ISB Insights Forum 2026

Artificial intelligence is widely recognized as a general-purpose technology with pervasive impact across diverse sectors. Its defining features in the upstream layers of the value chain - high upfront costs, increasing returns to scale - place control of these consequential layers in the hands of a small number of firms and states. Most countries participate further downstream, building applications on infrastructure and models that they neither own nor fully govern. This asymmetry renders AI a potent instrument of statecraft. It raises concerns about the control and jurisdictional exposure of sensitive data, vulnerability to upstream chokepoints, the representation of local languages and knowledge systems, and the consequences of renting intelligence through foreign platforms rather than developing the capacity to supply it. Governments are responding with localization mandates, trusted-vendor requirements, sovereign-compute investments and domestic-model initiatives.

The panel will examine whether these responses can produce meaningful strategic autonomy, or whether they merely relocate dependence without changing its underlying structure. We will examine the political economy of AI, who controls its critical infrastructure, and how much room remains for countries and firms to influence the rules of AI before today’s dependencies become entrenched.

Who benefits when new financial products and AI reshape how people borrow, search and buy?

New financial products and AI tools promise greater access, lower costs, productivity gains and higher consumer welfare. But whether those gains materialize, and who captures them, depends on how these technologies are adopted and how markets respond.

Buy Now, Pay Later brings credit directly into the point of sale. It can help credit-constrained consumers and raise sales for small merchants, but it can also reshape competition and change what consumers ultimately pay. Generative AI is changing how people search, how firms reach customers, and how transactions are negotiated. These changes create new opportunities, but also raise questions about who benefits when decisions and interactions increasingly move through algorithms.

Across ISB, researchers are studying these questions using transaction data, field experiments, and economic models. This session brings together evidence from this research with perspectives from industry and regulators. The central question is simple — when financial innovation and AI change the rules of the game, who captures the gains and on what terms?

What does it really take to turn entrepreneurship into a sustainable livelihood? Providing access to credit can help someone start or invest in a business. But capital does not guarantee customers. Training can build capabilities, but capabilities do not guarantee demand. And creating opportunities for entrepreneurship does not necessarily mean that everyone can access or benefit from them.

Across ISB, researchers are working with entrepreneurs, financial institutions and organisations on the ground to understand these gaps and test ways to overcome them. From expanding access to credit and enabling women to participate in entrepreneurship to helping microentrepreneurs find customers and grow their businesses, this research is uncovering what it takes to create economic opportunity that lasts.

Business for Good brings these research initiatives together with perspectives from organisations working on these challenges at scale. Entrepreneurship is often celebrated as a pathway out of poverty. The harder question is what turns the opportunity to start a business into the ability to build a livelihood from it.

Examining the design and delivery of community health worker programmes across public and private health systems

Community health workers (CHWs) are essential to expanding access to healthcare and advancing universal health coverage. Over the years, public and private health systems around the world have adopted different models to recruit, train, and deploy these workers. The challenge is to build models that deliver better outcomes while remaining operationally effective and financially sustainable.

In India’s public sector, Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHAs) have become integral to health service delivery, but the role of financial incentives, the scope for additional responsibilities, and their reach among vulnerable populations warrant closer scrutiny. In the private sector, outreach programmes using community health workers have proved feasible, but evidence of their cost-effectiveness and potential to scale remains mixed.

The session will bring together findings from ISB research on community health worker programmes in the public and private sectors with evidence from other studies. A panel of researchers, policymakers, and practitioners will assess the policy implications of this evidence, identify the gaps that remain in current understanding, and consider the programme designs most likely to widen access to healthcare and improve population health.

Why Role of Policy Experts Matters Most in Turbulent Times

Effective policymaking is critical to the management of economic crises. Yet evidence to guide policy can be scarce. From a pandemic to a balance of payments crisis, in every case the policymaker must act before the data settles, often with models built for calmer times. Expertise supplies the tools; conviction supplies the willingness to use them amidst the storm. Crisis policy may require the amalgamation of the two: reasoning carefully from first principles, committing to a course of action, and remaining open to revising it as the facts arrive.

In emerging economies, policymaking during crises poses additional challenges. High-quality research on macroeconomic questions relating to emerging economies are not abundant. While this imposes constraints, it also provides freedom as original thinking, anchored in a country's own economic context, can shape outcomes in ways that are harder to achieve when the playbook is already written. This is why, in turbulent times, the public role of experts matters most. When economists and technocrats earn the trust of citizens and governments, their judgements can move policy at scale and at speed. That trust is a privilege, and it comes with a responsibility that outlasts any term of office: to reason honestly and to explain clearly.

In this session, Professor Krishnamurthy Subramanian will draw on his policymaking experience as Chief Economic Adviser to the Government of India and Executive Director at the International Monetary Fund and reflect on how to advise and decide when evidence is thin, models are borrowed, but accountability is permanent.

What helps women advance at work, and what makes progress difficult? This session brings together women’s experiences in India and insights from published research in western context to explore how career opportunities, workplace interactions and support systems shape women’s working lives.

Research, mainly conducted in Western contexts, has extensively examined issues related to mentors and sponsors, experiences of hiring, support from organisations and families. pay and promotion, reactions to assertiveness, and access to leadership opportunities. This research has led to practical interventions that organizations and its leaders can use to advance gender equality at the workplace. Little is known about the generalizability of this research in Indian contexts. We aim to fill this gap by surveying a large group of women professionals about the applicability of these findings in the Indian context.

Senior practitioners will be invited to reflect on the findings and share examples of what has worked within their organisations, where challenges remain, and what they would do differently. The session will focus on practical choices facing leaders and managers: how to make career support more effective, improve fairness in everyday decisions, and create conditions in which women can pursue leadership and progress at work.

Three practical questions will guide the conversation:

1. What support helps women access opportunities and advance in their careers?

2. Where do women continue to encounter barriers, and what explains differences in their experiences?

3. What can leaders and organisations do to make workplace support more effective?