Peter Plastrik | An Island Press Author

Peter Plastrik

Peter Plastrik was born in Paris, grew up in New York City, and lived in four cities in Michigan. He is cofounder and vice president of the Innovation Network for Communities (INC), established in 2007. Along with John Cleveland, he was a founding consultant to the Carbon Neutral Cities Alliance and helped it develop its strategic plan and Innovation Fund. He also consulted closely with the Urban Sustainability Directors Network (USDN) and managed USDN's Innovation Fund. Pete has been the lead author on several INC reports about cities and climate change: "Essential Capacities for Urban Climate Adaptation," supported by the summit Foundation, and "Leadership by US Cities Innovations in Climate Action," supported by Bloomberg Philanthropies. He is coauthor with John and Madeleine Taylor of Connecting to Change the World: Harnessing the Power of Networks for Social Impact (2014). He coauthored two books with David Osborne: Banishing Bureaucracy: The Five Strategies (1997) and The Reinventor's Fieldbook: Tools for Transforming Your Government (2000). He lives on Beaver Island in Lake Michigan with his wife Deb and their pugs.

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Going Together, Page by Page

By Peter Plastrik / On February 19th, 2015
Reposted from the Connecting to Change the World blog with permission. I heard the African proverb again at a retreat held by a team building a national network: “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” I say “again” because we put those words right at the front of our book as a signal about what the point of connecting and collaborating is: to go far, because that’s what it takes to change the world in big ways.