George Gilder

Senior Fellow, Discovery Institute

Emerging technologies and business opportunity.

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Biography

George Gilder has an unerring eye for the technologies that will drive the next wave of economic growth and for the companies that are bringing these technologies to the market. He draws together equal parts science, business history, social analysis, and prediction to make sense of the important trends driving change in society and the economy.

This "Gilder effect" was one of the most potent forces in the stock market throughout the 1990s and companies continue to seek out the man whose vision has generated so much value.

He is chairman of Gilder Group, Inc. and a senior fellow at Seattle’s Discovery Institute, where he directs Discovery’s program on high Technology and Democracy.

Gilder is a contributing editor at Forbes, a frequent writer for major business publications and the author of several books on society, politics, and economics.

Gilder's most recent book is a updated edition of his bestseller Wealth & Poverty. Gilder compares America’s current economic challenges with her past economic problems–particularly those of the late 1970s.

His previous book is The Israel Test. The Israel test registers how you respond to people who excel in performance, achievement, innovation, or creativity: Do you resent and envy them, or do you imitate and admire them? And in economic terms: Do you regard their success as coming at your expense, or do you regard their success as creating new opportunities for you?

In The Silicon Eye, Gilder profiles a new imaging technology that promises to revolutionize, not just cameras, but computing itself. The book demonstrates Gilder’s legendary instinct for where technology is headed and where new value in the sector can be found.

George Gilder has had an extraordinary career as a thought leader in economics and public policy, emerging technologies and business innovation.

He studied under Henry Kissinger at Harvard and helped found Advance, a journal of political thought. He later returned to Harvard as a fellow at the Kennedy Institute of Politics and editor of the Ripon Forum. He has served as a speechwriter for several prominent officials and candidates, including Nelson Rockefeller, George Romney and Richard Nixon.

Mr. Gilder has had a long-time interest in the causes of poverty and its solutions. He’s written three books on the subject: Men and Marriage, Visible Man and the international bestseller Wealth and Poverty. He pioneered supply-side economics when he served as Chairman of the Lehrman Institute's Economic Roundtable, as Program Director for the Manhattan Institute, and as a frequent contributor to A.B. Laffer's economic reports and the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal.

Wealth and Poverty was a spirited promotion of unfettered entrepreneurship as the best hope of the poor and was an international bestseller. The book began a long-held interest in entrepreneurship and, especially, in hi-tech innovation. In 1986, President Reagan gave George Gilder the White House Award for Entrepreneurial Excellence. George's book The Spirit of Enterprise also praises the entrepreneurs who drive economic growth.

George has written several books on emerging technologies and technology sectors, including quantum electronics (Microcosm) as well as computers and telecommunications (Life After Television, Telecosm, and, most recently, The Silicon Eye).

Mr. Gilder publishes the Gilder Technology Report and produces the annual Gilder/Forbes Telecosm Conference, both of which offer elite analysis of ascending and disruptive technologies affecting the management and investment decisions of investors, engineers and entrepreneurs.

Credentials

  • Founding Editor, Forbes ASAP
  • Former Chairman, Lehrman Institute’s Economic Roundtable
  • Former Program Director, Manhattan Institute
  • Founder, Advance journal of political thought
  • Fellow, International Engineering Consortium, 1996
  • Fellow, Kennedy Institute of Politics
  • Speechwriter, Nelson Rockefeller, George Romney & Richard Nixon
  • Recipient, White House Award for Entrepreneurial Excellence
  • Consultant to leaders of America's high-technology businesses

Books

Knowledge and Power

The Information Theory of Capitalism and How it is Revolutionizing our World

George Gilder

Ronald Reagan’s most-quoted living author — George Gilder — is back with an all-new paradigm-shifting theory of capitalism that will upturn conventional wisdom, just when our economy desperately needs a new direction.

America’s struggling economy needs a better philosophy than the college student's lament: "I can't be out of money, I still have checks in my checkbook!" We’ve tried a government spending spree, and we’ve learned it doesn’t work. Now is the time to rededicate our country to the pursuit of free market capitalism, before we’re buried under a mound of debt and unfunded entitlements. But how do we navigate between government spending that's too big to sustain and financial institutions that are "too big to fail?" In Knowledge and Power, George Gilder proposes a bold new theory on how capitalism produces wealth and how our economy can regain its vitality and its growth.

Gilder breaks away from the supply-side model of economics to present a new economic paradigm: the epic conflict between the knowledge of entrepreneurs on one side, and the blunt power of government on the other. The knowledge of entrepreneurs, and their freedom to share and use that knowledge, are the sparks that light up the economy and set its gears in motion. The power of government to regulate, stifle, manipulate, subsidize or suppress knowledge and ideas is the inertia that slows those gears down, or keeps them from turning at all.

One of the twentieth century’s defining economic minds has returned with a new philosophy to carry us into the twenty-first. Knowledge and Power is a must-read for fiscal conservatives, business owners, CEOs, investors, and anyone interested in propelling America’s economy to future success.

Regnery Publishing (June 10, 2013)

The Israel Test

Why the World's Most Besieged State is a Beacon of Freedom and Hope for the World Economy

George Gilder

In this book, George Gilder claims that the reason there is such hatred and crticism of the current state of Israel is because these critics are envious of Israel’s sudden rise as a world power. This, he claims, is an inherent quality of Judaism, which, “perhaps more than any other religion, favors capitalist activity and provides a rigorous moral framework for it.” Those who currently hate Israel’s economy, such as surrounding countries in the Middle East and Western European nations that are facing socialist decline, have failed the “Israel Test” because they seek to tear down this country’s success, and America’s ability and desire to defend Israel will define our future survival as a nation: “If Israel is destroyed,” he says, “capitalist Europe will likely die as well, and America, as the epitome of productive and creative capitalism spurred by Jews, will be in jeopardy.”

