Social Innovation and Philanthropy

BY JAMES PAGANO To kick off the Kennedy School Review’s special series In the Statehouse, Governor Dukakis spoke with me about what drew him to politics, how racial attitudes in Massachusetts have changed over time, his own advice for policy students interested in state government, and his aspirations for a more united Democratic Party. Michael […]

BY MARTA MILKOWSKA “This technology will save millions of patients!” This was the elated comment from the head of a tuberculosis health facility in Lesotho, in response to my prototype of a mobile phone application. Last summer, I was exploring the value of machine learning in predicting patients’ default rates in HIV and tuberculosis treatment […]

BY MATTHEW SPECTOR The first months of the Trump administration have radically reshaped the calculus of social entrepreneurship. Institutions that opened themselves to public accountability during the Obama years now face little demand to adhere to the transparency and environmental rules they helped negotiate. At Harvard’s Social Enterprise Conference (SECON) this year, reflections from local […]

BY PAOLO FRESIA I am an impact investor. I believe that deploying capital more responsibly is necessary to redirect global capitalism toward greater social and environmental sustainability. However, I am not naïve. Impact investing is no silver bullet, and—alone—will never be sufficient to solve the world’s direst problems. My classmate Matt Tyler recently wrote in […]

BY MATT TYLER I thought impact investing was central to curing social ills. Government was secondary, in my mind. I was wrong. Over the last 18 months, working with governments in the United States and Australia, I have focused on how to improve social outcomes for the most vulnerable. As a graduate student at the […]

BY REILLY KIERNAN Why Uber and Lyft joining the fray was just good business, and why activists should consider lessons about businesses’ competitive environment and customer pressures. In an highly polarized political moment, where Super Bowl ads feature thinly-veiled references to policy, and corporate leaders of all kinds are attempting to find appropriate responses to […]

 In Fred Wilson’s Guarded View, four black headless mannequins dressed in iconic museum guard uniforms from the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Jewish Museum provoke visitors to consider the unequal power relations and stereotypes that structure our experiences of cultural institutions. First shown […]

Innovation is now at the epicentre of Angola’s drive towards economic diversification. Innovators build business from the ground-up; creating new job opportunities and contributing to a diverse, healthy supply chain. It’s a model that made America the world’s biggest economy and has sustained the developed economies through good times and bad. Indicative of how important […]

In the last decade, Medellin made a decision that will mark its future: it changed its economic vocation. The city, known in the twentieth century as the “Industrial Capital of Colombia,” decided to move from a traditional industrial operation to a knowledge economy. Corporation Ruta N is articulating these efforts and boosting a true ecosystem […]

BY TRACEY LAM AND JONATHAN HUI “If you say ‘Asian,’ what pops into your head? They think we’re all supposed to be doctors, you know? Or they think we come from a good, rich family. But we don’t.”[i] These words are from Pass or Fail in Cambodia Town, a documentary about the true stories of […]

BY JESSICA KAHLENBERG Last month, while I was sitting in a rocking chair overlooking the beautiful Lake Chautauqua, my uncle casually asked me about my summer internship. I responded that I was working to close the gender wage gap in Boston. When I asked what he, as a prominent businessman, was doing at his own […]

BY JOSHUA WELLE While the post-9/11 wars waged, the Department of Defense (DoD) did not focus on two imperatives to ensure military superiority: technology innovation and talent management.[i] To millennials, these concepts are linked.[ii] The Pew Research Center found that 24 percent of those born between 1980 and 1995 believe their generation’s uniqueness is tied […]