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Skyline of Downtown Dubai with Burj Khalifa from a Helicopter

Event Review, 2018 Annual Harvard Arab Conference: Technology and innovation: Inseparable couple?

01.4.19

Technology and innovation have the potential to ameliorate an impending regional energy crisis while creating space for young people to flourish.

Education Policy Reform: A Catalyst for Innovation in Developing Countries

02.14.18

BY BILAL CHAUDHARY Stimulating domestic innovation is crucial for developing countries. Innovation, creativity, and out-of-the-box thinking can accelerate the pace of poor countries’ development, reducing their reliance on aid and enhancing their capacity to participate in a rapidly changing global economy. For development to succeed, innovation cannot be solely the domain of the rich and […]

Trump’s Technology Week Stumble

06.26.17

BY MATTHEW ERIC SPECTOR President Trump’s recent “technology week” was full of contradictions. Although the administration put on airs to appeal to Silicon Valley, top CEOs, and emerging innovators, the Trump team failed to spell out concrete plans for expanding technological opportunities and closing the growing digital divide. While playing host to executives from Facebook, […]

Trafficking and Autonomous Vehicles: A Long Road Ahead

06.21.17

BY DOUG LAVEY Many hail autonomous vehicles (AV) as a life-altering innovation that will radically transform the way society transports individuals and goods. However, few resources are dedicated to the impact AVs may have on those individuals and goods that should not be transported, namely illegal human and drug trafficking. Consider the following scenarios: 1)     […]

The Trump Era Shifts Social Innovation Agendas

05.3.17

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 […]

Trump’s Dance With Tech

12.22.16

BY MATTHEW E. SPECTOR The most critical activity at Trump Tower last week was not the selection of ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson as the president-elect’s secretary of state or the appearance of Kanye West for a short meeting about “life,” but a small, closed door meeting with 25 tech leaders with potentially dramatic implications for […]

Innovation: In the DNA of Medellin

10.7.16

Innovation: In the DNA of Medellin By Ruta N Medellin 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 […]

Social Innovation and Philanthropy

Driving the Future of Future Driving: Scaling Up Adoption of Electric Vehicles in China

08.10.16

BY JACK GAO AND DIANA ZHOU Imagine a world where cars operate on electricity alone. Cars are silent, engineless, odorless. Gas stations are replaced by individual electric charging stations located in homes, offices, and shopping mall parking lots. Roads and pavement use friction technology to charge cars as they drive. In dense urban metropolises like […]

Science, Technology and Data

Designing America’s Defense for the Digital Age

07.13.16

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 […]

Addressing Inequality through Inclusive and Sustainable Development: Lessons from Detroit

05.11.16

BY ANDREA BLINKHORN AND JONATHAN HUI Driving down Puritan Avenue in the Martin Park neighborhood in northwest Detroit, it’s hard not to feel a sense of emptiness. Many houses are boarded up and crumbling, lying in a state of long-time disrepair that belies the ornate architectural styles that used to define the city. A short […]

Cities and Communities

Skolkovo: The Moscow Suburb’s Struggle to Survive

04.14.16

BY JUSTIN REYNOLDS The bus trundled to a stop in front of a dismal looking barbed wire gate. The vodka from the previous night still featured prominently in my thoughts as I struggled to build a picture of a place I never thought I would visit: Russia.  It was the third day of a week-long […]

States that React and Criminals that Innovate

10.21.13

Juan Carlos Garzón Vergara is a consultant for the United Nations Development Programme. Previously, he was a specialist at the Organization of American States. His latest book, Mafia & Co: Criminal networks in Mexico, Brazil and Colombia, was recently published by Editorial Planeta and translated into English by the Woodrow Wilson Center.   “I urge […]

Fairness and Justice

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