One Size Fits None

HIGHLY COMMENDED, 2026 SMART THINKING BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR

What if the fact that no one can help you at your bank, doctor's office, airline, or job - you name it - is on purpose?

In One Size Fits None, social entrepreneurship experts Alejandro Juárez Crawford and Miriam Plavin-Masterman argue that the systems powering our experiences are unresponsive by design; they often run on "best practice" templates imported wholesale from somewhere else and applied to people and places they were never built for. In a fragmenting world, that top-down, one-size-fits-all approach is breaking down, and the cracks show up everywhere: in workplaces, hospitals, schools, and city halls, and in our collective inability to make progress on bigger problems like climate change, housing, and food.

The book goes beyond just highlighting these failures. Pairing an accessible style with sharp analysis, One Size Fits None shows that it doesn't have to be this way.

Drawing on original research conducted across 20 countries, the authors point to something already taking shape: a borderless, entrepreneurial ecosystem of people using digital tools to build the solutions the imported playbooks couldn't. This loose network of innovators—working across industries and borders—is emerging as a stabilizing force precisely because it starts from the opposite premise of "best practice": trust the people closest to the problem.

When we make it practical for the people facing unresponsive systems—employees, patients, students, community members—to build new ones that actually meet their needs, they rise to the challenge. We change from passive "users" to engaged participants equipped to shape the systems in which we live and work.

One Size Fits None is relevant to management and business readers looking to change organizations; researchers, students, and leaders focused on social entrepreneurship, innovation, or sustainability; and anyone who's ever wondered why things just don't quite work.

To learn why systems have become unresponsive, what can be done about it, and how to bring this approach to your organization or community, order the book here.