Trillion Dollar Ideas to Build Prosperity

Trillion Dollar Ideas to Build Prosperity
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
Loeb House at Harvard University
(17 Quincy St. Cambridge, MA. T: 617.495.5758)
RECEPTION AND DINNER:
4:00pm – 5:00pm
Registration
Welcome Remarks:
DAVID ELWOOD
5:00pm – 6:00pm
Dean of the Harvard Kennedy School
Keynote Speaker:
LAWRENCE SUMMERS
6:00pm – 7:00pm
Cocktail Reception
7:00pm – 9:00pm
Dinner
President Emeritus of Harvard University
Charles W. Eliot University Professor. Harvard University
www.cid.harvard.edu/gem
Thursday, October 25, 2012
th
Harvard Kennedy School, Taubman Building, 5 Floor
(79 JFK St. Cambridge, MA. T: 617.784.3857)
MORNING SESSION:
7:30am - 8:30am
8:30am - 9:30am
Breakfast
Lecture: Conglomerates in Emerging Markets: Tigers or Dinosaurs? The Role of Conglomerates
in Driving Development
Presented by:
RICARDO HAUSMANN
Director. Center for International Development at Harvard University
Professor of the Practice of Economic Development. Harvard Kennedy School
And
TARUN KHANNA
Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor. Harvard Business School
In many emerging economies governments have had a poor track record at identifying new
promising sectors to drive diversification and economic growth. Decentralized markets have also
not been sufficient to encourage the exploration of new fields where missing factors need to be
coordinated simultaneously. This chicken and egg problem of development is exacerbated in
small and less developed countries since there are many missing capabilities -like a proper
financial market or the ability to motivate executives to acquire a very specific skill, where
nobody else can hire them. Conglomerates have been successful throughout emerging markets
as a second best solution in overcoming some of these institutional voids and market failures.
From Chile and Mexico to South Africa, India, Indonesia and Korea, many highly diversified
groups have grown handsomely, raising considerable funds in the international market and
creating substantial gains in shareholder value in the process.
As conglomerates look for future sources of growth, their role as globally connected microcosms
with many internal capabilities could be catalytic for emerging economies to help them sprout
new, complex and innovative industries that would be riskier for smaller players. This catalytic
and socially validated path to growth will be explored in this session, showing some of the most
promising examples in the developing world. Disparaged in the developed world, emergingmarket conglomerates are here to stay, provided they adapt to their ever-changing
environment.
9:30am - 11:00am
Interactive Discussion and Group Exercise:
Moderated by:
RICARDO HAUSMANN
Director. Center for International Development at Harvard University
Professor of the Practice of Economic Development. HKS
And
TARUN KHANNA
Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor. Harvard Business School
Panel Discussion:
LORENZO MENDOZA
ALI KOÇ
ARIF NAQVI
JAIME ZOBEL DE AYALA
TONY ELUMELU
JORGE LONDOÑO
MANUEL SANCHEZ-ORTEGA
CEO. Polar Enterprises (Venezuela)
Koç Group (Turkey)
CEO. Abraaj Capital (United Arab Emirates)
Chairman. Ayala Corporation (Philippines)
Chairman. Heirs Holdings (Nigeria)
Grupo Empresarial Antioqueño GEA (Colombia)
CEO. Abengoa (Spain)
www.cid.harvard.edu/gem
11:00am - 11:30am
Coffee Break
11:30am - 1:00pm
Lecture and Interactive Session: Building State Capability
An integral part of development is the expansion of capability of the state to carry out its
responsibilities and effectively both impose obligations and provide services. A great deal of the
development debate is about what should be done rather than how the state will do it. The
development assistance dedicated to building capability has a mixed track record and overall,
there has been little progress. Many development projects are designed to accomplish
objectives that far exceed existing implementation capability in scope and complexity in too
short time-lines. This pre-mature load bearing can make for vicious cycles of organizational
collapse.
