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Old School or New School, the Question is the Same: How can development institutions make measurement core to their business?

Submitted by Nigel Twose, co-authors: Jodi Nelson on Mon, 2011-09-19 18:59

Firms maximize their profits by developing strategy with targets, tracking progress, and using incentives to drive achievement. Without the natural feedback of the market, how can we use this approach to drive toward results for the poor? 

One of us works for the International Finance Corporation (IFC) – an old school Bretton Woods institution with years of experience building systems to track results across countries. The other one of us works for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, an entrepreneurial organization that is much newer on the block, without some of the systems that come with fifty years of development work but also without the preconceptions. We come to the table with a desire to learn from each other’s experience. We hope this first blog will pique input from colleagues around the world, similarly passionate about the power of data to improve our business.


The India Paradox: Promoting Competitive Industries in a High-Growth Country

Submitted by Ivan Rossignol, co-authors: Parth Shri Tewari, Rosanna Chan on Tue, 2011-09-13 12:10


India’s economic growth rate in the past decade has been nothing short of spectacular.  With its GDP growth around 7 to 9 percent per year, India is the second-fastest-growing large economy in the world.  However, the country’s manufacturing sector accounts for a dismal 17 percent of its employment opportunities, as compared to 60 percent in agriculture and 23 percent in services.[1]This summer, the World Bank’s Indian Visiting Scholars Program* invited two leading academics from Harvard University to visit India and to articulate potential pathways to sustain the country’s growth trajectory. These 2 scholars are Ricardo Hausmann, Professor of Economic Development at the John F. Kennedy School of Government and Director of Harvard’s Center of International Development and Dani Rodrik, Professor of International Political Economy at the Kennedy School. While there, they interacted with the private sector and key policymakers, including senior officials of the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion, the Planning Commission, and the Ministry of Finance.

On the Front Line of Climate Change....Buildings!

Submitted by David Lawrence on Mon, 2011-09-12 10:14

Efforts to fight climate change tend to focus on emissions, usually dirty ones, like vehicle exhaust or the toxic belching of coal-fired power plants. A blast of diesel fumes in your face is a good reminder that these things are bad for both people and the planet. So it’s no surprise that we zero in on cheerful, clean solutions, like solar power and zippy electric cars.

Geothermal energy: an under tapped, climate-friendly resource

Submitted by David Lawrence on Mon, 2011-08-15 09:50

A few years ago I had the pleasure of swimming in a big, heated pool. Outdoors. In winter. It sounds like an unaffordable luxury, and in most places, it is. But in Iceland, you can swim all year round in geothermal swimming pools. Iceland sits on the boundary of the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates, which are slowly pulling apart, giving it extraordinary geothermal resources. Besides year-round outdoor swimming, this renewable resource provides heat, hot water, and electricity.

Climate Change Solutions in a New Age

Submitted by David Lawrence on Wed, 2011-07-20 15:05

I recently stumbled across an interesting article in the May 26 issue of The Economist, which argues that human impact on the planet is so immense that we have ushered in a new geological age, which they call the Anthropocene: the age of man.