Sir Geoff Mulgan CBE is Professor of Collective Intelligence, Public Policy and Social Innovation at University College London (UCL).  Prior to that he was Chief Executive of Nesta, the UK's innovation foundation between 2011 and the end of 2019.   Between 1997 and 2004 Geoff had roles in the UK government including director of the Government's Strategy Unit and the Performance and Innovation Unit, and head of policy in the Prime Minister's office.  From 2004 to 2011 he was the first Chief Executive of The Young Foundation. He was the first director of the think-tank Demos; and has been a reporter on BBC TV and radio.   

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He has a PhD in telecommunications and has been a visiting professor at London School of Economics (LSE), University College London (UCL) and Melbourne University, a senior visiting scholar at Harvard University and President of the Innovation Design Department at the Italian University for Design (IAAD) in Turin.   He has also been a regular lecturer at the China Executive Leadership Academy.   Geoff has founded or co-founded many organisations including: Demos, the Young Foundation, the Social Innovation Exchange (SIX), Uprising, Studio Schools Trust, Action for Happiness, the Alliance for Useful Evidence, States of Change, The Australian Centre for Social Innovation, Maslaha and Nesta Italia. 

 

He has advised many governments, foundations and companies  He co-chaired a World Economic Forum group looking at innovation and entrepreneurship in the fourth industrial revolution and was a World Economic Forum Schwab Fellow from 2019-22. He's a board member of Reimagine Europa and the Culture Trust.  He has pioneered many ideas used by governments, civil society and business – including joined-up government, anticipatory regulation, experimentalism, social investment and social impact bonds, open innovation and creative economy strategies, collective intelligence and data (these are covered in more detail in the 'ideas' section on this site).

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Geoff has roles with Demos Helsinki and the New Institute in Hamburg.  At UCL he is co-lead of the International Public Policy Observatory on COVID (IPPO).   From January 2021 he is a member of the International Advisory Board of the European Parliament's Science and Technology Options Assessment panel (STOA).   In 2023-24 he is chairing a European Commission programme on 'whole of government innovation', working with a group of EU nations.

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Geoff's books include ‘The Art of Public Strategy’ (Oxford University Press, 2008), ‘Good and Bad Power’ (Penguin, 2006), ‘The Locust and the Bee’ (Princeton University Press, 2013), ‘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) and his latest ones are 'Another World is Possible: how to reignite social and political imagination' (Hurst/Oxford University Press, 2022) and 'Prophets at a tangent: how art shapes social imagination' (Cambridge University Press, 2023).  His books have been translated into many languages including Chinese, Arabic, Korean, Russian, Malay, Italian, Punjabi, Turkish, German, Japanese, French, Romanian and Greek.  More information on these and other books can be found in the books section of this site.  

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Geoff has given TED talks on the future economy, happiness and education (these and others can be found in the videos section of this site).  He was knighted in the Queen's Birthday Honours in 2020.

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