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A 2023 opinion piece in the journal Nature Psychology challenged the prevailing perspective on success and achievement, essentially arguing that we have it all wrong! So, where does the truth about success and achievement really lie??? To discuss this I am delighted to be joined by one of the co-authors of that article, Professor Brooke Macnamara.
About our guest...
Brooke Macnamara is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychological Sciences at Purdue University. In her research, Brooke is interested in how various factors predict skilled performance variance – both performance changes within an individual and performance differences across individuals.
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Balancing exploration and exploitation is a fundamental strategic challenge for organizations operating in dynamic environments. Managers must decide how often and when to search for new technologies and products, weighing the costs of exploration against the risk of missing trends that could render their business models obsolete
To dig deep into this topic I am delighted to be speaking today to Professor Axel Zeijen.
About our guest…
Axel Zeijen is a Lecturer at the Department of Management, Technology, and Economics at ETH Zurich in Switzerland.
With a background in industrial engineering and innovation sciences, Axel is broadly interested in technological change and its organizational implications. In particular, he attempts to understand where and how technological forces and firm strategy interact, and how this process plays out. His research projects cover industries where new
technologies change the capabilities of firms, create new opportunities for change, and affect how competition plays out.
The articles discussed in the podcast area as follows (both open access):
Websites for Axel and each of his co-authors are as follows:
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A recent article in the Journal of Business Venturing sought to address the question of: Why and how does founder age perception influence funding outcomes?
To discuss the importance of this question and the key findings of the paper I am delighted to be joined by Dr Michael Matthews, Assistant Professor at the University of Texas, Rio Grande Valley.
About our guest...
Michael Matthews, Ph.D., studies leadership and the intersection between work and life. Michael received his B.S. (Brigham Young University) and M.S. (The University of Oklahoma) in information systems. Later, he received his Ph.D. in Business Administration (University of Oklahoma) with a particular focus on organizational behavior. Currently, he is an Assistant Professor at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. His writing has been featured in outlets such as the Journal of Management, Leadership Quarterly, and Harvard Business Review. Prior to entering academia, Michael worked as a computer programmer for several technology companies. In particular, Michael has coded for organizations such as ExxonMobil and Proofpoint.
More information:
Two other papers mentioned in our conversation:
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In a new book – Learning to See: Inside the world's leading art and design schools, published by MIT Press – our guest today, Professor Keith Sawyer explores the way that people see and learn to see, offering an engaging and profound account of how professional artists and designers create and how they teach others to do it. In the interview we explore the key insights from Keith's research and their significance for anyone working in any role or organisation.
About our guest…
Keith Sawyer is Morgan Distinguished Professor of Educational Innovations at the University of North Carolina.
Keith has dedicated his career to the study of creativity and learning. His research helps us answer questions such as: Which teams are more creative? What team processes result in greater creativity? Which groups are more likely to contribute to more effective learning of the participants? Which organizations and classrooms are most likely to foster effective group interactions?
Learning to See: Inside the world's leading art and design schools by Keith Sawyer is available to purchase here: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262551649/learning-to-see/
You can find out more about Keith's work via his Substack and Podcat:
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Creative work in itself is stressful and riddled with anxiety-provoking uncertainties. It takes resilience to persist through these challenges. It takes willingness to endure and overcome obstacles, from the internal voices of doubt and self-criticism to scarce material resources to difficulties in getting support for ideas. How are creative people able to do what others cannot? How do they transform the challenges and difficulties that original ideas are riddled with into actions and achievements?
It is just these questions that our guest today, Dr Zorana Ivcevic Pringle explores in her new book, The Creativity Choice, published by Hachette.
About our guest…
Zorana Ivcevic Pringle is a Senior Research Scientist at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence where she currently serves as the Director of the Creativity and Emotions Lab. Zorana studies the role of emotion and emotional intelligence in creativity and well-being, as well as how to use the arts (and art-related institutions) to promote emotion and creativity skills.
