Podcasts about London Business School

Alex Price started his career as an officer in the British Army, moved into investment banking, did an MBA at London Business School, and joined Palmer Capital in 2003. At that point the business had three or four people, a balance sheet under £1m, no funds under management and three operating partners. Over 16 years he built it alongside founder Ray Palmer into a business with more than £1bn of assets under management, having raised over £1.5bn from the UK, US, Middle East and Asia, employing nearly 100 people across ten operating partners. They sold to Fiera Capital in 2019, and Alex went on to run the combined European business before leaving in 2023 to study a masters at King's College London. He set up Ashen Capital in 2024 with Steven Wright, a colleague of 15 years, to invest in the people investing in property. They take minority stakes in UK operating businesses, providing up to £5m of working capital alongside advice, connections and experience. Two investments so far: a land promotion business and an investment management business doing senior secured construction loans. His argument in this conversation is about what separates a real estate entrepreneur from any other kind. In most startups you risk a laptop, an office and your reputation. In real estate the numbers are staggering, so the downside is far larger relative to the upside, and that changes what investors look for. Alex backs character before skill set, because trust is what he's actually underwriting. He also never backs a solo founder, wanting two complementary people so one drives and one reduces risk. He walks through the mindset, skill set and character he looks for, the six steps to launching a business from concept through to launch day, and why he'd put £500m into UK residential rather than commercial. The People Property Place Podcast is powered by Art Capital & Yardi. For more on Yardi, head to: https://hubs.li/Q04wHxlH0 For more on Art Capital, head to: https://www.art-capital.co.uk/ LIKE - SHARE - SUBSCRIBE http://peoplepropertyplace.com/

When is the market genuinely irrational, and when have you simply failed to understand what the market understands?Alex Edmans, Professor of Finance at London Business School and author of The Madness of Markets, joins me to talk about market psychology, stories, bubbles and what behavioural finance can actually teach investors.Alex explains his research showing that stock markets tend to fall after a country is knocked out of the World Cup, even though a football result should have little effect on corporate profits. From there we ask what really counts as market “madness”, why collective beliefs can sustain the value of assets such as gold and crypto, and how markets can show both short-term momentum and longer-term reversal.We also discuss why investors still struggle to value intangibles such as culture and employee satisfaction; how share prices can change corporate decisions rather than simply reflect them; and whether professional investors are actually less biased than everyone else.Alex is candid about his own mistakes. He talks about a failed investment in a fitness start-up, the one-minute delay he put on his email outbox to counter his tendency to interpret messages negatively, and why he deliberately seeks out people and evidence that challenge what he already believes.We also cover Neil Woodford, cognitive diversity, sustainability and ESG, misinformation, AI, deep work and Alex's creative process.At the heart of the conversation is a difficult investing question: if you think the market is wrong, what evidence would convince you that it is actually you who is wrong?Contents00:00 Meet Alex Edmans00:35 When are markets really irrational?01:29 Football results and investor sentiment07:47 Stories, narratives and bubbles12:33 Momentum, reversal and behavioural finance16:17 Why markets misprice intangibles24:07 How prices change real decisions33:02 Are professional investors less biased?39:55 Alex's failed start-up investment43:03 Rethinking sustainability47:48 Overrated / Underrated56:06 Social media and AI01:00:06 Deep work and creativity01:03:36 Final adviceTranscript, links and key takeaways:www.thendobetter.com/investing/2026/9/18/alex-edmans-the-madness-of-markets-when-are-markets-really-irrational

Lynda Gratton is a renowned professor at London Business School, a global authority on the future of work and longevity, and the author of 11 books, including her latest, Living the 100-Year Life. For decades, she has explored how longer lives are reshaping the way we learn, work, build relationships and find meaning. Today, Lynda Gratton shares how her mother and grandmother shaped her steady optimism, why living longer requires curiosity and reinvention, and how we can move beyond the traditional path of education, work and retirement. She invites us to see life as a tapestry woven from our experiences, relationships and choices, with each season offering new possibilities. My friends, if you've been moving through life on autopilot or wondering what your next chapter could hold, this conversation is for you. You'll leave encouraged to invest in what matters most, remain open to new possibilities and make your longer life not only fuller, but more meaningful.

Why do smart investors make crazy decisions? Listen to Jason Mitchell discuss with Professor Alex Edmans, London Business School, about what markets are really pricing; why they get it wrong in systematic and predictable ways; and how we can become better investors, better thinkers, and maybe even better stewards of the future.

The traditional life plan, learn, work for four decades straight, retire once and for all, was built for a much shorter life than many of us are actually going to live. Lynda Gratton, London Business School professor and bestselling author of The 100-Year Life, has spent years studying what happens when that old blueprint stops matching reality. Her answer isn't a bigger retirement number. It's a completely different way of thinking about how work, rest, learning, and relationships fit together across a much longer stretch of time, and what that means for how you actually fund it.What You'll Walk Away WithWhy a single, long block of retirement often backfires, and what tends to happen to people's sense of purpose and friendships when it doesThe "weaving" framework: eight threads, four about staying productive and four about nurturing yourself, that Gratton argues need ongoing attention throughout life, not just at the endWhy a "flexibility fund" might matter more than a traditional retirement account for anyone planning to take real breaks, sabbaticals, or career pivots along the wayA simple four-option framework (stay, switch, scale back, or sail away) for deciding what to do when a chapter of work stops feeling rightWhy the fastest way to burn out is neglecting the "nurture" side of life, and why neglecting the "productivity" side leaves you financially fragile insteadA genuinely useful reframe on AI: not a threat to outrun, but a reason to double down on the specifically human parts of work and lifeWhy This Matters NowLonger lifespans sound like good news until you realize the traditional financial and career plan never accounted for them. A forty-year runway to retirement followed by thirty-plus years of doing nothing structured often turns out to be less fulfilling, and harder to fund, than a life built with more transitions built in along the way. Planning for that kind of life means thinking further ahead than most retirement calculators do, and building in the flexibility to actually use the extra years well, not just survive them.From the BasementA Dolly Parton headline turns into a genuinely sharp personal finance lesson: how she turned down Elvis, kept the rights to "I Will Always Love You," and built Dollywood, her literacy program, and her entire business empire on the exact same core talents rather than chasing unrelated ventures. Old-school diversification, but the boring kind that actually works.Resources MentionedLiving the 100-Year Life by Lynda Gratton — Lynda's book, workbook, and free diagnostic on the eight life threadsLife Threads podcast — Lynda's eight-episode podcast series exploring each threadThe 100-Year Life by Lynda Gratton and Andrew Scott — the original million-copy bestseller that started this line of researchSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Interview recorded - 14th of September, 2026On this episode of the WTFinance podcast I had the pleasure of welcoming back Shaun Rein. Shaun is the Founder and Managing Director of the China Market Research Group (CMR), the world's leading strategic market intelligence firm focused on China.0:00 - Introduction1:43 - Overview of markets and the economy4:13 - Chinese property9:06 - Manufacturing12:10 - Chinese subsidies14:08 - Surplus problem18:29 - Geopolitical shifts22:03 - Reconciliation possible?26:53 - Underrated countries?29:47 - Chinese Growth Sustainable?31:23 - Safety nets?35:48 - Asset overview40:21 - One message to takeaway?Shaun Rein is the Founder and Managing Director of the China Market Research Group (CMR), the world's leading strategic market intelligence firm focused on China. He works with Boards, billionaires, Heads of States, CEOs and senior executives of Fortune 500 & leading Chinese companies, private equity firms, SMEs and long/ hedge funds to develop their China growth, political and investment strategies. Rein authored the international best-sellers "The War for China's Wallet: Profiting from the New World Order," "The End of Cheap China"​ & "The End of Copycat China."​ Publishers Weekly named "Cheap"​ a "Top 10 business book for 2012." The Financial Times called "Copycat"​ "Intriguing" and said of Wallet: “Mr. Rein's insider tales of what it takes to work in contemporary China are insightful...a toolbox for those who want to work with Chinese companies make it a worthwhile read.”Rein is regularly featured in the Wall Street Journal and The Financial Times. His op-eds have appeared in the New York Times. He frequently appears on CNN, BBC, MarketPlace, CNBC, Bloomberg, PBS and MSNBC. Rein formerly taught executive education classes for London Business School and was a weekly columnist for CNBC and Forbes. He also wrote a column for Bloomberg BusinessWeek. Rein is one of the most sought out keynote speakers focused on innovation, consumer trends and the economy in China.Shaun Rein - Website - http://www.cmrconsulting.com.cn/xsyX - https://x.com/shaunreinYouTube - @shaunrein4708 WTFinance -Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/wtfinancee/Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/67rpmjG92PNBW0doLyPvfniTunes - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/wtfinance/id1554934665?uo=4X - https://twitter.com/AnthonyFatseas

Jeffrey Pfeffer has spent decades showing that people-first companies outperform, and just as long watching that evidence lose to habit. His answer is blunt: whether you're cautious about power or thirsty for it, there's no denying its role in the workplace, and ideas without power are just ideas. In this revisited episode, Dart and Jeff explore the purpose of power, the knowing-doing gap, and how to build profits by putting people first.Jeffrey Pfeffer is the Thomas D. Dee II Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he has taught since 1979. He is the author of several books, including The Human Equation, Dying for a Paycheck, and 7 Rules of Power.In this episode, Dart and Jeff discuss:- Why most of us are ambivalent about power- Why a big title doesn't make you powerful- Why ideas alone don't change anything- The seven rules, and which one matters most- Why we never pick the leaders we say we want- Why evidence keeps losing to habit- Getting ideas past people who can ignore you- Why HR keeps losing the power game- Can you have power and put people first?- And other topics…Jeffrey Pfeffer is the Thomas D. Dee II Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he has taught since 1979. He previously taught at the University of Illinois and the University of California, Berkeley, and has been a visiting professor at Harvard Business School, London Business School, Singapore Management University, and IESE. He is the author or co-author of several books, including The Human Equation, The Knowing-Doing Gap, Leadership BS, Dying for a Paycheck, and 7 Rules of Power. His work has been cited more than 200,000 times. He hosts the Pfeffer on Power podcast and has taught a MasterClass since 2025.Resources Mentioned:Jeff's Books,7 Rules of Power: https://www.amazon.com/7-Rules-Power-Pfeffer-Jeffrey/dp/1800751281The Human Equation: Building Profits by Putting People First: https://www.amazon.com/Human-Equation-Building-Profits-Putting/dp/0875848419Dying for a Paycheck: How Modern Management Harms Employee Health and Company Performance, and What We Can Do About It: https://www.amazon.com/Dying-Paycheck-Management-Employee-Performance/dp/0062800922Leadership BS: Fixing Workplaces and Careers One Truth at a Time: https://www.amazon.com/Leadership-BS-Fixing-Workplaces-Careers/dp/0062383167The Knowing-Doing Gap: How Smart Companies Turn Knowledge into Action (with Robert Sutton): https://www.amazon.com/Knowing-Doing-Gap-Companies-Knowledge-Action/dp/B00DEK8PAAChimpanzee Politics: Power and Sex among Apes, by Frans de Waal: https://www.amazon.com/Chimpanzee-Politics-Power-among-Apes/dp/0801886562Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, by Robert B. Cialdini: https://www.amazon.com/Influence-Psychology-Persuasion-Robert-Cialdini/dp/006124189XConnect with Jeff:Website: https://jeffreypfeffer.com/Pfeffer on Power podcast: https://jeffreypfeffer.com/pfeffer-on-power/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffrey-pfeffer-57a01b6X: https://x.com/JeffreyPfefferStanford GSB: https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/faculty/jeffrey-pfefferWork with Dart:Dart is the CEO and co-founder of the work design firm 11fold. Build work that makes employees feel alive, connected to their work, and focused on what's most important to the business. Book a call at 11fold.com.

