Harvard Business Review: Breakthrough Ideas for 2010

Fascinating article (link here - requires subscription though a free pdf version seems to be available if you google the title). HBR's ten breakthrough ideas include Romer on Charter Cities, Mullainathan on spotting bubbles, Amabile and Kramer on worker motivation and Dixon on simple technologies to revolutionise healthcare. It is hard to look at our situation in Ireland and Europe and not have some optimism that we are so far from the frontier of human potential that breakthroughs in healthcare, the nature of work, innovation policies and related areas in 2010 could usher in an area of real progress in human welfare. There is no doubt that our debate in Ireland will be intense this year as the government strategy of promoting economic progress through funding university based inter-sectoral research clusters rolls out in the backdrop of looming problems with public finance. Much of the breakthrough ideas in the HBR article are simple ideas for operation at the ground level. Hopefully, the 2010 debate in Ireland will see a greater appreciation of the role that such innovation plays in promoting human welfare.