Category: Archive

For a few happy seconds, it seems like nothing has really changed: then Wile E. Coyote looks down and sees that he has run over a cliff edge and is about to suffer a nasty fall. That sequence, from the Road Runner cartoons, keeps appearing as we look into the Philanthrocapitalism crystal ball in search […]

The Philanthro Crystal Ball worked pretty well last year. What is our oracle predicting for 2016 in the world of philanthrocapitalism? CRSPR, ISIS, Data for Good & Refugees This year, we expect to see leading philanthrocapitalist thinkers wrestle with the implications for society of the powerful new gene editing technology, CRSPR; with what the private […]

This has been a bumper year for books related to philanthrocapitalism, including some terrific tomes on philanthropy and social entrepreneurship, as well as others focused on topics that should be of interest to anyone trying to innovate a better world. Here, in no particular order, is a selection of the best of 2015: Getting Beyond […]

This is going to be a big year for philanthrocapitalism, not least because of the need to agree new goals for the world to replace the expiring Millennium Development Goals. It is there that we start our annual crystal ball gazing: Battle of the Goals Expect a mighty struggle over what should be included in […]

Eighty years ago today (4th January) the economist Simon Kuznets presented a report to the US Congress on a new measure of economic activity to help policy-makers to find a way out of the Great Depression. That measure, Gross Domestic Product (GDP), has today become the standard yardstick of how a country is doing. Today […]

The start of the New Year means that it is time, yet again, to gaze into our philanthrocrystal ball and make our annual predictions. Judge for yourself how well we did last year; not bad, we think. But we are hoping to do even better in 2014 with these forecasts: Michael Bloomberg versus Bill Gates No […]

2013 was another strong year for books on themes central to philanthrocapitalism. These were our 10 favourites, in no particular order: The Business Solution to Poverty: Designing Products and Services for Three Billion New Customers by Paul Polak and Mal Warwick. If you believe that business rather than government aid offers the best route for the […]

Caring is easy. Making a difference is hard. This perennial problem faced by anyone trying to make the world a better place is felt most acutely in the fight against extreme poverty. International aid is beset by accusations that a decent hunk of what we spend trying to feed the starving, give kids an education, […]

New York is often described as the World’s Capital City, primarily because it is the headquarters of capitalism. Certainly this week, the last full week in September each year, as hundreds of leaders and thousands of their flunkeys gridlock Manhattan, it is easy to believe that this is the global capital – though what is […]

Partnership is all the rage nowadays in the world of development. Yet behind the consensual language of collaboration lies an uneasy relationship between state and private organisations, based on their very different attitudes and cultures. The worlds of business, philanthropic foundations and official donors have been evolving in parallel, and there is often misunderstanding of […]