Harvard Kennedy School BSC hosted the Untying Development workshop to present examples of governance reforms that look better but do not produce better results and to ask if the governance agenda could have more impact. The workshop brought together several voices, including: Francis Fukuyama, Merilee Grindle, Jennifer Brinkerhoff and Jennifer Widner, to discuss the challenge […]

Harvard Kennedy School A growing body of work shows that development interventions often have a limited impact, especially when targeting improved governance and service delivery by the state. This observation has inspired many efforts to rethink the practice of development, and a number of new strategies have emerged for designing, implementing and even evaluating development […]

London, UK ODI, in collaboration with BSC, convened a private workshop bringing together a number of actors from academia, civil society, and donors, to look at how the adaptive development agenda has been put into practice throughout the world. We attempted to draw out some lessons learnt, and chart a way forward for both actors […]

Harvard Kennedy School Speaker Matt Andrews, Faculty Director, Building State Capability, Edward S. Mason Senior Lecturer in International Development, Harvard Kennedy School Summary Matt Andrews, leads an interactive session on Problem-Driven Iterative Adaptation (PDIA). Professor Andrews explains that PDIA is a process innovation that Building State Capability has been using within many countries to help […]

Harvard Kennedy School Speakers Matt Andrews, Faculty Director, Building State Capability, Edward S. Mason Senior Lecturer in International Development, Harvard Kennedy School Salimah Samji, Director, Building State Capability Tim McNaught, Research Fellow, Building State Capability Summary Matt Andrews and Salimah Samji launch the newly published PDIA Toolkit, a comprehensive resource to solving complex problems at […]

Harvard Kennedy School Speakers Alice Evans, BSC Associate and Lecturer at Kings College in London Rakesh Rajani, Vice President, Programs at Co-Impact Lily L Tsai, Faculty Director, MIT Governance Lab and Associate Professor at MIT Salimah Samji, Director, Building State Capability Summary There are a lot of important agendas at the global, regional, and local […]

Harvard Kennedy School Speakers Matt Andrews, Faculty Director, Building State Capability, Edward S. Mason Senior Lecturer in International Development, Harvard Kennedy School Jorrit de Jong, Faculty Director, Bloomberg Harvard Center for Cities, Emma Bloomberg Senior Lecturer in Public Policy and Management, Harvard Kennedy School Salimah Samji (Moderator), Director, Building State Capability Summary Global Empowerment Meeting […]

Harvard Kennedy School Speakers Anisha Poobalan, BSC Teaching Assistant Alieu Nyei, Liberian Economist, Public Sector Reformer, and Public Finance Management Practitioner Ganga Palakatiya, Senior Deputy Director · Board of Investment, Sri Lanka Summary Anisha Poobalan leads a discussion with Alieu and Ganga about their experiences working on PDIA teams in their countries of Liberia and Sri Lanka.

Online Speaker Peter Harrington, Natural Resources and Energy Team Leader, Oxford Policy Management Summary As part of Harvard's Worldwide Week, Building State Capability hosted Peter Harrington, who worked with the Government of Liberia to craft their communications strategy in response to the Ebola crisis. He prioritized simplicity, conciseness, and truth in this crisis communications initiative […]

Online About This Series BSC Faculty Director, Matt Andrews, and Program Director, Salimah Samji, have been co-teaching PDIA in Action: Development through Facilitated Emergence (MLD 103) at the Harvard Kennedy School since 2018. This is a field-lab class where students learn a research-oriented version of PDIA by working on public problems – they learn by doing. This […]

Harvard Kennedy School Speakers Dan Honig, Associate Professor of Public Policy, University College London Lant Pritchett, Research Director of the Research on Improving Systems of Education (RISE) Programme and Labor Mobility Partnerships (LaMP) Salimah Samji, Director, Building State Capability (BSC) Matt Andrews (Moderator), Faculty Director, Building State Capability & Edward S. Mason Senior Lecturer in […]

Online Speakers Matt Andrews, Faculty Director, Building State Capability & Edward S. Mason Senior Lecturer in International Development (HKS) Salimah Samji, Director, Building State Capability (HKS) Jocelyn Chu, Director of Community Engaged Learning and Instructor (HSPH) Carrie Conaway, Senior Lecturer on Education (HGSE) Facilitated by: Karina Lin-Murphy, Manager of Faculty Development (DCE) and Allison Pingree, […]

Harvard Kennedy School Speakers Salimah Samji, Director, Building State Capability (BSC) Yamini Aiyar, President and Chief Executive of the Centre for Policy Research, India In 2008, Yamini Aiyar founded the Accountability Initiative at CPR, which is credited with pioneering one of India’s largest expenditure tracking surveys for elementary education. Yamini’s work sits at the intersection […]

Harvard Kennedy School Speakers Rita Vinokur, COO of Rubikus.helpUA Zhenya Leonov, Freelance Software Engineer Olga Yulikova, State Director of the Massachusetts employment and training program Sasha Segal, Daughter of Olga Yulikova Salimah Samji (Moderator), Director, Building State Capability (BSC) Summary Nobody was really prepared for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine … especially the refugees. The traditional […]

