Geoff Mulgan

Geoff Mulgan on 24 May 2011

Geoff Mulgan CBE (born 1961) is Chief Executive of the National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts (NESTA)^[1] and Visiting Professor at University College London, the London School of Economics and the University of Melbourne. Previously he was:

• CEO of the Young Foundation based in London
• Director of the Prime Minister's Strategy Unit (formerly known as the Performance and Innovation Unit),
• Co-founder and Director of the London-based think tank Demos (from 1993–98),
• Chief adviser to Gordon Brown MP in the early 1990s ^[2]

Mulgan obtained a First Class degree from Balliol College, Oxford^[3] and a Ph.D. in telecommunications from the University of Westminster. He was also a Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, trained as a Buddhist monk in Sri Lanka ^[4] and worked for a spell during the 1980s as a van driver for the "Labour-supporting collective of musicians and comedians known as Red Wedge",^[5] opting ultimately for a career in local government and academia in the UK and going on to become an influential writer on social and political issues in various newspapers and magazines in the 1980s including the Independent, Financial Times, Guardian, and New Statesman. He worked as a reporter for BBC television and radio and was made a CBE in 2005.^[6]

He has written a number of books including: Communication and Control:networks and the new economies of communication (1991), Politics in an Anti-Political Age (1994), Connexity (1997), Good and Bad Power: the Ideals and Betrayals of Government (Penguin 2006) and The Art of Public Strategy (2009). His most recent book is The Locust and the Bee (Princeton 2013) that has been translated into languages including Chinese, Russian and Arabic. He has written numerous reports and pamphlets for Demos, the Young Foundation and Nesta. He has lectured and advised governments around the world on policy and strategy - including China, Australia, the United States, Japan and Russia, and is seen as one of the pioneers of the global field of social innovation. He is profiled in two books - The New Alchemists (1999 by Charles Handy) and Visionaries (2001 by Jay Walljasper). He is chair of the Studio Schools Trust; co-chair of the London LEP Digital,Science, Technology and Arts group; a board member of Big Society Capital, and has been a trustee of the Design Council, the Work Foundation, Crime Concern, Involve and Political Quarterly, and a member of various commissions for bodies including the European Commission and the Academy of Medical Science. He has done TED talks on the global economy, education and happiness.

In 2007-2008 Geoff Mulgan was an Adelaide Thinker in Residence advising South Australian Premier Mike Rann on social innovation and social inclusion policies.^[7] As a result of Mulgan's recommendations the Rann Government established The Australian Centre for Social Innovation.^[8]

On 19 July 2010, Dr Mulgan was awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Social Science (DSoc Sci) by Nottingham Trent University^[9]

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