The team, comprising some ex-IBM employees along with a bunch of diverse people, had an interesting idea to apply systems analysis to basically all current global issues. The author took the approach of an ‘embedded journalist’ to detail the events of the group over the nine-month period the group agreed to collaborate.
This book is essentially the diary of these events. The group ended up with 21 streams of issues which they work-shopped via video conferencing and other planning tools.
I imagine that it would have been an exciting project for the participants, but the exhaustive details made for a quite long-winded, uninspiring read. So I just turned to the end see what they had actually accomplished, which, as it turns out, wasn’t a great deal.
I imagine that this technique of an electronic community solving problems will take off in the post covid, globalized world, however everything that needed to be said about this project, could have fitted into a short article, but I guess the project participants would be interested in reading about it at this level of detail, the general public, less so.

Thanks to NetGallery for providing an e-copy of this book in exchange for an unbiased review.

The premise of The Pivot is a really great one - one that can be applied to so many avenues beyond the examples surrounding climate change that Hamm references. Yes, there are myriad large, complex, and/or global problems, but not all solutions must be large, complex, and global in scale. I love how Hamm brings to light the idea that small, seemingly inconsequential changes can actually have a massive impact over time or as enough of them occur. It's a sadly all-too-novel approach to problem solving and it's one that can and should be considered.