In this episode of the Earn and Invest podcast, host Doc G interviews Alex Edmans, a finance professor at London Business School and author of The Madness of Markets: Why Smart Investors Make Crazy Decisions and How to Exploit Them. The conversation explores why financial markets are inefficient, how psychological biases create market distortions, and how everyday investors should navigate the trade-off between market "beta" and "alpha". Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Nog snel even dat ene mailtje beantwoorden. Een to-do-lijstje maken. De bestanden op je computer ordenen. En voor je het weet is de dag voorbij zonder dat je aan het belangrijkste werk bent toegekomen. Herkenbaar? Je bent niet de enige. Volgens Ben Tiggelaar is prioriteiten stellen voor veel professionals een van de lastigste onderdelen van hun werk. Wie kent het niet? Je zit midden in een belangrijke taak als er een collega langskomt met een verzoek. Daarna volgt een Teams-bericht, een binnenkomende mail en een melding uit je agenda. Alles lijkt urgent. "Als mensen onder druk staan, kunnen ze vaak geen onderscheid meer maken tussen wat belangrijk is en wat urgent is," zegt Ben Tiggelaar in zijn podcast. "Alles voelt opeens even belangrijk." Dat heeft grote gevolgen voor de keuzes die we maken. Waarom we onder stress de verkeerde dingen doen Psychologen spreken van het mere urgency effect. Zodra de druk oploopt, richten mensen zich opvallend vaak op de taak die het snelst af te ronden is, niet op de taak die de meeste waarde oplevert. Dat zie je niet alleen op kantoor. Onderzoek laat zien dat zelfs artsen en verpleegkundigen op drukke momenten soms geneigd zijn eerst een relatief eenvoudige klus op te pakken om weer grip op de situatie te krijgen. Voor kenniswerkers betekent dat vaak: e-mails beantwoorden. "Je drukt op verzenden en hebt direct het gevoel dat je iets hebt afgemaakt", zegt Tiggelaar. "Dat geeft een beetje controle." Maar ondertussen blijven de écht belangrijke taken liggen. Het probleem zit vaak hoger in de organisatie Wie denkt dat slechte prioriteiten vooral een persoonlijk probleem zijn, heeft het volgens Tiggelaar mis. Veel organisaties zijn zelf onduidelijk over wat echt belangrijk is. Onderzoek van onder meer de London Business School laat zien dat medewerkers bedrijfsstrategieën vaak te vaag vinden om er dagelijks richting aan te ontlenen. Zinnen als "door voortdurende innovatie stellen wij de klant centraal" klinken mooi, maar bieden weinig houvast voor de keuzes van vandaag. Nog problematischer wordt het wanneer organisaties tientallen prioriteiten tegelijk hanteren. "We hebben vaak niet te weinig prioriteiten, maar juist te veel", zegt Tiggelaar. "En soms spreken ze elkaar zelfs tegen." Amazon: alles op nummer één werkt niet Een bekend voorbeeld is Amazon. Het bedrijf presenteert zichzelf tegelijkertijd als het meest klantgerichte bedrijf ter wereld, de beste werkgever én de veiligste werkplek. Op papier kan dat allemaal prioriteit hebben. In de praktijk blijkt dat lastiger. Tijdens piekperiodes, zoals rondom Thanksgiving of de feestdagen, ontstaat er druk op de organisatie. Dan blijkt welke prioriteit daadwerkelijk wint. "Uiteindelijk zie je dat andere doelen sneuvelen als het echt druk wordt", aldus Tiggelaar. De les: als alles prioriteit heeft, heeft uiteindelijk niets prioriteit. Wat bedrijven kunnen leren van de spoedeisende hulp Waar gaat het dan wél goed? Tiggelaar wijst op de spoedeisende hulp in ziekenhuizen. Daar komen voortdurend urgente situaties binnen, maar toch ontstaat er meestal geen chaos. Het geheim is triage: een vast systeem waarmee zorgverleners bepalen wat onmiddellijk aandacht nodig heeft en wat kan wachten. Volgens Tiggelaar kunnen organisaties daar veel van leren. Een effectieve prioriteitenlijst ontstaat volgens hem in vier stappen: Maak een overzicht van alle doelen. Breng conflicten tussen die doelen in kaart. Bepaal wat voorrang krijgt wanneer doelen botsen. Zet de prioriteiten expliciet op volgorde. Pas dan ontstaat er echte duidelijkheid. Disney traint medewerkers hier twee dagen op Een van Tiggelaars favoriete voorbeelden komt uit de Disney-parken. Medewerkers die met bezoekers werken krijgen daar een duidelijke prioriteitenvolgorde mee: Boven alles veiligheid, daarna hoffelijkheid, dan inclusie, gevolgd door de show en als laatste efficiëntie. Die volgorde wordt uitgebreid geoefend aan de hand van praktijkvoorbeelden. Stel: Donald Duck staat handtekeningen uit te delen en ziet een kleuter gevaarlijk op een prullenbak klimmen. Dan is de keuze eenvoudig. Veiligheid gaat vóór de show. Juist doordat medewerkers die afweging vooraf al hebben gemaakt, hoeven ze op het moment zelf niet meer te twijfelen. De kracht van een stopdoing-lijst Tiggelaar verwijst ook naar naar een beroemde tip van belegger Warren Buffett. Maak een lijst van alles wat je belangrijk vindt. Kies vervolgens de vijf belangrijkste zaken. En dan komt het verrassende deel; de rest verdwijnt niet op een lijst voor later. Integendeel. Die andere belangrijke dingen komen juist op een zogenaamde avoid-at-all-costs-list. "Je raakt niet afgeleid door onbelangrijke dingen", zegt Tiggelaar. "Je raakt afgeleid door dingen die óók belangrijk zijn." Wie werkelijk focus wil aanbrengen, moet dus niet alleen bepalen waar hij tijd aan besteedt, maar vooral ook waaraan niet. Maak dus een stop-doing list. Drie praktische tips van Ben Tiggelaar Maak samen met collega's een korte prioriteiten- of triagelijst. Vertaal die prioriteiten naar concrete keuzes in agenda's en dagelijkse werkzaamheden. Maak een stopdoing-lijst met activiteiten die bewust géén aandacht krijgen. Of zoals Willemijn Veenhoven het samenvat: "Die stopdoing-lijst kan mij niet lang genoeg zijn."Over de makersBen Tiggelaar geldt al jaren als een van de bekendste experts op het gebied van leiderschap, gedragsverandering en organisatieontwikkeling. In deze podcast vertaalt hij wetenschappelijke inzichten naar concrete adviezen die direct toepasbaar zijn op de werkvloer. Met scherpe vragen van Willemijn Veenhoven ontstaan gesprekken die inspireren, uitdagen en aanzetten tot actie. Ben Tiggelaar is auteur, spreker, docent en gedragswetenschapper. Bekend van zijn NRC-column, het seminar MBA in één dag en bestsellers als Dromen, durven, doen. Hij houdt van evidence based én superpraktisch advies. Willemijn Veenhoven is programmamaker en journalist. Ze is al ruim 20 jaar een vertrouwde stem op de radio. Bekend van o.a. de radioprogramma’s Spijkers met Koppen, De Nieuws BV en Kunststof. Lichtvoetig, adrem en geboren nieuwsgierig. Paul Sanders deed redactie & montage, Gijs Friesen maakte de vormgeving en de eindredactie is in handen van Annick van der Leeuw. De Ben Tiggelaar Podcast is een productie van BNR en bouwt voort op een van de meest succesvolle leiderschapspodcasts van Nederland. De podcast biedt een groeiende bibliotheek met tijdloze inzichten over leiderschap, management, gedrag, samenwerking en persoonlijke groei. Luister elke week naar De Ben Tiggelaar Podcast en ontdek hoe je beter kunt leidinggeven, effectiever kunt samenwerken en meer impact kunt maken in je werk en carrière.Deze omschrijving is met AI gemaakt en gecontroleerd door een BNR-redacteur. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Skipper Gavin Rees led London Business School to second place in the 2025-26 Clipper Round the World Yacht Race. In this mini-episode, he tells Business Casual's Pola Lem about the leadership lessons he gleaned in this high-stakes environment. Covering all that matters in Business Education: https://poetsandquants.com/

What if midlife isn't the beginning of the decline, but the beginning of something entirely new? We've been sold a pretty outdated life plan: learn, work, climb, achieve, retire. Preferably while raising children, maintaining friendships, exercising, drinking enough water, keeping our relationships interesting, remembering everyone's birthdays, and figuring out what the fuck is happening to our hormones. Yeah. That plan could use an update. In this episode of This Is Woman's Work, Nicole Kalil talks with Lynda Gratton, one of the world's leading experts on the future of work, professor of management practice at London Business School, and author of Living the Hundred Year Life: How to Build a Career That Lasts and a Life You Love. They explore: Why the traditional learn-work-retire model no longer fits a 100-year life How longer lifespans are changing careers, retirement, and the future of work Why women have been living multi-stage careers long before workplaces caught up The eight “threads” that help create a fulfilling, sustainable life and career Why relationships, friendship, adventure, and calm are essential to avoiding burnout Why calm may be one of the most neglected resources in women's lives How to create more calm without pretending we suddenly have hours of free time The difference between the future self you hope for, expect, and fear Why adventure doesn't require blowing up your life or booking a trip around the world Why you might want to take a little piece of retirement now instead of saving all of it for someday So if you're asking, “What's next for me?” maybe you don't need the entire answer yet. Maybe you get to keep weaving, experimenting, and choosing as you go. Thank you to our sponsors! Protect your loved ones without spying on them. Go to HeyPolo.com/work or use code WORK and get 40% off your first year Connect with Lynda: Website: https://www.livingthe100yearlife.com/  Book: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Living-100-Year-Life-build-career/dp/1399432966/ref=sr_1_1  LI: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lynda-gratton-3b179813/    Assessment: https://www.livingthe100yearlife.com/assessment  Related Podcast Episodes: On Sabbaticals, Reinvention, and Getting Older | Unfiltered & Unhinged JoySpan: A Smarter Way To Age Well (And Break Free From Anti-Aging Culture) with Dr. Kerry Burnight | 425 Why “Rewirement” Beats Retirement (and How to Do It Right) with Anne Chow | 350 Share the Love: If you found this episode insightful, please share it with a friend, tag us on social media, and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform!

“When people trade, even before fees and commissions, the average trade loses money.” — Alex Edmans Isaac Newton might be able to foresee the movement of the stars, but he couldn't foretell the madness of men. It was a lesson that cost the great physicist £4 million (in today's money) when he threw his fortune into the South Sea Bubble. This priceless parable in Newtonian psychology opens The Madness of Markets, the new book by Alex Edmans — London Business School finance prof, old friend of the show, and author of the bestselling May Contain Lies. Dr Edmans's prognosis is bracingly unflattering to guys like Isaac Newton and Mark Twain who splurge their fortunes on speculative ventures. Intelligence, he reminds us, is domain-specific, but many smart people simply aren't intelligent enough to realize this. So, in the age of Robinhood — when we can all trade anything from stocks, options, crypto to NFTs — the supposed wisdom of crowds is sometimes driven over the cliff by the irrational exuberance of dumb individuals. Speaking of driving off the cliff, ninety percent of us think we're above-average drivers, Edmans jokes, and this same delusion applies to markets. Unfortunately, such stupidity can be expensive for big brain types like Newton or Twain. “When people trade, even before fees and commissions, the average trade loses money,” he warns. So close your Robinhood account and stick your cash in the bank? No, not quite. Know your edge, Edmans reminds us. And when it comes to making sense of the current AI boom, Edmans offers some particularly wise words. The AI sector trades at 25 to 30 times earnings rather than Cisco's bubble-era 190, he notes, so it's unlikely anyone will lose their life's savings on Anthropic or OpenAI. That said, the good doctor Edmans advises, don't confuse your self-worth with your net worth. That's a rookie conceit that only somebody as smart as Isaac Newton would fall for. Five Takeaways •       Newton's £4 Million. The book leads with the smartest victim on record: Isaac Newton rode the South Sea Bubble, banked a tidy profit, dove back in at the very top, and lost £20,000 — £4 million today — lamenting that he could predict the movement of the stars but not the madness of men. (Andrew's companion case, via last month's Citizen Twain episode with Jeff Jarvis: Mark Twain, genius writer, ruinous investor.) The lesson is that smartness is domain-specific: beating the market requires knowing the company, the industry, and — crucially — what's already priced in. A great secretary of state evaluating Theranos is the Dunning-Kruger effect in a suit: expertise misapplied, one piece of the mosaic mistaken for the whole. Even Warren Buffett's edge, Edmans notes, is partly restraint — don't watch the market too closely, or you'll mistake noise for signal.•       Know Your Edge. Edmans's framework: play the market only if you can name your edge — knowledge (unique insight into a sector) or endurance (capital that can't be withdrawn by flighty clients). His endurance exemplar is Clare College, Cambridge, which borrowed £10 million in the depths of 2008 and put it all into equities via its “2048 Fund”: a decade later the portfolio had tripled while the loan had merely doubled. No edge? Then “be humble” and hold a low-cost, globally diversified index fund — because the alternative is expensive. In the age of Robinhood, the market for everything has been democratized; the zero-commission promise is a myth (retail options bid-ask spreads run 20 to 25 percent); and the brokerage data is brutal: the average retail trade loses money before fees. “I'm generally a libertarian,” Edmans concedes — but decisions that jeopardize your financial future deserve a warning label.•       Why the Ox Doesn't Apply. The week's second Surowiecki appearance (after the Brunton episode): Edmans explains why the wisdom of crowds — the county-fair ox whose weight the crowd guesses perfectly — fails in markets. Two reasons: nobody is emotionally attached to the weight of an ox, and the guesses are secret. Stocks invert both — in a bubble everyone bids high together, and trading is public: Reddit threads, boasting friends, influencers, and the survivorship bias of gamblers who only mention their wins. Hence Andrew's cocktail-party indicator, confirmed: when smart, successful people start telling you how much AI they're buying, the trade is crowded and richly priced. The contrarian lineage — Graham, Buffett, Greenblatt — exists precisely to take the other side of mimicry. Or, per Andrew's accepted inversion of the subtitle: why crazy investors make smart decisions — Ford's faster horses, Moneyball's walks, Jobs's refusal to ask customers what they want.•       Is AI a Bubble? Maybe Not. The hour's most contrarian calm. There are moments, Edmans says, when reasonable people could call a bubble in real time — Cisco in 2000 traded at a price-earnings ratio of 190, triple Microsoft's. AI today trades at roughly 25 to 30 times earnings; the bear case is that those earnings rest on capex (Meta's own investors say it's spending too much) that may not be sustainable. His verdict: fairly priced, or modestly overvalued — “something about which reasonable people have different views.” On using AI to invest, the rule is anti-confirmation: don't ask it why you're right or to advocate for your pitch; ask it why you're wrong, and let it gather mosaic pieces (Glassdoor culture scrapes) while humans still walk shop floors and read management's eyes. Andrew's gloss: it's unlikely anyone will lose their life's savings on Anthropic or OpenAI. The teaser: FT journalist Robin Wigglesworth — who blurbs this book “a maddeningly good read” and warns in the Times of the AI debt binge — visits this show soon.•       Cutting Our Flowers, Watering Our Weeds. Andrew's Claudeception question — what happens when Anthropic feeds The Madness of Markets into its AI and everyone turns contrarian? — got a data answer: when a trading strategy is published in the Journal of Finance, its returns fall by only about a third. Money stays on the table because psychology is stubborn: momentum (buy six-month winners) has worked since 1993, yet it fights the disposition effect — our temptation to bank winners and cling to losers, chasing casino losses, “cutting our flowers and watering our weeds.” Timing cuts both ways: six-month winners keep winning, three-year winners revert — the foundation of contrarianism — but calling the market's top or bottom is near-impossible, which is why Edmans bought heavily in late 2008 content to be “80 percent right.” And the closing wisdom, after Joe Kennedy's 1928 exit and Trump's well-timed memecoin: your self-worth should have nothing to do with your net worth — a rookie conceit, as Andrew's intro has it, that only somebody as smart as Isaac Newton would fall for. About the Guest Alex Edmans is Professor of Finance at London Business School and a leading expert on market psychology. His research has featured in the Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, and on the BBC, and he has advised sovereign wealth funds, pension funds, and asset managers worldwide. He is the author of May Contain Lies, an Amazon number-one bestseller disc...

