How Do We Measure Our Society?

You may not be inclined to enter this competition as it will require a significant commitment to deep thinking about difficult issues, but even without scribing your own entry it might be worthwhile keeping an eye on the results because the winners will undoubtedly bring some fresh ideas into focus.

Measures are vital In every area of our lives because ‘measurability’ is a major influence on the social actions our government will support. If we cannot measure a suggested action then it is unlikely to get support from any political party because governments and funding agencies are driven by statistics, they want quantitative results.

Too often the more soft ‘happiness index’ type data are ignored by those who have control over how we live, qualitative results are often perceived as too vague.

This is the brief for the competition;

“How would you design a new economic measure for global economies that fully acknowledges not only social and economic factors but the impact of creativity, entrepreneurship and digital skills? How should your new measure be used to improve the way we measure GDP in official statistics?”

http://www.letterone.com/media/news/2017/major-new-economics-competition-launched-100000-indigo-prize