The Prosperity Paradox: How Innovation Can Lift Nations Out of Poverty
February 16, 2021 from 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm EST
Early analyses from the World Bank of the COVID-19 pandemic in developing countries suggest a real impact on incomes, jobs, and human capital that are likely to amplify pre-existing inequalities, between rich and poor countries and between the privileged and underprivileged within countries. Progress has not only stopped but has regressed in areas like lifting people out of poverty and improving conditions for women and children around the world. Many in the international development community are decrying how one year into the COVID-19 has reversed at least a decade of helping the world’s most poor and vulnerable populations. How do developing countries economies move forward from here? Come join Efosa Ojomo as he presents the power of market-creating innovation and discusses how developing countries can leverage innovation to transform their economies and spur employment growth?
In this talk, Efosa Ojomo, co-author of the groundbreaking book, The Prosperity Paradox: How Innovation Can Lift Nations Out of Poverty, will provide a clear categorization that explains the three different types of innovation. He'll explain that innovation is not necessarily something that is high-tech, overly advanced, or even entirely new, and is therefore different from invention. From an economic development standpoint, innovations can be categorized as being market-creating, sustaining, or improving efficiency. Market-creating innovations have been the foundation upon which corporations and countries have built new growth engines that have triggered economic prosperity.
Efosa Ojomo was selected as one of 30 thinkers in the 2020 Thinkers50 Radar list, the world’s most reliable resource for identifying, ranking, and sharing the leading management ideas of our age. He researches and writes about how innovation can transform organizations and create inclusive prosperity for many. In January 2019, alongside Harvard Business School professor, Clayton Christensen, he published the book, The Prosperity Paradox: How innovation can lift nations out of poverty. Efosa leads the Global Prosperity research group at the Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation, an innovation-focused think tank based in Boston and Silicon Valley. Over the past several years, his work has been published and covered by the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, The Guardian, Quartz, Forbes, Fortune, The World Bank, NPR, and several other media outlets. Efosa graduated from Vanderbilt University with a degree in computer engineering and received his MBA from Harvard Business School.