Make It So is my new eight-week seminar, and this episode is the full walkthrough — what it is, who it's for, and why I built it around practice instead of prediction. The name comes from Jean-Luc Picard: you're telling me you want to do something, so do it. And there's research behind that instinct. Herminia Ibarra at London Business School has shown that identity shifts when you apply what you're learning — you can think about something extensively, but real learning starts when you make it real. Leadership programs hand you a framework. This is a practice, and preparation starts with examining what you're already assuming to be true. That's my Assumption-Ground Audit: it doesn't start with strategy, it starts a layer back — what are we treating as settled that we haven't even looked at? Everyone has a history, a present, and a future, which means futurism doesn't require a crystal ball. It's woven into your life already — how you respond, how you plan, how you envision what's ahead. And there's no one future. There's futures. For decades, Canada operated on the assumption that the US was its biggest trading partner and a great neighbour. This summer, that's not proving reliable. Tariffs may be temporary. Repairs may not be. Whatever your version of that assumption is — in your work, your business, your family — you can't build for the future until you've looked at what you're assuming will hold. In this episode: Who this is for: people who sense things before the room catches up — not the "this is the way it always was" crowd Building across a permacrisis: climate, economic uproar, geopolitical drama, technology upheaval — how do you adapt when your strategy stops being realistic within 90 days? Why so much of change is rooted in identity, which assumptions are load-bearing in yours, and why letting go of a story you tell about yourself can feel like grief (my neighbours' US-centred retirement plans, my husband's shift as our kids moved to university) Trust: who you trust, why, what disrupts it — and how you repair it when the breach is cultural and underlying-values level, not day-to-day What's a true signal and what's just noise: how you scan, what bias impedes your noticing, and how you make meaning out of what you notice Scenario thinking as a leadership tool, not just a planning exercise Language and power: who gets to name things, who respects the reasons for a name, and what the Lake Ontario / "Lake America" drama says about hierarchy and identity Embedding: setting up a practice you run in your own life — almost like configuring a tool stack for a world that's shifting in real time How I used these skills myself: implementing work from home a full decade before the pandemic, and moving away from working for an American division ten years before this summer A note for American participants — what I'll ask you to be able to sit with before you join Why this is a moment to invest in Canada and be chosen for the Canadian perspective, not because the historical choice has always been an American expert These skills are transferable — they'll apply to your work, your parenting, your relationships. It's not a straight line; it's learning to work with the currents, the waves, the disruptions, and get closer to where you want to be. More of what you want, less of what you don't. That's the hope and possibilities in the future of work. The details: Eight weeks, starting Tuesday, September 8 Runs through Telegram and is designed to be asynchronous — live sessions are recorded, time zones aren't a barrier, and it's open to participants anywhere in the world Twenty seats total, across three tiers: Program (fully asynchronous, CAD $1,600), Program + Office Hours (CAD $2,400), and Program + 1:1 (CAD $3,200, two private sessions with me, by application) Enroll at nolasimon.com/make-it-so The future isn't predicted. It's practiced.  

Summary:  In this episode, Mitch Beinhacker interviews John Mullins, a professor of entrepreneurship at the London Business School. They discuss Mullins' background as an entrepreneur and how he transitioned into academia. They also talk about the evolution of entrepreneurship education and the impact of technology on startups. Mullins shares examples of successful companies that have emerged from entrepreneurship programs, such as World Remit. The conversation highlights the importance of real-world experience and collaboration in the classroom. The conversation explores the importance of planning and strategic thinking in entrepreneurship. It highlights the need for entrepreneurs to assess their ideas before starting a venture. The conversation also emphasizes the value of learning and acquiring the right mindset for entrepreneurial success. The guest, John Mullins, discusses his books and the key principles he teaches, including thinking outside the box, problem-first logic, and the six mindsets of successful entrepreneurs. The conversation explores six counter-conventional mindsets that entrepreneurs should adopt to increase their chances of success. These mindsets include: 1) Yes, we can!; 2) Problem first, not product first logic; 3) Think narrow, not broad; 4) Ask for the cash, ride the float; 5) Borrow assets instead of investing in them; and 6) Never ask permission, beg forgiveness later. The conversation also highlights examples from successful companies like Nike, Dell, and Tesla that have applied these mindsets. Keywords:  entrepreneurship, academia, startups, London Business School, education, technology, World Remit, entrepreneurship, planning, strategic thinking, business plan, mindset, problem-first logic, success, entrepreneurship, counter-conventional mindsets, success, customer-centric, problem-solving, narrow focus, cash flow, borrowing assets, permission vs forgiveness Takeaways Entrepreneurship education has evolved over the years, with more students pursuing entrepreneurship as a career path. Real-world experience and collaboration are crucial in entrepreneurship education. Technology has enabled the growth of innovative startups, such as World Remit. Entrepreneurship programs provide valuable resources and support for aspiring entrepreneurs. Assessing an idea crucial step before starting a venture. Entrepreneurs should be open to opportunities outside their comfort zone. Thinking about problems and finding innovative solutions is more important than focusing solely on the product. Successful entrepreneurs possess specific mindsets that differentiate them from other successful business people. Entrepreneurial thought and action are essential for driving innovation and creating jobs. Think customer first, not product first Focus on solving a problem rather than creating a product Narrow your focus to a specific target market Ask for payment upfront to validate your idea and accelerate growth Borrow assets instead of investing in them Take action and seek forgiveness later, rather than waiting for permission Titles From Entrepreneur to Professor The Impact of Technology on Startups The Six Mindsets of Successful Entrepreneurs Problem-First Logic: A Different Approach to Innovation The Benefits of Thinking Narrow The Power of Thinking Customer First   Sound Bites "I'm like Joe Montana, I get paid to have fun." "That company today is worth a couple of billion pounds." "Entrepreneurship programs provide valuable resources and support for aspiring entrepreneurs." "84% of the businesses started in the entrepreneurship summer school were still in business, and two-thirds of them were not the idea they started with." "The lack of planning and strategic approach in business owners is frustrating and leads to failure." "The odds of success in entrepreneurship are tough, but doing homework and planning can improve them." "Find a problem that you can solve and let the product follow" "Think narrow at the outset about a tiny target market" "Get paid before you even build a product"   Chapters 00:00 Introduction and Background 04:24 Transitioning from Entrepreneur to Professor 09:19 The Evolution of Entrepreneurship Education 12:39 The Impact of Technology on Startups 23:19 Assessing Ideas and Adapting 24:17 The Importance of Planning and Strategic Approach 26:16 Improving the Odds of Success 30:59 The Entrepreneurship Summer School at LBS 33:15 Break the Rules: Thinking and Acting Entrepreneurial 37:14 The Customer Funded Business 40:09 The Mindsets of Successful Entrepreneurs 49:19 Thinking Customer First 50:13 Solving Problems, Not Just Creating Products 53:26 Thinking Narrow 56:06 Asking for Payment Upfront 57:04 Borrowing Assets 01:07:09 Taking Action and Seeking Forgiveness  

If you knew you might live to 100, how differently would you think about the career you are building today? Lynda Gratton is Professor of Management Practice in Organisational Behaviour at London Business School, where she's taught for more than thirty years and leads the world's number one ranked programme in human resources. Lynda is also the bestselling co-author of the million selling The 100-Year Life. Ahead of the publication of her new book, Living the 100-Year Life: How to build a career that lasts and a life you love, Lynda joins David to explore why longer lives are stretching the traditional education, work and retirement model to breaking point, and what this means for individuals and organisations. In this episode, David and Lynda discuss: The eight threads Lynda believes can help us build resilient and fulfilling working lives, and why calm is becoming increasingly important Why “amplification”, our relationship with technology and AI, is one of the eight threads we need to manage deliberately How AI is reshaping work at the level of tasks, and what that means for the careers we build Why career architectures, mobility and development models designed for shorter, more predictable working lives need to evolve How organisations can help people navigate repeated transitions across careers that could span 50 or 60 years Ultimately, this is a conversation about longevity, technology and human agency, and how individuals and organisations can make the extra years we have been given count. This episode is sponsored by HiBob. HiBob brings HR, Payroll, and Finance together into a single platform that employees actually use. With AI throughout, you move faster, work smarter, and empower your people to power your business. Sapient Insights recognises HiBob's AI vision, citing the Bob AI Companion for making everyday work faster and easier. Fosway Group also names HiBob a 2025 9-Grid™ Core Leader, recognising the strongest AI vision among Core Leaders. HiBob. All-in-one HCM for HR, Payroll, and Finance. ​​​Learn all about HiBob's modern HR platform hereResources: Living the 100-year old Life: How to build a career that lasts and a life you love Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this week's MBA Admissions podcast we began by discussing the beginning of the new application season. Cambridge / Judge is the first top MBA program with their Round 1 deadline, which was last week. This upcoming week, London Business School, Oxford / Said and Duke / Fuqua all have admissions deadlines. Graham highlighted Clear Admit's upcoming events. We plan to do a livestream event this Tuesday, to kick off the new admissions season. This event is for participants to ask any questions they have for their Round 1 strategy. Graham and Alex will be hosting, as usual. You can subscribe to Clear Admit's YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@ClearAdmitMBA Later in September, Clear Admit will also host several more webinar events featuring admissions professionals from all the top MBA programs. Signups for those events are here: https://www.clearadmit.com/events Graham highlighted a recently published deep-dive piece on Adcom's considerations regarding the use of AI in MBA admissions. Graham also noted admissions tips related to GMAT & GRE test waivers and video essays. Clear Admit also published a handy chart that highlights which top MBA programs allow for test waivers. Clear Admit continues its Adcom Q&A series. This week Graham notes a Q&A with Texas / McCombs. Graham also highlighted several podcast Q&As that continue to be released, including Q&As with Harvard, Fuqua, Booth and Stern. For this week, for the candidate profile review portion of the show, Alex selected two ApplyWire entries: This week's first MBA admissions candidate is planning to apply in 2028. They are a structural engineer and want to use the MBA to pivot to investment banking. This week's second MBA applicant is from India and has a master's in chemistry. They have a 645 GMAT score and we wonder if they should retake the test. This episode was recorded in Paris, France and Cornwall, England. It was produced and engineered by the fabulous Dennis Crowley in Philadelphia, USA. Thanks to all of you who've been joining us and please remember to rate and review this show wherever you listen!

J. Patrick Galleher is the CEO & Managing Partner of Boxwood Partners, an investment bank headquartered in Jupiter, FL, where he leads transactions for Boxwood's M&A advisory services.   Over the past 25 years, Patrick has led sell-side transactions on over 70 engagements. At Boxwood Partners, he and his team focus on transactions in the lower middle market between $50-$500m in Enterprise Value. Since 2011, Boxwood has successfully completed over 35 Franchisor sell-side transactions, assisting founder and private equity-owned businesses to find strategic or private equity partners for their next stage of growth.   Prior to joining Boxwood, Patrick was CEO of WILink plc (WLK:LSE), a global financial communications and compliance business which is headquartered in London, with operations in the United State, Canada, United Kingdom, Continental Europe, and Sweden. Through its IPO in 2000, Patrick became the youngest CEO on the London Stock Exchange. In 2006, he successfully led the Company through a public-to-private transaction with SVIP, a NYC-based private equity group, and delisting it from the London Stock Exchange.   Patrick made a minority investment in sweetFrog Franchising, LLC in 2012. During his investment, sweetFrog grew from 15 locations to over 380 locations. In 2015, Patrick stepped in as Chairman & CEO, until completing a successful transaction with MTY / Kahala Brands in September of 2018.   Patrick served on the Board of Directors for Issuer Direct (ISDR:NYSE), since 2014. He was Chairman of the Strategic Advisory and Compensation Committees. Patrick holds a B.S. in Business Administration from the University of Richmond, where he played golf for the Spiders. He also holds a degree from the London Business School, as well as attending the Centre for Creative Leadership (CCL) in Belgium. He is a founder of the Virginia Chapter of Young President's Organization (YPO), member of CEO.org and the former Finance Chair of the Southeast U.S. and Caribbean (SEC) Region of YPO.

People are living longer, healthier lives than ever before. But many of our assumptions about executive careers—from climbing the corporate ladder to retiring at 65—haven't caught up. London Business School professor Lynda Gratton says we need a new way of thinking about work and life, and argues that traditional career paths are giving way to more flexible, multi-stage journeys that require greater personal agency, continuous learning, and a long-term perspective. She explains why leaders should think of their lives less as a ladder and more as a fabric they actively weave over time, and offers up practical advice for balancing productivity and personal well-being, preparing for career pivots before they're necessary, and developing the skills that will matter most in an AI-powered future. Gratton is the author of the upcoming book Living the 100-Year Life: How to build a career that lasts and a life you love.

