I recently picked up a copy of How Change Happens: Why Some Social Movements Succeed While Others Don't, a book out last year by Leslie Crutchfield. I immediately became interested in the title because of my upcoming book The Startup Community Way, which will be out later this year. That interest came from the fact that our book (I’m co-authoring it with Brad Feld) is really about a special type of movement-driven social change—one built around local entrepreneurship. How Change Happens is the product of many years of research by Leslie and her team studying a wide range of social movements in the United States—from gun control, to same-sex marriage, to smoking, to drunk driving, to acid rain reduction, to vaccination, and beyond—and systematizing why some succeed while others fail. Dissecting these major movements case-by-case, Crutchfield and her team were able to uncover some interesting patterns about what works and what doesn’t. As I was reading the book, I had in the back of my mind “how do these social movements apply to building startup communities?” I’m glad I did, because it helped crystalize a few ideas I in my head.