Upstream by Dan Heath Life is so often a cycle of responses. Fighting fires is what we do. Whenever there is an emergency, we respond. Despite our efforts, we remain downstream, fixing problem after problem while never addressing the causes of the problem. Police chase robbers, doctors treat patients with chronic illnesses, and customer service representatives deal with customer complaints. But many crimes, chronic illnesses, and customer complaints are preventable. How come we tend to spend so much energy reacting rather than preventing? We can be blind to serious problems going on around us if we experience problem blindness, Upstream explores the psychological forces that push us downstream. As Heath illustrates, upstream thinkers have overcome these obstacles by changing their perspectives. A simple modification to a travel website's booking system prevented twenty million customer service calls every year. After figuring out that it could predict which students would drop out as early as ninth grade, a major urban district cut its dropout rate in half. Through deliberate cultural changes in a European nation, teenage alcoholism and drug abuse were almost eliminated. In addition, one EMS system predicts where 911 calls will come from and deploys its ambulances to stand by in those areas well in advance to speed up emergency response times. Upstream delivers practical solutions for preventing problems rather than reacting to them. The problem with our lives and society is that many problems are simply being ignored because we forget we can fix them?