Why Big Problems Can’t Be Solved by Government or Business Alone
Climate change. Pandemics. Inequality. Food security. National security.
These are often described as grand challenges because they are large, complex, and deeply interconnected. They cross industries, borders, and political systems. And despite decades of effort, no single actor seems capable of solving them on their own.
Governments lack speed, flexibility, and specialized capabilities. Businesses have innovation and resources, but limited legitimacy and incentives to act alone in the public interest. Civil society fills gaps, but often lacks scale. So what actually works?
In a review article published in the Journal of Management, co-authored with Gerard George, Sergio Lazzarini, Anita McGahan, and Phanish Puranam, we argue that the most promising solutions to grand challenges lie in how public and private actors are organized together, not just in whether they partner at all .
The rise of public–private collaborations
Over the past several decades, collaborations between governments and businesses have become increasingly common. These arrangements take many forms: infrastructure projects, innovation partnerships, public procurement, venture funding, service delivery, and more. But not all collaborations are created equal. Some partnerships deliver meaningful impact. Others stall, collapse, or quietly reinforce existing problems. The difference often has less to do with intentions and more to do with organizational design.
The hidden challenge of organizing collaboration
Grand challenges are difficult not just because they are big, but because they create a unique set of organizational problems. They involve:
Deep uncertainty about causes and solutions
Conflicting values and interests across stakeholders
Difficulties measuring impact and assigning responsibility
Low trust and high risk of opportunism
Weak or fragmented institutions
These conditions make coordination extremely hard. Simply bringing public and private actors to the table does not solve these problems. In many cases, it can make them worse.
The core argument of the paper is that public–private collaborations should be treated as organizations in their own right, with design choices that shape how well they function.
One size does not fit all
A key insight from the review is that there is no single “best” model for collaboration. Some challenges require tight government oversight. Others benefit from giving private actors more autonomy. Some problems are well-defined and stable, while others demand experimentation and learning over time.
The paper maps a wide range of collaboration forms along a spectrum, from state-led arrangements to market-based partnerships, and shows how different designs address different problems. What works for building infrastructure may fail for delivering healthcare. What succeeds in innovation may collapse in service delivery. The lesson is straightforward but often ignored: matching the design of a partnership to the nature of the problem is critical.
Design choices that matter
Across the literature, several design questions consistently shape outcomes:
Who participates? Which actors are included or excluded, and whose voices matter
Who decides? How authority and accountability are distributed
How work is divided? What tasks are assigned to public versus private actors
How effort is coordinated? Through contracts, trust, or ongoing supervision
How learning occurs? Whether partnerships are rigid or adaptive over time
Poorly designed collaborations often fail because these questions are left implicit. Effective collaborations confront them directly.
Why this matters now
Governments around the world are increasingly relying on private actors to help deliver public goods. At the same time, businesses face growing pressure to contribute to social and environmental goals. This creates both opportunity and risk.
Without careful design, public–private collaborations can drift toward rent-seeking, symbolic action, or the privatization of public value. With the right design, they can unlock capabilities, scale solutions, and align incentives toward real societal impact.
The future of tackling grand challenges will depend less on whether sectors collaborate, and more on how those collaborations are structured, governed, and adapted over time. In that sense, organizing is not a technical detail. It is the work.
Read the full paper here: https://doi.org/10.1177/01492063221148992