 So when someone says education quality is bad could teachers aren't teaching you don't want to say okay teachers aren't teaching Don't want to say well. Why aren't they teaching? Mm-hmm? Oh because they're not being monitored Well, why are they not being monitored? Oh because the politicians don't care Well, why do the politicians not care because people don't care? Why do people not care in fact? Is it true that people not care? Maybe they do but they simply don't exercise their political rights Through the system. So you know you get a very different process for us It's really important that you spend time getting the diagnosis done because guess what if you don't do the diagnosis Write your solution which is step three for us the design will solve the wrong thing. It'll be the band-aid It won't be the correcting the internal trauma if that's what you're doing. So it won't be a sustainable solution Boom, what's up everyone welcome to simulation. I'm your host Alan Sakyan We are at the Harvard Kennedy School in the beautiful Cambridge in Massachusetts We are now going to be talking about economic development and empowerment. We have awesome quadrant joining us on the show Hello, hi. Thank you so much for coming on greatly appreciate it. It's a pleasure to be here Yeah, awesome's work. So interesting. He's the professor of international finance and development at Harvard Kennedy School He's the co-director of evidence for policy policy design e-pod and co-founder of the Center for Economic Research in Pakistan CERP Starting July 1st 2019. He will serve as a director of the Center for International Development CID at Harvard University All right, awesome. Let's start things off with the perspective of we're stewards of earth now What is your current take on the state of our world? That's not with the easy question, right? So I guess that the two ways to look at it one way is Kind of more the arc of history if you will and if you look at the arc of history In terms of particularly if you take the view of economic development, actually things are really good In terms of things like education levels maternal mortality health outcomes Kind of what you would think as the basic ingredients, you know Are people able to consume the basic stuff? What is poverty rates looking like like all these simple measures but powerful measures of economic development and empowerment actually things are The progress we've made in the last 50 to 100 years has been just spectacular. So in that sense, you know You know things are great That said obviously a lot of us don't feel that way And so it would be kind of naive to say well look at the data Clearly, we're much better than our forefathers were and so should all be really grateful and thankful about that In reality as you can see in the world There's a really concerning trend that people aren't unhappy, right? The kind of promise of globalization hasn't quite Given people what they expected there was resentment. There's polarization. There was increased xenophobia We aren't a great kumbaya place. We aren't a place where everyone is like thrilled with how they're doing everyone's opening up to others Increasingly if anything populism is on the rise. We don't want people to come in from outside We don't want to share what resources we have and a lot of people are very dissatisfied They're see their forefathers not in terms of I'm better than what my father had. I have a flat screen TV now I can eat comfortably now, but they see themselves relative to where they could be or where they think they could be in terms of ranks and that creates a lot of Unhappiness and so so I think if you ask me kind of what the pressing problem of our time is is to really Pay creed to that sentiment is to take it seriously to not dismiss it and try and figure out How is it that despite the economic progress we've made? These forces are still there. Are they real or are they also driven just by a greater global awareness? Are we just more sensitive to these things now? And even if it's all in our mind, it still is real, right? Emotions are real emotions are palatable beliefs are real aspirations are real expectations are real and Divergence from your expectations or aspirations is real because it leads to real behavior And some of that behavior is not the behavior we as humankind would aspire to we want to be a place where we provide Opportunities for others. We're not unhappy with other success. We want to share another success We want to help people who are worse off than us Become better and that's the world we aspire to and so in that sense I think that to me would be kind of a pressing problem now as an academic as a researcher As also a practitioner You know, I don't I don't get discouraged. It's not you know, yes These are these are challenging questions, but I do think increasingly we have the tools the information I mean, we live in an amazing era of you know, if you give me access to your phone I probably know more about your life than you do Scary as well, but it also says that there's a possibility that we have more We know now more about the human condition than we've ever done before now It's the onus is on us to use that in a way to improve our lives and when I say our I don't mean our personal lives But I mean our collective lives Yeah, the the state of the world being so So successful in so many ways of measurement and while simultaneously seeing so many things that are like Why do we have those errors happening and how do we