Brain for Business

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-LaitinenAbout 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

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.GallenBarbara’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, SwitzerlandCharlotta’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

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 outNot all feedback is equal, organisations need to be clear who is sharing it and how relevant it isPeople giving feedback notice what the organisation responds to and adjust their responses accordinglyThe 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 importantOrganisations must manage the trade-off between narrowing the feedback criteria to get something that is very focused, versus looking for a broad range of responsesWhen 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 respondedFeedback is not always objective, but rather reflects performance against expectations – and these expectations can be framed based on the feedback of others About HenningHenning 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.)

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

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

The psychology of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship is a fascinating area. Let’s face it – it can sometimes seem completely bizarre that someone might leave a possibly well-paid and secure job in order to follow their entrepreneurial dream. Yet this is exactly what some people do, despite all the risks and challenges involved.So what is the “psychology of entrepreneurship”? And what is it that makes entrepreneurs so unique?About our guest…Ute Stephan is Professor of Entrepreneurship at King’s Business School, King’s College London, a Fellow of the International Association of Applied Psychology (IAAP) and a 21st Century Entrepreneurship Fellow. She serves as Associate Editor at the Journal of Management and at Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice. From 2015-2019 she was Editor-in-Chief of Applied Psychology: An International Review and from 2019-2022 Consulting Editor at the Journal of International Business Studies.As an expert on the Psychology of Entrepreneurship, Ute explores how individuals and societies can thrive through entrepreneurship. Ute’s research builds evidence on how contexts (culture and institutions) shape entrepreneurship and well-being, and how entrepreneurship, in turn, can help to build more inclusive societies.You can find out more about Ute’s research here: https://sites.google.com/site/stephanute/home Some relevant articles co-authored by Ute on the psychology of entrepreneurship are as follows:Gorgievski, M. J., & Stephan, U. (2016). Advancing the psychology of entrepreneurship: A review of the psychological literature and an introduction. Applied Psychology, 65(3), 437-468.-      https://publications.aston.ac.uk/id/eprint/28176/1/Advancing_the_psychology_of_entrepreneurship.pdf Gorgievski, M. J., Stephan, U., Laguna, M., & Moriano, J. A. (2018). Predicting entrepreneurial career intentions: Values and the theory of planned behavior. Journal of career assessment, 26(3), 457-475.-      https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1069072717714541

While we have previously explored the question of narcissism and the dark triad of personality traits on the Brain for Business podcast, the question of how narcissistic leaders impact on overall organisational performance is something we are yet to consider in great detail. Yet this is exactly what our guests today, Professor Thanos Verousis of Vlerick Business School and Professor Pietro Perotti of the University of Bath, examine in a recent paper co-authored with Shee-Yee Khoo of Bangor Business School and Richard Watermeyer of the University of Bristol. To do this they  examine the narcissism of university vice chancellors in the context of the overall performance of their universities. While this might perhaps seem a little obscure to those outside academia, Vice Chancellors are ultimately the CEOs of large and complex organisations and the transferrable insights are many.Key findings include:The appointment of a highly narcissistic VC leads to an overall deterioration in research and teaching performance and concomitantly league table performanceKey potential mechanisms explaining this include excessive financial risk taking and empire-buildingThe findings are consistent with the view that narcissism is one of the most prominent traits of destructive leadershipThere are practical implications for leadership recruitment and the monitoring of leadership practices in the higher education sector The article discussed - Vice-chancellor narcissism and university performance – can be accessed here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0048733323001853 About our guests…Thanos Verousis is a Professor in Sustainable Finance at Vlerick Business School, Associate Editor at the Journal of Futures Markets and the European Journal of Finance. In his research he is particularly interested in understanding behavioural biases and decision-making in finance, especially with respect to departures from the classical rational expectations theory. Thanos also works on Artificial Intelligence (AI) applications in finance, especially in applications involving machine learning and robo-advising.  You can find out more about Thanos’s research here: https://sites.google.com/site/thanosverousis/Pietro Perotti is a Senior Lecturer, or Associate Professor, at the University of Bath. Pietro researches the capital market consequences of accounting information, financial reporting quality and market microstructure. Pietro’s research has been published in a range of leading journals including Journal of Business Finance and Accounting. Research Policy, Journal of Accounting Literature, Journal of Empirical Finance and Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting.You can find out more about Pietro’s research here: https://researchportal.bath.ac.uk/en/persons/pietro-perotti

The Big 5 Model of Personality is perhaps the most consistently reliable model of personality used in research around the world. Focusing on the key elements of conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism, openness to experience and extraversion, the Big 5 model has been applied to evaluate personality traits in my contexts including not least leadership. A recent paper – co-authored by our guest today on Brain for Business – Dr Fabian Braesemann – considered the Big 5 traits most commonly found in entrepreneurs and founders, assessing amongst other things what are the personality characteristics of typical of founders and how they contribute to start-up success.About our guest…Dr Fabian Braesemann is a Departmental Research Lecturer in AI & Work at the Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford.Fabian’s research focuses on the Science of Success. He uses data science methods to quantify the determinants of success in different fields:1. The Science of Success in Business2. Success and the Future of Work, and 3. Quantifying success online and offlineBefore Fabian started to work as a Departmental Research Lecturer at the OII, he worked as a Research Fellow & Data Scientist in the Future of Real Estate Initiative at the Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, and as a Data Scientist at the OII on projects that applied data science to understand human development and labour markets The article co-authored by Fabian is available here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-41980-yThe 2019 Nature article discussed in the podcast (“Quantifying the dynamics of failure across science, startups and security” by Yin et al.) is available here: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1903.07562.pdfYou can find out more about Fabian via his Linkedin page (https://www.linkedin.com/in/fabian-braesemann-210645138/_ or else via the OII website (https://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/people/profiles/fabian-braesemann/)

In times of great turmoil and uncertainty radicalisation can emerge as a real challenge. Yet what is it that really drives radicalisation and how can we better support de-radicalisation?Given the events of recent months around the world, we felt it timely to re-issue of Brain for Business Episode 22 of Series 1 which was an interview with internationally recognised expert in radicalisation and de-radicalisation, Robert Örell.Based in Stockholm, Robert Örell is an internationally sought-after trainer, speaker, workshop facilitator and expert in the field of radicalisation, disengagement, and intervention.Robert Örell has two decades of experience in the field of disengagement and exit work and has led Exit programs in Sweden and in the USA.Since 2011, Robert has been a member of the Steering Committee of the European Commission’s Radicalisation Awareness Network (RAN) and he currently works as an independent expert, consultant, and trainer in the Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism field. His recent work focuses on setting up exit programs, online counseling in exit work, and advising on policy guidelines and recommendations.