Capital Ideas: How to Generate Innovation in the Public Sector

Offers suggestions for and examples of how to stimulate innovation in government, including identifying priorities, allowing for creative and entrepreneurial solutions, funding innovation, improving incentives, changing cultures, and scaling what works

Scaling New Heights: How to Spot Small Successes in the Public Sector and Make Them Big

Examines barriers to bringing innovations to scale in the social sector and recommends developing a market for social outcomes, designing funding models that encourage scaling, shaping the field of knowledge about what works, and investing in mentors

Social researchers must continue to engage in the systematic exploration of the world as it is and as it could be.

How researchers and the state understand the scope of social research plays a pivotal role in the future of impact. Geoff Mulgan argues society at large – the public, researchers and the government – must all adapt their practices to take evidence seriously and to take part in policy implementation. Social researchers are in a unique position as they are required to be engaged with power, but remain ultimately accountable to the public not the state

COVID's lesson for governments? Don’t cherry-pick advice, synthesize it

Too many national leaders get good guidance yet make poor decisions

It’s time to face it: some meetings can be a waste of your time

Geoff Mulgan suggests seven ways to improve meetings, based on research and experienc

Possibility space: The role of social sciences in understanding, mapping and shaping the future

Social science no longer does enough to map out the possibilities for the future, at a time when there is a serious need for more options. There are many reasons for this including the structure of incentives within universities, and the impact of an otherwise healthy focus on evidence and data. This piece describes both how social sciences can better understand the future and their role in helping to shape options, including methods for creativity, and the relationship between broad goals and experimental methods to find pathways. It addresses the problems of ‘materiality bias’, a bias towards exaggerating the influence of material over non-material factors and concludes with a discussion of how to think about future consciousness

Reforming Whitehall: bluff, bluster, brilliance and brains

Geoff Mulgan assesses Dominic Cummings’ proposals for reforming government and argues that, while bringing new people and ideas into Number 10 can be welcome, there are several pitfalls, not least in failing to learn from past attempts at reform

Social Innovation: What it is, why it matters and how it can be accelerated

The results of social innovation are all around us. Self-help health groups and self-build housing; telephone help lines and telethon fundraising; neighbourhood nurseries and neighbourhood wardens; Wikipedia and the Open University; complementary medicine, holistic health and hospices; microcredit and consumer cooperatives; charity shops and the fair trade movement; zero carbon housing schemes and community wind farms; restorative justice and community courts. All are examples of social innovation – new ideas that work to meet pressing unmet needs and improve peoples’ lives. This report is about how we can improve societies’ capacities to solve their problems. It is about old and new methods for mobilising the ubiquitous intelligence that exists within any society