real-life ideas of growth, he argues, efficiency and entrepreneurship can be harnessed to promote better lives and relationships rather than just a growth in the quantity of material consumption. Healthcare, education, and green industries are already becoming dominant sectors in the wealthier economies, and the fields of social innovation, enterprise, and investment are rapidly moving into the mainstream--all indicators of how capital could be made more of a servant and less a master.
 This is a book for anyone who wonders where capitalism might be heading next--and who wants to help make sure that its future avoids the mistakes of the past.

The Locust and the Bee: Predators and Creators in Capitalism's Future

Economics

Princeton University Press

The recent economic crisis was a dramatic reminder that capitalism can both produce and destroy. It's a system that by its very nature encourages predators and creators, locusts and bees. But, as Geoff Mulgan argues in this compelling, imaginative, and important book, the economic crisis also presents a historic opportunity to choose a radically different future for capitalism, one that maximizes its creative power and minimizes its destructive force.
 In an engaging and wide-ranging argument, Mulgan digs into the history of capitalism across the world to show its animating ideas, its utopias and dystopias, as well as its contradictions and possibilities. Drawing on a subtle framework for understanding systemic change, he shows how new political settlements reshaped capitalism in the past and are likely to do so in the future. By reconnecting value to real-life ideas of growth, he argues, efficiency and entrepreneurship can be harnessed to promote better lives and relationships rather than just a growth in the quantity of material consumption. Healthcare, education, and green industries are already becoming dominant sectors in the wealthier economies, and the fields of social innovation, enterprise, and investment are rapidly moving into the mainstream--all indicators of how capital could be made more of a servant and less a master.
 This is a book for anyone who wonders where capitalism might be heading next--and who wants to help make sure that its future avoids the mistakes of the past. This edition of The Locust and the Bee includes a new afterword in which the author lays out some of the key challenges facing capitalism in the twenty-first century.

The Locust and the Bee: Predators and Creators in Capitalism's Future - Updated Edition

Big Mind: How Collective Intelligence Can Change Our World

A new field of collective intelligence has emerged in the last few years, prompted by a wave of digital technologies that make it possible for organizations and societies to think at large scale. This “bigger mind”―human and machine capabilities working together―has the potential to solve the great challenges of our time. So why do smart technologies not automatically lead to smart results? Gathering insights from diverse fields, including philosophy, computer science, and biology, Big Mind reveals how collective intelligence can guide corporations, governments, universities, and societies to make the most of human brains and digital technologies.
Geoff Mulgan explores how collective intelligence has to be consciously organized and orchestrated in order to harness its powers. He looks at recent experiments mobilizing millions of people to solve problems, and at groundbreaking technology like Google Maps and Dove satellites. He also considers why organizations full of smart people and machines can make foolish mistakes―from investment banks losing billions to intelligence agencies misjudging geopolitical events―and shows how to avoid them.
Highlighting differences between environments that stimulate intelligence and those that blunt it, Mulgan shows how human and machine intelligence could solve challenges in business, climate change, democracy, and public health. But for that to happen we’ll need radically new professions, institutions, and ways of thinking.
Informed by the latest work on data, web platforms, and artificial intelligence, Big Mind shows how collective intelligence could help us survive and thrive.

Reference

Review\n"A fascinating and important book."―James Crabtree, Financial Times\n"Brilliant. . . . Mulgan outlines the elements of CI, which has informed collaborations from the Manhattan project and NASA’s moon landings to Google Maps and Wikipedia."―Kirkus Reviews\n"Enlightening―indeed inspiring―and should be read by all citizens."―Martin Rees, former president of the Royal Society\n"Big Mind brims with pragmatic, unexpected insights. Mulgan filters his awe-inspiring breadth of academic knowledge through the lens of decades of practical experience."―Scott Page, University of Michigan\n"A book the world needs. . . . Magnificent."―Jeremy Heimans, coauthor of New Power\nHow collective intelligence can transform business, government, and our everyday lives\nA new field of collective intelligence has emerged in recent years, prompted by digital technologies that make it possible to think at large scale. This "bigger mind"―human and machine capabilities working together―could potentially solve the great challenges of our time. Gathering insights from the latest work on data, web platforms, and artificial intelligence, Big Mind reveals how the power of collective intelligence could help organizations and societies to survive and thrive.

