Ideas Matter
Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come. Since its founding, the Berggruen Institute has forged new conceptual frameworks to meet the challenges and harness the opportunities of the arriving future. As an independent think and action tank, we have the autonomy to step outside the usual lanes, reaching beyond academic disciplines to bridge social divides, partisan dispositions, and cultural boundaries. This cross-fertilization, joined with a unique capacity to connect and convene a diverse global network of relationships, gives us the ability to spread actionable ideas and influence events.
History
In 2010, Nicolas Berggruen and Nathan Gardels sat down with a group of scholars, business leaders, and political veterans in California to contemplate the economic and political stresses caused by the global financial crisis, the widespread perception of failing political institutions and Western democracies, and the question of how China’s rise would affect international cooperation and governance in the 21st century. The ideas that emerged led to the formation of the Berggruen Institute (BI)—a global network of thinkers that devise systemic solutions to the world’s challenges.
BI’s program focuses on themes such the Renovating Democracy, Universal Capital, The Planetary, and Future Humans, all of which together ask how we should rethink our governing institutions and systems to best support flourishing relations between humans, technology, and the planet. The BI’s cross-pollination of thematic work also has led to the incubation of Antikythera, a new program exploring the impact of planetary-scale computation.
Diverse and purposeful, our activities work to foster dialogue and the development of ideas, from keeping open channels of communication through exchanges between Chinese President Xi Jinping and our global council of former heads of government, tech executives, and global intellectuals to promoting citizens’ assemblies in Europe. In California, we are working to integrate deliberative institutions into the direct democracy process and to engage leading Silicon Valley entrepreneurs with the state’s governor in the idea of sharing wealth in the digital age through universal basic capital.
In the cultural realm, we are networking frontier technologists with Hollywood auteurs and science fiction authors who will shape the next narrative. Similarly, the Future Humans program placed philosophers and artists in tech labs to interact with the engineers of innovation.
Our China Center hosts dialogues that examine AI from the non-Western perspective of Daoism, Buddhism and Confucianism while our new center for European activities in Venice will gather policymakers and political thinkers, artists and architects, authors and scholars, scientists, and technologists to explore Europe as planetary laboratory.
Publishing is a crucial tool in Berggruen Institute’s exploration of these themes. BI launched the digital platform WorldPost in 2014, which delved into geopolitical power shifts in the post-American global order; how to renovate governance and democracy in the digital age; and advances in genetics, biosciences and artificial intelligence through a big-picture, societal lens. This content first appeared on HuffPost and then in 2018,The Washington Post exclusively published WorldPost op-eds, features, and videos. Next, BI partnered with the University of California Press on the book series “Great Transformations,” which has included the recent Renovating Democracy: Governing in the Age of Globalization and Digital Capitalism by our founders Nicolas Berggruen and Nathan Gardels. BI’s latest and celebrated platform is the independently published Noema Magazine, an award-winning magazine which shares new perspectives and synthesizes ideas from BI’s growing community of thought leaders.
Wanting to commit more robustly to thinkers whose ideas have shaped our world, the Berggruen Institute initiated the annual Berggruen Prize for Philosophy and Culture. This $1 million award is chosen by an independent jury and given to a thinker whose ideas have led us to find direction, wisdom, and improved self-understanding in a transforming world, and celebrates the significance of philosophy to society. Laureates have included Charles Taylor (2016); Onora O’Neill (2017); Martha Nussbaum (2018); Ruth Bader Ginsburg (2019); Paul Farmer (2020); Peter Singer (2021); and Kojin Karatani (2022).
The BI also supports younger, emerging thinkers—some with bold, relatively untested ideas—through its Berggruen Fellowship and programmatic incubation. Since 2015, Berggruen Fellows have published more than 50 books; written op-eds for media including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Financial Times; contributed articles to the Institute’s Noema Magazine; authored white papers; provided congressional testimony; and served as expert consultants to the UN, the WHO, and other governing bodies with global impact. The BI’s academic fellowship partners have included Harvard, NYU, Oxford, Peking University, Tsinghua University, Stanford, University of Southern California, and Università Ca’ Foscari.
Seeking space where scholars can work and reflect, and where thinkers, leaders, and experts can convene, the Berggruen Institute is creating a network of physical centers. From its flagship office in downtown Los Angeles, BI went on to open a China Center at Peking University and a European center at the Casa dei Tre Oci in Venice, Italy. BI is currently developing a new Los Angeles headquarters, Monteverdi, a scholarly campus in the Santa Monica Mountains.
