Episode summary
Why Think Tanks are a Billion Dollar Business
Wall Street Week
· · 12 min · Hosts: Chrystia Freeland, David Westin
Summary
The episode argues that think tanks are best understood as a business of ideas, with measurable costs, funding, and influence even when the output is intangible. The host frames the question as a return on investment problem: major organizations such as the Council on Foreign Relations, RAND, Heritage, Brookings, and Aspen are backed by wealthy individuals and corporations, and the five biggest U.S. think tanks brought in roughly $1.3 billion in their latest reported fiscal years.
Caroline Elkins says think tanks can be evaluated by their convening power, the quality of the people they bring together, and whether their ideas move into the wider debate. Aspen is presented as a different model from policy shops like Brookings or Heritage: less of a lobbying operation and more of a “do tank” focused on dialogue, leadership, and human flourishing. Dan Porterfield says Aspen had to sharpen its identity, build enterprise-wide cooperation, and allocate money, time, and talent around a clear purpose.
The episode also contrasts Aspen’s softer, harder-to-quantify mission with explicitly political think tanks such as Heritage, whose influence is shown through the Reagan-era adoption of its recommendations and the later Project 2025 blueprint. The core tension is whether success means changing policy directly or creating conditions for better society-wide decision-making.
Key takeaways
- Elkins says the five biggest U.S. think tanks brought in roughly $1.3 billion in their latest reported fiscal years.
- Aspen is portrayed as a "do tank" that convenes people rather than lobbying Capitol Hill.
- Porterfield says Aspen’s strategy was to build a stronger enterprise and focus resources on a clear purpose.
- The episode contrasts Aspen’s broad civic mission with Heritage’s explicit goal of shaping policy in a political direction.
- Heritage is credited with major influence, including the Reagan administration adopting two thirds of its 2000 recommendations.
Notable quotes
“This is a story about return on a different kind of investment, an investment not in plants and equipment, but in ideas”
“The 5 biggest think tanks in the U.S. brought in roughly $1.3 billion in their latest reported fiscal years”
“we're less of a think tank than a do tank. We don't sit around and go up to Capitol Hill”
“-We have a stronger understanding of our identity. We have more cooperation and collaboration across the organization”
“What they're looking to do is to cultivate a good society”
How the episode opens
Westin: This is a story about return on a different kind of investment, an investment not in plants and equipment, but in ideas. We hardly go through a day without getting a new report or policy proposal from a think tank, from the Council on Foreign Relations, or RAND, or Heritage, or Brookings, all supported by wealthy individuals and corporations. But do they make a real difference?
And how do we tell? For that matter, how do they tell? -I've been intensely interested in this question, what I call "the business of ideas.
Westin: Caroline Elkins studies think tanks at Harvard Business School. -How do ideas get formulated? How do they make it in the marketplace?
How do we value them? And more importantly, what influence and impact do they have on the society in which we live? Westin: Elkins says that there are between 8,000 and 10,000 non-profit organizations worldwide that deal in the business of ideas.
And the U.S. has 20% of them. The 5 biggest think tanks in the U.S.
brought in roughly $1.3 billion in their latest reported fiscal years. But their rise has been a long time in the making. -They go back, you know, really all the way into, at least in the United States, into the Second Industrial Revolution, and they really take off after World War I.
Brookings is among the first, and then we have the Council on Foreign Relations, and then we see another uptick again in these think tanks in the post-Second World War period. And that's when we have institutes like the Aspen Institute coming into fruition, a lot of them focusing on, you know, sort of big sort of geopolitical problems, like the RAND Corporation and others. And these think tanks were really meant to bridge this kind of research for research sake, which is really what universities were doing, with practical implementation, decision-makers.
From the episode’s captions: roughly the first two minutes, lightly cleaned. Keep watching on YouTube →
Topics
- think tank funding
- measuring impact of ideas
- policy debate influence
- nonprofit research budgets
- success metrics
Companies and tickers mentioned
- Aspen Institute
- Heritage Foundation
Watch the episode
Watch “Why Think Tanks are a Billion Dollar Business” on YouTube
Summary, takeaways and quote selection by Octagon. Quotes are short excerpts; the full conversation is in the episode.
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