Event Materials

In the 1940s, Joseph Schumpeter famously described economic growth as “creative destruction”: a process in which new technologies and entrepreneurial practices displace incumbent firms and established business procedures. In recent years, this framing has been refined into a formal model for understanding and promoting growth, culminating in last year’s Nobel Prize for Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt. But viewed through a wider development lens, creative destruction is not limited to firms or technologies. It unfolds across nearly every sector as a complex and often wrenching social process that reshapes issues ranging from identities and community cohesion to life aspirations and state-society relations. Historically, nearly every country that has undergone such a widespread social transformation has also endured severe political conflict. 

If development is understood at the outset as both creative and potentially destructive, then policy and practice must anticipate how its destructive aspects can best be addressed, especially for the poorest and politically weakest citizens. Grounding development strategy in locally legitimate change processes is thus both an ethical imperative and a pragmatic necessity.

Drawing on his recent scholarly and operational work, Michael Woolcock will discuss how evidence on state capability, community-driven development, and contentious change processes can inform sound, supportable, and implementable strategies. As development faces growing funding and delivery challenges, successfully navigating “creative destruction” only becomes more, not less, important.

Image

Michael Woolcock Speaker

Lead Social Scientist, Development Research Group

Michael Woolcock is Lead Social Scientist in the World Bank's Development Research Group, where he has worked since 1998. For twenty of these years he has also been an Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. His research focuses on strategies for enhancing state capability for implementation, on crafting more effective interaction between informal and formal justice systems, and on using mixed methods to better understand the effectiveness of "complex" development interventions. In addition to more than 125 journal articles and book chapters, he is the author, co-author, or co-editor of thirteen books, including Contesting Development: Participatory Projects and Local Conflict Dynamics in Indonesia (with Patrick Barron and Rachael Diprose; Yale University Press 2011 – a co-recipient of the 2012 best book prize by the American Sociological Association's section on international development), Building State Capability: Evidence, Analysis, Action (with Matt Andrews and Lant Pritchett; Oxford University Press 2017), and co-lead author (with Samuel Freije-Rodriquez) of the World Bank’s Poverty and Shared Prosperity Report 2020: Reversals of Fortune. 

Learn More
Susana Cordeiro Guerra, Vice President for Latin America and the Caribbean, World Bank

Susana Cordeiro Guerra Discussant

Vice President for the Latin America and the Caribbean region

Susana Cordeiro Guerra is the Vice President for the Latin America and the Caribbean region at World Bank. In this role, she manages the Bank’s engagement with 31 countries across the region and oversees a portfolio of US$41.5 billion in ongoing operations. Under her leadership, the World Bank partners with governments and stakeholders to advance strategic priorities to deliver measurable results, jobs-driven development and stronger public–private collaboration across the region. Prior to joining the World Bank, Cordeiro Guerra, led senior leadership positions at the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB), including as Principal in the Office of Strategic Planning and Development Effectiveness, and as Manager of the Department of Institutions for Development (IFD), where she led strategy on fiscal and economic programs, advanced data-driven decision-making and promoted financial innovation.

Learn More
Image

Aaditya Mattoo Chair

Director, Development Research Group

Aaditya Mattoo is Director of the Development Research Group of the World Bank. He specializes in development, trade, and international cooperation, and provides policy advice to governments. Previously, he served as Chief Economist of the East Asia and Pacific Region. He was also Co-Director of the World Development Report 2020 on Global Value Chains and Research Manager, Trade and Integration. Before he joined the Bank, Mr. Mattoo was Economic Counsellor at the World Trade Organization and taught economics at the University of Sussex and Churchill College, Cambridge University. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Cambridge, and an M.Phil in Economics from the University of Oxford. He has published on development, trade, trade in services, and international trade agreements in academic and other journals and his work has been cited in the Economist, Financial Times, New York Times, and Time Magazine.

Learn More

The Policy Research Talks showcase the latest findings of the World Bank’s Research Group, challenge and contribute to the institution’s intellectual climate, and re-examine conventional wisdom in current development theories and practice.

These talks facilitate a dialogue between researchers and operational staff and inform World Bank operations both globally and within partner countries.

Register here to receive email notifications about our events!