Over the last number of years, the internet has facilitated much greater connectivity and interaction between people – both on a personal and professional level. Intuitively we might expect that this would lead to an upsurge in innovation as people are exposed to new ideas and can easily collaborate with many more people. And, indeed, this would very much with the recombinant theory of innovation. Yet is that really the case?

To explore this further I am delighted to be joined by Professor Lingfei Wu of the University of Pittsburgh.

Lingfei Wu is Assistant Professor of Information Science at the University of Pittsburgh. His research leverages big data, complexity sciences, and AI to understand how science and technology can advance through collaborative teamwork, known as the Science of Team Science and Innovation.

His research has been published in prestigious academic journals like Nature and Proceedings of the National Academy of Science and featured in renowned media outlets. Lingfei Wu also advises organizations like Novo Nordisk Fonden and John Templeton Foundation on the use of data science to evaluate teamwork in science. He has received multiple awards for his research and teaching, including the NSF Career Award, Richard King Mellon Award, and Oxford Martin School Fellowship.

Lingfei’s personal site is accessible here: http://lingfeiwu.github.io/

The paper discussed in the interview is available here: https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/2206/2206.01878.pdf

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In many areas of life – both personal and professional – the need to envision potential futures and establish how to get there is crucial. Indeed, some would argue that the ability to envision potential futures is part of what defines us as human beings. And while there are well established approaches such as scenario planning and forecasting, a recent paper in journal Futures outlines a promising new approach, informed by literature and the great literary works. To discuss this, I am delighted to be joined on the Brain for Business podcast by Professor Rebecca Braun.

Professor Rebecca Braun is the Executive Dean of College of Arts, Social Sciences & Celtic Studies at the University of Galway.

Prior to joining the University of Galway in 2021, Rebecca was Professor of Modern Languages & Creative Futures at Lancaster University in the UK, where she was also Co-Director of the Institute for Social Futures from 2017-2020. Rebecca held further lectureships and research fellowships at the Universities of Liverpool, Manchester and Oxford in the UK and at the Freie Universität Berlin.

• The article discussed in the interview is available here – https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016328724000314
• More information on the Literary Futures approach is available here –
• https://thenextwavefutures.wordpress.com/2024/03/22/using-literary-futures-to-open-up-the-imagination-methods/
• Rebecca Braun’s University Page can be access here – https://www.universityofgalway.ie/our-research/people/languages-literatures-and-cultures/rebeccabraun/
• The Futures journal can be accessed online – https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/futures
• The Next Wave Futures blog can be subscribed to online – https://thenextwavefutures.wordpress.com/

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In recent years, Diversity along with Equity and Inclusion have emerged as key elements of organisational and people strategy. It is now essentially a “taken for granted” assumption that DEI initiatives are a good thing and that they in turn play an important role in reducing bias and inequality in the workplace. But is this really the case?

To explore this further I am delighted to be joined today by Professor Karin Hellerstedt and Professor Timur Uman, both of Jönköping International Business School in Sweden, who were co-authors with Karl Wennberg of Linkoping University of a recent paper published in Academy of Management Perspectives.

About our guests...

Karin Hellerstedt is a Senior Associate Professor at Jönköping International Business School.

Karin has conducted research on entrepreneurship in knowledge intensive industries, and on how firms and teams are formed and develop over time.

She has been involved in several research projects dealing with different aspects of entrepreneurship such as academic, rural and knowledge intensive entrepreneurship. Karin Hellerstedt has written and published several research reports and published in international peer review journals.

Her current research centers around ownership transitions and the succession of privately held businesses.

Timur Uman is a Professor in Accounting and Control at Jönköping International Business School.

Timur’s research deals with corporate governance and management control in stock listed corporation, hybrid and public organizations and new ventures. His work has been published in premier journals in Business Administration such as Corporate Governance: An International Review, Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, Journal of World Business and Long-Range Planning among others.

Prior to joining academia Timur worked in executive positions in Latvian and German companies dealing with financial management and planning.

The paper discussed in the interview is available here: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4308670

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A recent paper in the Journal of Possibility Studies argues that creativity is an essential skill for effective leadership and that creative leaders can motivate their teams more effectively and can handle novel challenges by being more flexible in going outside the typical routines. Key to this is the important role played by a leaders’ creative identity and the recognitions that leaders can deliberately enact their creative identities in their roles, based on two ways to understand their creativity: as a way of thinking or as a personality type.

Just as importantly, however, leaders need to be adaptive in their approach – both to leadership and to the cultures they encourage in the workplace.

To discuss this further I am delighted to be joined by Dr Oana Velcu-Laitinen

About our guest…

Dr Oana Velcu-Laitinen is a researcher and consultant who works in the areas of creativity, change, innovation and well-being.

Her focus is challenging the habitual thinking of leaders, researchers and other knowledge workers to bring positive change and breakthroughs to their workplaces and domains of knowledge.

Oana has a published a number of papers and books, including “How to develop your creative identity at work”, published in October 2022.

You can find out more about Oana and her work here:

· https://www.linkedin.com/in/oana-velcu-laitinen-phd-6081084/

· https://www.velcu.fi/

The article from the Journal of Possibility Studies discussed in the interview is available here: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/27538699231226173

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When it comes to decision making, overconfidence is acknowledged as one of the most common managerial decision making biases. Nonetheless, much uncertainty remains about the implications of CEO overconfidence most particularly in terms of risk taking and ultimately organisational performance.

To explore the impact of CEO overconfidence in more detail I am delighted to be joined by Dr Barbara Burkhard and Professor Charlotta Sirén of the Institute for Responsible Innovation at the University of St Gallen, Switzerland.