In this week's episode, Dustin speaks with Omar Chihane, Global General Manager of TOEFL at ETS, about the evolving landscape of international student mobility and the growing importance of English proficiency in an AI-driven world.  Drawing on his own international journey and global perspective, Omar explores how students are making increasingly pragmatic decisions about where to study, balancing factors like cost, visa certainty, career outcomes, and long-term opportunities. Guest Name: Omar Chihane, General Manager for TOEFL at ETS Guest Social: LinkedIn Guest Bio: As the General Manager of TOEFL, Omar Chihane drives the strategic direction and growth of the TOEFL iBT, using his global experience as a tech entrepreneur and executive to lead teams across various functional areas of the business. Prior to joining ETS in 2024, Omar founded englease – an English teaching startup that serves the Middle East and Africa through synchronous online classes. Before his startup journey, Omar held various leadership roles with multinational corporations including Siemens, Nokia and Microsoft. Omar holds an MBA from the London Business School and is a venture partner with Antler, where he coaches and mentors up and coming tech startups. - - - -Connect With Our Host:Dustin Ramsdellhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/dustinramsdell/About The Enrollify Podcast Network:The Higher Ed Geek is a part of the Enrollify Podcast Network. If you like this podcast, chances are you'll like other Enrollify shows too!Enrollify is made possible by Element451 — The AI Workforce Platform for Higher Ed. Learn more at element451.com. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Feeling flat in a job that looks good on paper isn't ingratitude — it's information, and most advice culture offers ("follow your passion" or "just be grateful") skips the actual work of reading it. In this episode, Brett Ingram explains why a decent job is often harder to leave than a bad one, introduces the psychological concept behind why we tolerate "not bad enough" for years, and walks through a four-question "quiet audit" — plus one small experiment — for finding out whether you're bored, misaligned, or just in a different season of life, without gambling your paycheck to do it. What You'll Learn in This Episode Why a job that's "good enough" is often harder to leave than one that's genuinely bad — and the psychological trap that keeps you stuck in it The region beta paradox: why we recover faster from intensely bad experiences than from mildly bad ones, and what that means for a job you can't quite bring yourself to leave The two default scripts culture hands you ("follow your passion" and "just be grateful") — and why both are ways to skip the actual work of finding out what's true The difference between being bored and being misaligned, and a one-question test to tell which one you're actually dealing with Why "this no longer fits" and "this was a mistake" are two completely different statements — and why conflating them keeps people frozen The four anchors that quietly keep people in jobs that no longer fit them: money, identity, loyalty, and comfort Why clarity comes from action, not more thinking — and the small, reversible experiment to run before you decide anything Episode Timestamps [0:00] Introduction — the unhappiness nobody feels sorry for [2:00] Brett's own story: the ceiling that didn't match his ambition [4:00] The real problem — you've been auditing the wrong thing [5:00] The region beta paradox: why "not bad enough" is the hardest thing to leave [7:00] The two scripts culture hands you, and why both let you skip the work [9:00] Introducing the Quiet Audit — four questions and one move [9:00] Question 1: Am I bored, or am I misaligned? [11:00] Question 2: Is this a wrong job, or a changed season? [12:00] Question 3: What am I actually staying for — a reason or a fear? [17:00] Question 4: What could I learn about this without quitting? [19:00] Mr. Tanner, and the difference between a love and a livelihood [21:00] The two-week practice: track your energy, notice yourself, run one experiment [23:00] Closing thought — it's a compass, not a complaint Episode Summary There's a specific kind of unhappiness that nobody feels sorry for: a job you're good at, a paycheck that's solid, people who trust you — and underneath all of it, a quiet, persistent "is this it?" Brett Ingram opens this episode by naming that tension precisely, because the vagueness of it is what makes it so hard to act on. It's not dread. It's not misery. It's a low hum, a flatness on a Monday that isn't crisis-shaped enough to justify doing anything about it — which is exactly the problem. Brett's central argument is that most people are asking the wrong question. The instinct is to audit the job — is it good enough? — and by any reasonable measure, a decent job keeps passing that audit, which is exactly why the feeling doesn't go away. "The job may not have changed at all," Brett says. "You changed. What you need from your work at forty-two is not what you needed at thirty." The role didn't get worse; the fit got looser, and a loose fit is much harder to notice than a bad one. To explain why a mildly wrong job is so much stickier than an obviously bad one, Brett brings in the region beta paradox, a concept from a 2004 paper by psychologist Daniel Gilbert and colleagues (with the memorable title "The Peculiar Longevity of Things Not So Bad"). The finding: people often recover faster from intensely bad experiences than from mildly bad ones, because acute pain trips an alarm and forces a decision, while mild, tolerable discomfort never does. You can survive a "good enough" job for years, one bearable day at a time, because nothing about it ever forces the question. As Brett puts it, the salary, the competence, and the routine "aren't the reward for staying — they're the reason you stop asking the question." From there, Brett dismantles the two scripts most people default to when this feeling surfaces. The first — "life is short, follow your passion, go" — is seductive but skips the actual work; research on career change shows passion is usually the result of investment, not the cause of it. The second — "be grateful, plenty of people would kill for what you have" — weaponizes real gratitude into a gag order, when the truth is you can be genuinely thankful for a job and still have outgrown it. Both scripts let you avoid the actual question: what specifically is going on here, and what would it take to find out? That's where Brett introduces the Quiet Audit — four questions and one small move, none of which require quitting anything to start. Question one separates boredom (fixable inside the job — a new project, a harder challenge) from misalignment (the work itself, done well, still points away from what you now care about). The test: imagine the dream version of this exact job — best boss, best pay, best project. If that fixes it, you're bored. If it still feels wrong, that's alignment, and no internal move touches that. Question two reframes "wrong job" versus "changed season" — an important distinction, because "this no longer fits" is not the same claim as "this was a mistake." Question three is the most honest one: what are you actually staying for, and is it a reason or a fear? Brett names four anchors that quietly hold people in place — money (and more specifically, the lifestyle built to consume it, not the salary itself), identity (who am I if I'm not this?), loyalty to people who believe in you, and plain comfort. And question four is the one that actually breaks the paralysis, drawing on research from London Business School professor Herminia Ibarra: we don't think our way into a new direction, we act our way into it. Clarity isn't what you get before you move — it's what movement produces. The episode closes with a two-week practice built from all of it: track your energy (not your hours) and note one moment a day that gave you energy and one that drained it; notice when you feel most like yourself; and run one small, reversible experiment — a conversation, an adjacent project, a single afternoon doing the thing you're curious about — not to decide, but to learn. That's the whole shift Brett is after: from an inside question you keep answering with outside numbers, to actual information you gather on purpose. It connects directly to the fit between your work and the life you're actually living now — the ongoing question underneath most of what optYOUmize means by purpose and meaningful work. Resources Mentioned "The Peculiar Longevity of Things Not So Bad" — Jane E. J. Ebert and Daniel T. Gilbert, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2004 — origin of the "region beta paradox" concept discussed in this episode Herminia Ibarra, Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career — source of the "act your way into a new way of thinking" research on career change "Mr. Tanner" — song by Harry Chapin, referenced for the line "Music was his life, it was not his livelihood" Up in the Air (2009 film) — referenced for its portrayal of a life optimized on the outside but hollow underneath Frequently Asked Questions How do I know if I should leave a job I'm good at? Start by separating boredom from misalignment. Imagine the dream version of your exact job — best boss, best pay, best project. If that fixes how you feel, you're likely bored, which is usually solvable where you are. If the dream version still feels wrong, that's misalignment, and no internal move — a promotion, a raise, a new manager — will touch it. What is the region beta paradox, and why does it make a decent job so hard to leave? It's a psychological finding, from a 2004 paper by Jane Ebert and Daniel Gilbert, that people often recover faster from intensely bad experiences than from mildly bad ones. An acutely bad job trips an alarm and forces a decision. A mildly wrong job never does — it's tolerable enough, day to day, that nothing forces the question, so people can stay stuck in a low-grade wrong fit for years. What's the difference between a job that's actually wrong and one I've just outgrown? "This no longer fits" and "this was a mistake" are different claims. A job can have been genuinely right for who you were at 30 and genuinely wrong for who you are at 42 — the role didn't get worse, your needs changed. Treating a changed season as a mistake is what keeps a lot of people frozen, because it turns a normal evolution into something to regret. What are the real reasons people stay in jobs they've outgrown? Brett names four anchors: money (often it's the lifestyle built around the salary, not the salary itself), identity (who am I if I'm not this role), loyalty to people who believe in you, and plain comfort — the pull of the familiar. None of these are character flaws, but it's worth being honest about which ones are actually holding you. Do I have to quit my job to figure out if I should leave? No — and Brett argues that's the wrong approach entirely. Citing research from Herminia Ibarra, the episode makes the case that clarity comes from small, reversible action, not more thinking: a single conversation, an adjacent project, or one afternoon spent doing the work you're curious about will teach you more than months of lying awake weighing it in your head. Is it ungrateful to want to leave a good job? No. The episode's core distinction is that gratitude and outgrowing something aren't mutually exclusive — you can be genuinely thankful for a job and still know it's no longer yours. Framing the question as a gratitude test is one of the two scripts Brett says people should retire, because it lets you avoid finding out what's actually true. What is the "quiet audit" from this episode? It's a four-question framework plus one small move, done privately over two weeks: (1) am I bored or misaligned, (2) is this a wrong job or a changed season, (3) what am I actually staying for — a reason or a fear, and (4) what could I learn about this without quitting. Alongside the questions, you track your daily energy, notice when you feel most like yourself, and run one small, reversible experiment. Keep Exploring If this episode resonated, these are worth your time: Purpose & Meaningful Work Pillar — The full framework on building work that actually fits the life you want, not just a résumé → Purpose & Meaningful Work Guide Sustainable Ambition: How to Want More Without Losing Yourself — A closer look at telling genuine drive apart from compulsive striving → optyoumize.com/podcast/sustainable-ambition-want-things-without-being-consumed Is It Too Late to Change Your Life? The Ownership Test — A companion framework for separating a real constraint from an inherited deadline → optyoumize.com/podcast/is-it-too-late-to-change-your-life Enjoyed This Episode? The best way to support optYOUmize is to subscribe and leave a review — it takes about two minutes and makes a real difference in helping more people find the show. Apple Podcasts · Spotify · Amazon Music · YouTube Leave a Review →

This week on Taking Stock, Susan looks at the economics of migration and the forces that drive people to move with Jonathan Portes, Professor of Economics and Public Policy at King's College London.The yen is back in focus after a rare US intervention in currency markets. Alan Dunn, founder and CEO of Archive Capital, explains the carry trade, what's really at stake for Japan and the US, and why treasuries matter.Plus, Lynda Gratton, Professor of Management Practice in Organisational Behaviour at London Business School & author of 'Living the 100-Year Life: How to build a career that lasts and a life you love' argues the traditional three-stage life is breaking down, and how to plan for a 100-year life.

Economist Rebecca Homkes, a lecturer at Duke University and London Business School whose consulting practice focuses on the things that influence the thinking of chief executives, says that the valuations of A.I. companies are sky high because investors believe in the transformational technology, but that when that transformation shows up — and investors worry that an industry like software could get pinched in the transformation — investors tend to panic. She sees concerns that the A.I. funding cycle has become so circular that any troubles could unwind the market quickly, so while she is not expecting a recession or a bubble quickly, she does suggest danger signs are visible now. Carter Braxton Worth, chief executive officer at Worth Charting — known by many as "the Chart Master" on CNBC — brings technical analysis to the Market Call, noting that he doesn't study companies, he studies shares. Worth notes that he currently favors small-cap financials, utilities and energy companies, and he warns of the "bifurcation of technology," where one area of the sector does very well while another one does very poorly, which he considers a sign of potential trouble ahead. This bifurcation is similar -- but with a technical analysis bent -- to Homkes' explanation of the wild market responses to AI stocks. Todd Rosenbluth, head of research at VettaFi, brings the proverbial hammer of THOR to the ETF of the Week, bestowing the weekly title to a new income-focused stock fund  from Thornburg that carries that mythic ticker symbol.

Many non-technical founders don't lose money in one big mistake — they lose it in four small stuck points that all feel completely reasonable at the time. In this episode, Sophia walks through the four questions that reveal exactly where you're getting stuck, why it's a knowledge gap and not a personal failing, and what to actually do about each one. Plus: Tech for Non-Technical Founders — Sophia's flagship course — is on a flash sale until Thursday night at midnight. Full details inside the episode. In this episode: Why briefing a developer is a skill nobody ever taught you — and how to spot the gap in your own brief Why "AI vs. hire a team vs. find a co-founder" is the wrong question entirely How to tell if you're leading your own product development, or just funding it The six stages every product goes through — and why most founders can only name two Plus: Tech for Non-Technical Founders — Sophia's flagship self-study course — is on a flash sale until Thursday night at midnight! You'll get a pre-recorded version of the framework behind our $4,000 1:1 coaching program — plus a 1:1 strategy session with Sophia, for $497. Taught at Oxford University, Techstars, and London Business School — this is your chance to get the same thinking, without the four-figure price tag. Enroll here before midnight on Thursday 30 July ET: https://www.techfornontechies.co/flash-sale-tech-for-non-technical-founders Timestamps: 00:00 – 4 signs you're losing money as a founder 02:19 – Flash sale: Tech for Non-Technical Founders course 04:34 – Diagnostic #1: The developer briefing problem 06:58 – Diagnostic #2: AI vs. team vs. co-founder 09:12 – Diagnostic #3: Losing control in technical meetings 11:30 – Diagnostic #4: The 6 stages from idea to scale 13:48 – Why these gaps aren't your fault 16:10 – Recap: the 4 diagnostic questions 18:28 – Student success story and course details Follow and Review: We'd love for you to follow us if you haven't yet. Click that purple '+' in the top right corner of your Apple Podcasts app. We'd love it even more if you could drop a review or 5-star rating over on Apple Podcasts. Simply select "Ratings and Reviews" and "Write a Review" then a quick line with your favorite part of the episode. It only takes a second and it helps spread the word about the podcast. Listen to our podcast on: Apple Spotify YouTube Audible Pandora Transcript: https://www.techfornontechies.co/blog/314-4-ways-non-technical-founders-get-stuck

In this week's MBA Admissions podcast we began by discussing the upcoming events Clear Admit is hosting. The MBA Essay Workshop series begins this week, on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, and continues Tuesday and Wednesday of next week. These events will bring together an increasing number of the top MBA programs to discuss both their written essay prompts as well as their video essays. Signups for all events are here: https://www.clearadmit.com/events Graham highlighted two admissions tips, published by Clear Admit, this week. The first focuses on how to make the most of a campus visit. The second explores identifying advocates, students, alumni and faculty, that can help provide anecdotes to candidates' applications. Clear Admit continues its Adcom Q&A series. This week Graham notes Q&As from London Business School, Florida / Warrington and Toronto / Rotman. For this week, for the candidate profile review portion of the show, Alex selected three ApplyWire entries. This week's first MBA admissions candidate is from Brazil and is a sponsored candidate with plans to return to BCG. This week's second MBA applicant is from Mexico and has an EA score of 154. We encourage them to explore taking the GRE test. The final candidate this week is from India. They have an outstanding profile, but their GMAT score is 645. We are hoping they can retake the test, while still applying in Round 1. This episode was recorded in Paris, France and Cornwall, England. It was produced and engineered by the fabulous Dennis Crowley in Philadelphia, USA. Thanks to all of you who've been joining us and please remember to rate and review this show wherever you listen!

