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deBook Sprints for organisational knowledge
A Book Sprint is an effective tool to demarcate a certain field of knowledge, define and communicate a thesis or share practical experience from multiple contexts.
Book Sprints have facilitated a number of international organisations, universities and collectives to successfully produce an array of document types. These include policy papers, advocacy books, handbooks on legal contracts, university textbooks, academic literature, manifestos, artist books and even fiction. There is no field or profession we cannot work with.
Our clients value our product-oriented methodology and are always surprised by how quickly we can get different stakeholders to develop a shared understanding and reach a consensus. The diversity of perspectives in fact only enriches the text.
A Book Sprint can also support coalition-building. The experience of hashing out a thesis together can really unite people; this can be useful at any stage of a project, or as an attempt to build a community around a topic. Participants also tell us that they leave a Book Sprint with greater knowledge or a clearer consensus on the topic than when they started.
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Rethinking International Investment. Back to basics
The handbook “Rethinking International Investment. Back to basics” was finalized last Friday with great excitement of participants. The Columbia Centre on Sustainable Investment gathered for the book Sprint talented investment law and policy experts from the African International Law Centre, Harvard Law and Business Schools, Australian National University, Georgetown University Law Centre, University College London, ... read more
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Changemakers: Educating with Purpose
In 2016 a group of nine educators from so-called ‘Changemaker Schools’ got together to share best practices from their classrooms. They used the time to figure out what was unique about the educational environments created at their schools, and to describe these in a resource for other educators. A changemaker, as defined by the Ashoka ... read more
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Coalition-building through a Book Sprint: Curtin University’s Open Knowledge Institutions
The book ‘Open Knowledge Institutions: Reinventing Universities’ is currently on MIT Press’ PubPub online platform, open to a wider community for review and editing before it gets pitched to publishers. The book was written by a group of 13 authors including research professors, open knowledge advocates, science communicators, economists, publishers, high-level university administrators, librarians and ... read more
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Policy-making with Book Sprints: USAID Power Africa's Understanding Series
Power Africa Understanding Series Book Sprints have produced a series of five books – called the ‘Understanding Series’ – since 2014. Through the experience, the authors have discovered a new way to tackle policy development in their work. The Understanding Series form an initiative of USAID Power Africa Program. While the fourth book was added ... read more
Phil Karp
Lead Knowledge Management Officer, The World Bank
I have used Book Sprints for two very different kinds of operational manuals – one where we documented defined procedures among stakeholders and one where we developed the procedures together in the Sprint. It worked excellently for both scenarios!
Cameron Neylon
Professor of Research Communications, Curtin University
So much time is wasted bringing people together for meetings and usually the end product is just a list of bullet points. In a Book Sprint you get not only focused productivity from a group of issue experts but also delivery.