Barbara Burkhard is Postdoctoral Researcher at the Institute of Responsible Innovation at the University of St.Gallen

Barbara’s research is centered on the psychology of top managers and employees. She specializes in researching how the cognition, emotions, and other individual factors influence top managers and employees’ decisions, behaviors, and, consequently, organizational outcomes.

Charlotta Sirén is an Associate Professor of Management at the Institute of Responsible Innovation at the University of St.Gallen, Switzerland

Charlotta’s research focuses on key elements of entrepreneurship including the psychological aspects of entrepreneurship, informal entrepreneurship, responsible innovation and new venture teams.

You can find out more about the work of both Barbara and Charlotta on the website of the Institute of Responsible Innovation at the University of St Gallen: https://iri.unisg.ch/

The paper discussed – Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained: A Meta-Analysis of CEO Overconfidence, Strategic Risk Taking, and Performance – is open access and is available here: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/01492063221110203

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Does your organisation get the feedback it needs? In particular, does it get the feedback it needs to improve and to better meet customer or stakeholder needs? Or instead does it just hope for the best and pray that any improvements, changes or innovations somehow meet those needs?

To explore the role of feedback and the pivotal role it can play I am delighted to be joined by Professor Henning Piezunka of INSEAD.

Key insights:

• Feedback is vital for organisations and it is vital that they seek it out
• Not all feedback is equal, organisations need to be clear who is sharing it and how relevant it is
• People giving feedback notice what the organisation responds to and adjust their responses accordingly
• The clearer an organisation’s positioning, the more relevant will be the ideas and feedback received – though this comes with the potential cost of missing out on more unusual ideas that might be important
• Organisations must manage the trade-off between narrowing the feedback criteria to get something that is very focused, versus looking for a broad range of responses
• When organisations respond to feedback online they are not only responding directly to that person but also to other potential customers who will take note of how the organisation has responded
• Feedback is not always objective, but rather reflects performance against expectations – and these expectations can be framed based on the feedback of others

About Henning

Henning Piezunka is an Associate Professor of Entrepreneurship and Family Enterprise at INSEAD and is currently a Visiting Professor at Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania.

Henning is an award-winning researcher who studies how organisations can tap into the knowledge of their members to foster greater inclusion, innovation and diversity. He has also conducted research into the crowdsourcing of ideas and the wisdom of the crowds. In another stream of research, Henning studies collaboration and competition, such as the factors that escalate competition into dangerous conflict. He has further researched succession in family firms and how people can improve their ability to interact with others by leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Through his research, Henning has developed significant expertise across various domains, including start-ups, technology companies, family businesses and a range of sports. He has leveraged data from sports such as Formula One, soccer and chess to shed light on effective management practices. Henning’s work and expert opinions have been featured in leading business media including Time Magazine, The Economist and Harvard Business Review.

You can follow Henning on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/henningpiezunka/

The paper discussed is available here: https://journals.aom.org/doi/abs/10.5465/amj.2022.0710

(Full reference: Park, S., Piezunka, H., & Dahlander, L. (2024). Coevolutionary lock-in in external search. Academy of Management Journal, 67(1), 262-288.)

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When people consider a new employer they might think about a number of key factors, including location, salary, opportunities for growth and advancement, pension and others.

One factor which has emerged in recent years is consideration of a potential employers stance on social issues, most particularly relating to their values. More than this, however, research by our guest today – Professor Moritz Appels – highlights that potential hires also consider a CEO’s sociopolitical activism in evaluating how attractive a new, potential employer might be.

About our guest…

Moritz Appels is an Assistant Professor of Organisational Behaviour at the Department of Organisation and Personnel Management, Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University. He obtained his doctoral degree from the University of Mannheim in 2022.

His research illuminates how the behaviour of corporate actors shapes and is shaped by organizational and societal change, with a particular focus on the relationship between strategic leadership, social evaluations, and the broader socio-political environment. A particular focus of his work is the impact of corporate and CEO activism—e.g., speaking out on gun ownership in the U.S.—on stakeholder behaviours. He is likewise involved in understanding the environmental and dispositional antecedents of top managers’ engagement in organisational and societal change.

You can find out more about Moritz and his work at these links:

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/moritz-appels-a0b49a14a/
• https://www.rsm.nl/people/moritz-appels/
• https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=qEdUSREAAAAJ&hl=de

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Sometimes the challenges facing humanity are beyond the scope or remit of just one person or indeed one organisation. Often termed “grand challenges”, these problems might be bigger, more impactful or simply require greater resources to resolve. Equally, their resolution might need more coordinated efforts and collaboration across a wider range of stakeholders to ensure that they are effectively addressed. In more recent times, and perhaps fitting with the times we live in, the term “grand innovation challenges” has also been used. To explore this further I am delighted by joined on the Brain for Business podcast by Professor Vera Rocha of Copenhagen Business School.

About our guest...

Vera Rocha is Associate Professor in Economics and Management of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Copenhagen Business School. Vera’s research is at the intersection of entrepreneurship, strategic human capital, and labor market inequality.

Among other questions, Vera has been studying the determinants of career transitions into entrepreneurship, the causes and implications of hiring strategies as firms emerge and mature, how entrepreneurial activity can affect both individual careers and society at large, and how organizations contribute to expand or reduce labor market inequalities.

In addition, Vera is Co-Editor-in-Chief at Industry & Innovation and serves in the Editorial Review Board of Strategic Management Journal, Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, Journal of Business Venturing, and Small Business Economics.

You can find out more about Vera’s research here:

• https://www.cbs.dk/en/research/departments-and-centres/department-of-strategy-and-innovation/staff/vrsi
• 
  
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/vera-rocha-24a396136/

The special issue of the journal Industry and Innovation which focuses on Grand Innovation Challenges can be accessed here: https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/ciai20/31/1?nav=tocList

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