Alan Robinson and Dean Schroeder studied 70 public organisations in 5 countries, interviewing over a thousand people, for this book.

It shows how bottom-up driven innovation can achieve truly remarkable results - for small extra investment. Something surely of interest to the incoming British Labour Government - in fact any government.

Listen to my fascinating discussion with them - including how it does, and doesn't, mesh with Labour's "Mission Driven Government".

And buy and read the book.

William Eggers and Don Kettle's new book 'BRIDGEBUILDERS' isn't the first to address the issue of how Governments can 'catalyse' problem solving on the big issues. But it's a great updating, and refining, of the issues, methods and pitfalls of 'Bridgebuilding'. With lots of fascinating examples.

A worthy successor to 'Reinventing Government' (Osborne and Gaebler 1992) which three decades ago informed a lot of what the Clinton administration and Blair Government went on to do.

(This is the first in what I hope will be a mini-series around these issues).

The advertising for Al Roberts new book SUPERSTATES says

"In this century, the world will conduct an extraordinary experiment in government. In 2050, forty percent of the planet's population will live in just four places: India, China, the European Union, and the United States. These are superstates – polities that are distinguished from normal countries by expansiveness, population, diversity, and complexity."

In this episode of STATECRAFT Al and I discuss his latest book. What are 'superstates'? How do the different from empires? Was the USSR a superstate? All this and more in our discussion. Enjoy - I did!

SUPERSTATES is published by Polity Press