Social entrepreneurs are people who launch ventures aimed at promoting positive change in their community and the world. Their bottom line is not financial profit but the common good. Drawing on his extensive career, John Marks has written a practitioner's guide to the underlying principles of social entrepreneurship.
From Vision to Action offers a master class in effective negotiation and conflict resolution. It builds on a core strategy of understanding differences and acting on commonalities. Marks uses his own experiences of creating real-life breakthroughs during his time leading Search for Common Ground, which he founded and built with his wife, Susan Collin Marks, into the world's largest peacebuilding nonprofit. Beginning with an improbable effort to promote cooperation between the CIA and the KGB, this book features examples that range from helping prevent genocide in Burundi to using children's television to lessen ethnic tensions in Macedonia to creating a culture of mediation in Morocco. Readers learn key lessons, such as adapting to unexpected outcomes, communicating persuasive stories, and being incrementally transformational-or transformationally incremental. Bringing together compelling narratives and useful tools, From Vision to Action delivers practical guidance on building bridges and creating meaningful change.
Industry Reviews
John Marks has shown communities all over the world, time after time, how to turn hate-filled "us versus them" social conflicts into win-win collaborations. What could be more urgently needed now? This book tells you both how to do this and, more broadly, how you too can be a great social entrepreneur-addressing whatever social need you choose. -- Bill Drayton, founder and CEO, Ashoka
Hats off to John Marks, who epitomizes what it means to be a social entrepreneur for peace. In this lively and lucid book, part manual, part memoir, Marks presents eleven savvy principles for success, illustrated with gripping stories from his pioneering work. May it inspire and inform a new generation of peace entrepreneurs! -- William Ury, coauthor of Getting to Yes and author of Possible: How We Survive (and Thrive) in an Age of Conflict
This book provides extraordinary insight into what it means to be a social entrepreneur. -- Van Jones, CNN commentator and political activist
In charting his extraordinary journey from "provocateur to peacemaker," John Marks proves that even the most divisive, distrusting, and dysfunctional players can discover common ground for resolving long-held and deeply embedded enmity. This book takes us on Marks's remarkable quest, from the tables of power in Washington, DC, to the shantytowns of Morocco's Sidi Moumen and from gifted problem-solver to world-changing social entrepreneur. It reinforces at each small step and giant leap that peacemaking can, in fact, remake the world. -- Sally Osberg, former president, Skoll Foundation
At last, a book that shows us how we can survive - maybe even thrive - in these dangerous, polarizing times. It shares practical wisdom drawn from his decades of experience proactively resolving conflicts and building peace in countries around the world. The rest of us now should stand up and follow his example. -- Michael Wheeler, Chaired Professor of Management Practice (ret.), Harvard Business School
This is a groundbreaking book meant for people who are really up to something and know that they have the capacity to make a difference to the long-term future of life. Anyone who picks up this book will be empowered by it and see the difference they can make by being bolder, more courageous, and more loving. The principles Marks outlines are absolutely brilliant and come from a lifetime of profound experience with some of the most powerful and challenging leaders on this planet. Buy this book, read it, and share it with as many people as possible. It's a master work from a master peacemaker. Marks is one of the most brilliant and authentic voices in today's world. -- Lynne Twist, founder of the Soul of Money Institute and author of Living a Committed Life: Finding Freedom and Fulfillment in a Purpose Larger Than Yourself
This book tells the inspiring story of an extraordinarily successful social activist who used the precepts of social entrepreneurship to deal with highly charged conflicts around the world. -- Frank Ricciardone, former US Ambassador to the Philippines, Egypt, and Turkey
A hopeful, transformational, and heuristic handbook of what's possible to help make our governments, governance, and society work. -- John Steiner, cofounder of the Bridge Alliance and YOUnify