In this week's MBA Admissions podcast we kicked off the show by celebrating the 500th episode of this podcast series, which began in March 2018. Through the series we have profiled more than 1,000 MBA candidates, and the series has received over 400,000 listens. For upcoming events, Clear Admit is hosting a special webinar event for international students, scheduled for this Wednesday, July 16, at 10AM Central European time. This webinar explores the value of a U.S.-based MBA for international students, as well as the logistics of moving to the United States. The Clear Admit's MBA Essay Workshop series is also scheduled for July 21, 22 and 23, and July 28 and 29. These events will bring together an increasing number of the top MBA programs to discuss both their written essay prompts as well as their video essays. Signups for all events are here: https://www.clearadmit.com/events Graham highlighted a new £25 million gift received by London Business School, which will be used to help bolster their scholarship offerings. Graham also discussed three articles Clear Admit published last week, all focused on better understanding the value of the MBA. Clear Admit continues its Adcom Q&A series. This week Graham noted Q&As from Duke / Fuqua and IESE. Finally, Graham concluded the Real Humans Alumni series. This week focuses on an alumnus from London Business School, working at Bain. For this week, for the candidate profile review portion of the show, Alex selected two ApplyWire entries. This week's first MBA admissions candidate is from South America and has a 332 GRE score. They appear to have strong family-business experience. We hope there is clarity around their post-MBA goals. This week's second MBA applicant is from India and is a chemical engineer. They have a 665 GMAT score. We wonder if there is an advantage to retaking the test. This episode was recorded in Paris, France and Cornwall, England. It was produced and engineered by the fabulous Dennis Crowley in Philadelphia, USA. Thanks to all of you who've been joining us and please remember to rate and review this show wherever you listen!

This week on Sinica, in a special episode recorded at the Davos On Air booth at the World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting of the New Champions in Dalian, I sat down with Angela Huyue Zhang, professor of law at USC's Gould School of Law and author of High Wire: How China Regulates Big Tech and Governs Its Economy, and S. Alex Yang, professor of management science and operations at London Business School. Angela and Alex — who are also married, and who arrived at this collaboration from opposite ends of the academy — have developed what I think is one of the most useful new mental models for understanding China's political economy: the platform state. Their argument is that we should think of the Chinese state less as a central planner or owner and more as a platform company like NVIDIA or Apple, one that builds architecture, sets standards, and governs an ecosystem within which fiercely competitive private firms fight it out. Value accrues at the system level rather than as firm profit, and the payoff may decide who wins the race to put AI to work across an entire economy.5:37 – Three puzzles the framework is built to solve: profitless dominance in solar, EVs, and batteries; why the "grabbing hand" hasn't strangled Chinese innovation; and how China is attempting both zero-to-one invention and one-to-hundred scaling at once7:57 – The platform state thesis: why the Chinese government behaves like a platform company, how nurturing an ecosystem of private firms solves the information deficit that cripples command-and-control, and why over-entry, involution, and consolidation are a repeated pattern — from EVs to the 140-plus humanoid robot companies operating today16:13 – The aha moment: how a paper on the legal infrastructure of physical AI became the platform state idea over the Zhang-Yang dinner table, and whether this is a new species of political economy or the East Asian developmental state in new clothes20:44 – State conditions: why state capacity and domestic scale are the two preconditions for the model, and why an ambitious Vietnam — which has the top-down capacity — may still find the Chinese playbook impossible to replicate23:39 – Profitless dominance by design: harvesting versus extracting, the Uber analogy, overshooting as a control-theory strategy for nudging sectors, and how the anti-involution campaign and the 60-day supplier payment mandate show the state moderating the very competition it engineered30:33 – Organized chaos: from the bike-sharing graveyards of the O2O wars to today's disciplined market, the exit of more than 400 EV makers since 2018, and why the survivors of China's "Premier League" of competition are now turning profitable32:59 – The 3Gs playbook: growing markets by solving the cold-start problem, from Liuzhou's EV test drives to Beijing's green license plates, and how subsidy is only one lever among many38:36 – Governing the ecosystem like Apple runs its App Store: why Beijing regulates generative AI with a light touch but physical AI is a different species entirely, law as the sixth layer of the AI stack, why robotaxis scale faster in China than in the U.S., and the state-convened standard-setting that's driving down humanoid robot costs46:54 – Two flywheels: the familiar data-and-cost flywheel and the deeper state capacity flywheel, and how the National AI Fund's small but voting stake in DeepSeek aligns a complementor with the domestic stack — tilting the ecosystem toward Chinese chips53:28 – Guarding the moat: automotive data rules and Tesla's stalled FSD ambitions, the unwound Manus sale, China's own small yard and high fence, and the closing provocation — that America could build the smartest frontier models and still lose the diffusion race to "artificial good-enough intelligence." Plus: the case for coopetition, and what policymakers should (and shouldn't) borrow from the platform stateLinks from the episodeAngela's paper on law as the sixth layer of China's AI stack:The Sixth Layer: The Legal Infrastructure for Physical Artificial Intelligence in China (SSRN)Three Project Syndicate op-eds on the platform state idea:The Rise of the Chinese Platform State by S. Alex Yang & Angela Huyue ZhangAre Government Stakes the Key to AI Sovereignty? by Angela Huyue ZhangOvercapacity Is China's Biggest AI Advantage by Angela Huyue ZhangTwo Management Science papers on commercial platforms:Crowd-Judging on Two-Sided Platforms: An Analysis of In-Group BiasImproving Dispute Resolution in Two-Sided Platforms: The Case of Review BlackmailSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

For this episode, let's revisit a strategy skills classic interview with the author of Survive, Reset, Thrive: Leading Breakthrough Growth Strategy in Volatile Times, Dr. Rebecca Homkes. Survive, Reset, Thrive is a playbook for leaders derived from the author's first-hand experience working with executive teams across industries from software, technology, retail, fashion, and construction through to manufacturing. Drawing from over a decade of rich real-world experience, the author illustrates how to navigate the most complex strategic situations with a simple, executable approach. Rebecca Homkes explains how proactively to stabilize your business to withstand and grow through market shocks, reset your strategy to take account of new realities and thrive through uncertainty. Rebecca Homkes is a high-growth strategy specialist and CEO and executive advisor. She is a Lecturer at  The London Business School, Faculty at Duke Corporate Executive Education, Advisor and Faculty at the Boston Consulting Group focused on AI and Climate and Sustainability, and a former fellow at the London School of Economics Centre for Economic Performance. A global keynote speaker and recognized thought leader, she is also the global Faculty Director of the Active Learning Program with the Young Presidents Organization (YPO), leads several fintech accelerators, and serves on the boards of many high-growth companies. She earned her doctorate at the London School of Economics as a Marshall Scholar and is now based in Miami, the Bay Area, and London, UK. Get Rebecca's book here: https://rb.gy/aq85ee Survive, Reset, Thrive: Leading Breakthrough Growth Strategy in Volatile Times Claim your free gift: Free gift #1 McKinsey & BCG winning resume www.FIRMSconsulting.com/resumePDF Free gift #2 Breakthrough Decisions Guide with 25 AI Prompts www.FIRMSconsulting.com/decisions Free gift #3 Five Reasons Why People Ignore Somebody www.FIRMSconsulting.com/owntheroom Free gift #4 Access episode 1 from Build a Consulting Firm, Level 1 www.FIRMSconsulting.com/build Free gift #5 The Overall Approach used in well-managed strategy studies www.FIRMSconsulting.com/OverallApproach Free gift #6 Get a copy of Nine Leaders in Action, a book we co-authored with some of our clients: www.FIRMSconsulting.com/gift

Send us Fan MailIn this episode of The Mental Health Business Mentor, we explore how technology is reshaping the way therapists manage documentation, treatment planning, and clinical workflows. Our guest, Maria Szandrach, introduces Mentalyc, an AI-powered platform designed specifically for mental health professionals, and shares how it helps clinicians spend less time on paperwork and more time focused on client care. We discuss how the platform supports the creation of progress notes and treatment plans, reduces administrative burden, and provides valuable clinical insights while maintaining a strong commitment to privacy and compliance. Whether you're curious about integrating AI into your practice or looking for ways to improve efficiency and reduce documentation fatigue, this conversation offers a thoughtful look at how technology can support both clinicians and the clients they serve.What You'll Learn:How Mentalyc uses AI to support therapists, counselors, and mental health professionals with clinical documentation.Why documentation is one of the leading contributors to clinician stress and burnout—and how technology can help.The importance of maintaining HIPAA compliance, security, and ethical standards when incorporating AI into clinical work.What the future of clinical documentation may look like as technology continues to evolve within the mental health field.Bio:Maria is an experienced entrepreneur with over 10 years of experience and an MSc degree from London Business School. She co-founded Mentalyc as her third startup (the previous ones were solving problems in the Mental Health and Insurance industries). As a teenager, Maria went to therapy for an eating disorder. She switched therapists 5 times before she eventually recovered. She devoted her career to making therapy more effective and efficient. Nowadays, Maria spends most of her days talking to clinicians, other entrepreneurs, and decision-makers in various mental health organizations. As an ex-patient, she deeply values therapeutic relationships and therapy as such. She aims at making clinical work more rewarding and less stressful, the connection between clients and clinicians less disturbed, and the intuitively applied interventions recognized for their therapeutic impact.Please visit https://www.mentalyc.com/ and use this discount code: MHBM50OFF. It will give 50% off the first month for new clients, after the free 14-day trial.Connect with Maria Szandrach:https://www.facebook.com/Mentalychttps://www.instagram.com/mentalyc_inc/https://www.linkedin.com/company/mentalyc/Dr. Margo Jacquot is the award-winning founder and Chief Care Officer of The Juniper Center, one of the largest woman-owned counseling and therapy practices in the Chicago area. With over 20 years of experience, she specializes in trauma recovery, addiction treatment, and LGBTQ-affirming therapy. Dr. Jacquot is also the host of the "Mental Health Business Mentor" podcast, where she shares insights on running a successful mental health practice. thejunipercenter.comConnect with Dr. Margo Jacquot:Website: thejunipercenter.comInstagram: @thejunipercenterFacebook: The Juniper Center

In this episode of I Dare You, I'm joined by author, keynote speaker, and executive educator Adam Kingl—co-author of the wildly fresh new book, EXECUTIVE EATS: The Cookbook for a Better Working Life. Here's the big idea: your leadership doesn't start with what you know—it starts with how you feel. Your energy. Your focus. Your mood. Your ability to stay steady under pressure. And Adam makes the case (with real research + real-life practicality) that one of the most overlooked performance tools isn't another productivity hack… it's nutrition—and the act of cooking itself. We talk about why so many high performers are running on fumes, why “powering through” eventually backfires, and how the creative arts—especially culinary art—can train you to become more innovative, adaptable, and mentally sharp. This conversation will challenge the way you think about food, leadership, and what it really means to show up as your best self for the people who depend on you. If you've ever hit that 2pm crash, struggled to concentrate, felt your mood hijacked by stress, or wondered why you can't sustain the level you know you're capable of… this one's for you. In this episode, we cover: Why top performers are paying the price physically (and what to do about it) The link between nutrition, sustained energy, mood, and focus How cooking can actually become a mindfulness practice (not just another task) Why creativity is a trainable skill—and what chefs can teach leaders about it Simple, practical ways to eat for performance without making life complicated About Adam: Adam Kingl is the author of Next Generation Leadership and Sparking Success (shortlisted for the Business Book Awards). He teaches and advises globally, with faculty roles at University College London, Hult Ashridge, London Business School, the University of Cambridge, and Imperial College London. He trained at Le Cordon Bleu in California, cooked in a professional kitchen, and now blends leadership development with performance science in a way that's both inspiring and ridiculously actionable. Get the book: EXECUTIVE EATS Learn more about Adam: https://adamkingl.com/

Dr. Rebecca Homkes is an economist and high-growth strategy specialist who advises CEOs and executive teams focused on growth and success through uncertainty.   Uncertainty isn't new and we've pretty much "normalized" it at this point—but what's different now is the stacking of uncertainty. Tariffs, AI disruption, shifting policy signals, and constant organizational change are all hitting leaders at once. The result isn't just uncertainty—it's chaos. And chaos has a cost.Dr. Homkes helps leaders understand why uncertainty is inevitable, but chaos is optional— and how the best leaders can build clarity, momentum, and growth even when the external environment is unpredictable and ever-changing.    Dr. Homkes is a Lecturer at London Business School and Duke Corporate Executive Education, and the director of the Young Presidents' Organization (YPO) global Active Learning Program. She's also the author of Survive Reset Thrive and a frequent contributor on Bloomberg and CNBC

The Well Seasoned Librarian Season 17 Episode 7Guest: Adam KinglBio: EXECUTIVE EATS: The Cookbook for a Better Working Life (out 6/16/26) by Adam Kingl and Jakub Radzikowski. Are you looking for greater focus in your work and life? Do you find your mind wandering while trying to concentrate on daily tasks – whether at the office or at home? From sustained energy to improved focus and mood, each chapter in EXECUTIVE EATS pairs the latest nutritional research with practical culinary applications, offering readers scientifically backed recipes designed to address the challenges they face in their day-to-day lives.Whether you need a morning boost, an afternoon pick-me-up or a calming meal after a stressful day, you will have a deeper understanding of why certain foods can enhance your mental and physical states. This is more than just a collection of recipes; it's a tool to help you make mindful, informed decisions about your diet. Blending culinary expertise with scientific rigor, EXECUTIVE EATS equips you with the knowledge and recipes to nourish both your body and mind.About the authorWith a career spanning an impressive range of industries including entertainment, consulting, and education, Adam Kingl has spent decades working in innovation, strategy, culture and leadership. Adam is a highly respected expert on generational paradigms in the workplace, creativity, strategic and management innovation, the future of work, leadership and culture, and fulfilling organisational and personal purpose.Adam is Adjunct Faculty at the UCL School of Management and Ashridge – Hult International Business School. He also teaches at the Moller Institute-Churchill College-University of Cambridge, Hanken-Stockholm School of Economics, and Imperial College Business School. Previously, he was the Regional Managing Director for Duke Corporate Education, Duke University, leading the organisation's business in Europe, and advising clients on issues of adaptability, performance, creativity, and purpose. Before Duke, he was the Executive Director of Thought Leadership and Learning Solutions for London Business School. He also was an associate at Saatchi & Saatchi and the Management Lab. Furthermore, Adam served on the steering committee for the European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD), providing accreditation and creating standards for corporate universities and learning functions as a member of the CLIP (Corporate Learning Improvement Process) steering committee.Adam is passionate about leadership for what's next and has authored a book on this topic, Next Generation Leadership (HarperCollins, February 2020). His second book, Sparking Success (Kogan Page, April 2023) explores what business can learn from the arts to improve its creative capacity and capability. A regular keynote speaker and conference facilitator, he speaks with warmth and compassion, encouraging organisations to have different and better conversations, creating a simple and approachable path to transforming business success. He is also comfortable and experienced delivering all his topics virtually and as webinars.Adam contributes as a writer and expert interviewee to: The Financial Times, Sunday Times, Forbes, Fortune, The Guardian and Fast Company, among many others.Adam holds degrees from London Business School, UCLA, and Yale. He was raised in Silicon Valley, California and now lives in Surrey, UK. He is a dual British-American citizen.www.adamkingl.comExecutive Eats: https://www.amazon.com/Executive-Eats-cookbook-better-working/dp/1788609387