Encounter Books; Second Edition edition (October 23, 2012)

Wealth and Poverty

A New Edition for the Twenty-First Century

George Gilder

Hailed as “the guide to capitalism,” the New York Times bestseller Wealth and Poverty by George F. Gilder is one of the most famous economic books of all time and has sold more than one million copies since its first release. In this influential classic, Gilder explains and makes the case for supply-side economics, proves the moral superiority of free-market capitalism, and shows why supply-side economics are more effective at decreasing poverty than government-regulated markets.

Now, in this new and completely updated edition of Wealth and Poverty, Gilder compares America’s current economic challenges with her past economic problems — particularly those of the late 1970s — and explains why Obama’s big-government, redistributive policies are doing more harm than good for the poor.

Making the case that supply-side economics and free market policies are — and always will be — the answer to decreasing America’s poverty rate and increasing her prosperity, Wealth & Poverty offers solutions to America’s current economic problems and hope to those who fear that our best days are behind us.

Regnery Publishing; Second Edition edition (August 21, 2012)

The Israel Test

Israel is the crucial battlefield for Capitalism and Freedom in our time.

George Gilder

George Gilder's global best-seller Wealth and Poverty made the moral case for capitalism. Now Gilder makes the case for Israel, portraying a conflict of barbarism and envy against civilization and creativity.

Gilder reveals Israel as a leader of human civilization, technological progress, and scientific advance. Tiny Israel stands behind only the United States in its contributions to the hi-tech economy. Israel has become the world's paramount example of the blessings of freedom.

Hatred of Israel, like anti-Semitism through history, arises from resentment of Jewish success. Rooted in a Marxist zero-sum-game theory of economics, this vision has fueled the anti-Semitic rantings of Hitler, Arafat, Osama, and history's other notorious haters.

Faced with a contest between murderous regimes sustained by envy and Nazi ideology, and a free, prosperous, and capitalist, Israel—whose side are you on?

Richard Vigilante Books; 1 edition (July 22, 2009)

Review

What's Israel Got to Do with It?National Review Online

The Silicon Eye

How a Silicon Valley Company Aims to Make All Current Computers, Cameras, and Cell Phones Obsolete

George Gilder

Using the birth of a new technology to illuminate how Silicon Valley really works, tech expert George Gilder tells the story of the Foveon Corporation, whose electronic camera has a revolutionary analog chip that reproduces colors and images with the resolution and accuracy of conventional cameras and will allow digital machines to see as the human eye does. Behind this remarkable innovation is a team of pioneering engineers and scientists, chief among them the legendary inventor Carver Mead, whose combination of creativity and business acumen has put him in the center of the New Economy.

George Gilder has covered the wizards of high tech for twenty-five years and has an insider's knowledge of Silicon Valley and the unpredictable mix of genius, drive, and luck that can turn a start-up into a Fortune 500 company. Gilder believes that “Foveon can do for the camera what Intel did for the computer: Reduce it to a chip and make it ubiquitous.” The Silicon Eye is a narrative of some of the smartest — and most colorful — people on earth and their race to transform, not just an entire industry, but our lives as well.

W. W. Norton & Company; 1 edition (May 17, 2006)

Telecosm

George Gilder

The guru of high technology and a man whose "slightest utterance can move stocks" (The Wall Street Journal) presents a clear, cogent vision of the future of telecommunications; what it will mean in our everyday lives; and how savvy investors can get on the bandwagon today. With his books (including the groundbreaking Microcosm), top-selling newsletter, testimony before Congress, and annual Telecosm conferences, George Gilder has become the premier prophet of bandwidth and connectivity. In this revised version of Telecosm, Gilder takes technology buffs and investors on a mind-bending tour inside the worldwide webs of glass and light, explaining how fiber optics and wireless breakthroughs are pushing new technologies and new companies to the fore.

Free Press; 1 edition (September 11, 2000)

Wealth & Poverty

George Gilder

*Wealth & PovertyI was an international bestseller when it was published in 1981. It helped launch the entrepreneurial boom of the 1980s and was a manifesto for so-called “supply-side economics.” Tackling the crucial problem of contemporary society — how to increase prosperity and curtail poverty — Gilder argues that only unfettered entrepreneurship provides the economic vigor and opportunity that are the hope of the poor.This is one of the most influential books of the post-World War II era.

ICS Press (June 1993)

The Spirit of Enterprise

George Gilder

In The Spirit of Enterprise, George Gilder praises the heroes of capitalism—the entrepreneurs. In vivid, unforgettable prose, Gilder dramatizes the impact of enterprise on business and technology and offers a revolutionary analysis of economic growth. He shows how the fate of nations is determined not by the aggregate statistical abstractions of conventional economists but by the collective ingenuity and wisdom of individual entrepreneurs, the true prime movers of economic growth. This important book redefined the ultimate sources of our economic wealth as courage, ideas and faith.

ICS Press (October 1992)

Microcosm

The Quantum Revolution In Economics And Technology

George Gilder

Just as Gilder’s Wealth and Poverty ushered in a new era of economics and The Spirit of Enterprise• heralded the age of the entrepreneur, Microcosm* is a prescient look inside the expanding universe of economic, social, and technological possibilities contained within the shrinking world of the silicon chip.

Free Press (July 15, 1990)

Subjects

Geroge tailors each presentation to the needs of his audience and is not limited to the topics we have listed below. These are subjects that have proven valuable to customers in the past and are meant only to suggest his range and interests. Please ask us about any subject that interests you; we are sure that we can accommodate you.

Emerging Technologies

Business Innovation

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Reviews

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