fix them and one of the solutions that you name? There is this interdependence on one another and building systems that really uplift the collective meet basic physiological needs Make the self-actualization transcendence even more Commonplace so that we can reap the creative fruits of all people now Awesome now teach us about the journey that you went through in order to be able to get to this point That's a great question. I guess we all have you know We all have our personal journeys and I think a lot of us we do what we do partly because of that personal journey And it's very true for me as well. And so for my for me the personal journey was a just so you know, um, I Was born in England. My parents were doctors. They were originally from Pakistan. They were working in England I spent my childhood in Nigeria. My parents had a drive to be in the world They decided they were gonna work in Nigeria So I spent all my childhood actually amazing years in Nigeria northern Nigeria in a place called Kano As an adolescent I moved to Pakistan. So I did kind of my I would say my sort of Middle to high school education in Pakistan again sort of an amazing experience challenging times But an amazing experience and then I came as an undergrad to actually Cambridge Not Harvard a place down the road which Harvard makes fun of call MIT, but I love both places And I never left I did my PhD at Harvard and I joined the faculty here How did the transition happen from Pakistan to Cambridge? How did you find that? Yeah, it's a great So, you know, so the one thing that has worked for me And I'll say a couple of things and some might find contradicting so but I'll explain why they're not so One of the things I valued and I got from my parents very much and it's part of their journey as well It's part of my family's journey and my personal journey is Investing in human capital was always about that the way you'd kind of move to the next stage in life was you really invested in education and for me Kind of applying to the US. There were good places in Pakistan as well But nothing compared to the kind of places you could get here. And so it was all about Trying to do the best you can in that educational journey and sometimes at great personal cost I mean all my siblings I have two of the brothers all of us did that and you know My parents I sometimes feel you know, the best gift they could have given us was a very costly gift for them It was a gift of education and human capital, but it also meant a gift of mobility You know, my parents stayed back all their kids are Spread out in the world and you know, I give them a lot of credit to say that look I'm not gonna hold them back to me You know, there's an insecurity you want your kids to be with you But you know if you invest in people guess what happens they move And so for me it was very clear that human capital was very important The other two lessons I learned and again I credit lot my parents and my grandparents for this as well is kind of two realizations The first is even though hard work matters and education matters Most of what success is determined by is just luck. I was just lucky I was lucky to be born in a family Which was reasonably well off my parents were doctors my grandparents were professionals You know, so there was in a country where you know, the vast majority of people can barely at least in those times had barely enough food to survive I had the luxury of being able to invest in human capital now was just luck And also just their attitude right the friends I found in life who guided me the mentors I found a lot of these things you can expose look at them and say no no no, but there was some strategy here I really think maybe but mostly it was just I was there at the right place at the right time I was born in the right place and the reason I kind of mentioned this is I'm not saying hard work doesn't matter But the majority of what describes a variation in your outcomes is luck And then once you land in someplace, of course, you can have a positive trajectory based on your investment in human capital But because you realize it's luck then the third lesson is very obvious which again comes to me from my parents My parents were doctors and I remember as a child. I would really big grudge Like the patient always came first Right, we would be going out somewhere my dad's an ophthalmologist my mom's a gynecologist, you know and the emergency would come and it was never a question of Saying kids. Sorry, but I got to do this both my mom and my dad and I you know as a child You resent that but as you grow older you realize what message they were telling you that what matters is not your personal individual happiness but giving to others and So you know I vowed never to be a doctor because I was like man This is this takes over your life. Although in a very ironic way I've ended up being a different kind of doctor and equally as obsessed I would say in a good way about making that difference, but I think that that's really poignant because or Is really powerful once you recognize that most of life is luck then you feel like it's your responsibility To have whatever resources you have Because they're produced by luck like what you have is not just you know, you shouldn't feel ownership Even if you think you got it yourself through your hard work You should realize most of it was a gift given to you and if it's a gift given to you Then it's your responsibility to share that gift with others Whatever way you can and