Michael Dunlop Young, Baron Young of Dartington,, was a British sociologist, social activist and politician. He was an urbanist of different dimensions such as academic researcher, polemicist and institution-builder.
Matthew Taylor is a British former political strategist and current Chief Executive of the NHS Confederation, having previously led the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) in the United Kingdom between 2006 and 2021. In 2005, he was appointed by incumbent Prime Minister Tony Blair as head of the Number 10 Policy Unit. He is a writer, public speaker and broadcaster who has been a panellist on BBC Radio 4's The Moral Maze since 2008. In October 2016, he was appointed Chair of the Review of Modern Employment established by Prime Minister Theresa May; the Taylor Review report Good Work was published in July 2017.
Nesta is a British foundation, registered as a charity, which supports innovation.
The Young Foundation is a not-for-profit, organisation driving community research and social innovation.
Social innovations are new social practices that aim to meet social needs in a better way than the existing solutions, resulting from - for example - working conditions, education, community development or health. These ideas are created with the goal of extending and strengthening civil society. Social innovation includes the social processes of innovation, such as open source methods and techniques and also the innovations which have a social purpose—like activism, crowdfunding, time-based currency, telehealth, cohousing, virtual volunteering, microcredit, or distance learning. There are many definitions of social innovation, however, they usually include the broad criteria about social objectives, social interaction between actors or actor diversity, social outputs, and innovativeness. Different definitions include different combinations and different number of these criteria. Transformative social innovation not only introduces new approaches to seemingly intractable problems, but is successful in changing the social institutions that created the problem in the first place.
Sir Anthony Francis Seldon is a British educator and contemporary historian. As an author, he is known in part for his political biographies of consecutive British Prime Ministers, John Major, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, David Cameron, Theresa May and Boris Johnson. He was the 13th master (headmaster) of Wellington College, one of Britain's co-educational independent boarding schools, and is the current Head Master of Epsom College. He was vice-chancellor of the University of Buckingham from 2015 to 2020, when he was succeeded by James Tooley. In 2009, he set up The Wellington Academy, the first state school to carry the name of its founding independent school. Before that, he was head of Brighton College.
The Prime Minister's Strategy Unit was a unit based in the UK Cabinet Office between 2002 and 2010. The Strategy Unit was established by the former Prime Minister Tony Blair, forming one part of a more streamlined centre of government along with a Delivery Unit, a Policy Unit and a Communications Unit.
Demos is a cross party think tank based in the United Kingdom with a cross-party political viewpoint. Founded in 1993, Demos works with a number of partners including government departments, public sector agencies and charities. It specialises in public policymaking in a range of areas - from education and skills to health and housing.
Charles David Powell, Baron Powell of Bayswater, is a British diplomat and businessman who served as a key foreign policy adviser to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher during the 1980s.
Tom Bentley is an author and policy analyst based in Australia. Bentley was born and educated in the United Kingdom, where he gained a Bachelor of Arts degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics from the University of Oxford.
Roger John Liddle, Baron Liddle is a British political adviser and consultant who is principally known for being Special Adviser on European matters to the former Prime Minister Tony Blair, and President of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso. He also worked together with Peter Mandelson on books outlining the political philosophy of the Labour Party under Blair's leadership. He is the co-chair of the international think tank Policy Network and was Pro-Chancellor of the University of Lancaster until 2020.
Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU) is a research centre based at University of Sussex in Falmer, near Brighton, UK. It focuses on long term transformative change, science policy and innovation across different sectors, societies and structures. It was one of the first interdisciplinary research centres in the field of science and technology policy and at the forefront of the development of innovation as an academic discipline. Alongside internationally renowned research, SPRU also offers a range of MSc courses, as well as PhD research degrees.
Thinkers in Residence is a program in Adelaide, South Australia, designed to bring leaders in their fields to work with the South Australian community and government in developing new ideas and approaches to problem-solving, and to promote South Australia. Initiated by the state government in 2000 as Adelaide Thinkers in Residence and a global first, it was run by the South Australian government from 2003 to 2012, when funding ceased.
Action for Happiness (AfH) is a global movement and charity based in the United Kingdom. It aims to increase the happiness in the world by bringing together people and supporting them to take practical action to build a happier society. The patron of Action for Happiness is the Dalai Lama. The movement has over 270,000 members in 190 countries.
The Centre for Science and Policy (CSaP) at the University of Cambridge exists to improve links between academics and policy makers. Its main focus is on improving policy makers' access to scientific and engineering research, both to allow policy makers to make the best use of the available scientific evidence, and ensure that academics are better informed about public policy. The Centre attempts to achieve this goal by running three programmes:
Francesca Bria is an Italian innovation economist, digital policy expert, and information technologist working at the intersection of technology, geopolitics, economics and society, who lectures at various universities and is a consultant amongst others to the United Nations and the European Commission.
Robin Murray was an industrial and environmental economist. As a social entrepreneur, he advocated and implemented new forms of production and organization, based on principles of ecological sustainability, social justice, and democracy. He developed his thought through practical projects and experiments. A common thread throughout his work was how collaboration, rather than competition, could be a driving force behind economic development and provide the foundation for non-exploitative and egalitarian societies.
Hetan Shah is the chief executive of the British Academy and the chair of Our World in Data. In 2024 he was appointed by the UK Parliament to the Board of the National Audit Office, the UK's spending watchdog. He is a visiting professor at King's College London and a Fellow of Birkbeck, University of London. He served as executive director of the Royal Statistical Society from 2011 to 2019.
Demos Helsinki is a Finnish think tank. Their main research focus is on governance and societal innovation for the development of a democratic and environmentally sustainable society. The organisation receives a mix of public and private funding. When it was founded in 2005, Demos Helsinki became Finland's first independent think tank, described as a "front-runner" amongst think tanks in the Nordic by the Scandinavian Political Studies journal. Internationally, Demos Helsinki remains one of Finland's most prominent advocates of social change, receiving regular coverage from notable English-language newspapers, including The Guardian, The New York Times, and The Economist.
