What problems do developing countries face, and how can individuals contribute to solutions rather than await the largesse of the state or other actors? Intractable problems – such as lack of access to education and healthcare, forced reliance on contaminated food, deep-seated corruption – are part of the quotidian existence of the vast majority of five of the world’s seven billion people. Developing societies suffer from what we refer to as ‘institutional voids’ that make organized activities of all sorts difficult; think of the mundane but important physical infrastructure that allows us to get to work or school in the developed world, as well as our access to higher-order institutions such as the availability of information at our fingertips or the security of the rule of law. The course demonstrates that reflecting upon the nature of the developing world’s intractable problems through different lenses helps characterize candidate interventions to address them. The scientist’s hypothesis-driven and iterative experimentation, the artist’s imagined counterfactuals through putting oneself in others’ shoes literally and theatrically, and the planner’s top-down articulation of boundary conditions, all tailor the ultimate solution.

Course co-instructors:

Tarun Khanna: Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor, Harvard Business School Director, Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute

Satchit Balsari: Emergency Medicine, Harvard Medical School FXB Center for Health and Human Rights / HSPH

Krzysztof Gajos: Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences

Doris Sommer: Ira Jewell Williams, Jr. Professor of Romance Languages, Literature and African and African American Studies

Rahul Mehrotra: Professor of Urban Design and Planning Graduate School of Design