This week on the Sifted Podcast, host John Thornhill is joined by Anu Adebajo, former Atomico partner and, as of February this year, CEO of the Newton Venture Program.Launched in 2020 by VC firm Phoenix Court and London Business School, the educational programme aims to train new generations of VC talent — whether they are experienced investors or simply exploring new career paths.Anu began her career in Sheffield in 2012, where she joined a fund and later went into the British Business Bank. After nearly five years, she moved to the LP side, where she personally deployed over £365m into funds, before moving to Atomico where she led its fund of funds strategy.The pair discuss what LPs want from Europe's VCs now, how far away a Newton Venture's fund might be and the dangers of Europe's re-emerging “boys' club mentality”.Sign up to Sifted's daily newsletter here: https://sifted.eu/newslettersRead John's article about the needs for reinventing VC: https://sifted.eu/articles/vc-needs-to-reinvent-itselfFind out more about Newton Venture Program here: https://newtonprogram.vc/This podcast was brought to you by HSBC Innovation Banking.

What does strategy really mean when the word is everywhere, yet real strategic practice remains so rare?In this solo episode, David Lancefield takes on one of the most overused and misunderstood ideas in business. Drawing on nearly 30 years advising CEOs, C-suite leaders, founders, and leadership teams, he makes the case for a broader, more practical, and more human view of strategy.David explores why strategy so often gets trapped in decks, town halls, and top-level statements, while people across organisations are left unclear on the choices they can make and the contribution they can bring. He argues for a different approach: one that connects strategy with foresight, participation, ecosystems, self-management, and the wise use of AI — and brings it into the everyday moments that shape how we live and lead.If you want to think more clearly, act more intentionally, and raise your strategic game in your organisation, your team, and your own life, this episode will give you a fresh lens and a practical way forward.“Strategy is a practice for everyone, professional or personal.” – David LancefieldYou'll hear about:Why strategy is treated as distant and eliteStrategy defined: choices that move you to betterWhy strategy and execution must stay togetherStrategies that get announced but never translated downWhy more people need confidence to be strategicThe growing importance of foresight within strategyWhat open strategy looks like in practiceWhy ecosystems should shape strategy design and deliveryHow self-managed teams raise the bar for strategyWhere AI helps in strategy and where it doesn'tThe seven daily moments that make or break a dayWhy strategy is a practice for everyoneMore about DavidDavid Lancefield is a strategy and leadership advisor, coach, writer, and speaker who works with CEOs, C-suite executives, and founders at some of the world's top organisations. Over nearly 30 years, he has worked with more than 60 CEOs and hundreds of senior leaders on strategy, leadership, culture, decision-making, and growth.He writes for Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Review, strategy+business, Fast Company, and Forbes, and has been quoted in the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, The Times, and The Guardian. David is a former senior partner at Strategy&/PwC, a guest lecturer at London Business School, and the author of the newsletter Every Day is a Strategy Day.My resources:Try my High-stakes meetings toolkit (https://bit.ly/43cnhnQ).Take my Becoming a Strategic Leader course (https://bit.ly/3KJYDTj).Sign up to my Every Day is a Strategy Day newsletter (http://bit.ly/36WRpri) for modern mindsets and practices to help you get ahead.Subscribe to my YouTube channel (http://bit.ly/3cFGk1k) where you can watch the conversation.For more details about me:●      Services (https://rb.gy/ahlcuy) to CEOs, entrepreneurs and professionals.●      About me (https://rb.gy/dvmg9n) - my background, experience and philosophy.●      Examples of my writing https://rb.gy/jlbdds).●      Follow me and engage with me on LinkedIn (https://bit.ly/2Z2PexP).●      Follow me and engage with me on Twitter (https://bit.ly/36XavNI).

In this week's MBA Admissions podcast we began by discussing the current state of the MBA admissions season. We are continuing to see MBA programs release their final decisions. This upcoming week, USC / Marshall, CMU / Tepper, London Business School, Arizona / Carey, Georgia / Terry and Georgia Tech / Scheller are releasing final decisions. Graham highlighted a Fridays from the Frontline feature from a Stern student discussing their super experience with Stern's Endless Frontier Labs program. This was then followed by a deep-dive career reports piece focused on the consulting industry for MBA graduates. Graham also noted a new admissions tip which focuses on classes that might be worth considering before starting an MBA. Graham continued with the Real Humans Alumni series. This week focuses on three alumni: McCombs / Pepsi, IESE / Accenture and Owen / Bain. For this week, for the candidate profile review portion of the show, Alex selected two ApplyWire entries and one DecisionWire entry. This week's first MBA admissions candidate is from India, and works at Bain.  They also have links to family firm focused on pharmaceuticals. They have a 337 GRE score. This week's second MBA applicant is a veteran who has a 715 GMAT score and a 3.76 GPA from an Ivy League university. This week's final MBA candidate is deciding between McDonough and Anderson. This episode was recorded in Paris, France and Cornwall, England. It was produced and engineered by the fabulous Dennis Crowley in Philadelphia, USA. Thanks to all of you who've been joining us and please remember to rate and review this show wherever you listen!

In this episode, Donna and Tom sit down with Vineet Khanna, CEO of Advanter Advisory and former Global Head of Supply Chain at Nestlé, to explore the evolution of supply chain leadership in an era of rapid technological change. Vineet shares insights from nearly four decades of multi-cultural experience, discussing how AI and digital transformation are reshaping supply chain operations. He emphasizes the critical importance of mindset shifts required to leverage AI effectively, noting that success in the next several years will separate companies based on their ability to adopt these technologies. Vineet also provides valuable perspective on developing the next generation of supply chain leaders, highlighting the essential skills and cultural shifts needed to thrive in an increasingly complex global landscape. Takeaways: The transformative potential of AI in supply chain operations and the mindset shift required for success Critical talent and cultural changes needed for next-generation supply chain leaders Lessons from leading global supply chain transformation at Nestlé Strategic approaches to navigating technological disruption in supply chain management Stay connected with CSCR on LinkedIn (Center for Supply Chain Research) and Instagram (@pennstatesupplychain), and be sure to follow us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you are tuning into Unpacked: Insights hosted by the Penn State Smeal Center for Supply Chain Research™. Thank you for joining us!  Visit our website: https://www.smeal.psu.edu/cscr  Guest Bio: Vineet Khanna is a global business leader with nearly four decades  of multi-cultural experience across various domains, including supply chain & procurement, finance, digital technologies, and operational excellence. As the CEO of Advanter Advisory, he is a trusted advisor to several leading corporates, tech firms, consulting firms, and startups. Prior to Advanter Advisory, he was the Global Head of Supply Chain at Nestlé where he exemplified his strategic prowess and leadership, managing end-to-end supply chain operations and transformation projects encompassing demand and supply planning, physical logistics & sustainability, digital transformations, customer service and materials management. Throughout his career, Vineet has delivered results in senior leadership roles for 25 years, contributing his expertise at country, regional, and global levels. Vineet's influence extends to the boardroom, having served as a board member of Nestlé Enterprises SA. Currently, Vineet lends his transformative insights to diverse companies and start-ups as an advisor for the entire strategy-transformation-execution spectrum, leveraging his extensive experience to drive excellence. He is widely recognized as a thought leader in the realms of business, leadership, and societal progress, making him an inspiring and highly sought-after keynote speaker. Academically, Vineet holds an MBA degree from IIMA (India) and has pursued advanced studies at esteemed institutions including IMD, Lausanne, and London Business School.

Send us Fan MailIn this episode, Matt is joined by Herminia Ibarra who is an organizational behavior professor at London Business School. She is also the author of Act Like A Leader, Think Like A Leader.Ibarra turns the usual “think first and then act” philosophy on its head by arguing that doing these three things will help you learn through action and will increase what she calls your outsight—the valuable external perspective you gain from direct experiences and experimentation. As opposed to insight, outsight will then help change the way you think as a leader: about what kind of work is important; how you should invest your time; why and which relationships matter in informing and supporting your leadership; and, ultimately, who you want to become.Packed with self-assessments and practical advice to help define your most pressing leadership challenges, this episode will help you devise a plan of action to become a better leader and move your career to the next level. It's time to learn by doing.Support the showSupport the show

