David Korten

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David Korten is a prominent American public intellectual, ecological economics advocate, and anti-corporate globalization activist, who previously worked as a Harvard Business School professor and international development practitioner. His work centers on critiquing extractive, profit-first global economic systems and advocating for a localized, people-centric living economy that aligns human society with planetary ecological limits.

Key moments

1960sObtained his doctorate from Stanford University's Graduate School of Business, then joined Harvard Business School as a faculty member focused on international development research
1970s to early 1990sLed Ford Foundation development projects across Africa and Asia for nearly 15 years, accumulating on-the-ground experience that reshaped his views on mainstream global development models
1995Published his landmark best-selling work When Corporations Rule the World, which brought his critiques of corporate power dominance to a broad global non-academic audience
2000sCo-founded the Living Economies Forum, served as honorary board chair of progressive publication YES! Magazine, and was inducted as a member of the Club of Rome
2010s to 2020sReleased multiple new books and gave international public lectures promoting the transition to an ecological civilization, including exchanges with academic institutions in China on green economy policy design

Unusual ideological evolution from establishment insider to systemic critic

Unlike most progressive environmental thinkers who come from grassroots activist backgrounds, Korten spent the first decades of his career embedded in elite Western academic and global development institutional circles. His years of field work in low-income communities directly exposed the harm that top-down, corporate-led development policies inflicted on local livelihoods and ecosystems, pushing him to fully reject the mainstream neoliberal development framework he once taught.

Cross-cultural resonance far beyond Western activist spaces

Korten's framing of a transition to ecological civilization has found unusual reception in Chinese academic and policy circles, where his ideas have been translated, cited and discussed widely, even leading to multiple invited lecture tours at top Chinese universities. This makes him a rare Western critical theorist whose work bridges local Chinese green transition conversations and global anti-extractive economy movements.

Solution-focused framework that moves beyond pure critique

Rather than only highlighting the flaws of existing capitalist systems, Korten has laid out a set of concrete, actionable policy proposals including breaking Wall Street's monopolistic control over currency issuance, prioritizing support for small, community-owned local enterprises, reforming GDP metrics to exclude ecological and social harm, and devolving natural resource governance authority to local resident communities.

Overview

David Korten

birth date	1937 (age 89)
birth place	Longview, Washington
occupation	Teacher, institutional systems analyst, environmentalist, activist, and author
alma mater	Stanford University Graduate School of Business (MBA, Ph.D.)
genre	Localized economies, ecological economics, environmental economics, alternative energy, living economies, sustainability, climate change
spouse	Frances Fisher Korten
website

Early life and career

David Korten was born in Longview, Washington, in 1937 and is a 1955 graduate of its R. A. Long High School. He received a master of business administration and Ph.D. from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business. He said: "My early career [after leaving Stanford in 1959] was devoted to setting up business schools in low-income countries—starting with Ethiopia". He served during the Vietnam War as a captain in the United States Air Force, undertaking U.S.-based teaching and organizational duties;[1] and for five and a half years was a visiting professor in the Harvard Business School. While at Stanford in the 1950s, he married Frances Fisher Korten, with whom he lives on Bainbridge Island near Seattle, Washington.

Career and main body of work

Korten served for five and a half years as a visiting associate professor of the Harvard University Graduate School of Business where he taught in Harvard's middle management, M.B.A., and doctoral programs.

He also served as the Harvard Business School adviser to the Nicaragua-based Central American Institute of Business Administration. He subsequently joined the staff of the Harvard Institute for International Development, where he headed a Ford Foundation-funded project to strengthen the organization and management of national family planning programs.

In the late 1970s, Korten moved to Southeast Asia, where he lived for nearly fifteen years, serving as a Ford Foundation project specialist and, later, as Asia regional adviser on development management to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which involved him in regular travels to Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines.[1]

Korten has written that he became disenchanted with the official aid system and devoted his last five years in Asia to "working with leaders of Asian non-governmental organizations on identifying the root causes of development failure in the region and building the capacity of civil society organizations to function as strategic catalysts of national- and global-level change".[1]

The Post-Corporate World

Building on the arguments put forward in his 1995 book When Corporations Rule the World, Korten expands on several of the themes. Having made a case for the unworkability of current economic systems on several grounds - the impoverishment of the majority of the population, the need for indefinitely expanding credit leading to the debasement of the currency, and the finite limits of energy and material resources - he provides a context for discussing alternative ways of life, and explores possible courses of action to establish them.

The Great Turning

Korten's 2006 book The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community argues that the development of empires about 5,000 years ago initiated unequal distribution of power and social benefits to the small portion of the population that controlled them. He also argues that corporations are modern versions of empire, both being social organizations based on hierarchies, chauvinism, and domination through violence.

The rise of powerful advanced technology, combined with the control of corporate as well as nation-based empires is described as being increasingly destructive to communities and the environment. Korten postulates that the world is on the verge of a perfect storm of converging crises, including anthropogenic adverse climate change, post-peak oil production decline, and a financial crisis caused by an unbalanced global economy. This will precipitate major changes to the current economic and social structure.

Korten believes that these crises will present an opportunity for significant changes that could replace the paradigm of "Empire" with one of "Earth Community." Although recognizing the potential that the opportunity may not be seized, Korten hopes that this opportunity will result in the emergence of an "Earth Community," based on sustainable, just, and caring communities that incorporate the values of mutual responsibility and accountability, and he advocates toward that.

External links

Video of David Korten with the Dalai Lama during filming of the documentary Dalai Lama Renaissance

"Conscious Choice - The End of Business as Usual" - 2007 article on Korten, his work, and an assessment of the significance of The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community

"The Betrayal of Adam Smith" - article by David C. Korten

"We Are Hard-Wired To Care and Connect" - article by David Korten, July 30, 2008, YES! Magazine

"The Story of David Korten" - 2007 article by Our World in Balance

David Korten

WorldBrand briefing

Unusual ideological evolution from establishment insider to systemic critic

Cross-cultural resonance far beyond Western activist spaces

Solution-focused framework that moves beyond pure critique

Early life and career

Career and main body of work

The Post-Corporate World

The Great Turning

Bibliography

See also

External links

References