so that's that's really been a driving force in a lot of the work that I've done and a Lot of people that I'm impressed by Who who have lived that? We stand on the shoulders of Giants absolutely a hundred billion people that built civilization before us Absolutely, and also it makes sense now with understanding the journey that you went through a very Globalized journey with parents that were both putting others health First and that that makes sense now for me to better understand who you are and hopefully others as well Awesome now teach us teach us about These three evidence for policy design e-pods Center for Economic Research in Pakistan serp and the Center for International Development CID one Thing here that is a common thread that I've seen is that you are using Scientific evidence to show how to best develop economies and maximize people's potential. Absolutely. So, you know So I was trained as an economist And so for me, I'm not necessarily making a blanket statement of her I'm just describing how I found the world really a Way to contribute to the world using my own ability. So I was trained initially as an engineer So my approach the world as an undergrad I was, you know Did math computer science and economics, but you know, I very much had an engineering view of the world What I like about engineers is is In some sense, and I don't want to offend engineers who are rail engineers I became an economist is there's a simplicity in how they approach things which I think is beautiful and the simplicity is You start with a problem you face And you don't necessarily Theorize or philosophize about it endlessly you kind of her. Yeah, there's a very practicality to it There's a problem. I got to fix it Right and then you realize that you're fixed to the problem the machine you make to solve the problem isn't perfect It's never going to be perfect That's fine, but you still build the machine and then what you do is you kind of run the machine and you see how it does and As you operate the machine the kind of you figure out which parts are working what are not working and you keep adjusting and iterating What I find in policymaking or economics if you will is very similar to that approach You analyze a problem you then say, okay, I'm gonna try and design a solution to this problem I'm gonna diagnose first of all. I'm gonna figure out what's causing this problem I'm gonna try and design a machine a solution. It'll be a policy reform Now the role of evidence or analytics is critical in this because you can't while it's important to use human intuition Look, I'm a big believer in the power of the narrative the power of intuition the power of personal perspective But that's the initial driving force if you only rely on that you can lead to all sorts of bias decisions I think this is the right policy because I believe in it and that's dangerous So having that initial inspiration start you off But then marrying it with analytics, which to me is both theory and data is critical because that keeps that machine Running well it keeps that policy adjustment that you need to do based on real hard evidence And what often when I say hard evidence people think where you're an economist You're obviously gonna use like quantitative stuff only but increasingly and that is a weakness by the way I acknowledge that but increasingly we're able to use qualitative analysis as well So for me the framework is not about I'm running a regression or doing some really big data type of stuff It's just that I'm being analytical logical consistent in how I am Adapting iterating and improving my policy. I think that becomes fundamental the three organizations you mention all Sort of typify all exactly that approach Let me start with e-pod and SERP because they're both kind of sister organizations E-pod at a more global scale SERP at a country specific scale SERP really operates in Pakistan and you should think of e-pod and SERP having the same mission except SERP's view was look a country like Pakistan, it's huge 200 million people Still doesn't have as much evidence-based decision-making in policy. I mean the US is amazing in that sense of developed countries that how much Solid scholarship you have about any policy reform you could think of a lot of countries like Pakistan and other developing countries don't have that and so SERP for us was With a bunch of my colleagues Several faculty members who are kind of like me who are from Pakistan at if me at Princeton Ali Chima at Lums in Pakistan at naan Khan at LSE in London Tahir and Drabi at Pomona that we Bunch of people got together. We said we got to build something like this in Pakistan and that's been a fruit of love Where for the last 10 years or so? We've really pushed both in terms of creating evidence for policy training policymakers training future researchers Interfacing with decision-makers the whole gamut And you know, I'm thrilled that that organization has recently moved to stage 2 Where the founders people like us have stepped back a bit and new leadership is emerging to kind of scale that organization up E-pod is very similar E-pod was set up by Rooney Pande and Rima Hanna and myself kind of three academics who work in different parts of the world But the same idea we wanted to have you know, we're sitting at the Kennedy School So for me it was really important to say, you know evidence should be useful It should be applied we sit at the policy school And so we should really try and be at the same if you will not just