Cambridge, MA – Harvard University’s Center for International Development (CID) hosted its ninth annual Global Empowerment Meeting on April 18-19, 2017. Made possible by the collaboration with the MasterCard Foundation, GEM 2017 brought together a group of 100 business leaders, development practitioners, policymakers and academics representing a multitude of disciplines and geographies. Participants had the opportunity to hear from speakers from across the globe.
The theme of this year’s GEM, “the sense of us,” and its implications for economies and societies, emerged as an observation from CID’s research and country engagements. Through our work in different parts of the globe, we have recognized that this concept has profound implications on economic development.
The sessions at GEM allowed for wide-ranging discussions around what defines a society’s “sense of us,” how policymakers make decisions within the constraints of societal identity, and the importance of authentic leadership for building state capability and unlocking economic growth. Two topics with enormous importance for global development were discussed at length: migration and the tension between globalization and populism.
Day 1
SETTING THE STAGE: THE SENSE OF US AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
A lot has changed over the last year that can be traced to different ways in which societies define who is “us” and who is “them.” Grounding the argument on emerging research from various disciplines, Hausmann put forth the notion that development requires technological diffusion and a capable state, which in turn requires an “imagined community, deep and broad enough to allow the mixing of new forms of knowhow." This point set the stage for the question to be explored throughout the conference: “what will be the future sense of us?”
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