The Happy Progress Forum was created to help advance that conversation.
HPF is an international collaboration bringing together leading scholars from economics, psychology, public health, big data, design science, and public administration to develop new knowledge about human wellbeing, prosperity and societal progress. Our ambition is not to promote one model of development, but to deepen our understanding of what wellbeing, prosperity and sustainability are and how they can reinforce one another across different communities and societal contexts.
The Forum serves as a platform for collaborative research, education, policy dialogue and public engagement. Our international team brings together perspectives and experiences from many different parts of the world, allowing us to learn from diverse societies while recognising that there is no single pathway to happy progress.
By meeting in different countries and engaging with local scholars, policymakers and communities, we seek both the common principles that transcend cultures and the unique lessons that each society can offer. We believe that understanding progress requires learning from many different contexts—not to identify one best model, but to build a richer, evidence-based understanding of how people and societies progress and thrive.
The initiative grew out of a collaboration established in 2024 between the two founding partners, the Center for Wellbeing, Welfare and Happiness at the Stockholm School of Economics and the Royal Institute for Governance and Strategic Studies (RIGSS) in Bhutan. While Bhutan's pioneering work on Gross National Happiness has inspired many of these conversations, the mission of HPF is global: to explore how societies everywhere can create progress that improves people's lives.
Each annual Forum is hosted in a particular place of interest, bringing together scholars, policymakers and practitioners with a goal to share perspectives, ideate, initiate collaborations and develop projects with lasting impact.