design table But the problem discovery table as a policymaker We have amazing people who are students of ours some younger some older who are actually driving policy change in their countries We need to somehow have a partnership with them where the two of us are in the same table Working together towards this journey and that's just been spectacular I'm really grateful to have been part of that in different countries If you can look at E-pod's work and I welcome people to do so online You'll see kind of some of the examples of how these engagements work CID is is the parent of E-pod. We were all part of CID. I've now had the You know people think it's an honor But I think of it as a as a heavy responsibility burden perhaps is a harsh word to use I've I've reached I will be starting as director for CID In July and I'm taking over from a Ricardo Hausman who's done an amazing job as the as a leader for the last actually almost decade and a half And what I view kind of CID is very much that first thing I said to you Which is you know if I think of what one of the biggest assets that I'm sitting on right now The biggest gifts if you will is that I'm at Harvard and I don't mean that in an arrogant way I mean that in a way that Harvard is one of the unique places to me and whether it deserves it or not as a different question But which has amazing influence in the world In fact, it has amazing global convening power So it's not just Harvard has amazing set of faculty and students which it does There's just some of the most impressive people I've met here have been sort of In my in my years over here But what I find amazing is it is able to draw other talented people Into it even if they visit for a bit even if I get faculty from other universities that come in and work together And so so my vision for CID is really that we should leverage Global talent in the world to solve some of the most pressing problems of the world faces today It's a very simple vision, but I feel like it's a vision where we increasingly at Harvard are enablers We're doers as well. Some of the work we'll do ourselves But mostly we enable The best the most talented people in the world to connect with those who have the most needs and make that Work happen in the same framework in the same analytical evidence-driven style of work And that's what I'm most excited about Whether I'll succeed or not. We've already I think achieved somewhat in this but you know I'm I want to keep growing and so you should ask me in a few years how it's going, but that's that's the intent Okay, so I want to now learn from you about the the exact practices of policy design across the world that you have implemented and the scientifically analyze when you When your team gave a talk at Effective altruism global in Boston We were able to learn that there's a specific way to deliver insecticide treated nets For insects from specially mosquitoes in Africa and how it was crazy seeing over 15 years The amount of cases just decrease of malaria and I would love to Learn about deeper the specific yet cases and how you've been analyzing great So let me give you so the insectivite one is is probably Work done by JPL, which is great the poverty action lab at MIT and they're doing some wonderful work as well This let me answer this in in kind of both the micro of it and the macro of it The micro is kind of specific examples of projects Projects, I've been involved in and projects colleagues of mines have been involved in so I'll give you three examples Of the micro and then I want to kind of take it to the macro level to say what's what's the template over here? What's how do we get to scale this up so that it's not just us doing it? But many others can do it as well at the micro level I'll start first with my own work because I know it better So just one example of my work is I've been doing work in education now in in Pakistan for the last almost two decades And in that work we started very much with what I would call a Input-based approach like the approach was figure out specific things which are not working like you know Do schools lack good teachers or do schools lack good textbooks? Oh, and that's very much what the literature has done and then and this is the revolution the empirical revolution that People like Esther DeFloor and Abhijit Banerjee and Michael Kramer and other spearheaded Which is kind of randomized control trials be very scientific about what you're doing Test these inputs see what happens when you randomly allocate these inputs to one group and not the other Just like you did in medical drug trials, and there's been a profound set of knowledge that has been created from that That's very much the approach that we started with but increasingly we have at least in my work I've changed slightly in the sense that rather than my concern with with inputs is that what if you don't get it right? Right what if you don't know in this environment? What's the right input and you could you could try different ones and navigate that way and that's one way to go The way we went is mostly maybe because of my own background, which is I I'm an industrial organization person as well And so so I I viewed schools and parents and teachers as very interesting actors And so one of the views I took is to say well if the actors are there and a lot of the times I saw in Pakistan the actors were there parents did want schooling for their kids kids did want to improve teachers as Long as they were rewarded appropriately did