The Social Labs Revolution, Zaid Hassan
The Social Labs Revolution, Zaid Hassan
List: $12.99 | Sale: $9.10
Club: $6.49

The Social Labs Revolution
A New Approach to Solving our Most Complex Challenges

Author: Zaid Hassan, Joi Ito

Narrator: Nas Mehdi

Unabridged: 4 hr 13 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Ascent Audio

Published: 03/25/2025


Synopsis

Current responses to our most pressing societal challenges—from poverty to ethnic conflict to climate change—are not working. These problems are incredibly dynamic and complex, involving an ever-shifting array of factors, actors, and circumstances. They demand a highly fluid and adaptive approach, yet we address them by devising fixed, long-term plans. Social labs, says Zaid Hassan, are a dramatically more effective response.

Social labs bring together a diverse a group of stakeholders—not to create yet another five-year plan but to develop a portfolio of prototype solutions, test those solutions in the real world, use the data to further refine them, and test them again. Hassan builds on a decade of experience—as well as drawing from cutting-edge research in complexity science, networking theory, and sociology—to explain the core principles and daily functioning of social labs, using examples of pioneering labs from around the world. He offers a new generation of problem solvers an effective, practical, and exciting new vision and guide.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Rhythima on September 17, 2020

If you are looking for a book to understand the reasons to have a new approach towards solving complex problems, it's a good book. But if you are looking for the approach itself - skip to last chapter. The content is worth following, but it can be condensed immensely. It can get repititive and very......more

Goodreads review by Rod on January 17, 2014

Great book and introduction to social/change labs. Going to read it again and provide a full review.......more

Goodreads review by Mal on April 06, 2017

What Makes Social Change Happen? “Planning based-approaches — so common across government, civil society, and even business — represent a neo-Soviet paradigm” and have long been shown to be at best minimally effective in fostering meaningful social change. If that assertion is a revelation to you, you......more

Goodreads review by Nathan on January 10, 2018

I listened to this as an audiobook in hopes of better understanding how to build a social change lab, how they are facilitated, and what practical outcomes can result. Surely this is the book for just that, right? Unfortunately not. The Social Labs Revolution is stuffed with metaphors and anecdotes......more

Goodreads review by Cordelia on September 22, 2019

I mean…the basic premise is fine, but it doesn’t really go deep into anything. If you are looking to become a practitioner in social labs and facilitation or are one looking more more methods and frameworks, this book probably isn’t for you. Also maybe a book on approaches organizing should spend mor......more