Guest blog written by Beenish Amjad I was afraid that the onslaught of the pandemic would have devastating impact on a developing country like Pakistan which has a strong history of sluggish economic growth and long-standing need-base relationship with the IMF. The economy in 2019 was weakening and poverty (headcount poverty ratio 24.3) and inequality…Continue Reading Learning about Economic Growth in the Middle of a Pandemic
Guest blog written by Claudio Roberto Amitrano What is development? How is it driven? How can we get there? Who is it for? What do countries have in common? What are their specific problems? How do we identify them? How do we find solutions? Who will lead, authorize, design and implement them? Who are ‘We’…Continue Reading A Problem-driven Approach to Complexity, Public Policy and Economic Growth
written by Salimah Samji Implementation is hard. It is often the weakest link in the success of a policy or program. Yet, public policy education remains focused on teaching students to design and analyze policies. As Francis Fukuyama aptly wrote, “most programs train students to become capable policy analysts, but with no understanding of how to…Continue Reading Bringing the Field to the Classroom: Learning to do PDIA in Practice
Guest blog written by Nevena Bosnic, Mehdi El Boukhari, Ama Peiris, Matthew Welchert Over the past seven weeks, our group embarked on the learning journey of problem driven iterative adaptation (PDIA) as it applies to coordination challenges facing the various levels of government as well as civil society in addressing homelessness in Tarrant County, Texas….Continue Reading PDIA and Coordination Challenges within Government
written by Salimah Samji In March 2020, Harvard University decided to move all classes to online-only, in an effort to de-densify our campus and to slow the spread of COVID-19. It soon became clear that remote learning was going to be our new normal. At the time, Leading Economic Growth, a longstanding 5-day residential executive education…Continue Reading Leading Economic Growth 2020: Moving Executive Education Online during a Pandemic
Guest blog written by Rebecca Trupin, Prateek Mittal Our PDIA journey began with our authorizer, a senior bureaucrat in the State Government of Meghalaya, sharing a document with us about his vision to build capability of the state administration to deal with complex problems. We had been working with him on local governance-related projects and…Continue Reading Becoming Comfortable with Complexity: Maternal Mortality in Meghalaya
Guest blog written by Tamsir Cham, Andrea Hayes, Fateme Najafi, Aysha Valery Overall, we learned that the PDIA process is about being patient, digging deep into a problem, continuing to iterate, and engaging both the stakeholders and the authorizers. We also learned how to dig deep into problems. Digging deep requires discovering the underlying or root causes…Continue Reading PDIA and Dementia in the Workplace
Guest blog written by Simone D’Abreu, Smriti Iyer, Sofia Salas, Hafou Toure, Annie White PDIA can simultaneously hold the complexity of being exciting and frustrating; challenging and inspiring; harder and easier than you think. If we could choose one phrase to define PDIA, it would probably be iterative learning. In the next few lines, we…Continue Reading Strengthening Collaboration to Tackle Increasing Homicides in Charlotte, North Carolina
Guest blog written by Akbar Ahmadzai, Emma Davies, Renzo Lavin, Fernando Marquez Six weeks ago, the class counted off numbers: One, two, three, four, five. Repeat. One, two, three, four, five. Repeat. Some of us were fortunate enough to have been assigned to group 2. Others convinced classmates to switch with them. Regardless of how we…Continue Reading A Reflection on PDIA in Action: Homelessness in Tarrant County
Guest blog written by Nkere Skosana From the moment I saw the advert on Twitter and read through the content provided, something just told me this is the real deal. I felt there was no way I could not find more about the course. It has always been my approach not to do any academic…Continue Reading From South Africa To Boston and Back
