Private Innovation in the Public Interest

Professor Felipe Csaszar of the University of Michigan is an eminent scholar with extensive publications on managerialcognition, organizational decision-making, and the ways in which AI is reshaping the process of strategizing. In this conversation, he explains how the hard-core analytical work of strategizing may be much more effectively done by AI than by human analysts. Yet in the end, this will be a balancing act in which human prosperity stays squarely in our sights as thecentral goal of strategizing.

Professor Hyunjin Kim is at the frontier on understanding how organizations – and particularly entrepreneurial companies – build the capabilities to use AI to improve their performance. Her research demonstrates that, at this early stage, there’s a great deal of variation even in AI uptake to improve workflows. But what really excites her is how organizations can be designed from scratch to use AI in entirely unprecedented ways.

Professor Chris Yenkey studies corruption, political violence, misconduct, and bribery. In this impassioned conversation with Anita, he gives us deep insight into what constitutes corruption, and how it gets produced by people who want things that are important to them. Chris describes how this problem is changing on a macro level, and what it’s going to take to address corruption at scale. In the end, he finds optimism inthe ways in which we cooperate every day on the streets.

In this milestone episode, host Anita McGahan reflects on the key themes explored across the podcast's first 100 episodes,which bring together scholars, practitioners, and policymakers to discuss how private innovation can serve the public good.Complexity and entrenchment — Grand challenges like climate change and inequality are deeply baked into existing systems, making change difficult but not impossible.Achieving innovative solutions — Marshalling science, orchestrating public-private efforts (e.g., NASA as a model), and leveraging AI to break through innovation bottlenecks.Organizational adaptation — Whether large, established companies can actually overcome inertia to address global challenges, including stranded assets and competing incentives.Cross-sector collaboration — The role of NGOs, social movements, and public-private partnerships in driving change, along with the cultural and linguistic barriers between sectors.Corporate social responsibility (CSR) — A movement seen as declining due to greenwashing, anti-ESG sentiment, and poor measurement, with a shift toward genuine sustainability.Starting small and local — Despite the scale of global problems, many speakers advocated for prototypes and proof-of-concept approaches that grow organically.Government-side challenges — Governments are generally not designed for innovation, but can scale proven private-sector solutions effectively once trust is established.Stakeholder trust and dignity — Trust is slow to build, quick to lose, and foundational to any successful collaboration.Fairness, justice, and integrity — Acting ethically and collaboratively is essential to achieving meaningful breakthroughs.Personal transformation — Engaging in socially purposeful work can change the individuals doing it, not just the communities they serve.Risks of intervention — Imposing Western entrepreneurship frameworks on low-income communities can cause real harm, including backlash and violence.Strategic human capital and education — Innovation in K–12, university, and worker training, including the role of AI in reshaping skills development.Health innovation — Tensions between private IP and equitable access to medicine, especially for low-income populations globally.Energy security — The need for honest conversations about nuclear, geothermal, and natural gas as transitional energy sources.Microfinance and lending — Both the promise and the potential pitfalls of microfinance and entrepreneurship training in the Global South.Looking AheadAnita previews forthcoming episodes, flagging: AI and the future of work, wealth distribution, corruption, long-term "bigscience" projects, research integrity, authenticity and trust, and when small companies can outmaneuver large ones.

Professor DK Kryscynski is an expert on how employees bring their unique skills and capabilities into their employment duties in ways that create value for their employers, their customers, their co-workers, and themselves. In this conversation with Anita, he expresses an almost unbounded optimism about the potential for AI to make our jobs more meaningful and creative. The way that this will work will depend on how are jobs are designed. For those of us with a lot of drudgework, the potential is to offload those duties so that we can build stronger human relationships and spend more time on creative projects. How this will play outdepends on many factors that are not currently known, but DK sees a bright future for anyone willing to embrace the possibilities.