want to teach better Schools did want to provide good quality education as long as again They're rewarded and recognized for it And so a lot of the work that I've done now together with the jishnu das is at the World Bank and Tahir and the rabbi is at Pomona under the name of leaps learning and achievement in Pakistan schools is Understanding what are the frictions that prevent these actors from achieving success? So every one of our projects now has really resolved one or the other of these frictions It could be informational frictions. I as a parent don't know what schools are good or bad It could be financial frictions. I as a school can't get money to grow It could be labor market frictions. I as a school can't hire good teachers or reward them It could be educational intermediary frictions I as a school or as a parent can't buy educational support services like extra coaching or teacher training or e-learning and So like I use the word frictions exactly. It's exactly that and so that approach Touchwood has been working really well and now we're scaling it up to kind of do it at the economy wide level So I almost think create a virtual marketplace create a virtual mark just like it's Amazon meets eBay where you know parents and teachers and schools and financial providers and Education support service providers can all meet together and kind of exchange and so that's been one approach Let me mention briefly two other projects not of mine, but I think I Think these are amazing and just quick just to make sure it's clear So then these these key players will meet and talk about their best practices for decreasing friction and they'll apply exactly So they will because they we're enabling them to act basically And as long as this the nice thing about this approach is that as long as their preferences are in the right way They will achieve success test scores will go up school fees will drop education quality and improve and every one of our projects We see that happening right So I'm not saying look sometimes it is the case that preferences may not be progressive parents may not want to educate girls You know there are situations like that where this approach would need more nudging But by and large I've seen most actors do want the best for their kids parents do teachers do and so so I think as a first pass There's a lot of room to be made of improvement just by enabling actors I want to mention Rohini Pande and Rima Hanna's work, which is both as just spectacular Rohini has been doing some amazing work in India on environmental regulation and a very similar Spare to this work trying to think about and that's just one example try to think about how do I work with regulators and environmental agencies to have a Much more systematic design-based process through which they could improve regulation And her work has found huge impact just by doing simple design tweaks Well, not that simple, but you know reasonably feasible design tweaks finding amazing work similarly Rima Hanna with co-authors of hers at MIT Ben Olken and Abhijit Banerjee had done some Spectacular work a series of papers on improving targeting of subsidies in Indonesia So again, how do we use evidence and design to better target subsidies that a country may be giving its poor people? There's a whole bunch of papers. I'm not going to summarize them But all of this work and let me now go to the macro point Each of this kind of work typifies one specific style of working And we've kind of codified that in what we at Epod called speedy smart policy design and implementation And this is just one manifestation of this work I'm not necessarily saying well, this is the only way to go But it let me explain it to you because it'll highlight how we're able to be consistent and how Evidence analytics can be brought in So what we do in speedy is we kind of have the the following steps So first we want to identify the problem and this is non-trivial our times we focus on problems Which are not really the problems. We do kind of superficial problems. So To give you an example in education. My problem is enrollment Okay, so I might ask a minister of education or a secretary of education. Why is enrollment your problem? You might say well, it's because I want better jobs for my people or I want Better civicness and you say well wait a second Is your problem enrollment or is your problem getting the type of education which leads to personal improvement? And those are different problems because the first problem you just get kids in school The second problem you have to make sure that not only do you get kids in school But they're learning the kind of skills that would help them in life. Yes, so quality comes in not just enrollment Yes, so the first step for us is getting the problem right The second and by the way each of these steps is done in tandem with researchers and practitioners and people in the field It's not like any one of us has the right to decide that we all collectively Have that discussion. You're poking with the question. Why deeper why well that comes next. That's exactly right So once we know the problem then you want to do it what we would call in medicine a differential diagnosis Why is the problem occurring you keep asking why and you want to go beyond the kind of superficial diagnosis If you if you were a patient and you were bleeding and you walked into a doctor and you said hey doctor What's my problem? The doctor said well you're bleeding? You're gonna laugh exactly what you just