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PODCAST

Private Innovation in the Public Interest

Tune in with Professor Anita McGahan as she speaks with leading thinkers to understand and reinvent corporate social responsibility in service of the public good. Presented by Pi Squared, a project of the Burnes Center for Social Change at Northeastern University, this series explores new ways for companies, NGOs, and even government itself to collaborate and drive meaningful change.

business management

All Episodes

00:32:52

Episode 26: Across Sectors, Entrepreneurship =...

Private Innovation in the Public Interest ·

2025/05/19

Professor Peter Klein of Baylor University highlights the importance of long-standing relationships and trust in the kinds of collaborations that drive innovation in both the public and private sectors. To address major challenges such as the climate crisis, he argues that governments must establish large-scale guardrails that allow innovators to break down problems in ways that foster collaboration and build trust. Much easier said than done, he concedes!

en-us

00:27:13

Episode 25: Social-Change Advocates Can Help...

Private Innovation in the Public Interest ·

2025/05/15

Professor Kate Odziemkowska of the University of Toronto has found in her research that social-change advocates are partnering with companies to help them innovate. In a far-reaching conversation with Anita, she describes trends in advocacy that go way beyond what Anita ever imagined as an undergraduate marching in advocacy rallies.

en-us

00:23:49

Episode 24: Change the World by Understanding Your...

Private Innovation in the Public Interest ·

2025/05/12

Professor Myles Shaver of the University of Minnesota works with students from different disciplines to turn their focus from changing the world to understanding each other. By changing themselves, these students are changing the world.

en-us

00:27:48

Episode 23: Let’s Find a Common Agenda on Climate and...

Private Innovation in the Public Interest ·

2025/05/08

Professor Nicolai Foss of the Copenhagen Business School and Anita have sometimes found themselves on opposite sides of debates about climate change and public policy, but today they concentrate on defining a shared agenda for making progress on the most important issues of our time.

en-us

00:40:55

Episode 22: Making Space for Change in a System That...

Private Innovation in the Public Interest ·

2025/05/05

Professor Yiannis Ioannou of the London Business School teaches about how the sustainability challenge disrupts even successful large companies. What will it take to make progress? Changing both corporate cultures and the financial system to ensure they reward sustainable impact.

en-us

00:24:40

Episode 21: Change Happens one Entrepreneur at a Time

Private Innovation in the Public Interest ·

2025/05/01

Dan Cowen, Senior Consultant at InNova and the Build from Within Alliance, works with city leaders to foster local entrepreneurship. Dan is inspired by their deep enthusiasm to solve problems, seek understanding, and be effective.

en-us

00:25:18

Episode 20: The System Must Change

Private Innovation in the Public Interest ·

2025/04/28

Professor Tima Bansal of the Ivey Business School discusses the imperative for systems change, emphasizing that it requires both governments and companies to develop the skills necessary to collaborate on critical solutions over both short- and long-term horizons.

en-us

00:33:34

Episode 19: Move Social Impact from the Periphery to...

Private Innovation in the Public Interest ·

2025/04/24

Professor Rudy Durand of HEC Paris, a pioneer in Corporate Social Responsibility, believes the focus is shifting toward a new approach to social impact. What matters now is corporate purpose. He emphasizes that creating a constructive social impact can no longer be seen as a secondary agenda.

en-us

00:30:57

Episode 18: The Paradoxes and Dilemmas of Transparency

Private Innovation in the Public Interest ·

2025/04/21

Professor Shirley Tang of Bocconi University, a global citizen with experience in China’s oil & gas industry as well as academia, studies the paradoxes and dilemmas of transparency. For example, she analyzes the opportunities these complexities create for companies to avoid accountability.

en-us

00:37:45

Episode 17: Trust and Commitment in Public-Private...

