Geoff Mulgan
One effect of an individualistic culture that's poor at instilling mutual respect is that people jump more quickly to anger or violence.Collection: Anger
In Britain, polls show large majorities in favour of mansion taxes and higher taxes on the finance sector.Collection: Finance
All over the world, social innovation is tackling some of the most pressing problems facing society today - from fair trade, distance learning, hospices, urban farming and waste reduction to restorative justice and zero-carbon housing. But most of these are growing despite, not because of, help from governments.Collection: Society
Understanding capitalism is in some ways simple. At its best, capitalism rewards creators, makers and providers: the people and firms that create valuable things for others, like imaginative technologies and good food, cars and drugs.Collection: Car
On the environment and climate change, I suspect that future generations will think there was too much timidity, too much fear of upsetting business. Basically, New Labour was very nervous about regulating business, or requiring it to do anything, even when there was a very clear social or environmental case for doing so.Collection: Environmental
The wrongful arrest of tens of thousands of British Muslims after the September 11 attacks can be explained by the very poor intelligence the police had, and, just possibly, excused by the fact that a terrorist action in Britain linked to British Muslims would have been hugely damaging.Collection: Intelligence
Democracy isn't solely about polite conversations in parliaments. It needs to be continually refreshed with raw passions, anger and ideals.Collection: Anger
Huge sums are invested globally in medical research and development - and with good reason.Collection: Medical
All of nationalism can be understood as a kind of collective narcissism.Collection: Narcissism
Societies advance through innovation every bit as much as economies do.Collection: Innovation
The most important innovators often don't need any technologies - just imagination and acute sensitivity to people's needs.Collection: Technology
All innovation is about letting go, saying goodbye to things to create space for the new.Collection: Letting Go
The idea of entrepreneurship applies as much in politics, religion, society and the arts as it does in business.Collection: Art
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.Collection: Inspirational
So is civil society prepared for the future? Probably not. Most organisations have to live hand to mouth, juggling short-term funding and perpetual minor crises. Even the bigger ones rarely get much time to stand back and look at the bigger picture. Many are on a treadmill chasing after contracts and new funding.Collection: Hands
As the Internet of things advances, the very notion of a clear dividing line between reality and virtual reality becomes blurred, sometimes in creative ways.Collection: Reality
The biggest barrier to dealing with climate change is us: our own attachment to habits that are hard to shift, and our great ability to park or ignore uncomfortable choices.Collection: Attachment
Governments that invest billions in new hardware still find it hard to accept that they might benefit just as much from systematic innovation in such things as child development or cutting crime.Collection: Children
Science is, rightly, searching for drugs to arrest ageing or to slow the advance of dementia. But the evidence suggests that many of the most powerful factors determining how you age come from what you do, and what you do with others: whether you work, whether you play music, whether you have regular visitors.Collection: Powerful
Big business increasingly likes to portray itself as socially concerned, adopting the style of civic action through 'campaigns' of varying degrees of cynicism.Collection: Style
Health is already a dominant sector in most societies and the one most guaranteed to grow.Collection: Grows
There are hardly any apprenticeships in care; hardly any schools preparing teenagers for jobs in care; and few signs that politicians know what to do to raise the status and rewards for what will soon be one of our most important industries.Collection: Jobs
A tablet replacing an exercise book is not innovation, it's just a different way to make notes.Collection: Book
Lots of creativity is and should be solitary.Collection: Creativity
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.Collection: Children
The most dynamic cities have always been immersed in the critical innovations of their time.Collection: Cities
The smug complacency of technology adverts disguises a pretty mixed picture, with too many people not connected, too many passive users of technologies designed for interactive, and far too much talk about empowerment but far too little action to make it happen.Collection: Technology
Everyone knows of great projects that were too dependent on a charismatic individual, or simply too expensive to be replicated.Collection: Individual
With a fractured sense of self, we come to depend on what people feed back to us - often mediated through social networks - not what we are. We have complex identities but may become less able to act as a subject - confident in what we really are.Collection: Self
A modest dose of self-love is entirely healthy - who would want to live in a world where everyone hated themselves? But taken too far it soon becomes poisonous.Collection: Taken
Over 5,000 years, states have made surprisingly consistent claims about their duties. They have promised to protect people from threats; promote their welfare; deliver justice and also, perhaps less obviously, uphold truth - originally truths about the cosmos, and more recently truths drawn from reason and knowledge.Collection: Years
Cities simply don't have the powers they need to radically innovate in cutting obesity or the number of disaffected teenagers.Collection: Teenager
Before the Second World War, L'Oreal in France was an active supporter of the French fascists. The cosmetic group's founder Eugene Schueller was an active member of the 'Cagoule' group, committed to the violent overthrow of the Third Republic, and hosted meetings at Oreal headquarters.Collection: War
Bangalore has become a centre for healthcare.Collection: Healthcare
By international standards, many of the U.K.'s policies for civil society are exemplary. However, there are concerns about constraints on civil liberties - particularly restrictions on free assembly and about the rising tide of everyday regulation has seriously impeded community activity - from organising street parties to helping children.Collection: Children
Computing should be taught as a rigorous - but fun - discipline covering topics like programming, database structures, and algorithms. That doesn't have to be boring.Collection: Fun
Even many of the teenagers who feel confident on navigating the web simply don't have the skills needed to 'write and create' digital tools, not simply consume them.Collection: Teenager
In every capitalist economy there are anti-capitalist movements, activists, and even political parties; in a way, that there are no longer anti-democratic movements, activists, and parties.Collection: Party
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.Collection: Technology
Democratic nation states remain far more capable of managing the circuit of coercion, taxation and legitimation than any transnational bodies.Collection: Taxation
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.Collection: Ideas
The once-science-fiction notion of hyper-connectivity - where we are all constantly connected to social networks and other bubbling streams of digital data - has rapidly become a widespread reality.Collection: Reality
The really interesting moment will be when you have a critical mass of people engaging through the networks, more than through the press and TV. When that happens, the culture of politics has to change, moving away from controlled one-way messages towards a political culture that is more questioning.Collection: Moving
Courses can, and should, incorporate the excitement and fun of programming games, apps or even real digital devices.Collection: Fun
There is a yearning for people to return to elementary moral virtues, such as integrity and commitment. We distrust people who have no centering of values. We greatly respect businessmen, for example, if they display those virtues, even if we don't necessarily agree with the people.Collection: Integrity
Systems governed by only one set of rules are more vulnerable than those with variety.Collection: Vulnerable
L'Oreal's slogan 'because you're worth it' has come to epitomise banal narcissism of early 21st century capitalism; easy indulgence and effortless self-love all available at a flick of the credit card.Collection: Self
Spreading an idea is hard work.Collection: Hard Work
Economies are complex beasts that need people to do an extraordinary range of tasks.Collection: People
I didn't much like being in Parliament physically. I found it a bit depressing. It's very dark and heavy. I like being out and about.Collection: Depressing