Charity leaders should spend around a third of their time thinking about radical new ways to serve their beneficiaries, delegates at Charity Finance Live were told in the final plenary of yesterday's programme.

Dr Rafael Ramirez (pictured), a senior fellow in futures at the Institute of Science, Innovation and Society at Oxford University, warned delegates that the way their charities have done things up till now may soon become obsolete as their operating environments evolve.

He urged charities to consider emulating the behaviour of computer chip-maker Intel, which ceases to promote its own consumer electrical goods if its competitors produce better products that run Intel processors.

And he warned that “invaders” – new organisations that create new ways of delivering value – can reshape entire industries.  3SC, the new contract management agency launched by the Social Investment Business, appeared to be one such invader, as does the microfinance website Kiva.org.

“It can be dangerous to define who you are as a charity  by looking at your own activity,” he said.

Ramirez suggested the sector needed to develop a “charity architecture lab” to explore radical new ideas for achieving their aims.

Charities should map the ecology of parties with whom they do business in order to familiarise themselves with those shaping the architecture, he said.  He predicted that in future more charities would come together and do interesting things, and advised delegates to “expect odd alliances”.

He also lamented the lack of books written about the future of charity.  In his research for the speech, he had come across a number of books exploring the future of philanthropy, and this created the risk that the future design and delivery of charity services would be dictated by donors and not by charitable organisations, he said.

Spending time now thinking about the future will save time further down the track, Ramirez concluded, and recommended charity leaders should spend 30 to 35 per cent of their time doing so.