The Club of Rome A Case Study of Institutional Innovation

Abstract

The Club of Rome had its origin in 1967 when Dr Aurelio Peccei, an Italian industrialist, met the present author, a British scientist. They agreed on what later became the central concern of the Club of Rome: to find solutions to the tangle of interacting problems, now facing all mankind. So far the Club's greatest impact on world opinion was the report it commissioned from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Limits to Growth. The interdisciplinary concept is predominant in this and the Club's five subsequent reports. Regular meetings of Club members with Heads of States and other high officials is a further important activity; all these aspects are here fully reviewed. Like its small and local precursor, the Lunar Society of Binningham, two hundred years ago, the international Club of Rome derives its strength from its eminent membership of private citizens, working together as a catalyst and a spur to the world's conscience without budget, organization or constitution. They desire no political power nor do they invoke any new ideology.