Robin Murray (economist)

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Robin Murray (14 September 1940 – 29 May 2017) was an industrial and environmental economist. As a social entrepreneur, he advocated and implemented new forms of production and organization, based on principles of ecological sustainability, social justice, and democracy.^[1] He developed his thought through practical projects and experiments. A common thread throughout his work was how collaboration, rather than competition, could be a driving force behind economic development and provide the foundation for non-exploitative and egalitarian societies.

Robin Murray influenced how people eat, shop, and work, how we create and handle waste. He was an influential member of the democratic-socialist movement in Britain, playing a role in setting up organizations such as Twin and Twin Trading (an alternative trading and development organization from which emerged farmer-owned Fairtrade companies Cafédirect, Divine Chocolate and Liberation Nuts), the London Food Commission and The London Climate Change Agency. He also played a role as a policymaker, first as Chief Economic Advisor to the Greater London Council in the early 1980s and later in the 1990s in shaping London's waste strategy. While working on these practical initiatives he taught at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex, and later at the London School of Economics and Schumacher College. Over the years he published articles including those describing the concepts of post-Fordism, zero-waste and social innovation. He was awarded posthumously the Albert Medal of the Royal Society of Arts in October 2017, for "pioneering work in social innovation".^[2]