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.
Zaid helped found Reos Partners in 2007 where he serves as Managing Partner of the Oxford office. Reos Partners is an international organization dedicated to supporting and building capacity for innovative collective action in complex social systems, which also has offices in Cambridge (MA), The Hague, Johannesburg, Melbourne, Sao Paulo and San Francisco.
Zaid has worked around the world, on issues ranging from the sustainability of global food systems, child malnutrition, re-designing financial systems, climate change, and countering violent extremism. He is currently leading on a major effort to reduce global emissions; on a UK-wide strategy to practically increasing the resilience of communities and an effort on preventing state collapse in the Middle East.
Over 2009-10 Zaid was an Associate Fellow of The Institute of Science, Innovation and Society, Said Business School at the University of Oxford. He has been a contributing author to the innovative green website, worldchanging.com since its launch and writes columns for the Islamic Monthly and Religion Dispatches. He tweets @zaidhassan
Foreword author Joi Ito is the director of the MIT Media Lab. He is a leading thinker and writer on innovation, global technology policy, and the transformative role of the Internet in society in substantial and positive ways. Ito is a vocal advocate of emergent democracy, privacy, and Internet freedom, serving as both board chair and CEO of Creative Commons, and sitting on the boards of Creative Commons, Knight Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, The New York Times Company, Mozilla Foundation, WITNESS, and Global Voices. BusinessWeek named him one of the "25 Most Influential People on the Web" in 2008. In 2011, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Oxford Internet Institute.
