The Grand Challenge to Unleash the World’s Marginalized Talent

The Grand Challenge to Unleash the World’s Marginalized Talent

Speaker: Tarun Khanna, Harvard Business School

Abstract: I will frame the problem around joint work I am doing with the innovation scholar Karim Lakhani and, separately, on the teaching front with the behavioral scientist Linda Hill.  I am interested in the scholarship of how societies respond to so-called Grand Challenges. These can involve capitalizing on huge upside opportunities – eg commercializing space or capitalizing on the transition of biology from a taxonomic to an engineering discipline – or responding to disasters – eg pandemics or adapting to cataclysmic climate change.  The problem of marginalized talent in the world has huge economic and social costs and is a particularly interesting Grand Challenge because addressing it can unleash significant economic growth and social welfare, and failure to address it can breed disenchantment, ennui and instability.  I will use the four year story of an NGO I co-founded, Aspire, www.aspireleaders.org, to illustrate some ideas.  Aspire provided free higher educational services to 300,000 low income, first-generation college learners this year.  (Our estimate is that our target population is several hundreds of millions of 18-28 year olds, representing ‘lost’ talent.)   Aspire’s ‘flow’ rate doubles every year, and we have just under a million alumni in ~190 countries, and eight physical offices around world, coordinated from our Cambridge MA headquarters. Aspire has also become a platform for academics to do research.  Building Aspire has of course taught us a lot about strategy, organization, innovation, and use of algorithms and AI to create at-scale customized learning opportunities.