Big Bets
How Large-Scale Change Really Happens
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1.0 • 1 Rating
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
“Encouraging…Uplifting...Meeting apparently insurmountable goals requires thinking big…this will inspire.” —Publishers Weekly
“Raj Shah has written a practical guide to making the world a better place. He knows what he’s talking about, because he’s done it himself. Anyone who wants to make a change in the world, or their own lives, will benefit from this book.” —Bill Gates, Cochair, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Rajiv J. Shah, president of the Rockefeller Foundation and former administrator of President Barack Obama’s United States Agency for International Development, shares a dynamic new model for creating large scale change, inspired by his own involvements with some of the largest humanitarian projects of our time.
Rajiv J. Shah is no stranger to pulling off the impossible, from helping vaccinate 900 million children at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to a high-pressure race against the clock to stop the spread of Ebola. His secret? A big bets philosophy—the idea that seeking to solve problems rather than make incremental improvements can attract the unlikely partners with the power and know-how to achieve transformational change. Part career sweeping memoir, part inspirational playbook, Big Bets offers a master class in decision-making, leadership, and changing the world one bet at a time.
Shah animates his strategic insights with vivid behind-the-scenes stories, memorable conversations with household names that helped shape his approach to creating change, and his own personal growth as an Indian-American from an immigrant family looking for a way to belong. He distills his battle-tested strategies for creating change, arguing that big bets have a surprising advantage over cautious ones: a bold vision can attract support, collaborations, and fresh ideas from key players who might otherwise be resistant. Throughout the book, Shah traces his unlikely path to the Rockefeller Foundation across a changing world and through some of the most ambitious, dramatic global efforts to create a better world.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Rockefeller Foundation president Shah's encouraging debut couches advice on making broad social change in stories from his career. He illustrates how asking "a simple question" can "reorient thinking, crack open possibilities, and reveal paths previously hidden" by recounting how during his time advancing global vaccination efforts for the Gates Foundation, he asked UNICEF, vaccine makers, and health workers "what would you do if you had a magic wand." He learned that UNICEF's inconsistent funding sources made it difficult for vaccine producers to plan around their needs, leading Shah to focus on securing long-term funding commitments. Entreating readers to "keep experimenting," Shah recalls realizing as administrator of USAID during Liberia's 2014 Ebola outbreak that the conventional response—isolating the infected—was not feasible given the scale of the epidemic, prompting him to support more culturally sensitive measures, such as providing protective gear so traditional burial teams could safely bury the dead, which had previously been a transmission hazard. Shah's uplifting stories of helping coordinate medical care in postearthquake Haiti and increasing access to Covid-19 testing in the U.S. over the first year of the pandemic underscore his message that meeting apparently insurmountable goals requires thinking big, though the broad recommendations ("take concerns as challenges"; "when you screw up, own it and apologize") sometimes feel like afterthoughts to his anecdotes. Still, this will inspire.