Harvard Kennedy School Speakers Salimah Samji (Moderator), Director, Building State Capability (BSC) Steve Kadish, co-author of "Results: Getting Beyond Politics to Get Important Work Done" Steve Kadish has just stepped down after five years as a Senior Research Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School’s Taubman Center for State and Local Government. Previously, Kadish served as Massachusetts Governor […]

Harvard Kennedy School Speakers Daniel Agbiboa, author of "They Eat Our Sweat: Transport Labor, Corruption, and Everyday Survival in Urban Nigeria" Daniel E. Agbiboa is Assistant Professor of African and African American Studies at Harvard University. He earned a PhD in International Development from the University of Oxford, and an MPhil in Development Studies from […]

Online Speakers Agustin Filippo, Lead Economist at Inter-American Development Bank, Mexico, IPP 2022  Agustin is a Lead Economist at the Inter-American Development Bank. Since 2019, he lives and works in Mexico with responsibilities in economic risk analysis, applied research in real and monetary economics, and policy dialogue. He worked with other LAC countries prior to this […]

Harvard Kennedy School Speakers Matt Andrews, Faculty Director, Building State Capability & Edward S. Mason Senior Lecturer in International Development Salimah Samji, Director, Building State Capability (BSC) Summary Over the past decade, Building State Capability (BSC) has engaged with over 3,500 practitioners in 148 countries. In this session, the BSC team discusses the evolution of […]

Harvard Kennedy School Speakers Rakesh Rajani, President of JustSystems Salimah Samji (Moderator), Director, Building State Capability (BSC) Summary In this talk, Rakesh Rajani shares candid reflections on the complexities of driving systemic change in government and development. Drawing on 25 years of experience in civil society and philanthropy, Rajani recounts personal stories of success and unexpected failure […]

Harvard Kennedy School Speakers Yamini Aiyar, Senior Visiting Fellow at Brown University and previous President and Chief Executive of Centre for Policy Research in India Salimah Samji (Moderator), Director, Building State Capability (BSC) Summary In this talk, Yamini discusses the intersections between welfare politics, state capability, and democratic institutions in India’s 2024 elections. She examines […]

Harvard Kennedy School Speakers Lant Pritchett, Research Director, Labor Mobility Partnerships (LaMP) Salimah Samji (Moderator), Director, Building State Capability (BSC) This event was not recorded. Summary In this talk, Lant addressed the question “how did we go from the end of history in 1989 to where we are today?” Students had the opportunity to ask their burning […]

Harvard Kennedy School Speakers Dan Honig, BSC Associate, Associate Professor at Georgetown McCourt School of Public Policy & University College London Elizabeth Linos (Moderator), Emma Bloomberg Associate Professor of Public Policy and Management Summary In this talk, Dan Honig discusses the relationship between empowerment and compliance-based management in the public sector. He outlines research showing […]

Bahrain Speakers Lobna Jeribi, Implementing Public Policy Alumni 2024 Tim Kornprobst, Implementing Public Policy Alumni 2024 Peter Harrington (Moderator), Associate, Building State Capability Summary In this video, Lobna Jeribi and Tim Kornprobst discuss their experience using the PDIA approach to address solid waste management problems in Tunisia and Jordan respectively. While they both tackle similar […]

Online Speakers Greg Power OBE, Founder & Board Chair of Global Partners Governance and author of Inside the Political Mind: The Human Side of Politics and How It Shapes Development Salimah Samji (Moderator), Director, Building State Capability (BSC) About the Talk In this talk, Greg Power discusses his book Inside the Political Mind and his extensive experience working alongside […]

Harvard Kennedy School Speaker Shaun Tomson, World champion surfer, best-selling author, and leadership expert Highlight Reel About the Talk In a time marked by global uncertainty and rapid change, legendary world surfing champion, author, and leadership expert Shaun Tomson introduced The CODE Method—a transformative framework designed to help individuals turn hope into action, visualization into […]

Harvard Kennedy School Speaker Yamini Aiyar, Visiting Senior Fellow, Saxena Center for Contemporary South Asia and Watson Institute, Brown University About the Talk In this talk, Yamini Aiyar, senior fellow at Brown University’s Watson Institute and former president of the Center for Policy Research in Delhi, shares her path from a pivotal 2010 meeting in Bihar […]

Harvard Kennedy School Speaker Lant Pritchett, Research Director, Labor Mobility Partnerships (LaMP), BSC Associate, Former HKS MPA/ID Faculty Director About the Talk During this "Ask Me Anything" session, Lant Pritchett addressed the audience’s most pressing questions on international development. Pritchett offered a provocative reframing of the current crisis in international development. Rather than viewing recent […]

There is no shortage of ideas for tackling development challenges, yet far too many fail where it matters most: in implementation. In this session, Matt Andrews and Salimah Samji discuss policy work as an iterative process of learning, adaptation, and coalition-building, arguing that successful public policy implementation is an ongoing, dynamic process—not a one-off achievement.

Online About the Talk Ukraine is a live laboratory of reform under pressure. Wartime disruption, combined with the momentum of EU accession, is creating an opening for deep systemic change. The question is no longer whether to act, but how: How can we deliver lifeline reforms in a volatile, complex environment? How do we protect […]