Policy: From ideas to real-world change

Talks and writing from Progress Conference 2025

We wanted a track at Progress Conference 2025 to explore how policy movements go from idea to actual change. Talks covered agenda-setting, improving the policy-readiness of ideas, the abundance policy agenda, and pro-progress policy implementation at the city, state, and federal level. Here are select talks from the conference and related writing.

Track dispatch

Rethinking how we think about progress by Jeff Fong

In this essay for Big Think’s special issue The Engine of Progress, RPI Fellow (and National Board Chair at YIMBY Action) Jeff Fong writes about how good policy ideas become real-world progress.

At Progress Conference 2025 […] I noticed something new in the progress community.

In the past, its discourse was solidly grounded in specific problems (e.g., outdated policies, technical challenges) and their potential solutions (e.g., policy reform, technological innovations). But I’m now noticing more conversations about the meta-problem of implementation or, as we call it in the YIMBY (“yes in my backyard”) community, “theories of change.”

Talk videos

Government at the Speed of Progress

Jennifer Pahlka’s keynote at Progress Conference 2025 (a few days before launching the Recoding America Fund): “Technological and economic progress increasingly depends on functional government institutions. A “state capacity deficit” is constraining American competitiveness and innovation, but there’s a path forward that everyone who cares about progress can encourage.”

Creating a Marketplace for Outcomes

Tom Kalil, CEO of Renaissance Philanthropy, talks about new models for federal funding: “Currently, the federal government has made trillions of dollars of financial commitments that are contingent on failure (loan guarantees) but rarely makes financial commitments that are contingent on success, such as incentive prizes, milestone payments, and Advance Market Commitments. Kalil discusses recent successes, such as Operation Warp Speed, the NASA-SpaceX collaboration on the Falcon 9 rocket, the role of DARPA self-driving car competitions in creating Waymo, and Frontier Climate. He also makes the case for increasing the use of these approaches, and for thinking more creatively about the use of contingent commitments more broadly.”

Operationalizing Abundance

From Inclusive Abundance founder and CEO Derek Kaufman: “Abundance is a new framework for identifying and dismantling the artificial scarcity that’s holding America back. Derek discusses how a network of policy experts, business leaders, and public officials are working together to encourage scientific innovation, build more housing, invest in clean energy, and make government work better for everyone. Derek covers how policy philanthropy and strategic political giving can create the conditions for progress, and share details of Inclusive Abundance’s advocacy efforts around permitting reform and AI policy.”

How You Can Help Pass Meaningful State & Local Policy

“State and local” policy is often pushed into one word, but there are important differences in what it really takes to move the needle on policy at the state level vs the local level. Cadences, election cycles, coalitions, policymaker motivations, and incentives are different from the federal level and different across states. Learn about motivating people to contribute meaningfully to passing state and local policy. A dialogue with Misha Chellam Misha David Chellam, M. Nolan Gray, and Ryan Puzycki, moderated by Alec Stapp.

Other media

The DOGE days are over. Now what?

An interview with Jennifer Pahlka on how we can modernize federal agencies to improve people’s lives.

Procedural Rituals over Governance Results by Will Rinehart

Will Rinehart (American Enterprise Institute) wrote about Jenifer Pahlka’s keynote talk:

At the Roots of Progress Conference this weekend, Jen Pahlka, who was formerly the United States Deputy Chief Technology Officer under President Obama, related a harrowing experience she had. While she was walking around her home, she was confronted with a home invader. Though he wasn’t violent, she immediately dialed the Oakland Police Department (OPD). The phone rang, and rang. After several attempts, an operator finally answered and promised that officers would come. They didn’t arrive for two days.

The Bleeding Edge of Progress by Ryan Puzycki

After speaking at the conference, Ryan reflects on the event:

I recently toured Zipline’s South San Francisco headquarters, where young engineers were testing and building the same aircraft which continue to save lives in Africa and now also perform package and food deliveries in Japan and the United States. More than a thriving startup, it was a reminder that Silicon Valley began with hardware—and that the Bay Area still sits at the bleeding edge of technological progress. […]

If Zipline represents California at its best, the rest of the state too often shows it at its worst: a tangle of local vetocracies, procedural fetishism, and civic exhaustion. That contrast—between creation and decay—was on my mind at the Progress Conference in Berkeley ten days ago.

Democrats Could Learn a Lot from the Progress Movement by Ruy Teixeira

Here are my impressions:

1. There was more political diversity than among abundance advocates who tend to lean a bit left and mostly aspire to be a faction within the Democratic Party. The progress movement/studies umbrella includes such people but also many who lean right and/or libertarian and don’t have much use for the Democrats.

2. There was an entrepreneurial, as opposed to technocratic, feel to the crowd and many of the discussions, not least because there were quite a few startup founders and VCs present. That’s not to say there weren’t quite a few policy wonks too, but the entrepreneurial vibe helped give a sense of people creating progress, rather than twisting policy dials to help it along.

3. There was a fierce and generalized techno-optimism to the crowd that far surpassed what you see in Democratic-oriented abundance circles where it tends to be focused on favored goals like clean energy. These are people who deeply believe in the potential of technological advance and the process of scientific discovery that leads to such advance—”the endless frontier” if you will.

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This is the last collection of videos from Progress Conference 2025. All the videos, including prior year talks, are available on the RPI YouTube channel. Progress Conference 2026 will be October 8–11 in Berkeley, CA at Lighthaven. More info coming later this spring!

Thanks to Big Think, our conference media partner, for producing all these videos and The Engine of Progress, a special issue of Big Think exploring the people and ideas driving humanity forward.