Institutional Capital Project
Understanding How Societies Reproduce Prosperity
The Institutional Capital Project explores one of the most important yet overlooked questions of our time:
Why do some societies remain prosperous, innovative and resilient across generations, while others struggle to sustain success?
For decades, policymakers, economists and researchers have focused on economic capital, human capital and technological capital as the primary drivers of development.
Yet history suggests that prosperity cannot be explained by these factors alone.
Societies do not survive simply because they accumulate wealth.
They endure because they possess the capacity to create, transfer and reproduce something deeper:
Institutional Capital.
Institutional Capital consists of the trust, norms, leadership, entrepreneurial capacity, mentorship systems, institutional memory and civic responsibility that enable societies to adapt, innovate and remain resilient over time.
The central proposition of the Institutional Capital Project is simple:
Prosperity is not inherited. It is reproduced.
Nations, regions, organisations and communities thrive when they successfully reproduce institutional capital across generations. When this process weakens, even economically successful societies can experience stagnation, fragmentation and decline.
The project seeks to develop a new framework for understanding the relationship between entrepreneurship, institutions, innovation, mentorship and long-term societal resilience.
Drawing on insights from entrepreneurship research, institutional economics, geoeconomics, leadership studies and post-conflict development, the project aims to advance a broader understanding of how societies build and sustain prosperity over time.
Core Research Themes
Institutional Capital
Understanding the hidden foundations that enable societies to remain stable, adaptive and prosperous.
Strategic Reproduction
Exploring how institutional capital is transferred, renewed and reproduced across generations.
Entrepreneurship and Societal Resilience
Investigating entrepreneurship not only as economic activity, but as a mechanism for institutional renewal and long-term stability.
Mentorship and Knowledge Transfer
Examining how experience, values and institutional memory are transmitted between generations.
Geoeconomics and National Competitiveness
Understanding how institutional capacity shapes economic performance, innovation and strategic resilience.
A New Research Agenda
The Institutional Capital Project is developing a new perspective on prosperity, resilience and societal development.
Rather than asking how societies accumulate wealth, we ask a different question:
How do societies reproduce the institutional foundations that make prosperity possible in the first place?
Answering that question may be one of the defining intellectual challenges of the twenty-first century.
Founder
Dr. Glenn Agung Hole
Associate Professor of Entrepreneurship, Economics and Management
University of South-Eastern Norway
Founder & Director, Institutional Capital Project
Researching the intersection of institutions, capital, entrepreneurship and societal resilience