This Could Be Our Future

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This Could Be Our Future

Once you see the world this way you can’t unsee it

Once you see the world this way you can’t unsee it

This Could Be Our Future
This Could Be Our Future
 

What people are saying about This Could Be Our Future

What people are saying about This Could Be Our Future

“Yancey Strickler, cofounder of the online crowdfunding platform Kickstarter, urges us to change the way we view work and society… [a] mix of internal corporate reform and consciousness-raising

Wall Street Journal

“Intriguing ideas on how to create a better world…A valid evaluation of the modern world and why it needs to shift from financial maximization to something more humane.”

Kirkus

“This book is a gift to humanity, filled with blueprints and ideas about how effortlessly we can change the way we think to create a better and kinder world. It’s packed with insight and shows us that real change is not as impossible as we might believe. If you’ve got future-fatigue, this book might be the perfect bedtime story to help you sleep at night.”

Amanda Palmer, Musician and New York Times bestselling author of The Art of Asking: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Let People Help

“In this wise, and sometimes bracing, manifesto, Yancey Strickler reveals how hidden assumptions about what matters have coarsened our culture and corroded our values. Then shows how to create organizations and institutions built less on maximizing financial gain and more on family, faith, and sustainability. This book is the conversation starter our world needs.”

Daniel H. Pink, New York Times bestselling author of When, Drive, and A Whole New Mind

“Starting in the 1970s, new ideas were proposed about how business should run–ideas that prioritized short-term over long term, profit before people, selfish decisions over selfless ones. Those ideas blossomed in the 1980s and 90s and today they consume too many of the standard business practices. Yancey Strickler is one of the voices that is helping to reverse those ideas in favor of a people before profit model that benefits ALL stakeholders. Preach on Yancey!!”

Simon Sinek, New York Times bestselling author of Start With Why and Leaders Eat Last

“Yancey Strickler is convinced that our value system is broken. In this lucid book, he lays out a vision for how to fix it that’s both audacious and elevating. It’s a thought-provoking read for anyone who knows there’s more to life than accumulating wealth.”

Adam Grant, New York Times bestselling author of Give and Take, Originals, and coauthor of Option B

“Yancey’s career has been predicated on debunking unbridled self-interest––especially of the financial kind. In this book, he promotes a new design for society based on a more generous sharing of riches, ideas, and destinies.”

Paola Antonelli, Senior Curator, Architecture and Design at The Museum of Modern Art

“Throughout history, societies have fallen for the fallacy that the world around them is how things are destined to be forever–only in hindsight do we see how wrong and shortsighted they were. This Could Be Our Future is a brilliant exercise in reasoning from first principles, challenging our assumptions about how the world must be.”

Tim Urban, writer of Wait But Why

“This bold, moving book explains why forging a more humane, equitable society depends on a fundamental shift not just in values, but the very way we define what value is. This is urgent, actionable reading for anyone who cares about the long-term, complete with a simple framework for how to start seeing the bigger picture and making real change.”

Eric Ries, Author of the international bestsellers The Lean Startup and The Startup Way

“This is a beautiful, simple, important book. If we all follow its advice, the world will be a far better place for our children and grandchildren.”

Tim O’Reilly, Founder and CEO of O’Reilly Media and author of WTF? What’s the Future and Why It’s Up to Us

Reading This Could Be Our Future should be a requirement for all who endeavor to build and lead humane organizations.

Jerry Colonna, author of Reboot: Leadership and the Art of Growing Up

Want to actually change the world for the better? Start here.

Sophia Amoruso, New York Times bestselling author of Girlboss

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Publisher’s description

A vision for building a society that looks beyond money and toward maximizing the values that make life worth living, from the cofounder of Kickstarter

Western society is trapped by three assumptions: 1) That the point of life is to maximize your self-interest and wealth, 2) That we’re individuals trapped in an adversarial world, and 3) That this is natural and inevitable. These ideas separate us, keep us powerless, and limit our imagination for the future. It’s time we replace them with something new.

This Could Be Our Future is about how we got here, and how we change course. While the pursuit of wealth has produced innovation and prosperity, it also established an implicit belief that the right choice in every decision is whichever option makes the most money. The answer isn’t to get rid of money; it’s to expand our concept of value. By assigning rational value to other values besides money–things like community, purpose, and sustainability–we can refocus our energies to build a society that’s generous, fair, and ready for the future. By recalibrating our definition of value, a world of scarcity can become a world of abundance.

Hopeful but firmly grounded, full of concrete solutions and bursting with creativity, This Could Be Our Future brilliantly dissects the world we live in and shows us a road map to the world we are capable of making.

Download the introductory chapter for free here.