Speed & Scale

Speed & Scale

A Global Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis Now

Summary

#1 bestselling author and acclaimed venture capitalist John Doerr reveals a sweeping action plan to conquer humanity's greatest challenge: climate change.

In 2006, John Doerr was moved by Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth and a challenge from his teenage daughter: "Dad, your generation created this problem. You better fix it." Since then, Doerr has searched for solutions to this existential problem-as an investor, an advocate and a philanthropist.

Fifteen years later, despite breakthroughs in batteries, electric vehicles, plant-based proteins and solar and wind power, global warming continues to get worse. Its impact is all around us: droughts, floods, wildfires, the melting of the polar ice caps. Our world is squarely in a climate crisis and on the brink of a climate disaster.

Yet despite our state of emergency, climate change has yet to be tackled with the urgency and ambition it demands. More than ever, we need a clear course of action.

Fueled by a powerful tool called Objectives and Key Results (OKRs), SPEED & SCALE offers an unprecedented global plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions before it's too late. Used by Google, Bono's ONE foundation and thousands of startups the world over, OKRs have scaled ideas into achievements that changed the world. With clear-eyed realism and an engineer's precision, Doerr identifies the measurable OKRs we need to reduce emissions across the board and to arrive by 2050 at net zero-the point where we are no longer adding to the heat-trapping carbon in the atmosphere.

By turns pragmatic and inspiring, SPEED & SCALE intersperses Doerr's wide-ranging analysis with firsthand accounts from Jeff Bezos, Christiana Figueres, Al Gore, Mary Barra, Bill Gates, and other intrepid policy leaders, entrepreneurs, scientists and activists. This book is a launchpad for leaders of all kind, for anyone anywhere who can move others to act with them. With a definitive action plan, the latest science and a rising climate movement on our side, we can still reach net zero before it is too late. But as Doerr reminds us, there is no more time to waste.
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'A critical blueprint for anyone looking to take concrete steps to reach net-zero emissions.' Al Gore, former U.S. Vice President

'A practical guide for both public and private sector participation in decarbonizing the global economy, a task as challenging as it is urgent.' Christiana Figueres, former executive secretary of the UN Climate Change Convention

'A comprehensive plan to tackle one of the most vexing challenges in human history.
' Jim Collins, author of Good to Great and Built to Last

Reviews

  • This book is a critical blueprint for anyone looking to take concrete steps to reach net-zero emissions. Unlike many who simply issue ambiguous long-dated pledges to help solve the climate crisis, John Doerr understands the urgent need to ACT quickly and decisively. With Speed & Scale, he combines his extensive experience as a legendary technology expert and investor with his tried-and-true management methods to put forward a clear, detailed, and comprehensive plan for climate action exactly when we need it most.
    Al Gore, former U.S. Vice President

About the author

John Doerr

John Doerr is an engineer, industry-leading venture capitalist, the chair of Kleiner Perkins and the author of bestsellers Measure What Matters and Speed & Scale: An Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis Now. For over forty years, he has served entrepreneurs with ingenuity and optimism, helping them build bold teams and disruptive companies; and for the last twenty years, he has been investing in green companies tackling climate change. He was an original investor and board member at Google and Amazon and has helped create more than a million jobs. John is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and was a member of US President Barack Obama's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. A passionate climate activist, he has 287k followers on Twitter and his TED Talks on 'greentech', goal setting and decarbonizing the energy grid have over eight million combined views.
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