Find out more about Zorana’s work and order her book, The Creativity Choice, here: https://www.zorana-ivcevic-pringle.com/
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If all the noise in the popular media and online is anything to go by, differences between various generations including Gen Z, Gen X, Boomers and so on are not just real but are something that leaders and organisations need to take seriously in order to ensure their effectiveness into the future. But is that really the case? Is there really a scientific basis to support arguments and assertions about generational differences and their impact on organisations?
To explore these questions, I am delighted to welcome to Brain for Business Professor David Costanza.
David Costanza is a professor at the University of Virginia’s McIntire School of Commerce.
About our guest...
Professor Costanza’s research focuses on generational differences; adaptive leadership; high potential; organizational culture, decline, and death; as well as statistics and research methods. He has published in Journal of Business and Psychology; Journal of Vocational Behavior; Personnel Psychology; and Work, Aging and Retirement. He has authored for Slate and has been interviewed by The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, TIME magazine, VOX, and Yahoo! Finance. He is a member of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology and the Academy of Management and serves on the editorial boards of Journal of Business and Psychology and Work, Aging and Retirement.
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It is one thing to develop an innovation and put it out into the world, but that will only get you so far. Just as important is the adoption of innovations by customers, users or stakeholders. Yet what drives the adoption of innovation and how can organisations support the greater adoption of their offerings?
To discuss this it is a pleasure to speak today with Dr Radu Dimitriu, Associate Professor in Marketing at Trinity College Dublin.
About our guest...
Dr Radu Dimitriu is an Associate Professor in Marketing at Trinity College Dublin. Radu has a PhD from BI Norwegian Business School in Oslo, and prior to joining TCD worked with Cranfield University in the UK (2010-2018). His research is focused on branding, consumer behaviour and psychology, social media marketing, CSR and prosocial behaviour, consumer responses to sensory-enabling technologies, and consumers' adoption of AI-enabled technologies such as autonomous products and chatbots. On the Trinity MBA, Radu is also coordinating the programme's capstone Strategic Company Projects, as well as lecturing on Marketing Strategy. Radu has been consulting for blue chip companies and regularly engages with the industry; recent engagements include that of Judge at the Ireland User Experience Awards and of Speaker at the Customer Experience Professional Association Day. A citizen of the world, he speaks several languages including English, Spanish, French, Norwegian, Portuguese and his mother tongue, Romanian.
The paper discussed in the interview is available here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0148296324006106
Radu's Google Scholar page can be accessed here: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=DRbb4T8AAAAJ&hl=en&oi=sra
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In any organization sometimes things will go wrong or just not work out. While in many cases this might be due to mistakes or errors, at other times it is due to professional misconduct – often leading to significant consequences for both the organization and the individuals concerned.
To explore the issue of professional misconduct in greater depth, I am delighted to be joined on the Brain for Business podcast by the co-author of a recent paper on the subject, Will Harvey.
Will Harvey is a Professor of Leadership at Melbourne Business School in Australia and is currently the Director of the Social Purpose Centre, as well as being an International Research Fellow at the Oxford University Centre for Corporate Reputation.
Will researches on reputation, talent management and leadership within organisations. He has recently published the book, Reputations at Stake, with Oxford University Press and his work has appeared in journals such as Harvard Business Review, Journal of Management Studies, Human Relations, Management Learning, Work, Employment & Society, and the British Journal of Management.
The article discussed in the interview - Why Individuals Commit Professional Misconduct and What Leaders Can Do to Prevent It – is published in California Management Review and is available to download here: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/00081256241305815
Full Reference: Harvey, W. S., Arora, N., Currie, G., & Spyridonidis, D. (2024). Why Individuals Commit Professional Misconduct and What Leaders Can Do to Prevent It. California Management Review, 00081256241305815.
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In recent years, whether we like it or not, AI or artificial intelligence, has become omnipresent, pervading online systems of all types. In a recent paper our guests today argue that a “human rights frameworks can be regarded as the common denominator between law and ethics and have a crucial role to play in the ethics-based legal governance of AI.” Yet what might this mean in practice and how might we ensure that the opportunities offered by AI are taken full advantage of and not inadvertently stifled?
To discuss this I am delighted to be joined by Professor Linda Hogan, Professor of Ecumenics at the School of Religion at Trinity College Dublin and Dr Marta Lasek-Markey of the Adapt Research Centre, hosted by Trinity College Dublin.
