Geoff Mulgan – författare

At a time when the public badly want better public services, trustworthy politics, and a healthy biosphere, the social sciences have prioritized analysis and critique over design. Ours is a golden age of diagnosis but a dark age of prescription, which contributes to a widening gap between extraordinary technological dynamism and social stagnation. Exploratory Social Science shows how the social sciences can return to their best traditions and define pathways and options for the future: helping to change the world, rather than just interpreting it. The first use of the phrase "social science" came in a book two centuries ago which analysed social problems, including stark inequality, and proposed how they could be tackled. Mulgan argues we need similar combinations of analysis and prescription for current issues such as living with AI, declining birthrates, rampant disinformation, and rising global temperatures.Exploratory Social Science investigates how to make the most of the many resources available to social science, from history to data analytics, studies of systems and complexity to methods from design and the arts. These can be used to shape options for tasks such as reinventing democracy and care or designing new public institutions Most social scientists want to use their knowledge to serve their societies, but in recent years have been discouraged from design by trends leaning towards narrow empiricism and away from creative imagination. Many younger social scientists think it career-threatening to move from analysis to prescription. This book shows how to harness their intellects and energy for the greater good.

At a time when the public badly want better public services, trustworthy politics, and a healthy biosphere, the social sciences have prioritized analysis and critique over design. Ours is a golden age of diagnosis but a dark age of prescription, which contributes to a widening gap between extraordinary technological dynamism and social stagnation. Exploratory Social Science shows how the social sciences can return to their best traditions and define pathways and options for the future: helping to change the world, rather than just interpreting it. The first use of the phrase "social science" came in a book two centuries ago which analysed social problems, including stark inequality, and proposed how they could be tackled. Mulgan argues we need similar combinations of analysis and prescription for current issues such as living with AI, declining birthrates, rampant disinformation, and rising global temperatures.Exploratory Social Science investigates how to make the most of the many resources available to social science, from history to data analytics, studies of systems and complexity to methods from design and the arts. These can be used to shape options for tasks such as reinventing democracy and care or designing new public institutions Most social scientists want to use their knowledge to serve their societies, but in recent years have been discouraged from design by trends leaning towards narrow empiricism and away from creative imagination. Many younger social scientists think it career-threatening to move from analysis to prescription. This book shows how to harness their intellects and energy for the greater good.

The strategies adopted by governments and public officials can have dramatic effects on peoples' lives. The best ones can transform economic laggards into trailblazers, eliminate diseases, or sharply cut crime. Strategic failures can result in highly visible disasters, like the shrinking of the Russian economy in the 1990s, or the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005. This book is about how strategies take shape, and how money, people, technologies, and public commitment can be mobilized to achieve important goals. It considers the common mistakes made, and how these can be avoided, as well as analysing the tools governments can use to meet their goals, from targets and behaviour change programmes, to innovation and risk management. Written by Geoff Mulgan, a former head of policy for the UK prime minister, and advisor to governments round the world, it is packed with examples, and shaped by the author's practical experience. The author shows that governments which give more weight to the long-term are not only more likely to leave their citizens richer, healthier, and safer; they're also better protected from being blown off course by short-term pressures. The book is essential reading for anyone involved in running public organizations - from hospitals and schools to national government departments and local councils - and for anyone interested in how government really works.

The strategies adopted by our governments and public officials can lead to significant change in citizens' lives - smoking bans, carbon markets, even the reunification of a country like Germany. Equally, strategic failure can result in highly visible disasters, such as the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. This book is about how strategies take shape, and how money, people, technologies, and public commitment can be mobilized to achieve important goals. It considers the common mistakes made, and how these can be avoided. Written by Geoff Mulgan, a former head of policy for the UK prime minister, and advisor to governments round the world, it is packed with examples and shaped by the author's practical experience. The author's central point is that we as citizens deserve governments that pay more attention to the long-term, rather than to tomorrow's opinion poll or newspaper editorial. The evidence shows that those governments that have learned how to be strategic have helped to make their citizens healthier, richer and happier. The book is essential reading for anyone involved in running public organizations - from hospitals and schools to national government departments and local councils - but also for anyone interested in how government really works.

