Geoff Mulgan is director of the Young Foundation, a center for social innovation, social enterprise and public policy that pioneers ideas in fields such as aging, education and poverty reduction. He’s the founder of the think-tank Demos, and the author of "The Art of Public Strategy."
Why you should listen to him:
Geoff Mulgan is director of the Young Foundation, a center for social innovation, social enterprise and public policy with a 50-year history of creating new organisations and pioneering ideas in fields as varied as aging, education, healthcare and poverty reduction.
Before the Young Foundation, Geoff Mulgan has held various roles in the UK government including director of the Government's Strategy Unit and head of policy in the Prime Minister's office, and he was the founder of the think-tank Demos. He is chairing a Carnegie Inquiry into the Future of Civil Society in the UK and Ireland. His most recent book is The Art of Public Strategy: Mobilising Power and Knowledge for the Common Good.
Quotes by Geoff Mulgan
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“I’m not saying [economic] growth is wrong, but throughout the years of growth, many things didn’t get better. … If you look at America, the proportion of Americans with no one to talk to about important things went up from a tenth to a quarter.”
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“It’s already clear how much of the enormous amount of money [the American government] put into the economy, really went into fixing the past, bailing out the banks, the car companies, not preparing us for the future.”
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“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.”
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“The central position of finance capital is going to come to an end, and it’s going to steadily move to the sides, the margins of our society, transformed from being a master into a servant, a servant to the productive economy and of human needs.”
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“The longer you commute the less happy you’re likely to be.”
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“Teenagers learn best by doing things, they learn best in teams and they learn best by doing things for real — all the opposite of what mainstream schooling actually does.”
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“We called it a studio school to go back to the original idea of a studio in the Renaissance where work and learning are integrated. You work by learning, and you learn by working.”
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“What kind of school would have the teenagers fighting to get in, not fighting to stay out?”