Why do so many institutions seem stuck in the past? Why do so many relationships break down? How should the individual act when faced with a mass of conflicting information and values? This book attempts to provide radical answers to these questions, addressing the crises facing the planet at the end of the century. It shows that freedom and interdependence are set on a collision course. Basing its argument around the notion of connexity, it argues that the only way out of the impasse is to break down the rigid sense of ourselves as isolated units, and recognize the webs of mutual responsibility in which we live.

Connexity

International

Chatto&Windus

Good and Bad Power

Politics & Social Sciences

Politics & Government

ALLEN LANE (PENG)

The book starts from the premise that the proliferation of communication technologies - fibre optic cables, satellites and computers is part of a revolution in the nature of control. It is a revolution whose outlines are only just becoming visible, and whose effects will be far-reaching. It is a revolution that poses new choices about how control is to be organized, choices between rigid and hierarchical approaches, and more flexible, devolved approaches. By delineating these types of control, Mulgan points out some of the key political and economic choices which must be confronted in the 1990s.

Communication and control: Networks and the new economies of communication

Social Sciences

Polity Press

Ideologies of freedom are driving the global economy: the diffusion of technology, capital, and knowledge allows an ever-expanding proportion of the world's workforce to enjoy the freedoms of choice, speech, and expression. Yet, as the prosperity of individuals and businesses hinges upon distant markets, consumers, and investors, these freedoms have created a new universal dependence. This growing interdependence, or "connexity, " links our destinies and defines our times. Connexity, an inspiring new book by Geoff Mulgan, contends that although the pursuit of individual freedom is frequently at odds with the progress of global connectedness, the two forces must work in tandem if freedom is to flourish. Business, according to Mulgan, is fundamentally linked to our greater existence, and we must conduct it accordingly. Drawing upon an impressive array of ideas-from evolutionary psychology and moral philosophy to the predictions of business gurus-Mulgan argues passionately that to synchronize the forces of freedom and connection, we must go beyond our sense of ourselves and our businesses as isolated units, and embrace the webs of mutual dependability in which we live. "Boldly attempts to rethink the nature of political, economic, and moral structures.... Mulgan's argument is that societies are passing from dependence on tradition and hierarchy through the independence of liberal individualism to interdependence.... If you feel we spend too little time asking what capitalism is really for...connect with this book."--Financial Times

Connexity: How to Live in a Connected World

Computers & Technology

Harvard Business Review Press

This Element asks if the arts can help us imagine a better future society and economy, without deep social gulfs or ecological harm. It argues that at their best, the arts open up new ways of seeing and thinking. They can warn and prompt and connect us to a bigger sense of what we could be. But artists have lost their role as gods and prophets, partly as an effect of digital technologies and the ubiquity of artistic production, and partly as an effect of shifting values. Few recent books, films, artworks or exhibitions have helped us imagine how our world could solve its problems or how it might be better a generation or more from now. This Element argues that artists work best not as prophets of a new society but rather as 'prophets at a tangent'.

Prophets at a Tangent (Elements in Creativity and Imagination)

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Psychology & Counseling

Cambridge University Press

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by MULGAN, Geoff. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by MULGAN, Geoff

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by MULGAN, Geoff. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Art of Public Strategy: Mobilizing Power and Knowledge for the Common Good

The Locust and the Bee: Predators and Creators in Capitalism's Future

The Locust and the Bee: Predators and Creators in Capitalism's Future - Updated Edition

Big Mind: How Collective Intelligence Can Change Our World

Big Mind: How Collective Intelligence Can Change Our World

Connexity

Good and Bad Power

Communication and control: Networks and the new economies of communication

Connexity: How to Live in a Connected World

Prophets at a Tangent (Elements in Creativity and Imagination)