Breakthrough

Focusing on UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)—ending poverty, malnutrition, deforestation, and climate change—Kharas, McArthur, and Ohno ask what key ingredients produce nonlinear breakthroughs. They argue that a gradualist approach will fail and that exponential progress comes only with better policy and politics as well as technology. The book's 12 chapters draw on more than a dozen authors with expertise in science, business, civil society, and policy making. Overall, they find that best practices for innovation include user-centered design, understanding the context and concerns of affected communities, smart risk-taking, designing for scale and sustainability from the start, and collaboration. Chapter 4 examines utility-scale solar power, finding it nearly free as costs lie with battery storage and metering rather than with the electrical power itself. Chapter 7 targets smallholder agriculture with the maxim "think big, act fast, start small" to help improve agronomic decisions regarding activities such as fertilizing, watering, and harvesting. Chapter 9 explores "smart cities" as more than just a venue for showcasing new technology, from transportation to utilizing sensors for collecting large data sets for AI analysis. Throughout, contributing authors rightly recognize that new breakthrough technologies risk primarily benefiting the world's wealthiest, further exacerbating inequities borne by poor and rural populations. Highly recommended. * Choice Reviews *