Charlie Leadbeater is an ideas generator, strategic adviser and one of the most influential creative people in the world. He is former United Kingdom Prime Minister Tony Blair's favourite corporate thinker. The New York Times anointed Charlie’s idea, The Pro-Am Revolution, as one of the biggest global ideas of 2004.
In 2008, Spectator Magazine described him as "the wizard of the web". His most recent book “We Think; mass innovation not mass production” has been an Amazon bestseller and is about to be published in China, India, Japan, South Korea and elsewhere in Europe.
In 2002 he was listed by GQ magazine as one of the Most Powerful Men in the United Kingdom. In 2003 Accenture, the global management consultancy, ranked him one of the 30 top management thinkers in the world, and in 2007 the Financial Times ranked him the outstanding innovation expert in the UK.
He spent ten years working for the Financial Times between 1985 and 1995 where he was Labour Editor, covering industrial relations and training; Industrial Editor, leading a team of 15 writing about industries from cars and pharmaceuticals to telecommunications and construction and Tokyo Bureau Chief in charge of coverage of Japan, before becoming the paper’s Features Editor. Charlie writes for the Financial Times, The Guardian and Spectator magazine. In 1998 he won the prestigious David Watt Prize for journalism.
After the Financial Times he moved to the Independent where he became Assistant Editor in charge of where, together with Helen Fielding, he devised Bridget Jones’s Diary.
Since 1997 Charlie has been an adviser to the Downing Street Policy Unit and the Department of Trade and Industry on the Internet and the knowledge driven economy, helping to shape government policy across a number of fronts.
The vision statement he drafted for the Culture Online programme in 2001 predicted the web would become increasingly participative and collaborative.
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 also helped to draft the Science White Paper published in 2000, the Communications White Paper also published in 2000 and the Competitiveness White Paper published in 2001 and more recent government policy papers on innovation.
The UK Government has also turned to him for advice on policy issues ranging from health and education to climate change and culture.
Charlie has also advised the European Commission, working as a special adviser on competitiveness and the New Economy. In the run up to the EU’s Lisbon summit in Spring 2000, he wrote the draft report presented at the Lisbon summit: “The New Economy: The European Model.”
He brings a global perspective to innovation having researched in Silicon Valley, Sweden, Finland, China and India.
As a Senior Associate with the influential London think tank Demos he has led the Atlas of Ideas programme which is exploring the international dynamics of innovation. The Atlas programme thus far has produced reports on India, China, South Korea and Brazil. It is about to launch a multi-year programme looking at innovation in the Islamic world supported by the Islamic Development Bank.
Charlie is also a leading advisor to corporations on innovation and the impact of the web. He recently advised the BBC on its Charter Renewal strategy. Previously he was Strategy Advisor to Channel Four television on digital media and internet. He has also advised the Atlas Venture venture capital firm.
He has advised a long list of companies on innovation strategy, from Ericsson, Accenture, British Telecom, and Microsoft. He is a regular speaker at major corporate conferences: recent engagements include Tetra Pak, Vodafone, Cisco, Glaxo Smith Kline and Barclays
He is a senior research associate with Demos, the leading London think tank, a visiting Fellow at Oxford’s University Business School and a founder of Participle, the leading public services innovation agency, which is working with public sector agencies to create next generation public services.
Charlie is also a visiting fellow at the National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts, where he has championed ideas of open and user driven innovation.
Before publishing We Think he had written several acclaimed books and reports, including:
• The bestseller Living on Thin Air, published in 1998, which predicted the rise of the internet driven, knowledge economy.
• Up The Down Escalator, published in 2002, which predicted that the key political battle ground for the future would be between global pessimists and optimists.
• The Rise of the Social Entrepreneur, published in 1997, which was one of the first books to predict social entrepreneurs and social enterprise solutions to public problems would become more compelling. Social entrepreneurship has since become a global movement.
Charlie has also written extensively and influentially on the case for more personalised, participative approaches to education, most recently a report entitled What’s Next? 21 Ideas for 21st Century Education.
Charlie read Politics, Philosophy and Economics at Balliol College, Oxford. There he gained a Distinction in his first public examinations and left with a 1st Class Honours degree. After leaving university he worked on the influential current affairs programme Weekend World, between 1983 and 1985, before joining the Financial Times.