By the early 2000s, the transition in central and eastern Europe had progressed significantly, and businesses were encountering cutting-edge issues in other geographies, such as China and India. These new trends led the WDI board to expand the Institute’s mission to encompass “emerging economies” around the world. After eight years at the helm of WDI, Svejnar stepped down to return to teaching and research full time. He then handed the reins to Robert Kennedy, who was serving as the organization’s associate director. Kennedy joined WDI in 2003 from Harvard Business School, where he had been an associate professor of business administration. He was recruited to WDI and U-M’s Ross School of Business by Dean Robert Dolan, who also oversaw the board of the Institute. Dolan and Kennedy were colleagues at Harvard. “From his research, I knew that Bob had great ‘taste’ in selecting really important topics, and I thought he was the ideal person to lead us into a new agenda at WDI with a narrower focus on a few things that we really advanced the thinking on,” Dolan said. “This focus on a few topics at a time marked us as the world leader, drawing new people to seek to work with us.” Kennedy’s first order of business was to shift the Institute’s research focus from transition economies to economic development in emerging markets. He changed the philosophy of WDI’s research activities — the Institute’s core work — to focus on bridging theory and practice. He also restructured existing initiatives and launched new ones to generate resources and disseminate the knowledge created by WDI staff. To help bring the research of Ross School professors into the classroom, he championed the launch of a case-writing initiative in 2007. In 2010, WDI joined the World Resources Institute as partners of NextBillion, a website that covers the “development through enterprise” sector. Two years later, NextBillion became an initiative of WDI. WDI’s approach to knowledge creation and practitioner-oriented research under Kennedy attracted the interest of Robert Kennedy Four Who Moved It Forward “The fact that international organizations wanted to work with us meant that we were making a difference. That was tremendously gratifying.” 18 William Davidson Institute