About our guests...
Professor Linda Hogan is an ethicist with extensive experience in research and teaching in pluralist and multi-religious contexts. Her primary research interests lie in the fields of inter-cultural and inter-religious ethics, social and political ethics, human rights and gender.
Dr Marta Lasek-Markey is a Postdoctoral Researcher at ADAPT, the world-leading SFI Research Centre for AI-Driven Digital Content Technology, brings leading academics, researchers and industry partners together to deliver excellent science, engage the public, develop novel solutions for business across all sectors and enhance Ireland’s international reputation.
The paper discussed in the interview is open access and is available here:
Towards a Human Rights-Based Approach to Ethical AI Governance in Europe by Linda Hogan and Marta Lasek-Markey - https://www.mdpi.com/2409-9287/9/6/181
You can find out more about the the Adapt Centre at Trinity College and the FORSEE project here:
https://www.adaptcentre.ie/news-and-events/forsee-project-kicks-off-in-dublin/
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We tend to think of our memories as impressions of the past that remain fully intact, preserved somewhere inside our brains. In fact, we construct and reconstruct our memories every time we attempt to recall them. A new book, Memory Lane, co-authored by our guest today, Professor Gillian Murphy, introduces readers to the cutting-edge science of human memory, revealing how our recollections of the past are constantly adapting and changing, and why a faulty memory isn’t always a bad thing.
About our guest
Gillian Murphy is an Associate Professor senior lecturer in the School of Applied Psychology at University College Cork in Ireland and leads the Everyday Cognition Lab. Gillian’s research interests primarily relate to understanding attention and memory in everyday scenarios. She has conducted research examining distraction and attention failure in simulated driving environments and eyewitness memory for crimes.
Much of her recent research relates to misinformation - assessing who is most susceptible to misinformation, how and when do false memories form in response to misinformation, and developing interventions to reduce harm.
You can find out more about Gillian's research here on The Everyday Cognition Lab homepage: https://www.everydaycognitionlab.com/
Details on Memory Lane by Ciara Greene and Gillian Murphy are available here: https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691257099/memory-lane
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These days everyone seems to be searching for their passion, safe in the knowledge that ‘Find something you love to do, and you’ll never have to work a day in your life’. Yet how realistic is this? And how realistic is it for people to strive to find their ultimate life calling – if there even is such a thing?
To explore the question of callings in greater depth I am delighted to be joined by Professor Kirsten Robertson of Fraser Valley University in Canada.
About our guest…
Dr. Kirsten Robertson is a Professor of Organizational Behaviour and Human Resources in the School of Business at Fraser Valley University.
Kirsten’s research explores the lived experiences of individuals at work, with a particular focus on work meaningfulness, the interface between work and non-work, and workplace relationships with both people and animals. She has published her research in leading management journals, including the Academy of Management Review, Journal of Management Studies, and Journal of Organizational Behavior.
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The question of diversity is one that we have discussed previously on the Brain for Business podcast. While the benefits of diversity are often taken for granted and assumed in the popular press and discourse, research examining the actual benefits of diversity in terms of team effectiveness and performance have – up until now – been sadly lacking.
In a paper to be published shortly in the Journal of Business of Psychology, our guest today, Dr Lukas Wallrich and colleagues seek to address this gap in the literature.
About our guest...
Dr Lukas Wallrich is a Lecturer in Organisational Psychology at Birkbeck Business School , University of London, where he teaches on organisational psychology master programmes and primarily researches how workforce diversity can be harnessed to improve organisational performance. Other research interests include the effect of intergroup contact on pro-social behaviour, the development of stereotypes and implicit associations and the influence of traditional and new media on public attitudes.
Prior to moving into academia, Lukas worked as a consultant with McKinsey and Co.
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Over four decades ago the American author and futurist, John Naisbitt, captured the public imagination with his book Megatrends: Ten New Directions Transforming Our Lives. Since that time, the concept has been widely adopted by researchers, consultants, private enterprises and governments to explore long-term futures across a diverse range of regions, industries and socioeconomic domains.
