I so wanted to be won over by this book by the brilliant Indian economist, Amartya Sen. His central thesis is simple and compelling: “…the basic idea that enhancement of human freedom is both the main object and the primary means of development.” However, the empirical evidence he musters to support his case is often…

There aren’t any “I’s” in the word “development,” but there are plenty in this 2005 bestselling book on development by “Economist to the Stars” Jeffrey Sachs. The professor presents his personal vision of a grand plan to quickly eradicate extreme poverty, as though indigence was an easily treatable form of small pox. If someone would…

In 2011, Eric Ries made a big splash in Silicon Valley with his book “The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses.” He defines “startup” rather loosely (“an organization dedicated to creating something new under conditions of extreme uncertainty”) and encourages organizations of all sizes to avoid creating elaborate…

I’ve spent the past seven years working for Intuit, the company behind such successful consumer software products as TurboTax, QuickBooks, Quicken and Mint.com. A fundamental principle to our product management approach is the “follow-me-home.” That is, we literally shadow our potential customers – usually small business owners and American taxpayers and budgeters – to observe…

In his 2000 bestseller “Development as Freedom” Pulitzer Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen made the uplifting argument that the cornerstone of international development ought to be the promotion and growth of human freedom. What his thesis notably lacked was evidence. It seems to me that evidence supporting Sen’s important hypothesis is precisely what Daron Acemoglu and…