About
The Wheeler Institute creates impact by identifying big challenges, applying business insights to help solve these challenges and forging communities of learning and practice to implement large-scale and enduring change. We are committed to developing, sharing and implementing business expertise to solve the three development challenges:
Lives
Millions of people remain unable to fulfil their potential and their aspirations because they lack access to basic health, education, and skills.
Livelihoods
Most of the world’s poor eke out a living as entrepreneurs, and most of their businesses are forever stunted. Employment opportunities are often scarce, and employment conditions poor. Opportunities for successful entrepreneurship and employment are unequally distributed.
Environments
Too many people live in societies that are fragile. They have limited access to enabling institutions and infrastructure, and their lives are too frequently disrupted and calamitous.
How we support research
We support outstanding, novel, and impactful research research that applies business insights to address the world’s most pressing challenges. We are particularly keen on business research that addresses economic and social challenges in the developing world, although we recognise the often interconnected nature of these challenges, and their linkages to those in the developed world. Business contributions for development can be examined through the lens of any functional area or discipline and we leave it to those applying for support to argue the relevance and impact of their work to the topic of business and development.
Our donors
Tony and Maureen Wheeler have been passionate supporters of international development efforts for many years and firmly believe that business and entrepreneurship has a central role to play in this journey.
They have both witnessed the impact, both positive and negative, that business has on our world’s most vulnerable communities and their donation to the Wheeler Institute fits with their belief that business has a positive part to play in development globally.
Tony Wheeler is a graduate of LBS’s MSc05 (1972) programme and Maureen Wheeler was awarded an Honorary Fellowship from the School in 2011. They are the co-founders of guidebook Lonely Planet Publications and of the international development organisation Planet Wheeler Foundation.
Wheeler Institute Website
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Wheeler Blog
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