Is Development More Like GM or Google?

Published April 22, 2009

Does the development sector remind you more of General Motors or Google?

I fear the former. In the past 20 years we've seen GM build a series of cars that cost more than their customers would like to pay. They've been in steady decline, and the government is having to throw ever larger sums of money at the problem.

I remember the first time I was told by a donor that there was a problem with "burn rates"—the rate...