The recent economic crisis was a dramatic reminder that capitalism can both produce and destroy. It's a system that by its very nature encourages predators and creators, locusts and bees. But, as Geoff Mulgan argues in this compelling, imaginative, and important book, the economic crisis also presents a historic opportunity to choose a radically different future for capitalism, one that maximizes its creative power and minimizes its destructive force. In an engaging and wide-ranging argument, Mulgan digs into the history of capitalism across the world to show its animating ideas, its utopias and dystopias, as well as its contradictions and possibilities. Drawing on a subtle framework for understanding systemic change, he shows how new political settlements reshaped capitalism in the past and are likely to do so in the future. By reconnecting value to real-life ideas of growth, he argues, efficiency and entrepreneurship can be harnessed to promote better lives and relationships rather than just a growth in the quantity of material consumption.Healthcare, education, and green industries are already becoming dominant sectors in the wealthier economies, and the fields of social innovation, enterprise, and investment are rapidly moving into the mainstream--all indicators of how capital could be made more of a servant and less a master. This is a book for anyone who wonders where capitalism might be heading next--and who wants to help make sure that its future avoids the mistakes of the past.

The recent economic crisis was a dramatic reminder that capitalism can both produce and destroy. It's a system that by its very nature encourages predators and creators, locusts and bees. But, as Geoff Mulgan argues in this compelling, imaginative, and important book, the economic crisis also presents a historic opportunity to choose a radically different future for capitalism, one that maximizes its creative power and minimizes its destructive force. In an engaging and wide-ranging argument, Mulgan digs into the history of capitalism across the world to show its animating ideas, its utopias and dystopias, as well as its contradictions and possibilities. Drawing on a subtle framework for understanding systemic change, he shows how new political settlements reshaped capitalism in the past and are likely to do so in the future. By reconnecting value to real-life ideas of growth, he argues, efficiency and entrepreneurship can be harnessed to promote better lives and relationships rather than just a growth in the quantity of material consumption.Healthcare, education, and green industries are already becoming dominant sectors in the wealthier economies, and the fields of social innovation, enterprise, and investment are rapidly moving into the mainstream--all indicators of how capital could be made more of a servant and less a master. This is a book for anyone who wonders where capitalism might be heading next--and who wants to help make sure that its future avoids the mistakes of the past. This edition of The Locust and the Bee includes a new afterword in which the author lays out some of the key challenges facing capitalism in the twenty-first century.

A new field of collective intelligence has emerged in the last few years, prompted by a wave of digital technologies that make it possible for organizations and societies to think at large scale. This "bigger mind"--human and machine capabilities working together--has the potential to solve the great challenges of our time. So why do smart technologies not automatically lead to smart results? Gathering insights from diverse fields, including philosophy, computer science, and biology, Big Mind reveals how collective intelligence can guide corporations, governments, universities, and societies to make the most of human brains and digital technologies. Geoff Mulgan explores how collective intelligence has to be consciously organized and orchestrated in order to harness its powers. He looks at recent experiments mobilizing millions of people to solve problems, and at groundbreaking technology like Google Maps and Dove satellites. He also considers why organizations full of smart people and machines can make foolish mistakes--from investment banks losing billions to intelligence agencies misjudging geopolitical events--and shows how to avoid them.Highlighting differences between environments that stimulate intelligence and those that blunt it, Mulgan shows how human and machine intelligence could solve challenges in business, climate change, democracy, and public health. But for that to happen we'll need radically new professions, institutions, and ways of thinking. Informed by the latest work on data, web platforms, and artificial intelligence, Big Mind shows how collective intelligence could help us survive and thrive.

How collective intelligence can transform business, government, and our everyday livesA new field of collective intelligence has emerged in recent years, prompted by digital technologies that make it possible to think at large scale. This "bigger mind"—human and machine capabilities working together—could potentially solve the great challenges of our time. Gathering insights from the latest work on data, web platforms, and artificial intelligence, Big Mind reveals how the power of collective intelligence could help organizations and societies to survive and thrive.

In this book Geoff Mulgan offers a powerful analysis of the crisis of contemporary politics and argues that a new politics based around the quality and reciprocity of relationships is slowly emerging.

