Geoff Mulgan
Geoff Mulgan
Geoff Mulgan CBEis Chief Executive of the National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts and Visiting Professor at University College London, the London School of Economics and the University of Melbourne. Previously he was:...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionEducator
technology ideas people
Many of the greatest composers and musicians do their best work in extreme confinement but we are seeing it in other fields - uses of technology to link people together in networks to solve problems and almost certainly we'll get better ideas than we would from them just doing it on their own.
ideas design innovation
Social innovation thrives on collaboration; on doing things with others, rather than just to them or for them: hence the great interest in new ways of using the web to 'crowdsource' ideas, or the many experiments involving users in designing services.
opportunity ideas lessons
One of the lessons of history is that even the deepest crises can be moments of opportunity. They bring ideas from the margins into the mainstream.
hard-work ideas hard
Spreading an idea is hard work.
art ideas doe
The idea of entrepreneurship applies as much in politics, religion, society and the arts as it does in business.
both complex council directly elected government include ministers organised parliament relationships shown
Europe has shown how government can be organised in a network. Its institutions both compete and co-operate and include a directly elected parliament that does not appoint the executive, independent judiciaries and a complex set of relationships between the Commission, the Council of Ministers and the Parliament.
attention everyday life mainstream money oil software taken time
Predation is part of the everyday life of capitalism, in sectors as mainstream as pharmaceuticals, software and oil - where people's money, their data, their time and their attention are routinely taken in fundamentally asymmetrical exchanges.
honours monarchy palaces
Radicalism is as British as tea and cakes, as much a part of our make-up as monarchy and football. It will never have its own jubilees, palaces or honours system.
charities people provider
People don't want charities to usurp the state as the core provider of social services.
vigorous
Vigorous independent and critical media are indispensable in a democracy.
biases compass contain favour love moral plenty protect rich steely themselves whatever
Most governments do have inbuilt biases in favour of the rich and powerful, and most do contain plenty of manipulators who love intrigue, who have lost whatever moral compass they may once have had and who protect themselves with steely cynicism.
people
Freecycle groups match people who have things they want to get rid of with people who can use them.
answers contains within
Capitalism is not so much an aberration as a step on an evolutionary path, and one that contains within it some of the answers to its own contradictions.
ability change cynical government leave left opposite people rather
Many people leave government disillusioned about its ability to achieve change and cynical about politicians. I left with rather opposite lessons.