Global poverty is one of the world’s most vexing problems. For decades, we’ve assumed smart, well-intentioned people will eventually be able to change the economic trajectory of poor countries. From education to healthcare, infrastructure to eradicating corruption, too many solutions rely on trial and error. Essentially, the plan is often to identify areas that need help, flood them with resources, and hope to see change over time. The Prosperity Paradox identifies the limits of common economic development models, which tend to be top-down efforts, and offers a new framework for economic growth based on entrepreneurship and market-creating innovation. Christensen, Ojomo, and Dillon use successful examples from America’s own economic development, including Ford, Eastman Kodak, and Singer Sewing Machines, and shows how similar models have worked in other regions such as Japan, South Korea, Nigeria, Rwanda, India, Argentina, and Mexico. The ideas in this book will help companies desperate for real, long-term growth see actual, sustainable progress where they’ve failed before. But The Prosperity Paradox is more than a business book; it is a call to action for anyone who wants a fresh take for making the world a better and more prosperous place.

Theme: The Prosperity Paradox: How Innovation Can Lift Nations Out of Poverty

Claude Grunitzky, Moderator

Claude Grunitzky is the founder of TRACE and TRUE Africa, a media tech platform championing young African voices all over the world. In 2017, TRUE Africa was funded by Google’s Digital News Initiative. In 2003, Grunitzky and two business partners completed a multimillion-dollar financing deal led by Goldman Sachs Group. As a result, the TRACE brand is now being leveraged globally across various television, event and interactive platforms. TRACE, which now reaches an audience of more than 200 million people across 160 countries, was successfully sold to a French investor group in 2010. A graduate of London University and MIT Sloan, where he obtained an MBA as a Sloan Fellow, Grunitzky is also a trustee at The Watermill Center, a laboratory of inspiration and performance, at MASS MoCA, a contemporary art museum in Massachusetts, and at Humanity in Action, a foundation that works internationally to build global leadership, defend democracy, protect minorities and improve human rights. Grunitzky is a Visiting Social Innovator at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Social Innovation and Change Initiative.

Efosa Ojomo, Co-author of The Prosperity Paradox

Efosa Ojomo is currently a senior research fellow at the Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation, where he leads the organization’s Global Prosperity research. He works alongside Harvard Business School Professor Clay Christensen in figuring out the best ways to help entrepreneurs, policy makers and development practitioners spur economic prosperity in low- and middle-income countries, and in depressed regions in high-income economies. His work has been published by the Harvard Business Review, Guardian, Quartz, the World Bank, and he regularly speaks on the topic of innovation and economic development. His most recent book, published alongside Professor Clayton Christensen and Karen Dillon is titled The Prosperity Paradox: How innovation can lift nations out of poverty.
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Ojomo graduated from Vanderbilt University with a degree in computer engineering and got his MBA from Harvard Business School.