Reviews
Megacommunities
How Leaders of Government, Business and Non-Profits
Can Tackle Today’s Global Challenges Together
Mark Gerencser, Reginald Van Lee, Fernando Napolitano,
and Christopher Kelly
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2008)
In the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew in 1992, state officials and others
in Florida realized they lacked an effective structure for responding to the
extraordinary devastation wrought by Andrew’s 160-mile-an-hour winds. The
interrelated problems were of such a scale, and involved the interests of so
many stakeholders from every part of society, that
only a vast, combined effort by organizations from
every sector could have resolved them. Based on its
analysis of the flawed Hurricane Andrew response,
Florida created the kind of framework for which the
book Megacommunities is named – a “community of
institutions and organizations” representing govern-
ment, businesses, and nonprofits.
The authors – a quartet of Booz Allen Hamilton
consultants – argue that a host of heavyweight global
problems (involving, among others, the environment, energy policy, and threats to human health and
security) can be solved only by harnessing the power,
creativity, and insight of the three sectors working in
concert. These collaborations, they write, require structures “in which no leader
or institution is necessarily in charge, and yet a healthy, prosperous, effectual
environment exists in which issues are addressed and complexity is reduced.”
How to do that is the crux of this book. The authors draw on interviews with
CEOs, government officials past and present (Bill Clinton is among the most co-
gent), and heads of nonprofit agencies to give credence to their view that only
by putting aside the individual institutions’ unilateral agendas and identifying
areas of “overlapping vital interest” can a megacommunity effectively coalesce
around a well-defined mission and produce worthy solutions.
Unfortunately, the idea is new enough that few examples of such collabora-
tion exist; most are in their early stages. Moreover, because of the massive scale
of the problems they address, megacommunities are inherently open-ended
undertakings rather than time-bounded projects. Hardly a megacommunity
exists that has fully realized its mission. This dearth of practical experience oc-
casionally leaves the reader awash in too much theory and too little street cred.
Still, the authors manage to convey useful guidance, sometimes by depicting
instructive failures. In one such case, an international conference on avian influenza recommended the aggressive culling of infected birds. But since conference organizers excluded groups they perceived as opposed to their interests (a
healthy megacommunity would strive to include such viewpoints), a global bird
conservation group was not present to share solid scientific evidence that culling infected birds actually accelerates the virus’s spread. Oops.
The book doesn’t soft-pedal the difficulty of getting parties with strongly held
beliefs and agendas to subordinate them to pursue overlapping vital interests.
But it is in the main an optimistic handbook for creating promising frameworks
for change that balance ideals with realities, the perfect with the good.
–Lew McCreary
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Wagner James Au
(Collins, 2008)
A good anthropologist keeps one foot
firmly planted in the society he is studying
and the other in his own. If he’s simply a
detached observer or – just as bad – if he
goes native, he won’t be able to straddle
the two cultures in a way that leads to true
understanding. Wagner James Au carefully
strikes the right balance in his nuanced account of the evolution of the online world
Second Life. Au, who was first a reporter
hired by Second Life developer Linden Lab
and is now an independent blogger, has always combined an empathetic view of the
place and its “residents” with a journalist’s
dispassionate (if not always combatively
critical) voice. This book, which draws
on the vast trove of fascinating tales and
trends he has chronicled over the years,
continues in that vein, deftly addressing
subjects ranging from virtual sex to the
Second Life marketing initiatives of real-world
companies.
– Paul Hemp
The Trillion Dollar Meltdown:
Easy Money, High Rollers, and
the Great Credit Crash
Charles R. Morris
(PublicAffairs, 2008)
Why did the credit markets tighten so
drastically last year, in the absence of
major shocks? Morris, a former banker,
sees the crunch as the culmination of a
quarter century of deregulation and innovation that initially greatly benefited the
economy but eventually self-destructed in
an orgy of ideologically driven behavior.
He sees unnecessarily cheap money from
the Federal Reserve as the main proximate
cause of the excessive risk taking. With the
United States now in a slowdown, he adds,
this Fed policy, combined with the global
shift away from the dollar, means the
government has little leeway to stimulate
growth without provoking inflation. The
only good news is that Morris’s cyclical
view of the political economy suggests
America will return to a sustained period
of prosperity in the next decade.