did right you're gonna laugh and say well that's that's it And then the doctor says even worse and by the way here's some band-aids. I stopped the bleeding. Thank you so much Check please leave right a good doctor would say wait a second. Why are you bleeding? Is it an external injury is an internal hemorrhage if it's internal hemorrhage which organ is hemorrhaging? Why is it hemorrhaging so you want to do the same in policy? So when someone says education quality is bad cut teachers on teaching you don't want to say okay teachers aren't teaching You want to say well why aren't they teaching? Mm-hmm. Oh because they're not being monitored Well, why are they not being monitored? Oh because the politicians don't care Well, why do the politicians not care because people don't care. Why do people not care? Mm-hmm. In fact, is it true that people not care? Maybe they do but they simply don't exercise their political rights through the system So you know you get a very different process for us It's really important that you spend time getting the diagnosis done because guess what? If you don't do the diagnosis right your solution which is step three for us the design will solve the wrong thing It'll be the band-aid. It won't be the correcting the internal trauma if that's what you're doing So it won't be a sustainable solution. It might work for a bit In fact, you do want to actually the joke and bleeding is the first thing you want to do is actually stop the bleeding That is correct, but you don't stop there, right? Especially if you have a lot of bleeding going on you don't want the patient to die from the superficial cause, right? So it could be that you solve that but there's a deeper analysis you guys go to the roots Exactly the root causes if you will that's step two for us step three is design Now you become the engineer. Now you say, what's the policy machine? What's the thing I need to make to solve this and to solve not the problem, but the deeper diagnosis you just did Step four is even if you can design give us a quick idea of what a design design would look like So so let me continue the education example. So Suppose I found out that the problem was that there's really political teachers are not present Teachers aren't present because there isn't bureaucratic pressure. There isn't bureaucratic pressure because there isn't political pressure But parents care Then you've said the deeper diagnosis is somehow parents are not being able to express their concern politically through the system So design would be and this is something I mentioned this kind of hypothetically But it's actually something I'm working with a political scientist Tiffany Simon who's a PhD student Used to work with me in Princeton. She and I are proposing this pilot project where in Pakistan We're going to go to households and see if we can get their preferences better politically express you So how do you get people to lobby for something if that's the deeper and I don't know if that's true or not But that the design we're going to do is basically effective ways we're going to examine for Parents in rural areas to express their unhappiness with their school in their village To either their local politician Or central politician or the local bureaucrat or the central bureaucrat. I mean, how do you how do they get engaged? Exactly. So so so what we're going to do is to say what is the right form of engagement? What is the right messaging? So it really is political activism But in a way that we examine different ways So for instance is the right thing for you to do is all get together and have a meeting with the Local bureaucrat and explain your concerns Is the right thing for you to do is go talk to the local media and basically say look at what's going on come see our school It's terrible. So it's almost like a you make the the politician the bureaucrat feel guilty Is it about taking your local? Politically active person and they go with you to the politician who says hey if you want votes next year You better fix this problem. That's how democracy works Which of these means would work and that's an example of two or three different ideas And the way we do it is and that brings me to the implement stage You know the devil really is in the details you can design something But I often think we underestimate how much implementation is challenging And so I gave you three or four examples What we would do is we would figure out with the local organization So in this case, we are going to work with local NGOs who know how to implement things and say in this context What is the right way to implement this idea? Okay, but we're still not done Even if you implement and even if you have the best design and even if you have the best diagnosis There's never be arrogant, right realize you could be wrong And so what we do is especially in a culture in of a different part of the planet So for us the last two stages we call test and refine Which is set up and this is where randomized controlled trial techniques or other techniques can come in like if I had four or five different ideas Try all of them in a scientific way that you can test their relative effectiveness. It's running the permutation It's running the permutations, right? It's when the engineer starts running the machine and gets lots of data to see how the machine is running In different scenarios And then the last step as you run the machine as you test this as you test these different policies new things will emerge Some things