Professor Christiane Bode studies how firms implement social-impact initiatives. In this far-reaching conversation with Anita, she emphasizes how the field turned from extreme positions – first that companies will not do CSR and then that companies will all do CSR – to a middle ground where the current emphasis is on employee motivation. In her own research, Christiane has found that there are often paradoxes and problems that arise when companies pursue social impact to satisfy employee interests in meaningful initiatives. She feels that we haven’t quite cracked the code as a field on what it will take to have true social impact beyond meeting the needs of stakeholders. What’s it going to take to direct firms toward solving tough problems even when employees and customers and investors are uncomfortable with the work? Christiane says that answering this question is the next big leap required for true progress on corporate sustainability.

Professor Arzi Adbi hails from the poorest province of India, Bihar, where he studied assiduously for exams so that he could become an engineer. After a storied career at Schlumberger, Goldman Sachs, and Loncar Industries, he decided to pursue his passion for long-term impact through a PhD at INSEAD, after which he became a professor at the National University of Singapore. Arzi’s research is on themany ways that companies respond to incentives that originate outside the market, such as during pandemics and poverty crises. He has focused in his scholarship on how local and foreign companies respond to foundational changes in the needs of the communities they serve. Arzi argues that the corporate pursuit of pro-social solutions to long problems is not yet a reality, but it is an aspiration that he and all of us should focus on.

Professor Caroline Fry studies how low-and middle-income countries build scientific capabilities, which occurs onescientist at a time. The successful migration of scientists from low-income countries can create significant benefits for the country from which the migration occurs, but only when institutions in the home environment are designed to make that happen. Without those institutions, migrant scientists often struggle both in the countries to which they move as well as in their collaborations with peers in their countries of origin. Building institutions successfully in the home country requires integrity and deep engagement. Poor implementation can create profound mistrust that lasts for decades. Science and scientists also face unusually intense political challenges, especially during health emergencies such as COVID-19. The bottom line: It takes a lot ofcareful work by committed practitioners to support scientific creativity and insight. Caroline finds inspiration intheir accomplishments.

Professor Kris Irwin had a fifteen-year career as a management consultant prior to earning her PhD at theUniversity of Alabama. In this inspired talk, she describes how the individual motivations, situations, and circumstances that shaped individual ambitions drive the outcomes of mergers, acquisitions, and new-firm formation. People cause projects to fail. She analyzes how leaders develop the resilience to persist and even to innovate in the face of uncertainty and complex bureaucratic dynamics. Despite all the challenges, Kris remains hopeful and optimistic that the higher purposes of leaders can carry firms to achievements that will address grand challenges in the world around us.

Professor Sukhun Kang was motivated to turn from a promising career as a computer scientist toward studying the biopharmaceutical industry after his family member was diagnosed with a rare cancer. Why don’t we have enough drugs for devastating diseases such as the one that afflicted his relative, and why can’t we make those that we do have more widely available? Sukhun’s research shows that the costs of administering programs designed to make cancer drugs available more widely to late-stage patients have prevented their uptake. Companies instead tend to rush into drug development and distribution when there’s a big market and a relatively well-known mechanism of disease, even when there’s a lot of competition. Diagnosing diseases that afflict relatively fewer patients attracts few resources because the prospects for profitable treatments are narrow. The result: We may not even know what medicines are needed.

Professor Mark Desjardine is concerned about our generation’s obligations to preserve the environment for future generations – and the implications of them for corporations. What is sustainability, really? And how do companies deal with tradeoffs between short- and long-term value-creating goals? Mark’s answer to this question in part rests on insights about how advocates of different types can help managers to appreciate fully the ways in which their organizations can move toward solutions to pressing climate challenges.

Catherine D’Amato is an internationally renowned leader in the food-security movement. Serving as CEO of the Greater Boston Food Bank for three decades, she invented and reinvented a model through which the GBFB advocates for 190 smaller, community-based partners with suppliers, distributors, technologists, and – remarkably – governments. Consistently ranked as among the most important leaders in Boston, she describes the critical relationship between empathy for local neighbors and advocacy at scale for resources.

Professor Peter Klein of Baylor University highlights the importance of long-standing relationships and trust in the kinds of collaborations that drive innovation in both the public and private sectors. To address major challenges such as the climate crisis, he argues that governments must establish large-scale guardrails that allow innovators to break down problems in ways that foster collaboration and build trust. Much easier said than done, he concedes!