The Resilience Dividend

Being Strong in a World Where Things Go Wrong

By: Judith Rodin

Narrated by: Cyndee Maxwell

Building resilience - the ability to bounce back more quickly and effectively - is an urgent social and economic issue. Our interconnected world is susceptible to sudden and dramatic shocks and stresses: a cyber-attack, a new strain of virus, a structural failure, a violent storm, a civil disturbance, an economic blow.

Through an astonishing range of stories, Judith Rodin shows how people, organizations, businesses, communities, and cities have developed resilience in the face of otherwise catastrophic challenges:

• Medellin, Colombia, was once the drug and murder capital of South America. Now it's host to international conferences and an emerging vacation destination.
• Tulsa, Oklahoma, cracked the code of rapid urban development in a floodplain.
• Airbnb, Toyota, Ikea, Coca-Cola, and other companies have realized the value of reducing vulnerabilities and potential threats to customers, employees, and their bottom line.
• In the Mau Forest of Kenya, bottom-up solutions are critical for dealing with climate change, environmental degradation, and displacement of locals.
• Following Superstorm Sandy, the Rockaway Surf Club in New York played a vital role in distributing emergency supplies.

As we grow more adept at managing disruption and more skilled at resilience-building, Rodin reveals how we are able to create and take advantage of new economic and social opportunities that offer us the capacity to recover after catastrophes and grow strong in times of relative calm.

©2014 Judith Rodin (P)2014 Gildan Media LLC

Critic reviews

"In a world where disruption is a fact of life and uncertainty is guaranteed, Judith Rodin draws on years of experience to offer an inspiring look at how we can prepare for the unexpected-and by doing so makes our communities stronger, more prosperous and more connected in the process." (President Bill Clinton)

Not What You Might Expect...

This book was certainly not what I was expecting to find considering the title and the description of it - There was about 5% of the book dedicated to the actual building of anything or recovering from something that would be useful. The rest of the book was just primarily an accounting of the projects and other research that their foundation has done over the years on disasters and rebuilding communities - Light on the 'How To' - and more like a research paper. If you want to learn about what their foundation has done, get this - if you're looking for actual valuable useful information, look elsewhere.

Geeat reference for those doing resilience work

This book supports and aligns with the Rockefeller Foundation "City Resilience Framework " and the work of other global initiatives. The book uses case stories to illustrate points with support of statistics and quotes from key provessionals.

Pretty good book with horrible narrator.

The book is pretty good and makes good points on how to make resilient plans but goes to much into the examples. More explanation on how to make sure plans have resilience would be better then the level of detail the author goes into with each story. The narrator on the other hand nearly ruins this book. A flat monotone reader that occasionally mispronounces words like she is reading them for the first time. it is like having a book read to you by a speak and spell.

thoght provoking and useful

In what continues to be an era of natural and man-made disasters, this book is a refreshing primer on how smart people are strengthening their communities, in an effort to be better prepared when bad things happen.

Useless

A collection of generalities - need to prepare for disruptions, etc. I didn't learn anything new from this book

Boring

What didn’t you like about Cyndee Maxwell’s performance?

The narrator is very dull and monotone, the content is full of buzzwords and very neutral vocabulary, and overall reads like some kind of corporate report that was only written as a formality and never meant to actually be read by anyone.