Yet what are megatrends?
And how can we better understand their significance and impact?
To explore this I am delighted to be joined on Brain for Business by Dr Claire Naughtin.
Dr Claire Naughtin is a Principal Research Consultant at Data61 – part of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation or CSIRO, an Australian Government agency responsible for scientific research.
Claire leads Data61’s Digital Futures team and specialises in future-focused, strategic projects and has worked across a diverse range of policy and industry domains, including the future of trade, employment, healthcare and emerging technology and industry development opportunities. Among her most recent work, Claire co-led the delivery of CSIRO’s Our Future World report – a once-in-a-decade report that identified seven emerging megatrends that will shape the next 20 years for Australia.
Claire is passionate about bridging the gap between research and the real world and equipping leaders with a data-informed narrative of the future to help guide long-term decision-making. As part of this, Claire delivers strategic foresight training and workshops to help organisations build resilience to uncertain futures and publishes her research in scientific and industry journals.
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A recent paper in the journal Leadership Quarterly explores the very nature of leadership styles and how they play out, ultimately asserting that: "the common finding that positive leadership styles lead to positive outcomes […] might be an artifact of conflation rather than a reflection of reality” (p. 1).
Yet what are positive leadership styles and why have generations of leadership researchers so badly misinterpreted their impact?
Joining me on the Brain for Business podcast to discuss the findings of the paper is one of its co-authors, Professor Thomas Fischer of the University of Geneva.
About Thomas Fischer
Thomas Fischer is an Associate Professor at the University of Geneva and is the Yearly Review Editor of The Leadership Quarterly, the premier journal fully dedicated to leadership research. Thomas Fischer’s work focuses on managing people in organizations, and in particular on two topics. First, the conceptualization and measurement of leadership styles. Second, how people talk about their own leadership and whether their practice lives up to what they preach.
Details of the articles discussed in the podcast are as follows:
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A recent article in the journal Organization Science argues that
“Although prior research attributes news media coverage of firms to the alignment of firm behavior with societal expectations of appropriateness, the appropriateness of firm behavior is judged through an ideological lens. Therefore, the influence of a firm’s behavior on its news media coverage is likely to be contingent on news organizations’ ideology.”
The veracity of this statement has seemingly never been more true than in recent years when the news media has become increasingly polarised along ideological grounds and there would at times appear to be a news outlet to support any view, however mainstream or obscure.
To explore this further I am delighted be joined by one of the co-authors of the paper, Professor Georg Wernicke of HEC Paris.
About our guest…
Georg Wernicke is an Associate Professor of Strategy and Business Policy at HEC Paris. Georg’s research is on topics in, and at the intersection of, corporate governance and corporate social responsibility (CSR), broadly defined. More specifically, he is interested in the drivers of public disapproval of firms’ practices, for example the compensation firms pay to their CEOs, how firms’ prosocial activities affect disapproval, and, in turn, which subset of firms and CEOs reacts to being targeted. Georg also analyzes how the characteristics and values of CEOs affect firm level outcomes such as corporate misconduct or the adoption of prosocial practices, as well as how demographic minority status affects labor-market outcomes for directors after occurrences of financial fraud. Furthermore, Georg engages in projects that explore the antecedents of superior firm performance on CSR.
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Innovation is an inherently risky business. When we push the boundaries of possibility and try to develop new products, processes or services, we are by definition moving into areas that are new and unexplored. A key consequence of this is that innovation sometimes – or even often – results in failure. But why is this? And are all innovation failures the same?
To explore this further, I am delighted to be joined by Dr Elena Freisinger who, together with Professor Ian McCarthy of Simon Fraser University, has recently published on just this topic.
About our guest…
Elena Freisinger is an Assistant Professor of Innovation Management at Ilmenau University of Technology in Thuringia, Germany.
Elena’s research focuses on the behavioral aspects of Innovation Management, and she investigates the behavior of innovation decision-makers with regard to technological and environmental change and how this affects innovation management and business models of organizations.
The article discussed is open access and can be downloaded from here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0166497224000452
You can find out more about Elena and her research here:
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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.
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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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