At the turn of the 20th century, the Swiss were plagued by strange, interlinked medical conditions, which existed elsewhere to a degree, but in Switzerland… Read More »Not long ago; or, Little by little (10): Switzerland’s iodine revolution
I think people have been seduced into thinking that the advance in information technology is going to bring more change to the future than I… Read More »Lant Pritchett on the limits of information technology; or, The Moore the Merrier?
QUEEN GERTRUDEGood Hamlet, cast thy nighted colour off,And let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark.Do not for ever with thy vailed lidsSeek for… Read More »That Within Which Passeth Show (on Isomorphic Mimicry)
The Centre for Development and Enterprise (South Africa) has released a great interview with Lant Pritchett focusing on how nations develop. I’ll post a few… Read More »Lant Pritchett: “Schooling ain’t learning; education ain’t investment.”
To understand how persistent growth, even accelerating growth is possible, it helps to step back and ask where growth comes from. At the most basic… Read More »Recommendation: Paul Romer on progress, economic growth and combinatorial innovation
Autocatalysing innovations are innovations whose outputs lead to a virtuous cycle of further adoption and innovation. Steam engines The earliest steam engines were used to… Read More »Autocatalysing innovations
Covid-19 testing has been a mixed bag: Singapore and Korea seem to have been able to get on top of things quickly, while the UK… Read More »The onion strikes back: Maggie Koerth on the nested problems of Covid-19 testing
Here’s another example of how “best practice” is context dependent, this time in responses to the Covid-19 crisis: In the response to the COVID-19 pandemic,… Read More »Contextualising best practice: one size does not fit all
This is a nice illustration of a set of nested problems (a.k.a. “The Onion“) in development from Bill and Melinda Gates’ philanthropic work. Often –… Read More »Bill Gates’ onion