According to research by Gartner, 84% of business leaders report their company's identity must significantly change to achieve strategic objectives. But how do you know when the time is right? And more importantly, how do you ensure that change goes smoothly? Riley Rogers: Welcome to the Win/Win Podcast. I’m your host, Riley Rogers. Join us as we dive into changing trends in the workplace and how to navigate them successfully. According to research by Gartner, 84% of business leaders report their company's identity must significantly change to achieve strategic objectives. But how do you know when the time is right? And more than that, how do you ensure that the change goes smoothly? Here to discuss this topic is Shelly Luciano, Vice President of Strategy at Leah. Thank you so much for joining us today, Shelly. I’d love if you could just kick us off by telling us a little bit about yourself, your background, and your role. Shelly Luciano: I’m Shelly Luciano. I’m Brazilian. I studied industrial engineering in Brazil and France. I started my career working in infrastructure and R&D, so that experience gave me a strong foundation in execution early on. Back in 2014, I moved to the UK to pursue my MBA at London Business School. I used business school to transition from a technical background into strategy on a global scale. After my MBA, I spent three and a half years in strategy consulting. That work helped me learn how companies compete in larger markets. What I realized is that although strategy consulting is intellectually fascinating, I was being more and more drawn to the business. So I transitioned into tech about five years ago. I joined what was then ContractPodAI, which is now Leah. Today, I’m Vice President of Strategy and Operations. My team focuses on aligning strategic priorities, supporting cross-functional execution, and ensuring our go-to-market approach reflects both where the company's headed and what our customers need. One of the most valuable parts of my role is staying close to our customer base. These conversations give me and the company a lot of valuable insight into how the market is evolving and how organizations are actually adopting AI. I then bring these insights back into the organization, back into Leah, to inform product direction, enable our customer success team, and ensure that our strategy remains grounded in real market needs. Ultimately, my role sits at the intersection of strategy, go-to-market execution, and customer insight. RR: I think you have a fascinating role, to be quite frank, and also a really wonderful story. To go from “I'm trained as an engineer,” to “now I've got my MBA, I'm in consulting, and today I work in tech and have for the last five years,” that's really an incredible journey that I imagine must have given you a real wealth of experience that serves you very well at Leah. SL: It’s funny because if you asked me when I graduated in Brazil what I'd be doing now, I wouldn't have guessed. The world has changed so much. My world has changed so much. So I feel very lucky and blessed to do the job that I do. I really like it. My company's fascinating. My role is fascinating. My company gives me room to change as long as I'm adding value and my team is adding value. So I'm really happy. RR: Yeah, and that's certainly evidenced by the fact that you spent five years in one tech company when the average tenure is just over two, so something really must be going right. I'd love to dig a little bit deeper into this exciting, challenging, and evolving role that's been keeping you at Leah for the last few years. You're there to keep an eye on what's happening in the market so your reps can tell a story and your engineering teams can build a product that the market both wants to hear and to see. More than that, you're also there to break down silos and operationalize your strategy so it really shows up in everyday workflows. In this work, what kind of things tend to crop up—challenges or obstacles that make it difficult to build the connections that bridge that gap between strategy and execution? SL: For me, there are two major challenges I see in equipping internal teams to drive growth. First, strategy and execution often evolve at different speeds. A leadership team can align relatively quickly on a strategic direction, but translating that direction into how hundreds or thousands of people operate day to day can take much longer. For me, strategy only really lands when it keeps showing up in customer conversations. What you portray needs to align with what your client base and the market are seeing. If the people talking to customers every day don't understand the problems that your company is solving and why, then your strategy hasn't really landed. It's just a deck. It's lovely to build these ideas, but you've got to be able to execute on them. As companies scale, the complexity increases much faster than people expect. You have more industries, more personas, a larger product portfolio, and if you don't have the right systems and alignment, that complexity can create a lot of confusion internally. And if your team is internally confused, then everyone else is too. RR: So your job is to keep an incredibly close pulse on the market and on technology as they both evolve. And it's a little bit of an endless task because the market will always shift and technology will always evolve. So you've got to be right there with it as the voice of reason for the organization, telling everyone, “Okay, here's what's happening, and here's how we're going to move with it.” As someone who, by job description, is very comfortable with change and evolution, can you share with us how you're thinking about how Leah, as an AI-first company, is keeping pace through major technology shifts, and then how other organizations should think about translating these shifts into their own organizational and operational processes? SL: Leah has been an AI-first company for years, way before LLMs. What changed with LLMs is the speed and scope at which we can execute our strategy much faster. We've been using machine learning in our platform for a long time, so the foundation was already there. We already had a really strong team. What LLMs did was introduce a step change, and our founder, Sarvarth, is a visionary. He saw straight away how that was going to change the game. All these changes in the past few years did not change our direction, but for the client base, what they can really see is that LLMs have expanded the use cases that we can deliver. And I think that's what matters to customers—how can we solve more of their problems? With Leah, we've moved from traditional automation into what we describe as an agentic operating system. That means our AI is not just supporting workflows. We can do much more than that. We can now reason across data, understand context, and orchestrate actions. That is so exciting, as you can imagine, for someone who works in strategy because it feels limitless. Going beyond static workflows, you now have systems that can adapt dynamically to the problems that we're solving. And that's where the speed and pace of innovation really comes in. Once you move into an agentic model, you're no longer limited to predefined use cases. You can continuously expand how AI is applied across not only our internal organization but also our client base. From a strategy and operations perspective, the challenge is not adopting the technology, because we've been able to do it and we continue to do it. The challenge is how do we operationalize it? Strategists love frameworks, so if I had to group it, I'd say there are three ways I think about this. The first part is strategic focus. The risk with AI, within all this opportunity, is diffusion. So we need to be deliberate about which use cases we prioritize. We need to define where we can deliver the most value, because being AI-first doesn't mean doing everything. It means scaling the right use cases. The second part is how do we translate that into go-to-market execution? As I mentioned before, strategy only really lands when your customers can speak about you. Organizations need to understand how to position AI. We need to be able to explain it clearly so we can apply it across different industries and contexts. That's where systems like Highspot can really help us translate this within our organization and externally. The third thing is continuous customer feedback loops, because customer proximity is the most valuable strategic signal we can have. To be a strategist in tech, your goal is not to define a static AI strategy. You're always on a feedback loop, and you need to be agile. The tools and teams that support you need to be comfortable with always learning and always putting our best foot forward. RR: So as you alluded to, you and the team actually recently went through a rebrand. From ContractPodAI, you became Leah, named after the organization's flagship AI offering. I'd be curious to hear how, with these challenges to strategy-aligned execution in mind, you and the team made sure that everyone was telling the same story and supporting the same strategy, even as the brand message and narrative shifted so drastically. SL: Leah was already a product of ours that had taken a bigger and bigger piece of our client base. So moving from ContractPodAI, which was very contract-focused, into Leah made sense because the Leah product had become a much bigger part of who we were and our identity. When we came into becoming the Leah brand, we were ready in many ways. You're never fully ready for a full rebrand. There's still a lot of work. But we had the tools and processes in place to help us in that transition. In 2021, we had just raised $150 million from SoftBank's Vision Fund. At that point, I knew we were going to grow exponentially, so I wanted to manage as many growing pains as possible. At that stage, we were evolving from having a relatively general pitch to a much more sophisticated message tailored by industry and persona, and our platform was expanding even back then. I realized that we needed a way to ensure that our entire organization stayed aligned on how we communicate value because, as companies scale, complexity increases. More products, more industries, more ways customers can use your platform. So when trying to solve that problem, that's when we looked into Highspot. We wanted Highspot to help us ensure the entire organization could work from the same narrative. Highspot is now used across our sales teams, SDR teams, CX teams, and actually it has expanded because once people hear about it, they want to know what the go-to-market teams are presenting. I'm really glad we implemented Highspot four or five years ago now because since then the customers that we serve have grown and the breadth of our platform has grown. Putting things in place before you come to that stage is actually really important. RR: Can you walk through where Highspot fit into the picture and how you and the team used it to trickle down that message so, to your earlier point, strategic vision didn't get lost in that wonderful game of telephone between C-suite strategy and individual contributor execution? SL: When I came in, we had a general pitch on how we went to market. One of the reasons I was hired is because I came in to do an industry strategy, and there was a lot of research involved—both internally, looking at how we were using the tool for certain industries, and externally, looking at market potential and product fit for each industry. Based on that, I prioritized a few industries to start developing content and enablement around. That's when I looked into Highspot because we had a SharePoint at the time, and it was already not fully updated. People pasted things on top of it or saved materials to their computers and never checked the right version again. I came to Highspot with a very clear use case. There were other features and capabilities that we wanted, but the core problem I wanted to solve was creating one single source of truth. It seems like a SharePoint should do that just fine, but it didn't because we needed something that would help us as we continued scaling product growth, use case growth, and overall organizational growth. It was going to become really hard to enable everyone and make sure people accessed the information they needed at the right time. That's what we got Highspot for, and that's what we continue using it for. RR: So once you defined the strategy of the rebrand, where did you see friction between what you were telling reps—“Here's our new message, here's our new strategy”—and what they were actually saying and doing in the field? Where was there misalignment, and how did you and the team tackle that? SL: Once the strategy and story are defined, the real challenge is behavioral change at scale. Organizations tend to align on a narrative relatively quickly at a conceptual level. But alignment alone is not the end goal. Execution is. Execution, particularly in customer conversations, can take time. The friction I've observed is not usually resistance. It's normally a knowledge gap or a confidence gap. Sometimes you have the knowledge, but you're not confident in that knowledge. As your platform evolves and you're no longer selling a single product for a very defined use case, you're helping customers on a journey. You need to understand a variety of challenges across different workflows, industries, and personas. In that environment, the challenge is not whether teams understand the narrative. The bigger challenge is whether they can apply it dynamically in real conversations. What we consistently see is that reps are comfortable with the core story, but uncertainty appears around the edges. When a customer asks something slightly outside the standard pitch or challenges how the solution applies to their specific context, that's where execution can break down. For reps to feel confident using the right language and positioning the platform correctly, they need to understand things at a deeper level. With all the advancement in AI, we can develop things so quickly, but that also creates challenges because emerging technologies move incredibly fast. There's something new every week. If your software can deliver so much, there are a lot of questions reps need to feel prepared for, and we need to give the organization the ability to operate with clarity and confidence in this complex environment. Highspot has helped us do part of that, particularly in making sure teams understand how we're positioning ourselves, but there's also a lot of technical enablement and training that we need to make sure they complete. Teams have to prepare for conversations in many different contexts, and that fundamentally changes how an organization executes. You can't just memorize anymore. You need to understand. Ultimately, scaling a company is not about having the best strategy on paper. It's about ensuring that all of your employees can bring that strategy to life and communicate it with passion. RR: Yeah. I love the way you landed that because you're 100% right that to a certain extent it can be a knowledge gap, and another layer can be that confidence gap. But then that third and final layer is the context gap. Can reps embody the strategist? Can they embody the strategy? Reps want to do well. It benefits them and it benefits you. So when things are going awry, it's not intentional. It's hard to get up to speed and start delivering in the field, especially when things are changing so rapidly. If you can slowly bridge all those gaps, your strategy starts to encompass the whole company. And again, it's such a cool role that you have, getting to bring that to life and then watch it trickle out into every customer conversation your teams are having. You mentioned 2021 and implementing Highspot, and it's been five years since then. In that time, what key results have you seen? Any wins that you're especially proud of, whether early on or today during this rebrand phase? SL: Highspot is now widely used across the organization. We have the sales team, SDR team, CX team, and leadership all using it. Initially, we bought licenses only for the sales team, and since then we've more than doubled, if not tripled, our licenses because people continue asking for access. I think that's one of the biggest indicators of value. What I continue to see, and why I continue investing in the platform, is consistency. You want to be consistently delivering and positioning yourself in the market. As our product offering expanded and we began serving multiple industries and personas across different regions, it became critical that teams could access the most relevant materials quickly. Highspot ensures that everyone across the organization is working from the same narrative and delivering a consistent experience to customers and prospective customers. That alignment becomes very important as the organization scales. One of the most impressive things after the rebrand was that from the very next day, everything had changed. Everything in Highspot was Leah. I knew the marketing team had been working incredibly hard, but from day one everything was available to us. That's what tools are for. When you buy a tool, you want to make sure it makes you look good. RR: I can imagine that's a monumental task—to take every single piece of collateral, every single deck you've ever built, and overnight update it so every rep has all the content, messaging, and everything they need to hit the ground running on day one of the rebrand, day one of Leah. To the point of bringing strategy to life, you really did it. Very early on, you said you're never ready for a rebrand. And yes, it's certainly a huge task, but it does seem like you've come through it successfully. That takes me to the last question I had for you, which is: for other leaders navigating a rebrand or shifting message while trying to position themselves in a constantly changing market, what advice would you share? SL: One of the most important lessons for me is that rebrands are not simply marketing exercises. They're full organizational transformations. The success of a rebrand depends on whether the entire organization is bought in and understands the narrative, and whether they feel confident communicating what you're doing to customers. Like I said before, the success of the rebrand is really only clear when you see that it has landed with your customer base. Another key element is staying very close to your customers during the process. Understand how they're going to perceive this, and once you've launched it, pay attention to their initial reactions so you can address anything quickly. That's your most valuable insight because customers really know how you're positioning yourself in the market and what you can actually deliver. You want to make sure what you've changed feels true to who you are. Luckily, with Leah, customers responded positively to the rebrand. They felt the narrative resonated. When your organization combines strong strategic direction with customer insight, you're much more likely to build a story that's authentic and compelling. That's what you want with your brand. It needs to make sense. People need to know it wasn't just done to look good. It needs to resonate with the company and what you're offering. RR: Yeah. You absolutely need to prove that this is something worthwhile and valuable to your customer base, and that it tells the story and provides the value they're looking for. Otherwise, to your point, it winds up feeling like a vanity exercise because someone didn't like the colors or didn't feel the name was quite right. It needs to be strategic and feel strategic. Shelly, thank you so much for joining us today. It has been an absolute pleasure talking with you and learning more about the work that you're doing at Leah. To our audience, thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Win/Win Podcast. Be sure to tune in next time for more insight on how you can maximize go-to-market success with Highspot.

Thomas Lamb is an internationally recognized entrepreneur and executive in the resource sector. He's currently the CEO of Myriad Uranium Corp and is leading the advancement of one of the most historically significant uranium districts in the United States. The Copper Mountain Project in Wyoming encompasses over 18,000 acres and is underlain by an estimated uranium endowment exceeding 600 million pounds. He's also the CEO of J2 Metals Inc., overseeing a diversified exploration portfolio spanning three jurisdictions in Mexico, Canada, and Alaska. His work has spanned uranium, gold, cobalt, and critical minerals across North America, Mexico, Russia, and Africa. He has a MSc from London Business School and law degree from the University of British Columbia. This podcast is for informational purposes only. Guest speakers and their firms are not affiliated with or endorsed by PAS or Guardian. This material contains the current opinions of the speakers but not necessarily those of PAS, Guardian or its subsidiaries and such opinions are subject to change without notice. None of the organizations mentioned in this podcast have any affiliation with Guardian or PAS. Bryan Kuderna is a Registered Representative and Financial Advisor of Park Avenue Securities LLC (PAS). OSJ: 50 Tice Blvd. Woodcliff Lake, NJ 07677 (973)244-4420. Securities products and advisory services offered through PAS, member FINRA, SIPC. Financial Representative of The Guardian Life Insurance Company of America® (Guardian), New York, NY. PAS is a wholly owned subsidiary of Guardian. Kuderna Financial Team is not an affiliate or subsidiary of PAS or Guardian. CA Insurance License #OK04194    #8933524.1 exp. 5/28

Today, I have the pleasure of speaking with Alex Hayward, Executive Fellow, Family Offices and Private Capital at London Business School. Alex is a seasoned expert in Family Offices, with extensive experience building, reviewing, and optimizing Family Offices across the UK, Europe, the US, Dubai, and Australia. Over the past 15 years, he has analyzed more than 100 Single Family Offices, evaluating their structures, operations, and investment strategies. Alex draws on this broad experience to lead London Business School's work on value creation within Family Offices, examining how leading Family Offices develop their strategy, operations, and culture to support long-term growth. Alex also serves as an independent director to a Family Office in London, supporting a third-generation multi-billion family. Alongside this role he chairs the Family Office Community at Said Business School, University of Oxford, Ownership Project 2.0. Alex is a long-time friend and collaborator of FOX and a valued alumnus of the FOX team. Alex has done significant research into the importance of organizational culture among investment management, and its significance in explaining and driving performance of investment teams. He tells us what his research shows and highlights what both clients and members of investment teams can learn from it. We then focus more narrowly and look at the role of culture within family offices. Alex shares his views on how culture contributes to the value creation at the family office and the ability of family office teams to drive meaningful outcomes for their principals. Impact is frequently among the top objectives that family members seek to pursue individually or collectively with the support of their family office. Alex talks about his work and research on the effect of family office culture on the family's impact strategy, and the ability of family members to find and follow their individual pathways for self-realization and impact. Alex has also studied the effect of grief on the ability of families to make decisions and achieve growth. He shares his findings on how grief and other emotions impact UHNW family strategies and their collective activities within the family enterprise, including investing, philanthropy, social impact, etc. Enjoy this insightful conversation with one of the foremost academics and practitioners in the family wealth and family office space.

