Private Innovation in the Public Interest

Professor Carlos Inoue studies how people in different types of organizations–public companies, state-owned companies, private companies, governmental agencies, NGOs–solve a problem in ways that reflect the constraints and priorities of their employers. Physicians in public hospitals, for example, may not have access to the same kinds of equipment or even patients as their peers in private hospita...

Professor Leandro Nardi studies pathways for achieving outstanding social and economic performance. He has examined the reasons for the persistently mediocre financial and social performance that can arise from CSR initiatives. Much of the problem has to do with the complications that arise with enfranchising the previously marginalized. Disabled persons, for example, are not rewarded with career...

Professor James Orbinski accepted the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1999 as the International Council President of Medicins Sans Frontiers.   He talks with Anita about the essence of humanitarianism and the ways in which principles of mutual understanding, listening, dialogue and connection shape the public good.  Citing Socrates, he reflects on how dialogue requires dignity-infused listening and a wil...

Professor Jim Lavery has been a professor and advocate of healthcare for the poor for his entire life. What has he learned? The equitable distribution of drugs depends as much on the development of health systems as on new medicines. And decisions by companies to incur development costs are only one step in a cascade of constrained decisions that shape who gets essential medicines.

Professor Donal Crilly studies the ways in which business decisions are influenced by the concepts of time employed by managers, entrepreneurs, investors, and other stakeholders interested in achieving important outcomes. In this conversation, he describes how an emphasis in negotiations on a shared vision of the future–in which good outcomes arise and devastatingly bad outcomes are averted–can re...

Professor Pinar Ozcan is a superstar researcher, superstar teacher, and superstar thought leader. Among her many activities, she runs Oxford’s Said Entrepreneurship Centre and its FinTech Initiative. Ask her where she sees the greatest opportunity for addressing the world’s most pressing problems, and she’ll talk about innovation in investing through FinTech that can enable breakthrough tech advan...

Professor Russ Coff is a pioneer in our thinking about strategic human capital and its importance to the competitive advantage of firms. So why do firms train employees in broad skills that make them more employable elsewhere? And why do the relationships that we develop with colleagues and with our employers matter so much to our decisions about whether to quit? In this conversation, Russ explain...

Professor John Bryson is a world-renowned expert in public administration and governance. Over the course of his career at the University of Minnesota, he has studied and written about eras in the prevailing culture of governance, particularly in the United States. We are now at a point where commitment to the core principles of the Constitution is fraying, with deep consequences for the work of g...

Professor Jay Barney is a legend in his time. His resource-based theory of the firm reshaped the way we think about sustained competitive advantage, and his approach to theory-building and community leadership have been foundational to the field of Strategic Management. In this conversation with Anita, he describes how and why he has turned toward philosophy and work in low-income countries during...

Matt Harder was working in ecological rehabilitation in Costa Rica when he realized that the challenges of preserving the jungle would never be met without a fundamental change in the way that government works. Since that realization, he has been striving through the firm he founded, Civic Trust, to innovate in core budget processes that drive the way that local governments allocate funds. I n thi...

Professor Maurizio Zollo is an OG on Corporate Social Responsibility. After studying CSR as a professor at Bocconi and INSEAD, he is now at Imperial College London where he leads the Leonardo Institute. The first of the Institute’s activities is in documenting more than a million CSR activities by 16,000 corporations. Just about half of these activities are unprofitable by design because their pur...

Professor Mahka Moeen has been studying the emergence of industries for decades. In this conversation with Anita, she talks about the early prototypes of cars as fueled by a much wider range of technologies that we may have thought possible–and then compares the emergence of the industry as we know it with what might have evolved. Mahka also describes her recent work on drones, talks about the air...

Professor Howard Aldrich is one of the world’s foremost authorities on the building of entrepreneurial ecosystems. In this fascinating discussion with Anita, he talks about the risks of entrepreneurship without the right institutional framework, and the challenges of building a framework that reflects local conditions, capabilities and needs. Let’s teach entrepreneurship as a choice you need to ma...

