Explore
Search results
American pro sports make a lot of money. Had it not been for the pandemic, the industry in North America was projected to generate $75.7 billion per year in revenue, a tally that includes ticket sales, television contracts, concessions, and advertising. Less easy to calculate — but also significant — is the impact of sports on communities. Sports have a profoundly positive...
Community health workers bring lifesaving care to hard-to-reach locations. More than one billion people inhabit areas so remote that they lack any access to healthcare, but not too remote to trigger fast-moving epidemics. Enter community health workers, who can detect disease outbreaks, identify malnutrition and malaria, and provide basic primary care. Once operating large...
With the power of a text message, the advice of a health worker fits in the palm of your hand. With innovative entrepreneurship, care becomes accessible where it previously was not. With the skill of a midwife, the pregnant woman in need of a champion thrives. Health systems may be complex, but what powers them is simple—the human beings at their backbone who are critical...
Through the rise of European populism — from Brexit in the West to Orban in the East, from the Swedish far right in the North to the Italy's Northern League in the South — European politics and economics have been completely altered by the emergence and strengthening of populist movements. But what are the economics behind the erosion of the centre in Europe and where is i...
Policy makers and economists have much to say about invigorating the country’s economic prospects and productivity. What might leaders of the US business community advise, were they to write a memo to the next president?
Jerome Adams, the US surgeon general and the nation's doctor, joins Patrick Harker, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, in conversation. The Federal Reserve researches and works to help strengthen local economies in communities across the country. Through its Economic Growth and Mobility Project, the Philadelphia Fed focuses on turning research into acti...
The award-winning economist Mariana Mazzucato has been called the “world’s scariest economist.” Why? She challenges us to reconsider capitalism as it exists today. Focusing on innovation-led, inclusive, and sustainable growth, Mazzucato examines the critical — and misunderstood — role that governments play in fostering innovation. Her latest book, The Value of Everything,...
Meet three disruptive business leaders — all part of the Aspen Global Leadership Network — who drive significant economic value by leveraging emerging technologies to create sustainable, inclusive, and efficient business models in drug delivery, banking, and community-focused finance. Putting values-based leadership first, they address societal needs and drive economic gro...
The Aspen Challenge presents three high school teams from Philadelphia and one team from Chicago who developed brilliant solutions to issues they see plaguing their communities. See these young change-makers take to the stage to prove that effective community solutions can be created at any age. Learn how Wendell Philips High School is improving police relations and violen...
The unemployment rate is at its lowest in decades and the economy is booming, yet millions of working families are struggling to gain a foothold in the American Dream. The Aspen Institute's Ascend program catalyzes innovation from the ground up: forward-thinking community organizations, state policymakers, and philanthropists making bold partnerships to create lasting secu...
The resignation of Theresa May and the subsequent victory of Nigel Farage’s new Brexit Party in the EU Parliament elections paint a portrait of an extremely polarized United Kingdom, with deep divides between those who favor Farage’s hardline stance toward Europe and those who favor a re-do on Brexit. What’s at stake for the United Kingdom, the European Union, and the glob...
Most of us know the entrepreneurial success stories of places like Silicon Valley, the Research Triangle, and Boston. But if great ideas are everywhere, why aren’t entrepreneurial businesses thriving worldwide, in places large and small? What can we do to promote entrepreneurship in unusual places, and make sure the prosperity-creating and problem-solving power of entrepre...
The economic prosperity of the United States of tomorrow depends in large part on how we invest in human capital today. It’s not news that to continue to compete, we need a workforce that is better educated, more technology-driven, and global. Who will be the engines of future economic growth and what are we doing to capitalize on their momentum? While much attention is be...
As the nation’s top doctor, the US surgeon general is uniquely positioned to use his bully pulpit to drive Americans toward healthy decision-making. Jerome Adams is the 20th person to serve in that capacity, where he promotes wellness strategies, warns the public against emerging health hazards, and is a leader of the 6,500-person Public Health Service Commissioned Corps,...
It’s easy, in the United States, to talk about China as a monolith. But the reality couldn’t be further from the truth. As in the West, Chinese society is divided by inequality, geography, gender, and generation — after all, China is home to more than one billion people. As we seek to understand China’s role in the 21st century, we do well to consider where change is comin...
Worried about the health of our democracy? There’s a bright light. Nation-wide the social sector is expanding to include NGOs led by a new generation, entrepreneurs building companies that offer a social return, networks of change-makers who share a profession or passion, and philanthropies taking many new forms. Together they’re tackling hard problems at the community and...
The world faces many challenges—from climate change to political instability to widening inequality—that transcend borders and impact us all. If today’s young people are to be equipped with the imagination and skillsets to tackle these growing threats, educational excellence is key. How do we build successful education systems at scale and in every community? And what expe...
The Aspen Challenge presents teams of high school students from New Orleans and Miami who have developed innovative solutions to issues that have impacted their communities. See these young changemakers take to the stage to prove that entrepreneurial community solutions can be created at any age. Learn how Benjamin Franklin High School at the Katherine Johnson Campus is ta...
Featured Ideas Festival Scholars include Lashon Amado, María Teresa Kumar, Michael McAfee, and Eshauna Smith. Fueling today’s highly charged political environment is the growing sense that opportunity is elusive and inequality is rising because our national economic policies unfairly disadvantage the middle class. Millions of Americans believe they’re pawns in a game they...
A large, unsettling question looming among Washington regulators, lawmakers, and now state Attorney’s General across the US is whether the time has come to break up the big five: Facebook, Amazon, Google, Netflix, Apple. Have these powerful tech companies, once the darlings of the start-up community not twenty years past, become so dominant that they are stifling competiti...