Progress often demands shacking up with some unlikely bedfellows. At least that’s the view of Jim Yong Kim, formerly of the World Health Organization, who extolled the virtues of involving Harvard strategy guru Michael Porter in helping him understand health care delivery systems.
Such was Porter’s influence on the Harvard medical students he taught that a worried Dean of the Medical School called Kim to find out why 25% of them now wanted to go to business school. They were clear: to make a difference, and ‘the Michael’ – such is his global reputation – had convinced them that improving delivery mechanisms would be the most efficient way to do this.