SSIR’s 2022 Social Innovation Reading List

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A collection of some of Stanford Social Innovation Review's most popular book reviews and excerpts published in 2022:

The Neutrality Trap: Disrupting and Connecting for Social Change by Bernard Mayer and Jacqueline N. Font-Guzmán

“Conflict itself is not the problem, but how we handle it often is. Labor and management struggle over competing interests, environmentalists and fossil fuel producers look at the world through different lenses, and divorcing parents often have different visions and values about rearing children. The challenge we all face, therefore, is not so much how to resolve these differences but how to find a constructive way to deal with them over time.”

Yes to the City: Millennials and the Fight for Affordable Housing by Max Holleran, reviewed by Asher Kohn

“The issue with this ‘yes in my …’ framing is that a backyard, a block, and a borough are three very different spaces. They encompass very different social relations. When it comes to housing, the subject of many ‘Yes in my backyard’ affirmations, the enthusiasm may not be shared by everyone who shares the block, or the borough.” (Open to nonsubscribers for a limited time. Subscribe here.)

The Secret Language of Maps: How to Tell Visual Stories with Data by Carissa Carter

“There’s an ambiguous force at play in every map—it can feel like an unease in the center of the chest. What’s included and what isn’t? How is it depicted? Taken in? Is it useful? Enlightening? Dangerous or empowering? This force is bias.” 

Nonprofit Neighborhoods: An Urban History of Inequality and the American State by Claire Dunning, reviewed by Benjamin Soskis

“Dunning frames her indictment of nonprofit neighborhoods largely in terms of inadequacy—they could not sufficiently address the deep-seated structural injustices rooted in Boston’s African American and immigrant communities. But she also hints at a more active role that nonprofit neighborhoods took in perpetuating those injustices.” (Open to nonsubscribers for a limited time. Subscribe here.)

The Upside of Uncertainty: A Guide to Finding Possibility in the Unknown by Nathan Furr & Susannah Harmon Furr

“Although most people agree that we live in increasingly uncertain times, few of us have been taught the robust skills for navigating uncertainty with courage and resilience.”

Another World Is Possible: How to Reignite Social and Political Imagination by Geoff Mulgan

“We know that creativity can be learned—it’s not a unique attribute of a handful of people. And we know that innovation and creativity can also be institutionalised—made part of people’s jobs, as it is in TV and film, science and business. But for society’s imagineers there are not so many obvious tools as the raw material is life and society itself, and there are few academies or colleges to teach the craft of change.”

Direct: The Rise of the Middleman Economy and the Power of Going to the Source by Kathryn Judge

“It is very hard to disrupt an established class of middlemen without first appreciating the value they bring to the table. Today’s intermediation schemes may be ridden with inefficiencies, but most arose for good reason. Understanding why middlemen exist in a domain is key to identifying the hurdles that must be overcome for a direct or almost-direct option to be viable.”

The Voltage Effect: How to Make Good Ideas Great and Great Ideas Scale by John A. List, reviewed by Jeff Spross

“If companies are the individual plants, and the government is the gardener, we’re already awash in popular advice for how the plants can be the best plant they can be. But while few of us run large enterprises, we all live in the world they shape—and we elect the policy makers who must in turn shape them. So what we need as much, if not more, is a popular understanding of the framework that should guide the proverbial gardener: when, how, and to what purpose they should break out the pruning shears.” (Open to nonsubscribers for a limited time. Subscribe here.)

The New Reason to Work: How to Build a Career That Will Change the World by Roshan Paul & Ilaina Rabbat

“Research shows that if you want to create new habits, then joining a group that already practices those behaviors or life choices is highly effective because it gives you energy, makes you feel less of an outcast, and helps you follow in the footsteps of others who have already walked the path you’re on.”

Radical Curiosity: Questioning Commonly Held Beliefs to Imagine Flourishing Futures by Seth Goldenberg

“If the innovation we seek is social in nature, it may not be a product, a service, or a digital tool that we need to design. We may need to design cultures that seek, embrace, and point toward awe as core operating systems of our organizations and communities. Innovation as a practice of awe aspires to exceed our current conception of the world.” 

Read more stories by SSIR Editors.