will succeed some will not and so the last step for us is refining It's a constant iteration Where you learn from this first iteration about what worked what didn't work You either improve or stop doing what worked you do more of and you get into more nuanced ways of getting it to work So you would take the different design that that you've that that are being implemented You would actually go and work with a couple different schools and a couple different methods Absolutely, and then you would analyze how successful those were and then continue the ones that were successful Maybe refine some of the ones that weren't to try and see if they that's exactly right And in fact my wish list for policy is that that's how policy should happen All policy should happen in this way now It's challenging because remember a politician or a leader doesn't want to say I don't exactly know what to do But I'll figure it out. That's not a great political slogan politicians and leaders say I know exactly what to do Vote for me and I'll get your problem solved. I think so there's a dichotomy there in my sense is look People want to hear that I get it people want us here So I think you can be honest While not necessarily getting into the detail of things you can say I will fix this But that doesn't mean sticking to a specific policy I will fix this by adapting Adopting a procedure or a process which is a self learning correcting iterative process So even if I start with my best guess, which I think may not be perfect I can improve every single iteration. I can get better and better and better So over time I am doing what I promise to you, which is I am fixing the problem Right, but I think we have a tendency of not only saying we're fixing the problem But also giving the solution at the same time and then we get stuck because if our solution isn't the right solution We have one or two choices admit that the solution was wrong and change it or just stick to it And most of us just stick to it and hope the next guy is going to come up and say well It was a perfect solution, but he screwed it up So I hope that we can get more nuanced in how we do policy And that's something I would like not only for us at CID, but at the Kennedy school to spread But also kind of teach amongst our students and practitioners Welcome this act of saying set up the right processes Become learning states. In fact, I'm I'm hoping to write a I'm beginning to write a book with a colleague of mine Adnan and a couple of other colleagues as well On how do we do evidence-based decision-making in the policy space? We're going to call it something like learning states, but the idea is to really Set up this this kind of learning iterative process. Yes. Yes, okay So now that you've laid out speedy for us and given us the idea of the evidence and by the way, I should say One other thing I wanted to mention two other groups Building state capabilities, which is at CID It does an amazing thing called PDIA problem-driven iterative adaptation Which is very similar to speedy. Yeah, same ideas and then growth lab Which is headed by Ricardo Hausman, which also has a very interesting diagnostic approach a more macro approach But basically says what's the binding constraints that economy faces and how do I alleviate those constraints? So so I do want to say that a lot of us Are overlapping a lot. We may use different terms and words But I think there's a general agreement that our approach is very analytical iterative self-learning correctives So that feature is not inherent to speedy. Yes. It's shared by all of us. Yeah. Yeah, okay. Cool. Cool And it totally makes sense running the permutations analyzing which ones are doing the best And continuing to go to different pockets of the world to continue testing these policy designs Now I want to know with the center for international development What what exactly is the kind of this future roadmap is taking this process that you've described and applying it across more places in the world And empowering people to get the process in and in applying it. Is that kind of I think that's it Yeah, I mean, it's very much taking it. So two things one the approach and the other the convening power That we are lucky enough to have over here. So and you know If I if I were to believe in my own process, I should admit that this approach is iterative as well There's lots of learning in this. So what I'm giving you is my initial thing But I want to be scientific in how I do policy as well, right? So I'm starting with what my best guess is my best guess is we have an amazing ability to bring people together We should use that gift And the the the responsibility we have is to make sure that matching is happening in the best possible way So we get the best possible talent, whether it's at Harvard or elsewhere We get the most needy people When I say needy people, I mean people dealing leaders or citizens dealing with really pressing problems in the world And we try and put the two together. Okay, so that's that convening aspect And then once you come together, how do we bring them together? What do we do when we come together? And that's very much this approach, which is And when I say the approach, I mean the meta version of the approach not the specific like everyone's going to be doing speedy I mean, I might personally love that to say, oh look speedy is happening everywhere But it's more the meta of the approach, which is people are willing to be in learning Environments people are