By Ryan Bellinson and Daniel Wainwright The cost of living crisis has made daily life untenably challenging and stressful for Britain’s working and middle classes. Parents are having to make impossible decisions to forgo meals for themselves so that their children can eat. …

By Ahmad Bismillah (GLA), Christos Grammenos (IIPP) & Lidia Piccinino (IIPP) In April 2022, UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP) MPA students entered the University of Oxford’s Said Business School’s “Map the system” competition, exploring London’s innovation ecosystem and the role of the Greater London Authority (GLA) as…

By Katie Kedward I t has been a fortnight since the conclusion of the 27th Conference of the Parties (COP27) talks on climate change in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. Following an eleventh-hour U-turn by representatives from the European Commission, the final agreement succeeded in committing to a ‘Loss and Damages’ financing…

By Craig Berry With every passing moment, the chances that, by cutting CO₂ emissions alone, humanity will reach ‘net zero’ by 2050 and/or restrict the global average temperature rise to 1.5°C, seem ever more remote. …

By Katie Kedward and Helen Tunnicliffe This blog is a follow up to the event ‘Sustainable to regenerative’. The event is part of IIPP’s Research Seminar 2022–23 series. The recording of the event can be watched above. Sustainability has long been a somewhat vague buzzword amongst those seeking to…

By Rainer Kattel, Wolfgang Drechsler and Erkki Karo What would a world without quantum mechanics look like? There would be no computers, no iPads, no mobile phones and certainly no satellites. Most 20th and 21st century electronics and, obviously, all the content that runs on them, from space communication to…

By Iacopo Gronchi Between January and April 2022, the World Bank’s energy price index rose by 26.3%. In Europe and the US this affected low-income households the most, and in Asia it culminated in the occupation of Sri Lanka’s presidential palace. These images may be reminiscent of the 1970s oil…

By David Eaves, Heidi Uchiyama and Rosemary Evans From 12–14 October 2022, digital consultancy Public Digital and UCL’s Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP) co-hosted the 5th annual Digital Services Convening which was attended by experts in digital from around the world. Since its inception, the Digital Services Convening…

By Josh Ryan-Collins and Ilan Strauss The five major Big Tech firms are all U.S. companies. However, their reach and impact is global. Not only do they earn the majority of their revenues from abroad but their business models establish a competitive norm which European start-ups and tech companies must…