Guest blog by Yaveneshaa Madurai, LEG’23 The Harvard Kennedy School Leading Economic Growth (LEG) programme challenged me in quite a different way, than I’m ‘used to’. As a Strategist, I’m used to delivering things that are ‘neatly processed’ – you choose your ‘weapon of choice’ (a previously developed strategy model by one of the ‘gurus’,…Continue Reading The developing world needs to get ‘shoveling’
Guest blog by Anna Niita Etuna Nahambelelwe Shatika, LEG’23 Embarking on the Harvard course on Leading Economic Growth has been a transformative 10-week journey. Throughout the course, I gained invaluable insights and knowledge that will shape my approach to addressing the growth challenges faced by Namibia. In this blog, I will share key ideas and…Continue Reading Growing through Understanding: Tackling Namibia’s Income Inequality Problem
Guest blog by Tariq Alsuwaidi, LEG’23 The realization that addressing inflation is essential to achieving sustainable economic development is one of the most important things that may be gained from taking this course. For instance, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has suffered from the negative impacts of excessive inflation, such as a drop in buying…Continue Reading Rapid Inflation and its Implication in the UAE
Guest blog by Jason Whiteaker, LEG’23 I came into this program thinking about how the program would help me identify solutions to the growth challenges being faced by my region. Within the first two weeks my thinking had completely changed, moving away from the solution-based approach and very much focusing on identifying the problem /…Continue Reading Insufficient Housing in Western Australia
Guest blog by Sibusiso Thami Gambi, LEG’23 A key learning from the course is that, simply put: context matters. One cannot simply apply “best practices” blanketly. There is a ready example in South Africa’s public spending on education. The country’s spending (as a share of GDP) is higher than the OECD, but education outcomes have…Continue Reading Reducing Income Inequality in South Africa
Guest blog by Kristin Fong I’ve enjoyed the Leading Economic Growth (LEG) course immensely and some of the key takeaways I’ll continue to utilize regularly in the future are (1) the power of asking questions, (2) doing the hard work of listening before proposing solutions, and (3) airing hypotheses with partners from different backgrounds and…Continue Reading How does a resource-rich state collaborate to increase economic confidence?
Guest blog by Gordana Kierans, LEG’23 Due to my four years at the Shenzhen Technology University in China, where I taught, among other subjects, the circular economy and systems thinking, I decided to focus my project within this programme on implementing the circular/regenerative entrepreneurship. Shenzhen is a megacity with over 17 million inhabitants, 99% of…Continue Reading Exploring how Shenzhen can increase circular/regenerative entrepreneurship
Guest blog by Albeck Yair, LEG’23 While it seemed at the beginning of the program that we all in our working group are facing the same problems, along the program we have realized how different the solutions are, which highly depend on the particular context. That led me to the first takeaway, which is that problems are…Continue Reading A Lesson on Complexity, Curiosity, and Modesty
Guest blog by Piotr Arak, LEG’23 In successful businesses it is typical to try out new things and evaluate the outcome because you can earn more money if you find a better solution. Governments are not so different and public officials can use similar tools as the fishbone diagram or the 5-why approach to make…Continue Reading Integrating Refugees into the Polish Labor Economy
Guest blog by Yolanda Smit, LEG’23 Your problems are never what you think your problems are, and neither are your solutions. PDIA is helpful for problem identification and identifying the binding constraint but also as part of finding solutions. A key takeaway is that your problem is never what you think your problem is, and…Continue Reading Exploring Economic Complexity in South Africa
