Global development is at an inflection point.
Development, Reimagined: Pathways to a Thriving World convenes Harvard CID faculty affiliates and scholars to offer fresh, evidence-based ideas on how countries can adapt—strengthening education, expanding opportunity, and fostering inclusive growth.
CID faculty affiliates share one idea for how we can build a world where all can thrive.
Bold Ideas for New Era of Development
This collection of essays, launched alongside CID's 2026 Global Empowerment Meeting, serves as a resource for policymakers, academics, and leaders across sectors navigating a new era of global development.
Asim I. Khwaja, Director, Harvard Center for International Development; Sumitomo-FASID Professor of International Finance and Development, Harvard Kennedy School
Emiliana Vegas, Professor of Practice, Harvard Graduate School of Education; Faculty Chair, Education Policy and Analysis (EPA)
The goal of education should be to enable every child to discover their innate and unique talents and then develop those talents into skills that generate individual and collective benefit.
To get there, we need to reconsider how we conceive of, and provide, education. Education should not be reduced to a sequence of classrooms and standardized exams stretching from kindergarten to college. It is, at its best, a dynamic and lifelong process of discovering, nurturing, and activating human potential.
Gordon Hanson, Peter Wertheim Professor in Urban Policy, Harvard Kennedy School; Co-Director, Reimagining the Economy Program at Harvard Kennedy School
Disquiet about the state of the labor market has gone global. In high-income and many middle-income countries, longstanding concerns over how globalization and technological change have left behind large numbers of middle-wage workers are being compounded by fears of a looming AI job collapse. Across the developing world, apprehensions over how to address persistently high rates of informality (especially in Latin America), youth unemployment (especially in Africa), and rapid urban population growth (in urbanizing Asia and Africa) are being exacerbated by concerns over the impacts of industrial robots, climate change, and geopolitical conflict.
Aisha K. Yousafzai, Professor of Child Development and Health, Global Health and Population, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
The science of early child development has informed a host of evidence-based programs to promote healthy development and thriving for the youngest children. The early years of life represent a sensitive period of brain development shaped by our genetics, environment, and experiences. Interventions to mitigate risks and promote good health and nutrition, protection, positive interactions, and early learning for the young child are recognized to be beneficial for supporting healthy developmental trajectories.
Dani Rodrik, Ford Foundation Professor of International Political Economy, Harvard Kennedy School; Co-Director, Reimagining the Economy Program at Harvard Kennedy School
Structural change is the essence of economic development. It entails moving people from bad, low-productivity jobs to better, higher-productivity jobs. Achieving economic development is tantamount to unlocking this process in a rapid, sustainable manner.
Historically, industrialization has been the key vehicle through which low-income countries have created better jobs. The trouble is that manufacturing industries are no longer the labor-absorbing sectors they used to be.
Matt Andrews, Edward S. Mason Senior Lecturer in International Development, Harvard Kennedy School
I define development as “good change,” a process through which societies adapt to address problems they care about in ways that endure. This definition emphasizes two essential features. First, development is inherently contextual: what counts as ‘good’ depends on socially defined priorities within particular societies. Second, development is fundamentally dynamic: it involves continuous adaptation as conditions, constraints, and aspirations evolve.
Ideas from the CID Community
Scholars and students from the CID community share their thoughts about how to navigate a new era for global development.
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Eliana La Ferrara, Professor of Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School
Development policy does not operate in a social vacuum. Programs are implemented within communities that are structured by norms governing cooperation, authority, gender roles, kinship, inheritance, and social hierarchy, to name a few. These norms shape which policies “fit” a given context and determine how promising interventions play out in practice: Do they work? Do their effects persist? Or do such policies backfire and generate unintended consequences?
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