This Element asks if the arts can help us imagine a better future society and economy, without deep social gulfs or ecological harm. It argues that at their best, the arts open up new ways of seeing and thinking. They can warn and prompt and connect us to a bigger sense of what we could be. But artists have lost their role as gods and prophets, partly as an effect of digital technologies and the ubiquity of artistic production, and partly as an effect of shifting values. Few recent books, films, artworks or exhibitions have helped us imagine how our world could solve its problems or how it might be better a generation or more from now. This Element argues that artists work best not as prophets of a new society but rather as 'prophets at a tangent'.

This Advanced Introduction explores innovation in the public sector, examining the mindsets, methods and strategies needed for success at every stage. It draws on global case studies to showcase key practical tools that can support innovation across local, regional and national governments.Key Features:Demonstrates how to generate, gather and assess promising ideasEvaluates the role of markets and competitionPresents approaches used to identify, spread and scale efficient new methodsHighlights ways to prevent government and political environments from crushing imaginative risk-takingCovers the benefits and drawbacks of diverse methods, from the organisation of specialist teams and labs to systemic change, and from different models of finance to the use of data and AIProviding an accessible and rigorous framework, this Advanced Introduction is essential reading for practitioners working in both city and national governments, as well as scholars and students of public policy, public sector economics, regulation and governance, administration, management and organisational innovation.

This Advanced Introduction explores innovation in the public sector, examining the mindsets, methods and strategies needed for success at every stage. It draws on global case studies to showcase key practical tools that can support innovation across local, regional and national governments.Key Features:Demonstrates how to generate, gather and assess promising ideasEvaluates the role of markets and competitionPresents approaches used to identify, spread and scale efficient new methodsHighlights ways to prevent government and political environments from crushing imaginative risk-takingCovers the benefits and drawbacks of diverse methods, from the organisation of specialist teams and labs to systemic change, and from different models of finance to the use of data and AIProviding an accessible and rigorous framework, this Advanced Introduction is essential reading for practitioners working in both city and national governments, as well as scholars and students of public policy, public sector economics, regulation and governance, administration, management and organisational innovation.

The 21st century has brought a cornucopia of new knowledge and technologies. But there has been little progress in our ability to solve social problems using social innovation – the deliberate invention of new solutions to meet social needs - across the globe.Geoff Mulgan is a pioneer in the global field of social innovation. Building on his experience advising international governments, businesses and foundations, he explains how it provides answers to today’s global social, economic and sustainability issues. He argues for matching R&D in technology and science with a socially focused R&D and harnessing creative imagination on a larger scale than ever before.Weaving together history, ideas, policy and practice, he shows how social innovation is now coming of age, offering a comprehensive view of what can be done to solve the global social challenges we face.

Science and politics have collaborated throughout human history, and science is repeatedly invoked today in political debates, from pandemic management to climate change. But the relationship between the two is muddled and muddied.Leading policy analyst Geoff Mulgan here calls attention to the growing frictions caused by the expanding authority of science, which sometimes helps politics but often challenges it.He dissects the complex history of states’ use of science for conquest, glory and economic growth and shows the challenges of governing risk – from nuclear weapons to genetic modification, artificial intelligence to synthetic biology. He shows why the governance of science has become one of the biggest challenges of the twenty-first century, ever more prominent in daily politics and policy.Whereas science is ordered around what we know and what is, politics engages what we feel and what matters. How can we reconcile the two, so that crucial decisions are both well informed and legitimate?The book proposes new ways to organize democracy and government, both within nations and at a global scale, to better shape science and technology so that we can reap more of the benefits and fewer of the harms.Also available as an audiobook.

Calls for an imaginative surge to fix our battered societies, fusing bold ideas and practical experiment.As the world confronts the fast catastrophe of Covid and the slow calamity of climate change, we also face a third, less visible emergency: a crisis of imagination. We can easily picture ecological disaster or futures dominated by technology. But we struggle to imagine a world in which people thrive and where we improve our democracy, welfare, neighbourhoods or education. Many are resigned to fatalism—yet they desperately want transformational social change.This book argues that, although the threats are real, we can use creative imagination to achieve a better future: visualising where we want to go and how to get there. Political and social thinker Geoff Mulgan offers lessons we can learn from the past, and methods we can use now to open up thinking about the future and spark action.Drawing on social sciences, the arts, philosophy and history, Mulgan shows how we can recharge our collective imagination. From Socrates to Star Wars, he provides a roadmap for the future.