I was relieved and excited
when Harvard accepted my late application for their prestigious Executive
Education program on Innovation. Boston, the intellectual capital of the USA,
has always intrigued me for the cutting edge research occurring there and I
noted down all the facilities I wanted to visit while in Boston.
The course at the Harvard
University’s Kennedy School was titled ‘Innovation for Economic Development’ and was headed by Prof. Calestous
Juma, a cheery old Kenyan. It was smack in the middle of the FIFA World Cup,
and with many soccer playing countries represented among the students, the topic snuck
its way into many lectures.
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| IFED Class of 2014 in front Taubman Building, Harvard Kennedy School |
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| Class in session |
What a fantastic learning
experience it was!.. It was great to be
amongst govt ministers and officials, company heads, academics as well as entrepreneurs
from across the globe. The lecturers were the best in their respective fields,
including Prof. Juma himself, Dr. Daniel Isenberg (Entrepreneurship Guru), Dr. Ricardo
Hausmann (‘Economic Atlas’) and Dr. Anita Goel (X-Prize Winner,
CEO-NanoBioPhysics), etc. Two teams from Singapore and Chile flew-in to present
for the program on fostering innovation and the Cocoa University, respectively.
It was indeed an
unforgettable and life changing experience. I made some fantastic friends
including the possible future president of Ghana J. They said at the end of the program – ‘Ask What You Can
Do’ and make it happen!
Challenge accepted!
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| 'Ask What You Can Do' |