Private Innovation in the Public Interest ·

2025/04/17

Henri Hammond-Paul, Sante Fe’s Director of Community Health and Public Safety, explains how government actors often hesitate to rely on the promises of companies to accomplish important innovations. How can this be overcome? Through dialogue, trust, and a commitment to putting in the time.

en-us

00:19:16

Episode 16: Mountains Beyond Mountains

Private Innovation in the Public Interest ·

2025/04/14

Professor Daphne Baldassari of the University of Southern California shares her research on the Oscars So White and #MeToo movements in the film industry. How do we overcome persistently unequal outcomes despite significant efforts for change? Daphne and Anita discuss profound solutions to this pressing issue.

en-us

00:29:42

Episode 15: Small Companies can Drive the Social...

Private Innovation in the Public Interest ·

2025/04/10

Professor and GIDMO Founder Tunji Adegbesan discusses the challenges that GIDMO faced in providing educational materials to hundreds of thousands of teenagers in Africa before, during, and after the pandemic. Through strategic pivots, he and the GIDMO team are now partnering with large companies that integrate GIDMO’s gaming software into their products, thereby enhancing educational outcomes along the way.

en-us

00:28:58

Episode 14: Get Inspired by NASA

Private Innovation in the Public Interest ·

2025/04/07

Professor Raja Roy of the Stevens Institute of Technology, an expert on NASA's achievements, joins Anita to discuss the Space Shuttle, the world’s first reusable spacecraft. NASA successfully orchestrated the involvement of multiple companies working on different elements of the design, knowing that they would both compete and collaborate. How did this government agency pull this off?

en-us

00:25:26

Episode 13: Be Bigger Than Your Job

Private Innovation in the Public Interest ·

2025/04/03

Professor Jasjit Singh of INSEAD argues that the skillsets taught in MBA programs are often too narrow and lack the ambition needed for today’s challenges. He emphasizes the importance of encouraging students to bring their full brainpower to the pressing issues in the world and to collaborate with corporations and key government actors to drive meaningful change. In other words, “Be bigger than your job."

en-us

00:26:40

Episode 12: Investing in the General Education of...

Private Innovation in the Public Interest ·

2025/03/31

Professor Thomaz Teodorovicz examines how investments by companies in the general education of low-income workers can lead to unexpected improvements in their lives, ultimately resulting in higher worker retention. He and Anita discuss how companies can support such investments at scale by partnering with city governments, citing the example of Tulsa, Oklahoma.

en-us

00:32:29

Episode 11: Let’s Tap into Humanity’s Greatest...

Private Innovation in the Public Interest ·

2025/03/27

Professor Dovev Lavie is dedicated to building new institutions that leverage our collaborative and altruistic instincts, rather than our competitive and exploitative tendencies. He believes that digital technology can provide the tools necessary to spark an epidemic of collaboration.

en-us

00:33:23

Episode 10: Listen to Your Community and Then Act Justly

Private Innovation in the Public Interest ·

2025/03/24

Professor Sergio Lazzarini of INSPER, one of Brazil's leading business schools, is deeply engaged in various sustainability initiatives. He believes that companies succeed in creating social impact when they act with justice. Achieving this, he says, requires listening to communities as they define the challenges they need help with.

en-us

00:23:47

Episode 9: The Power of Harnessing Ideals to Drive...

Private Innovation in the Public Interest ·

2025/03/20

Professor and Vice Dean Witold Henisz, who leads ESG initiatives at Wharton, describesthe polarized debate surrounding corporate social responsibility. His advice tostudents? Bring your best selves to the world’s most impactful organizationsand drive meaningful change from within.

en-us

00:24:52

Episode 8: Don’t Give up. Co-create. Innovate. Try...

Private Innovation in the Public Interest ·

2025/03/17

Professor Sarah Kaplan, an expert on stakeholder engagement, views trade-offs between stakeholder needs as opportunities for innovation. However, navigating these challenges is far from easy. Her advice in the face of failure? Don’t give up – try something else.

en-us

00:24:14

Episode 7: Companies Can Experiment Where Governments...

Private Innovation in the Public Interest ·

2025/03/13

Professor Sandro Cabral provides a profoundly simple answer to Anita’s pressing question: Why can’t governments solve public problems without assistance from the private sector? His response: Governments are structured for transparency and accountability, not for prototyping, experimenting, learning, revising, and relaunching. This creates a significant gap that companies and private organizations are well-equipped to fill.

en-us

86 results

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