I’ve written a book on exploratory social science for OUP which will come out in the second half of next year It extends various other writings I’ve done (eg for the New Institute in Hamburg or a recent piece on an ‘ARIA for social sciences’) and the annual lecture for the UK Academy of Social Science and at Copenhagen University. Here is a short summary. Introduction Should the social sciences…
I’ve written a book trying to put in one place lessons about what works in public innovation, from structuring teams to finance, experiments to evidence, citizen engagement to technology, systems to adoption. It draws on examples from across the world and across history and aims to help practitioners as well as researchers. It will be published next year by Edward Elgar. This is an extract from…
In ancient China, everyone had to bow before the emperor, and ordinary citizens also had to ‘kow-tow’ to officials and magistrates: prostrating the body and touching the forehead to the ground. The kow-tow was an act of humiliation in front of power. It symbolized the relationship of the winners to the losers, the strong to the weak. Many assumed that the know-tow was a thing of the past, that we…
‘ An enthusiastic philosopher… had constructed a very satisfactory theory on some subject or other and was not a little proud of it. "But the facts, my dear fellow," said his friend, "the facts do not agree with your theory."—"Don't they?" replied the philosopher, shrugging his shoulders, "then, tant pis pour les faits;"—so much the worse for the facts!” ― Charles Mackay, Extraordinary Popular…
A few years ago I wrote a blog with Vincent Straub - setting out in some detail how data governance could evolve, with a proliferation of data trusts of different kinds to handle everything from health to financial data, research to consumer data. It proposed an alternative to data either being dominated by a handful of big companies, mainly from the US, or by the state. I assumed that something…
How should we understand what is good or bad about growth? What theoretical and practical frameworks are useful in grasping the key choices? My interest in this question was first sparked some 25 years ago when I became involved in what was coming to be called the circular economy – seeing the economy not as I had learned about it in university, but rather as a metabolism that takes in vast…
Is it possible for an organisation, a system or a society, to become wiser? If so, how could we make this real and not just a vague invocation — like wishing people would be kinder or more loving? In this paper I share some answers. I suggest what might be missing in much writing about wisdom and I suggest an alternative framework that cuts across different disciplines, including philosophy,…
I've written an overview of how skills for running governments are provided around the world - by governments' own colleges, universities and online - and how this provision might be improved. The paper describes the history of training from ancient China onwards and the main forms it now takes. It suggests 10 areas where change may be needed and goes onto discuss how skills are learned,…
[this post was first published a day after the election of a new Labour government in the UK in July 2024. It still seems quite relevant.] I’ve worked with politicians and bureaucrats in many countries, through periods of triumph and disaster, changes of administration, wild popularity and deep public distrust - including dozens of governments around the world (and pretty much all of the most…
Every government is, in reality, a flotilla of many departments, agencies, tiers rather than a single thing. But all aspire to greater coherence. ‘Whole of government’ approaches - that mobilise and align many ministries and agencies around a common challenge - have a long history: during major wars, and around attempts to digitize societies, to cut energy use, to reduce poverty and to respond to…
We are used to the idea that knowledge progresses, and that fields cumulate understanding over time. This is normal in science, medicine and many other fields. Each era knows the best knowledge of the past, and more. Each pioneer stands on the shoulders of those who came before them. And the more we combine different kinds of knowledge, the more knowledge as a whole accelerates forward. Such is a…
We live in a world full of lies, distortions and misinformation. Should we have rights to be told the truth, or at least not to be lied to? If a government issues a statistic, a report, or a warning to its citizens, should any rights guarantee that it’s based on the best available information? Should there be penalties if a company or a political party, knowingly lies? If a doctor gives you a…
Having worked in this space for several decades I'm often asked about the desirability and viability of states becoming creative, entrepreneurial and innovative. I'm generally an enthusiast for anything which brings life and imagination to the work of governments. But as I will show, the answers are not as obvious as they might seem. There is no doubt that public sectors can innovate – the…
This piece looks at the role of stories in social and political imagination, from analogy and metaphor to the universal patterns found in stories across the world. It suggests a common, paradoxical pattern in some of the most powerful progressive stories. These use what I call 'generative opposites'. They combine a promise of both return (to an idealised past) and advance (to an idealised future).…