A new paradigm at Harvard’s Center for International Development aims to research practical
alternatives to building capability and promoting the correct practices for implementation. The
new approach “Problem Driven Iterative Adaptation” (PDIA) provides a new way to think about
this challenge and approach building capacity in institutions in the developing world.
Presented by:
LANT PRITCHETT
Professor of the Practice of International Development
Harvard Kennedy School
And discussion moderated by:
MATTHEW ANDREWS
Associate Professor of Public Policy. Harvard Kennedy School
LUNCH SESSION:
1:00pm - 2:30pm
Keynote:
Conversation between:
JOHN KERRY
Senior United States Senator from Massachusetts
Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
(to be confirmed)
DOUGLAS ALEXANDER
Former Secretary of State for International Development
Member of Parliament, UK
AFTERNOON SESSION:
2:30pm - 4:00pm
Dynamic Session 1: Behavioral Economics and Psychology in Development
In the study and implementation of programs to alleviate poverty, economists usually assume
rational decision-making. We assume humans have an abundance of psychological resources to
think through problems, unbounded by self-control issues, and can act deliberately in their
desire to save, spend, consume, etc. We have found ample examples that this is not true:
people do not take life saving medication even if it is free, they do not save or spend based on
their needs and have an unrealistic view of the future. Understanding how humans behave, in
particular the poor, with the least financial and psychological resources to spare, can have huge
implications in programs and policies to eradicate poverty. This panel will features psychologists,
economists, neuroscientists and decision experts to help us understand the biases we posses
and how to plan around this in developing products, programs and policies. Each expert will
present a short synopsis of their idea. The session will conclude with an open discussion
between the panel of speakers and the audience, moderated by Professor Sendhil Mullainathan.
Moderated by:
SENDHIL MULLAINATHAN
Professor of Economics. Harvard University
Assistant Director. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. United
States Department of the Treasury
www.cid.harvard.edu/gem
Speakers:
STEVEN PINKER
Professor of Psychology. Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard
University
Professor of Mechanical Engineering & Director of the Stanford
University Design Program
Professor of Psychology. Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard
University. Director of the Harvard Moral Cognition Laboratory
BANNY BANERJEE
JOSHUA GREENE
4:00pm - 4:30pm
Coffee Break
4:30pm - 6:00pm
Dynamic Session 2: The Role of Networks in Building Prosperity
We can think of the poor as those who are excluded from networks of productivity. Both the
access to those networks, and leveraging them for maximum impact, more so with technology’s
aggregating power, can lead to creative solutions of the problems faced by the poor. Similar to
the fabric of the human mind, the infrastructure of a network is strengthened primarily through
the quantity of connections established between actors. This panel will discuss these
connections in topics ranging from disease contagion, disaster relief and aid coordination.
A multi-disciplinary spectrum of speakers will discuss the influence of networks in promoting
economic development. This panel will look at how networks affect development, and how
technology and participatory platforms can change the way we think about affecting progress.
Each expert will present a synopsis of their idea. The session will conclude with an open
discussion between the panel of speakers and the audience, moderated by Professor AlbertLászló Barabási.
Presented by:
ALBERT-LÁSZLÓ BARABÁSI
Professor and Director of Northeastern University's Center for Complex
Network Research (CCNR), Member at Dana Farber Cancer Institute.
Speakers:
ALESSANDRO VESPIGNANI
DAVID LAZER
ASIM KHWAJA
RICARDO HAUSMANN
SINAN ARAL
6:00pm
Sternberg Family Distinguished University Professor of Theoretical
Condensed Matter and Biological Physics. Northeastern University
Professor of Governance. Northeastern University College of Computer
and Information Science and at the Department of Political Science
Sumitomo-Foundation for Advanced Studies on International
Development Professor of International Finance and Development. HKS
Director. Center for International Development at Harvard University
Professor of the Practice of Economic Development. HKS
Faculty member in the Information, Operations and Management.
Sciences department of the NYU Stern School of Business and professor
of Information Systems.
Closing Remarks & Cocktail Reception
www.cid.harvard.edu/gem