willing to set up learning systems The specifics of how they do it is up to them We can give some ideas, but I think the idea that I can design something I can diagnose it properly. I can iterate. I may be wrong. I need to experiment This kind of thinking is critical, right? Failure is not a problem Like what we often think of failure as like a terrible terrible thing The terrible thing is is ignoring failure when it happens and not learning from it. That's terrible, right? And so just getting people comfortable with that kind of way of thinking. I think that's the meta So if I even succeed in a bit of this and you know, there'll be another leader at CID all I hope is that that journey I'm stepping on people's shoulders I would love it if in a few years I'm ready to step down and someone else is emerging who's taking this idea to its next level So then would it be fair to say that you really care a lot about identifying the Act the key actors within the areas of the world that you want to make help make policy design Permutations and and scientific analysis within you need to find those key actors put them together Especially from different socioeconomic statuses different backgrounds different Some in political office some in the education office that type of stuff. Okay. Okay, and actually Find a regard the onus on me if this thing works They come themselves right if you succeed in what they're doing people to recognize it And then people were like, where should I if I have a really pressing problem? And I want to work in this learning iterative way Where do I go and they'd be like, hey the CID at the Kennedy school? I know they've done it and so You know, they start approaching us and then all you need to do is basically just help match them Right, you don't need to go out and kind of the best sort of Signal that you're working is whether others want to do what you're doing Both in terms of joining you and even replicating what you're doing Yes. Yes. Yes. Okay. Great. That that does seem like a really strong way You build out the process season and people reach out and you can pair people together and make the change This is awesome. I'm so excited for center for international developments To to continue making the impact and also to for us as a simulation to be able to continue coming and talking to the different Leaders you mentioned so many of them throughout the conversation for us to be able to sit down and dive deep into what's happening in India Or Indonesia and Africa. They're just amazing people Yeah, let's get deeper into the exact nuance of the gap of what how it's actually happening as well Okay, just two quick questions on the way out that we like asking our guests on our show Do you think we are in a simulation? Is this a simulation? I don't know. I mean, there's a deep question of is life a simulation that we live in I used to have a teacher who was teach something called phenomenology Which is everything we experience is an illusion And there may be multiple illusions that you're experiencing But for me personally, no, I I think this is very real I think everything we say everything we and you and I have talked about from my perspective is very real And it's something I want to commit to acting on and I hope You do and I have your audience does and so but yes in some grand scheme of things It could be an elaborate simulation Yeah, because at the very end of taking action on all of these pressing challenges You at the very end get to see how many levels you gained how much experience you gained Yeah, so you have to take these challenges on and build up the skills Yeah, okay, and the very last question we like asking is what is the most beautiful thing in the world? um to me I guess for me the most beautiful thing is when I see someone deploying their talent, whatever that may be For doing something which goes beyond themselves Yeah, that's profound I like that a lot. Yeah And that's in many ways what the processes that you're implementing do enables people to self actualize and then self transcend as well And what I like about that is it doesn't matter who you are where you are how rich you are how poor you are How talented you are I fundamentally believe each one of us has some beautiful thing inside them Which they can give Maybe just a smile, you know So yeah different colors on color wheel some smiles some race kids some build the billion-dollar Organizations as long as you're going beyond yourself going beyond the self. I love it awesome Thank you so much for coming on this show and sitting down with us teaching us about all of this Thank you. Hopefully everyone that watched. Thank you so much. We greatly appreciate it Please check out the links below We'll have all of the links evidence for policy design center for economic research in pakistan center for international development And go and talk to more people about these types of processes of economic development around the world to talk to your friends your family Online on social media with your co-workers. Let's get more people researching this and effectively being able to implement economic development strategies and also support the artists Entrepreneurs and organizations around the world that you believe in help them scale simulations links are below help us out as well and Go and build the future everyone manifest your dreams into the world. Thank you so much for tuning in and we will see you soon Thank you. Peace That's it awesome. Thank you so much really appreciate