Professor Stefan Dimitriadis studies how entrepreneurs in Togo and Nigeria have dealt with deep-seated, long-standing challenges that are occasionally made acute through external shocks. He has found that community entrepreneurship in Togo can be strengthened through the development of outside ties. And that the relief from extortion that comes with insurgent challenges to the local government can...

Professor Jiao Luo studies how firms organize to shape public policy, which she describes as “non-market strategy". The goal is to develop a climate through which investments in social outcomes are valued more fully–and thus become more profitable. But given this, why are corporate-social-responsibility initiatives so difficult for firms to pursue profitably? How does the governance structure...

Professor Robert Eberhart has performed at the frontier of academics, government, entrepreneurship, and business over the course of his long career as an innovator. What interests him most is “reversing the arrow,” by which he means to understand how the cultural phenomenon that we call entrepreneurship is changing the way we relate to each other. He is striving through his scholarly work, corpora...

Professor Tim Weiss raises foundational questions about the basis of successful entrepreneurship in Africa, which occurs in communities such as the 105 co-located car repair shops in the Dagoretti neighborhood of Nairobi. These entrepreneurs are collaborating through apprenticeship programs, referrals, collaborations, and even mutual welfare funds like insurance. The success of each one is deeply...

Professor Laura Doering is perhaps best known for her pioneering work on microfinance in low-income countries, including India, Colombia, and Kenya. Overall, her findings raise fundamental questions about whether systems designed for high-income countries can work in places where entrepreneurship is a matter of necessity. The ways in which organizations compel repeated interactions shapes the rela...

Professor Rob Nason is tired of the myopic exportation of entrepreneurship ideas and training from high-income to low-income countries. He’s gone as far as to say that teaching entrepreneurship in Africa in the same way as we do in North America can put lives at risk. In this incisive, insightful conversation, he describes how his research in African and other low-income contexts has made him keen...

Professor Ilze Kivleniece has examined tradeoffs in public goals such as providing high-quality water in small, rural French towns. Her pioneering studies on water utilities in France demonstrate how public and private utilities act differently in the public interest, and on how hard it is for local governmental officials to work effectively with corporate executives. In this warm and friendly con...

Eppa Rixey studies how regulators compete to enable business activity in their jurisdictions–and how they can cultivate community identity and engagement in the process. Eppa is passionate about how companies such as craft brewers help create places in cities where relationships, trust, and connection thrive. His passion also extends to a local project in Cambridge, Massachusetts, at Jerry’s Pond,...

Professor Pushpika Vishwanathan is an eminent authority on how stakeholders are enfranchised in company activities. She studies criteria that legitimize stakeholders: transactions, community members, and even the natural environment. How do we know who is in and who is out? It really depends on a case-by-case analysis by managers of organizations, she says. She explains how managers are held true...

Professor Gabriel Cavalli studies the ways in which AI tools have enhanced understanding of the protein-folding problem at the heart of what constitutes life itself. Specifically, he has studied how the Nobel Prize winning modelers at Google Deep Mind won the CASP competition in 2018 and 2020, and the implications of this achievement for the organization of academic laboratories dedicated to the d...

Professor Arielle Newman made the transition from political science to entrepreneurship because she wanted to get away from broad policy prescriptions and move toward bottom-up creative opportunities–particularly for poor and vulnerable communities such as those that she has studied in Ghana. What did she find in a deep and extensive examination of the reshaping of the Kumasi market to improve pub...

Professor Chirantan Chatterjee has devoted his life to fulfilling the vision for justice of his countryman, the Nobel-Prize winning economist, Amartya Sen. From his early years as an engineer and journalist through his scholarly accomplishments as a Professor, Chirantan has been devoted to the joint achievement of access to essential medicines and innovation in their provision. This far-reaching,...