In the business world, organisations can become huge and change the world directly as their goods or services become mainstream. In civil society, this is much rarer, partly because capital is so much harder to raise, partly because of the challenges of ethos and culture, and partly because love and compassion are much harder to scale up than cars

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An Idea Machine is a self-sustaining organism that contains all the parts needed to turn ideas into outcomes:- It starts with a distinct ideology, which becomes a memetic engine that drives the formation of a community- The community’s members start generating ideas amongst themselves- Eventually, they form an agenda, which articulates how the ideo... See more

Idea machines are not new, but the form in which they appear is changing. For most of the 20th century, the home for idea machines was foundations, first popularized by John D. Rockefeller in the 1910s.

In a world where there are many wealthy people, then, and many more types of wealthy people, there are also more idea machines, and a more liquid idea marketplace. If you’re an “idea operator”, instead of having to beg one of two funders to take your idea seriously, you now have many more potential options to shop around to.