Geoff Mulgan is a Professor at University College London (UCL), in the Science, Technology, Engineering and Policy team (STEaPP) in the engineering department.  Previously, he was Chief Executive of Nesta, the UK's innovation foundation (2011-2019), and from 1997-2004 he had roles in the UK government including director of the Government's Strategy Unit, director of the Performance and Innovation Unit and head of policy in the Prime Minister's office.  From 2004-2011 he was first CEO of the Young Foundation.   Geoff has been a reporter on BBC TV and radio and was the founder/co-founder of many organisations, including Demos, Uprising, the Social Innovation Exchange, the Australia Centre for Social Innovation and Action for Happiness.  He has a PhD in telecommunications and has been visiting professor at LSE and Melbourne University, and senior visiting scholar at Harvard University.

Geoff has advised many governments, businesses, NGOs and foundations around the world. He is a senior fellow with Demos Helsinki and was a senior fellow at the New Institute in Hamburg (2020-2022) and a World Economic Forum Schwab Fellow (2019-22).   He recently chaired a European Commission programme on ‘Whole of Government Innovation’ and co-founded TIAL, The Institutional Architecture Lab.   ​​He is a board member of the Centre for European Policy Studies in Brussels, and on the advisory board of Labour Together.

Past books include ‘Good and Bad Power’ (Penguin, 2005), ‘The Art of Public Strategy’ (Oxford University Press, 2008), ‘The Locust and the Bee’ (Princeton University Press, 2012), ‘Big Mind: how collective intelligence can change our world’ (Princeton University Press, 2017),  ‘Social innovation: how societies find the power to change’ (Policy Press, 2019), 'Prophets at a Tangent: how art shapes social imagination' (Cambridge University Press, 2023) and ‘When Science Meets Power’ (Polity, 2023/24).  His books have been translated into many languages including Chinese, Arabic, Russian, Malay, Spanish, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Japanese, Korean, Persian, Punjabi, Urdu, Greek, Turkish, Romanian, Hungarian, Norwegian, Lithuanian, Finnish and Swedish.

He is a founding joint editor-in-chief of the journal Collective Intelligence (Sage/ACM).   Many of the ideas Geoff has worked on have gone onto become mainstream, from creative economy strategies to social investing, open data to collective intelligence,  experimental and evidence-based government to policies for well-being and challenge-driven innovation.  Geoff has given TED talks on the future economy, happiness and education.    His website is geoffmulgan.com.  He has a CBE and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2020. 

Current Work

  • Professor

    At UCL, I teach undergraduates on a new degree linking engineering, science and technology to social change, focused on systems and their transformation.  I've also been teaching a new MPA course on intelligence, AI and algorithmic governance in early 2025. Recent working papers cover topics including Innovation Districts and energy.

    https://www.ucl.ac.uk/steapp/

  • I helped create a new 'Institutional Architecture Lab', TIAL (tial.org), focused on the design of new public institutions, which launched in early 2024 and is now working with the UNDP, various national governments and cities as well as developing new theories and methods.

    https://tial.org/

  • I edit (with Scott Page) the interdisciplinary academic journal on Collective Intelligence (with Sage and ACM) which launched in 2022.  Our annual conference is in San Diego in August 2025. https://journals.sagepub.com/home/col

Some recent talks

These are some of the talks I’ve done in Spring/Summer 2025Anticipatory Governance conference, Trento on ‘Generative Shared Intelligence’ ; UCL Lunch Hour lecture; SITRA, Helsinki on demographic change and institutional innovation; American Academy, Rome, on synthesis; Stockholm, Swedish Academy of Science on the ‘Future of Truth’; Salzburg Foundation Public Services Network, on institutions; Oxford University, Regenescape, on Collective intelligence; Creative Bureaucracy Festival, Berlin; UCL STEaPP on ‘Science and institutions’; Imperial College on ‘Systems change in health’; Institute for Wicked Problems, Copenhagen on ‘Wicked problems and systems change’; Istanbul/Hisar, on ‘Collective intelligence in Education’; Enfield Southgate School on ‘young people and imagination’; Govtech Forum, Milan on ‘algorithmic governance’; UNDP Istanbul Innovation Days, on institutional innovation; LSE on global cooperation in difficult times; my 12 week UCL MPA course on AI and government; UCL Campus on startups and social impact; Royal College of Art – social innovation and service design; Saint Helier, Digital Jersey summit; Home Office Senior Civil Service on digital innovation.

Helping to create new organisations

Contact Geoff

Thanks for visiting and engaging with the work I do. If you have a specific request or would like to engage further, please fill out this form and I will get back to you as soon as I can.