113: Audra Wormald. How David overshadowed Goliath to create a new way of banking in low-income settings

113: Audra Wormald. How David overshadowed Goliath to create a new way of banking in low-income settings

Professor Audra Wormald of the University of North Carolina’s Keenan-Flagler Business School left a promising career in intellectual-property analysis and consulting to study innovation in the business of banking.  She wrote her PhD thesis on the ways in which local companies in developing markets were more effective than multinational banks in serving low-income customers, particularly in Tanzania.   In this conversation with Anita, Audra discusses how entrepreneurs in low-income settings respond with resilience and insight to the opportunities before them.  This is about more than only economics.  It’s about the psychological benefits to the entrepreneur of self-efficacy.A

112: Rachelle Sampson. How can executives overcome short-term pressures to invest for the long term?

Professor Rachelle Sampson has long studied the challenges that executives face to increase short-term earnings by cutting investments with longer-term investments.   After decades of research on technology adoption, alliances, corporate social responsibility, and ESG investing, Rachelle is now thinking as well about the effects of personal consciousness-raising on executive decision-making.  In this thoughtful conversation, she draws a straight line between short-term pressures, survival instincts, investment incentives, and the conscious ways in which executives can escape their fight-or-flight instincts to make better decisions for the long run.

111: Shaz Ansari. Don’t surrender your cognition to AI

Professor Shaz Ansari of the Judge Business School at Cambridge University is renowned for his work on institutional logics, cultural frames, and the effects of ArtificialIntelligence on how we think about what’s important.  In this conversation with Anita, he explains how the logics that reflect our identities both shape and are shaped by newframes.   Shaz ties everything together by describing how AI challenges us by resting on historical understandingsrather than new ways of thinking.  It’s never been more important to avoid cognitive surrender.   Think critically!

110: Brent Goldfarb. Great scientists think big, think long-term, and have integrity

Professor Brent Goldfarb studies big ideas, arguing that short-term investor pressures can cause firms to innovate less than they might otherwise.   Brent also studies how well-intentioned corporate innovators may pull the plug on their work once they achieve results that are good enough to pass muster – even when breakthroughs are just around the corner.  With training in both economics and computerscience, he brings a long view – an historian’s sensibility – to trajectories of scientific commercialization through corporate action.   Despite all the challenges, Brent remains excited and optimistic that science can deliver the insights we need forprosperity in the face of AI.

109: Adam Clark. Authentic organizational commitment is a long game with a big payoff

Professor Adam Clark of Chapman University is studying something that is notoriously difficult to assess:  the authenticity of an organization’s commitment.  In this powerful conversation, he talks with Anita about whether and how an organization’s authenticity may evolve over time.  Thestakes are high, with firm survival turning on getting authenticity right.