Charles Leadbeater works with entrepreneurs, governments, cities and foundations around the world to promote innovation with purpose. His focus is on systems innovation to create the systems of the future – for energy, food, mobility, ageing and care - to support more sustainable, inclusive growth. His is the co-lead of the Rockwool Foundation’s Systems Innovation Initiative based in Copenhagen, where he and a team are developing new frameworks, methods and tools for deliberate, practical system-wide innovation. As a co-founder of the systems innovation agency Alt Now he is developing practical programmes for systems innovation, involving cohorts of participants over several months, to take on big shared challenges, ranging from the future of work to mental health and ageing. Charles was an adviser to the Downing Street Policy Unit and the Department of Trade and Industry on the knowledge driven economy. He drafted the UK Government’s White Paper – Our Competitive Future: Building the Knowledge Driven Economy published in 1998, one of the first policy papers in the world to argue that advanced economies would become increasingly dependent upon innovation for growth. He went on to advise a range of government departments on long term strategy. Over the past ten years he has published a string of influential reports on the changes needed in education to equip students with the agency needed for a world of rapid transitions. In Learning from the Extremes he explored how way social entrepreneurs are using technology to create new approaches to learning in the poorest parts of the developing world. The Problem Solvers examines the skills young people will need to thrive in an uncertain, creative and entrepreneurial economy in which machines with artificial intelligence may well be capable of doing many routine jobs. He was one of the first people in the world to write about social entrepreneurship in his 1997 report The Rise of the Social Entrepreneur. He is the author of several internationally renowned books, among them Living on Thin Air, which explores the rise of the knowledge driven economy and We-Think: mass innovation not mass production, which examines how the web was enabling creative collaboration across a wide range of fields. His book, The Frugal Innovator, is an account of how lean, simple, clean and social self-help innovations are providing new solutions in health, energy, water and housing in the developing world. Charles has advised cities and regions extensively on how to promote economic, cultural and civic innovation to create more inclusive growth. As a visiting Professor at the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose he advised the British government and the European Union on how to organize innovation to meet big societal challenges through his work on a commission on Mission Oriented Innovation. In a speaking career spanning 20 years Charles has spoken to audiences convened by many of the largest companies in the world on every continent.His TED talks on innovation have been watched by millions of people. Accenture, the management consultancy ranked him one of the top management thinkers in the world, and the Financial Times said he the outstanding innovation expert in the UK. He is a past winner of the prestigious David Watt Prize for journalism. He is a Life Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts in London.