PDIA in the City of Helsinki

Blog written by Salimah Samji

Over the past few years, we have been growing our PDIA engagements in cities.

In late 2023 we were approached by Meri Virta and Piia Pelimanni, participants who had completed a PDIA training we conducted for the Bloomberg-Harvard City Leadership Initiative, to offer a custom online action learning program for the city of Helsinki. The objective of this program was to continue their work on youth and child safety in their city, in teams, through action-oriented work.

In March 2024, we began a 12-week PDIA online action learning program for 24 city leaders across 5 teams. The teams included 4-5 members from various departments within the city of Helsinki, and other service providers working on issues of youth and child safety. They worked on a range of problems and explored a variety of causes including the lack of activities for youth, drug abuse, harassment, lack of social cohesion, insufficient services, disengaged parents, absent fathers, and isolation due to language/cultural barriers.  

Informal Employment in Azerbaijan as an Impediment to Economic Growth

Guest blog by Nijat Rahmanli, LEG ’23

Throughout my career in the government, I have participated in numerous discussions and workshops on how to achieve economic growth while ensuring inclusivity and sustainability. However, few of them were as practical and down-to-earth as the course on Leading Economic Growth. We came to understand that the easiest part of addressing certain economic challenges is to draft a sophisticated, finely detailed action plan, full of carefully selected policy choices. Instead, what the course taught was that, unfortunately, real economic challenges are not tackled through top-to-bottom approach. A central government should be a coordinator at best, but not an implementer.

Navigating the Challenges of Diversity and Public Engagement in Wyoming

Guest blog by Amy Quick, LEG ’23

I had the unique privilege of being able to engage in the PDIA process and problem identification prior to beginning this fall’s Leading Economic Growth course, allowing me to bring some real-world experience to the classroom and intellectual component. The State of Wyoming has been working with the Harvard Growth Lab for about a year and the majority of the Wyoming Business Council team as well as several external partners have preceded me in this learning and application.

Making Eastern Helsinki Safer

Guest blog by Tarja Silventoinen, Terhi Tuominiemi-Lilja, Mirjam Malik, Katri Kairimo, Katriina Aaltio  

12 weeks ago, we met each other as a team at Helsinki City Hall. We joined the team to represent the urban environment, education and training, culture and leisure, and social, health and rescue sectors. The unifying theme of our PDIA training was the East Helsinki region and the children and young people living there. Our more specific task was to consider the problems and challenges related to their safety and to find ways to improve the current situation through the training program.  

A Safer City Center for Young People in Helsinki

Guest blog by Tiina Gustafsson, Ville Immonen, Christina Lundqvist, Kimmo Mustonen, Jaakko Rautavaara

Children’s and young people’s experiences of insecurity and harassment have been highlighted significantly in several surveys and studies, such as the School Health Survey. The insecurity experienced by young people in their own environment is directly reflected in their everyday life and mood. Feelings of insecurity can arise for many different reasons, such as increased violence or the threat of violence, theft, or other crime. Various forms of harassment, such as sexual harassment or bullying, also increase insecurity. This phenomenon has made us concerned about the well-being and future of our young people. 

Analyzing Brazil’s Position in Semi-Conductor Supply Chain using PDIA

Guest blog by Loureiro Fernando, LEG ’23

To be able to reflect on PDIA concept and process, to put these concepts in a process-oriented approach, gave me a great insight to help me prepare and propose my interactions with government and policy makers with whom I engage in Latin America and Africa. I was involved in the past in a creation of a kind of “Investment Promotion Agency” in Brazil and many of the topics discussed here were very interesting to balance with what was my experience at that time and what or how it would be today considering the learnings and processes discussed in this course. Nowadays I am not in a position of leading (public) economic growth initiatives in countries, regions or municipalities, but as an individual I do feel I am in a position to be a relevant stakeholder, be able to initiate discussions and position for ideas and insights and propose/support specific economic growth opportunities in the countries that I am in charge in my position at my current firm. In the middle of a relevant goal to our company/industry in the need to rebalance the global semiconductor supply chain and preparing/helping many countries in Latin America and Africa to be ready to the task, realize the opportunity, map the geopolitical and strengths of their countries, the learnings during the course was fantastic to help me put in action the concepts discussed.

Driving Inclusive Economic Growth for Azerbaijan

Guest Blog by Samira Musayeva, LEG ’23 

“Leading Economic Growth” program is a valuable learning process that in a very attractive “language” explains the use of creative and effective tools that allow defining a specific approach for each economy. It defines a new view on the context of economic reforms and their subsequent implementation. 

Azerbaijan is an upper-middle income country that implemented a large number of socio-economic reforms and had ensured strengthening and modernization of the national economy. It is worth to mention that main pathways to socio-economic development were set in the dedicated reform program (Azerbaijan 2030: National Priorities for Socio-Economic Development). 

A steadily growing, competitive economy is one the 5 national priorities of Azerbaijan.  

Building Costa Rican Capabilities to Generate Employment

Guest blog by Fernando Ocampo, LEG ’23

“Development is really about the acquisition of social capabilities and what are the stumbling blocks in the process of acquiring those capabilities, and how we can think of ways to overcome these things. What are the points of entry of mental frameworks that we can have in the back of our mind to see how we can affect change”. – Ricardo Hausman 

Costa Rica is a significant net recipient of FDI and continued to receive large FDI flows every year; and strives to attract investment to high value-added sectors that promote the into global value chains; as a vehicle for export promotion, diversification, and transfer of technology and knowledge to other sectors of the economy. Despite being a successful strategy, it is increasingly necessary to align the skills of existing human capital with the new skills that companies require. The workforce needs to improve its abilities to meet the demand of the productive sector to boost the growth of companies and employment.  

Restless Behavior of Children and Young People in the Kannelmäki Urban Renewal Area 

Guest blog by Tiina Kalliola, Heidi Kiuru, Marianna Niemi-Korhonen, Ia Pellinen, Marjaana Martinez de Pinillo

In March 2024, we began our three-month Harvard training with anticipation. 24 people from regional cooperation networks for children and young people were selected to participate in the training. The City of Helsinki organized PDIA training with Harvard University. PDIA stands for Problem Driven Iterative Adaption. They had chosen increasing the experience of children’s and young people’s safety in urban environments as their theme. They chose Kannelmäki, which is one of the urban renewal areas in Helsinki, as their more specific area.  

Addressing Economic Challenges in Wyoming

Guest blog by Renny MacKay, LEG ’23

The LEG course offered incredible ideas related to understanding the economics of growth – or the lack thereof – specific to countries and metro areas. The product space illustrates a path towards expanding industries, growth diagnostics help to use price signals to best identify what is binding expansion. These are powerful. For my home state, the bottom line is that Wyoming is lacking complexity and it makes diversification particularly hard. The evidence shows that we need to take strategic bets and by exploring the Atlas of Complexity I can see more clearly why growing many new industries here has been intractable. For decades people in Wyoming have been looking to diversify the economy without success.