The Institutional Capital Research Programme
Understanding How Societies Reproduce Prosperity
The Institutional Capital Research Programme 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 Research Programme 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.
Institutional Capability Dynamics
Formation
How institutional capability is created through investment, education, governance and organisational development.
Conversion
How institutional resources are transformed into strategic action and measurable outcomes.
Mobilisation
How distributed capabilities are coordinated across organisational and sectoral boundaries.
Reproduction
How critical capabilities are preserved and reconstructed through leadership, organisational and generational transitions.
Depreciation
How institutional capability gradually deteriorates through fragmentation, underinvestment and loss of knowledge.
Renewal
How institutional capability is rebuilt through innovation, reform, institutional entrepreneurship and adaptive governance.
A New Research Agenda
The Institutional Capital Research Programme 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.
Founding Document
The Institutional Capital Declaration
The project's founding statement on why prosperity is not inherited but reproduced — and why the capacity of institutions to transform resources into capability is the defining challenge of our time.
Read the Declaration →Founder
Dr. Glenn Agung Hole
Associate Professor of Entrepreneurship, Economics and Management
University of South-Eastern Norway
Founder & Director, The Institutional Capital Research Programme
Researching the intersection of institutions, capital, entrepreneurship and societal resilience