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Nobel Laureate Praises MIT Students and Classrooms
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Soon after winning the 2024 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, MIT economists Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson, PhD ’89, took part in a livestreamed press conference with MIT President Sally Kornbluth.
Much of the discussion centered on the pair’s most recent book, Power and Progress: Our 1000-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity, which argues that progress depends on the choices those in power make about technology. Questions also focused on Acemoglu’s two books with James Robinson, the University of Chicago political scientist with whom he and Johnson share the Nobel prize, as well as the trio’s many collaborations.
However, an MIT student’s question about the impact teaching has had on their research that particularly animated Johnson, who is the Ronald A. Kurtz (1954) Professor of Entrepreneurship at MIT Sloan.
“From an educational and mentorship perspective,” the question began, “I’d would like to ask how each of you approaches teaching this thorough approach to political economy to the undergraduate or the graduate student. How do you balance the study of history with an analysis of an ever-changing and turbulent present?”
In response, Johnson clarified that although he and Acemoglu had recently co-taught an undergraduate class, he mostly taught MBAs at MIT Sloan.
Sometimes, people say research and teaching can be disassociated, including in business schools. That’s not been my experience at all at MIT. For me, they’re very deeply intertwined.
“MBAs are fantastic students,” said Johnson. “I think they’ll agree that they’re always about, ‘Okay. How do I use this? Why is that useful knowledge? Show me what this means.’ That’s where I get pushed all the time by my classrooms.”
Johnson went on to thank the “many thousands of MIT students” he has taught since joining the MIT Sloan faculty in 1997. “[Teaching] really helps sharpen the ways you communicate these ideas and the ways that you think about them,” he explained.
One of the most pertinent examples of this is the Global Entrepreneurship Lab (G-Lab), which Johnson co-founded with then-MIT professor Richard Locke, PhD ’89, in 2000. At the time, Entrepreneurship Lab (E-Lab) offered students the chance to work with tech startups on projects of strategic importance to the venture, but only the context of the United States.
With many students eager to work with entrepreneurial companies outside the U.S., Johnson and Locke designed what would become G-Lab. It remains one of the largest and most popular Action Learning labs over 20 years later, with total annual enrollment capped at 120 to preserve intimacy between groups and their mentors.
Locke left MIT in 2012, but Johnson continues to teach the course with Senior Lecturer Michellana Jester. Together, all three helped to oversee hundreds of G-Lab student teams that have delivered insight and analysis to 515 startup and growing companies on 739 projects located in 55 emerging and frontier markets globally.
“Sometimes, people say research and teaching can be disassociated, including in business schools. That’s not been my experience at all at MIT. For me, they’re very deeply intertwined,” said Johnson.
