Guest blog by Farid Amirov, LEG ’22
A good thing is that the lessons and principles of Leading Economic Growth can be applied across various economic growth and development challenges and within a national and subnational context.
I am sharing the lessons, experience and insights those I have taken away throughout the Leading Economic Course:
- Complexity and diversity are vital components for developing successful growth strategies
- Inclusive growth eliminates inequality (reduce the GINI coefficient)
- Complex set of exports are needed for growth
- GDP per capita is not the only and best option to be considered for measuring economic growth: Inclusiveness and sustainability are also the important factors
- PDIA: Useful approach to resolve complex development problems
- High bandwidth organization with legitimacy and authority as a communication mechanism to foster understanding of how to grow the country
- There is no cookie cutter approach. It is very important to make a proper problem statement and supported by many tools in the assessment of problem such as the PDIA to construct and deconstruct the problem, the fishbone diagram and the need to keep asking why
- Implementing growth strategy requires authority, ability, acceptance, iterative approach to problem solving and high bandwidth teams that tied to the right levels of authority to make incremental progress and show legitimacy
- The importance of know how
- Binding constraints: understanding what is restricting growth assists in formulating a strategy for growth
- Defining the problem is critical
- Planting more trees makes it easier for monkeys to jump
This is a blog series written by the alumni of the Leading Economic Growth Executive Education Program at the Harvard Kennedy School. 71 Participants successfully completed this 10-week online course in May 2022. These are their learning journey stories.