Futurist, optimist and author of An Optimist’s Tour of the Future, Mark Stevenson releases his book We Do Things Differently today.
Our systems are failing. Old models – for education, healthcare, government, food production, energy supply – are creaking under the weight of modern challenges. As the world’s population heads towards 10 billion, it is clear we need new approaches. Here, acclaimed writer and futurist Mark Stevenson sets out to find them, across four continents.
From Brazilian favelas and rural India to one of the toughest housing estates in Britain, Stevenson travels the world to find remarkable innovators who are pioneering new ways to make our world more sustainable and democratise access to resources and knowledge.
In Boston, he learns how patients are helping each other find the best treatments by using the medical equivalent of a dating website; in Jharkhand, he meets rural farmers who are exceeding the yields of the Green Revolution with techniques inspired by a Jesuit priest; in the small Austrian town of Güssing, he finds a community that made itself completely independent from the big energy suppliers by turning bark that used to just rot on the forest floor into electricity; in Detroit, he sees how urban farming and a community-run food system has turned a city on the brink of collapse into a food capital; and in Lincoln, he finds a school – the Hartsholme Academy – that an ex night-club manager turned into a beacon of educational excellence by asking the students to mark each other’s work.
Populated by extraordinary characters and inspiring ideas across all fields, from participatory budgeting to the Enernet, We Do Things Differently paints an enthralling picture of what can be done to address the world’s most pressing dilemmas and offers a much-needed dose of down-to-earth optimism. It is a window on (and a roadmap to) a different and better future.
Mark Stevenson is a writer, entrepreneur, broadcaster, futurologist and founder of The League of Pragmatic Optimists. He has written for Radio 4, The Times, Wall Street Journal, Guardian and New Statesman, and is the author of the critically acclaimed An Optimist’s Tour of the Future.
For more on the book, visit its website.