Approach
Find Archimedes' levers — and the right team to move the world.
Archimedes' lever principle
Archimedes said: Give me a lever long enough and a place to stand, and I will move the world. Our work is about finding those levers in society: changes that are feasible for a small group of people to pull off, but powerful enough to shift whole systems.
What “levers” look like in practice:
The bottleneck is political and social
The hardest problems left are not knowledge problems. As the political scientist, Francis Fukuyama explained in a recent article, Superintelligence isn’t Enough to solve the world’s problems, the problems are often in the people layer. As one example, the reason cities in parts of the developing world lack clean water is not a lack of knowledge of how to implement a municipal water supply.
Francis Fukuyama
Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
In software, the gap between ideas and implementation is small. In society, the frictions are large and the barriers are created by people, incentives, norms, and institutions. An ideal solution often runs against competing interests and real constraints.
A network model
The Center is a hub-and-spoke network. We start from the problem, then matchmake the people and papers to implement policies. When Zanzibar's new city needed land valuation expertise, we brought on the economists who had run exactly those field experiments with other governments. We amplify our collaborators' work and carry it through our policy pathways.
Inspired by networks like LSE's International Growth Centre, we aim to shape the policies that will determine human progress in the coming decades.
Built like a startup. Embedded in the real world.
Universities produce much of the research we build on, and many of our affiliates already work directly with governments. Our role is to bring researchers and practitioners together around specific problems, test ideas in schools, cities, and governments, and learn where they succeed or fail. We use data and theory driven discovery to identify bottlenecks and barriers to progress and how overcome them, and then try to test these in the world. If your theories don't work in the real world, they don't work at all.
Evaluation Criteria
Our reward function is Impact Return on Information, and Information Return on Investment. What do we need to know to change a system and how much will it cost to get that information? We take a portfolio approach. We expect to fail most of the time, but our successes should outweigh those failures. We want enough confidence in the timeframe real world constraints demand. A well-grounded direction in three months often beats a near-certain answer in three years.
We evaluate projects against 10 criteria designed to prioritize research that is testable, evidence-based, and actionable.
Project selection criteria (10-point checklist):
1: Theory completeness
What is the theory and how complete is it?
2: Current knowledge
What do we know and how confident are we?
3: World-change potential
Why does this matter compared to other things we could do: what changes in the world if we conduct this research? What happens if we don't?
4: Method fit
Why is this the best way to get a sufficiently convincing answer?
5: Decision readiness
What complementary evidence is needed before acting?
6: Theory of change
What’s the causal pathway from action to outcome?
7: System effects
How does it positively and negatively affect the system and connected systems? What are the externalities and spillovers? Over what timeframe? Can we course correct?
8: Portability
Can insights apply across contexts? How do you know?
9: Feasibility
Is it politically feasible, economically viable, and aligned with constraints?
10: Speed
Can we deliver timely, implementable recommendations?
How funding works
We are currently actively seeking funding of two kinds:
Core philanthropy funds CHP as the engine that connects, matchmakes, and scales.
Initiative gifts fund specific projects, flowing to fieldwork through our network partners. These will need to be discussed with the relevant project leads and researchers.
From research to policy, by design
We don’t hope that results reach decision-makers. We’ve built the pathways to get the necessary information to the right people. Our work connects to global governance and implementation through two primary pathways:
Why philanthropy unlocks the approach
Philanthropic support enables us to identify promising interventions, assemble teams, and test ideas in practice. Core funding supports the work that connects projects and helps useful findings lead to action.
Your support enables:
Faster, more ambitious problem-solving that keeps pace with technological change
A solutions-centered pipeline of talent and operators (not just researchers)
A year-round program translating insights into policy and action