13 October, 2018: GCRF_COMPASS team from Kent and Cambridge Universities visited the University of World Economy and Diplomacy, Tashkent. It was good to see colleagues from the UK and Uzbekistan and discuss a unique #GCRF_COMPASS (Comprehensive Capacity-Building in Eastern Neighbourhood and Central Asia: research integration, impact governance and sustainable communities) project where I am a member of the Advisory Board.

There are some assessment scales of “the most influential” politicians, thinkers, etc. It would be interesting to measure also the General Impact Index (GII) of individuals. GII can indicate how outstanding individuals affected or changed the world. For instance, musician A may have a greater impact on his/her contemporaries than politician B. GII can be assessed in a country, international, modern or historical context. For example, in a historical context, Confucius is a more influential person than the Chinese rulers in his time. That means Confucius’s historical GII is higher than GIIs of those rulers. It would be a challenging exercise to find out comparative GIIs of, let’s say, Confucius, Alexander the Great, Nelson Mandela, Albert Einstein and Picasso. This may remind the question or quiz about the historical importance of individuals, or league table of historical figures. However, speaking about GII, we mean the task of finding quantitative measures of the individual’s impact on the world. This may be a very controversial approach, but also a quite interesting one.