Global Social Competitiveness Index Initiative, Inc.

Imagine if countries competed with each other to create the best environment in which social innovation can happen…

The Global Social Competitiveness Index Initiative (GSCII) is a new organization that was formed to measure and compare the capacity of countries - government, the private sector and civil society, working together - to innovate and scale up solutions to the social and environmental problems they face. The Global Social Competitiveness Index (GSCI) will measure countries' potential to deliver not just economic growth but sustainable improvement in the lives of their citizens. Its goals are to spur discussion and research on how to best tackle social problems and to drive social innovation higher up on the political agenda, making the world a better place to do good.

Every country wants to be prosperous, happy and environmentally sustainable. Yet the current tools available to policymakers to help them understand how to achieve this goal are either too narrow - measuring only a nation's ability to create economic growth and ignoring other, equally important, measures of well-being - or too static - measuring only what a nation has achieved so far rather than its potential.

The GSCI model proposes measuring social competitiveness based on four drivers: 1) the extent to which institutions - government, business and civil society - are trustworthy partners that are willing and able to make constructive contributions to solving social and environmental problems; 2) the presence in society of the conditions that facilitate joint action toward solving future problems; 3) the potential to find innovative solutions to social and environmental problems; and 4) the capacity to scale up promising innovations.

The GSCI concept was developed under the auspices of the World Economic Forum’s Global Redesign Initiative with the leadership of Matthew Bishop, New York Bureau Chief of The Economist and author of Philanthrocapitalism: How Giving Can Save the World. The Board of Directors of the Global Social Competitiveness Index Initiative comprises Chairman Brizio Biondi-Morra, President of the AVINA Foundation; President and CEO Roberto Artavia, Chairperson of Viva Trust and of Fundación Latinoamérica Posible; Sally Osberg, President of the Skoll Foundation; and Alvaro Rodríguez Arregui, President of Compartamos Bank.