On this episode of Deans Counsel, hosts Ken Kring and Dave Ikenberry welcome back to the podcast François Ortalo-Magné, Executive Dean (External Relations) and Professor of Management Practice in Economics and Strategy & Entrepreneurship at London Business School. He served as the School's ninth Dean from 2017 to 2024, leading it through the COVID-19 pandemic, geopolitical upheaval, and the sustained pressures facing global higher education. Before that, he was Dean of the Wisconsin School of Business, leading the school and university through a period of significant institutional innovation. Across sixteen years in senior leadership and sixteen years as a professor of economics, he has developed a distinctive perspective: rigorous academic research combined with operational accountability under pressure.That combination now shapes his work with students, senior executives, and boards. François helps leaders make better decisions under pressure — not through generic frameworks, but by bringing academic research in economics, psychology, and the humanities to bear on the specific, high-stakes problems they face. His approach is grounded in three questions: How do we frame this decision clearly? How do we strengthen the decision process? How do we live with the consequences — including the need for healing and repair? Francois addresses those questions, as well as such topics as:- The linkage between research and brand value - The different aspects of scholarship - Linking teaching to research funding - Addressing the headwinds of stakeholders - Sage advice to deans Learn more about François Ortalo-Magné.Comments/criticism/suggestions/feedback? We'd love to hear it. Drop us a note.Thanks for listening.-Produced by Joel Davis at Analog Digital Arts--DEANS COUNSEL: A podcast for deans and academic leadership.James Ellis | Moderator | Dean of the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California (2007-2019)David Ikenberry | Moderator | Dean of the Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado-Boulder (2011-2016)Ken Kring | Moderator | Co-Managing Director, Global Education Practice and Senior Client Partner at Korn FerryDeansCounsel.com

Twelve official definitions for R&D. Zero agreement. The US government publishes at least a dozen distinct official definitions across agencies, accounting standards, tax authorities, and international bodies. Not one agrees with the others on where research ends and development begins. Trillions of dollars flow through R&D budgets every year. Boards approve them. Investors evaluate them. Governments subsidize them. Analysts benchmark them. And the term at the center of all of it has no settled definition. A company can gut its research investment without triggering a single alarm on its income statement. Researchers who gained rare access to confidential federal R&D data found exactly this: when companies face financial pressure, they cut research while leaving development essentially untouched, and the combined number barely moves. Every benchmark, every board conversation, every investment thesis built around the R&D line may be built on sand. Innovation, ideas made real, requires both. Research is how you find the idea. Development is how you make it real. Strip out the research and you're not innovating, you're iterating on what already exists. Strip out the development and you're just experimenting. The problem is that nobody in the room knows which one they're actually funding, because the definition that would tell them doesn't exist. Someone needs to draw the line. This episode is about why nobody has, and the definition I think should replace the chaos. By the end, I'm going to put that definition in front of you and ask you to push back on it. Not to agree. To tell me where it breaks. How We Got Here Four institutions took a run at defining R&D. Each one got it right for their own purposes. None of them got it right for yours. Frascati: Built for Governments In June 1963, OECD economists met at a villa in Frascati, Italy, south of Rome, and produced what became the international standard for measuring R&D across nations. Now in its seventh edition. The Frascati Manual divides R&D into three tiers: basic research (theoretical work with no application in view), applied research (original investigation toward a specific practical objective), and experimental development (using existing knowledge to produce new products or processes). To qualify, an activity must be novel, creative, uncertain in outcome, systematic, and transferable. Used by governments across roughly 75 countries. Solid for what it was designed to do: let nations compare R&D investment on consistent terms. What Frascati cannot tell you: whether a specific company's spending is creating competitive advantage. It counts the type of activity. It doesn't assess what the activity produces for the organization doing the spending. A company can satisfy every Frascati criterion investigating something every competitor already knows. The knowledge is new to them. That is enough. The accountants drew a different line, for a different reason, with a different consequence. FASB: Built for Accountants In October 1974, the Financial Accounting Standards Board issued Statement No. 2, Accounting for Research and Development Costs, now codified as Topic 730. Every public company filing under US GAAP operates under it. The rule: all R&D costs expensed as incurred. Research, development, basic, applied: one line on the income statement. Their definition: research is a planned search aimed at discovery of new knowledge. Development is the translation of research findings into a plan or design for a new product. The rationale is explicit in the original standard. Future benefits from R&D are, in FASB's language, "at best uncertain." Expense everything immediately. The standard solved the problem it was asked to solve, which was accounting treatment: when to recognize the cost, not whether the cost was strategically sound. The consequence: sustaining engineering, feature maintenance, and incremental product updates all land on the same line as genuine exploratory research. Nobody looking at the income statement from outside can see the difference. The number is technically accurate and analytically opaque. Abraham Briloff, the late accounting professor at Baruch College, put it plainly: "Accounting statements are like bikinis. What they show is interesting, but what they conceal is significant." He was talking about financial reporting broadly. He could have been writing specifically about the R&D line. Researchers at Duke and London Business School spent years tracking corporate scientific output and found that it declined steadily across industries even as headline R&D spending kept rising. The combined number was hiding a substitution. Nobody on the outside could see it. Outside the United States, a different standard governs, and it creates a comparison problem most analysts never account for. IFRS: Built for International Investors IAS 38 governs R&D under IFRS, and its treatment differs from FASB in one significant way. Research costs are always expensed, same as FASB. But development costs can be capitalized as an asset on the balance sheet once a company can demonstrate technical feasibility, intent to complete, ability to use or sell the result, likely future economic benefit, adequate resources, and reliable cost measurement. A European company that capitalizes its development phase carries those costs as an asset: lower expenses in the period, higher total assets. An identical US company expensing everything under FASB takes the full hit immediately: higher expenses, lower assets. Same underlying investment. Incomparable financial pictures. Run the standard industry benchmark, R&D as a percentage of revenue, and you may conclude the US company is investing more aggressively. You may be comparing the same dollar invested under two different accounting regimes. Roughly 169 jurisdictions use IFRS. The United States does not. India uses an adapted version. Japan maintains its own standards board. The benchmark the industry trusts most is meaningless for cross-border comparison, and almost nobody says so. Section 174: Built for Tax Authorities The Internal Revenue Code adds another layer. Section 174 governs the deductibility of what the US tax authority calls "research or experimental expenditures," and the definition is not the same as FASB Topic 730. A company's R&D for tax purposes and its R&D for financial reporting can cover different activities and produce different numbers. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 tightened this further: domestic R&D expenses that were previously deductible immediately now must be amortized over five years, international over fifteen. The definition of what qualifies shifted when the timing rules changed. Within one country, one company, three definitional regimes apply simultaneously: Frascati for any government reporting, FASB for the income statement, and Section 174 for taxes. A single dollar of R&D spending can be classified three different ways depending on who's asking. The Gap None of Them Fill Four frameworks, built by four institutions, for four different purposes. Not one was built for the question that actually matters. Is this investment creating new knowledge that gives us a capability nobody else can easily replicate? The gap between them is where innovation decisions actually live. The National Science Foundation recognized the problem clearly enough that it publishes a separate annotated document just to catalog the competing definitions, because they're too inconsistent to assume any two readers are using the same one. That gap isn't an oversight. It's a structural consequence of four institutions doing their own jobs well. The question practitioners need answered was nobody's institutional job. You've been in the room. The R&D number is on the slide. Nobody asks what's inside it, because the accounting standard doesn't require an answer, and the room has learned not to expect one. So it went unanswered. Until now. A Better Definition for R&D Research is work directed at creating new knowledge where the outcome is genuinely uncertain and the knowledge cannot be readily obtained from existing sources. Development is the translation of that knowledge into products, services, or processes that meaningfully advance an organization's capability in ways competitors cannot easily replicate. Four elements define it: Genuinely uncertain outcome. If you know what you're going to get before the work starts, it's engineering execution, not research. The uncertainty doesn't have to be total. Most applied research has a likely direction. But there has to be real doubt about whether the approach works, whether the knowledge emerges. Cannot be obtained from existing sources. This is the one nobody puts in writing. If the knowledge is already in the literature, available from a consulting engagement, or present in a competitor's published work, finding it again isn't research. Generating new knowledge and capturing existing knowledge are different activities. Only one belongs here. This criterion alone would reclassify a significant portion of what companies currently call R&D. Advances capability competitors cannot easily replicate. Development only qualifies when it translates research into something that genuinely moves the organization forward competitively. Sustaining engineering doesn't pass it. Feature parity doesn't. Competitive catch-up doesn't. All real work, none of it development under this definition. Agnostic to accounting jurisdiction. This definition doesn't tell you how to expense or capitalize anything. That's already governed by whichever standard applies. What it does is establish what genuinely belongs in each category, regardless of where the company files. That makes it usable across FASB and IFRS companies without translation. There is a simpler way to put it. For any project in your R&D budget, ask two questions. First: are we creating new knowledge, or executing against something we already know? If you're executing, it's not research. Second: does this translate into a capability competitors cannot easily replicate? If not, it's not development either. It's product engineering, valuable and necessary, but a different budget category entirely. Three buckets: Research, Development, and Product Engineering. That taxonomy, applied honestly across a typical portfolio, would reclassify a significant share of what most companies are currently reporting as R&D. The Call I'm not asking FASB to rewrite Topic 730. What I am asking: that the people who actually make innovation decisions start applying a definition built for the question they're trying to answer. If you run an R&D function: apply this definition to your current portfolio. Not to change the accounting. To see what's actually in the category and what isn't. The gap between what your budget calls R&D and what this definition calls R&D will tell you something worth knowing. If you sit on a board: ask what portion of the R&D line is directed at new knowledge creation versus sustaining existing products. If no one in the room can answer, you're governing a number you don't understand. And if you think the definition is wrong, tell me. Where should the line be drawn differently? What element doesn't hold? What did I miss? That's not a polite invitation. That's the actual point of this episode. Definitions become standards when enough serious people apply them consistently and make the case until the institutions catch up. The four frameworks we inherited were each built by an institution serving its own purpose. This one is built for the people making the decisions. The most consequential line in any company's budget is the one separating what builds the future from what protects the present. Nobody drew it clearly. It's past time someone did. The idea was never the hard part. It never is. The call is. If this episode shifted something for you, subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. On YouTube, hit subscribe and the bell so you don't miss the next one. And if you want to go deeper every Monday, Studio Notes is free at philmckinney.com. Until next time. See the pattern. Make the call. The Innovators Studio | philmckinney.com

This week, we're revisiting our ever-timely and fascinating conversation around misinformation with London Business School professor Alex Edmans. All Else Equal will be back with a new episode in two weeks.  What is the real problem with misinformation? Are our biases so ingrained in us that we are unable to think critically about the world and the systems around us? What happens when large institutions attempt to push a heterodox narrative? Do we simply need more education to overcome misinformation, or do we need something much deeper—to learn to think critically again? In this episode, hosts and finance professors Jonathan Berk and Jules van Binsbergen welcome Alex Edmans, Professor of Finance at London Business School to discuss his latest book, May Contain Lies: How Stories, Statistics, and Studies Exploit Our Biases – And What We Can Do About It.   Find All Else Equal on the web:  https://lauder.wharton.upenn.edu/allelse/ All Else Equal: Making Better Decisions Podcast is a production of the UPenn Wharton Lauder Institute through University FM. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Alex Edmans, a professor of finance at London Business School, tells us how to avoid the Ladder of Misinference by examining how narratives, statistics, and articles can mislead, especially when they align with our preconceived notions and confirm what we believe is true, assume is true, and wish were true. Alex Edmans  May Contain Lies What to Test in a Post Trust World How Minds Change David McRaney's Twitter David McRaney's BlueSky YANSS Twitter YANSS Facebook Newsletter Kitted Patreon Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The standard story of American innovation features Silicon Valley, venture capital, and the heroic startup founder.When you trace the history of the internet, GPS, mass-produced penicillin, or the COVID vaccine, the starting point is not a term sheet but a government grant. How much does this matter,  and can we measure it?Tim Phillips speaks to Paolo Surico of London Business School and CEPR who, working with Andrea Gazzani, Joseba Martinez, and Filippo Natoli, has built the first systematic empirical account of how government-funded innovation has shaped US productivity since the Second World War. The headline result: government-funded patents account for roughly 2% of all patents filed in the post-war period, but explain around 20% of medium-term fluctuations in total factor productivity and GDP growth. The return on every dollar of public R&D is more than double the return on every dollar of private R&D. The key mechanism is not that government crowds out private investment; it crowds it in. For every dollar of public research, roughly another dollar of private investment follows, as talent from universities and research institutes moves into startups that commercialise what the public sector seeded. The logic is high-risk, high-reward: the government takes on the uncertainty and fixed costs that the private sector will not bear, accepting a large number of failures in order to find the breakthroughs that private capital would never have funded. The model is now under pressure: 2025 brought the largest cuts to US federal science funding in the post-war period. AI adds a further complication: for the first time, a general-purpose technology is being driven primarily by private capital, and that capital is now pulling the best scientific talent out of research institutes and universities and into industry. If that shift becomes permanent, the direction of innovation will be shaped by profitability rather than by broad productivity and living standards. The paper discussed in this episode:Gazzani, Andrea, Joseba Martinez, Filippo Natoli, and Paolo Surico. 2026. "The Public Origins of American Innovation." CEPR Discussion Paper DP20788. Centre for Economic Policy Research. [gated]To cite this episode:Phillips, Tim, and Paolo Surico. 2026. "The Public Origins of American Innovation." VoxTalks Economics (podcast/video).  Assign this as extra viewing. The citation above is formatted and ready for a reading list or VLE.About the guestPaolo Surico is Professor of Economics at London Business School and a Research Fellow of CEPR. [verify URL before publishing] His research focuses on macroeconomics, monetary policy, and the economics of innovation and growth. He has advised central banks and governments on macroeconomic policy and is one of the leading empirical macroeconomists working on the aggregate effects of technology and public investment.Research cited in this episodeScience: The Endless Frontier (Vannevar Bush, 1945) is the report commissioned by President Roosevelt as the Second World War was ending. Bush, Roosevelt's chief scientific advisor, was asked to distil what the wartime mobilisation of research had taught, and how it could be translated into a peacetime innovation ecosystem. The report identified three pillars: government, to set the direction of innovation by funding areas of strategic importance; research institutes and universities, to push the frontier of knowledge without the constraint of commercial goals; and the private sector, to transform new knowledge into new products. The framework became the organisational blueprint for post-war American science and, Surico argues, is the institutional foundation of American technological and economic leadership. The report is in the public domain and available online.The NIH and NSF are the two federal agencies whose funded innovations show the strongest subsequent links to productivity growth in the paper's results. The NIH (National Institutes of Health) funds health and biomedical research; the NSF (National Science Foundation) funds basic research across science and engineering. Both are predominantly funders of university and research-institute work — which is, Surico argues, precisely why their output generates larger productivity gains than defence-funded innovation. The result is not that health research is inherently more productive than defence research; it is that both the NIH and NSF fund more basic, frontier-pushing work, and that basic research generates the largest spillovers regardless of the department that pays for it.Crowding in versus crowding out is the central empirical question in the public R&D literature. Crowding out would mean that government spending on research displaces private spending that would have happened anyway, leaving total innovation roughly unchanged. Crowding in means the opposite: public research creates opportunities and trains talent that then attracts additional private investment. The paper finds consistent evidence of crowding in, particularly when government funds flow to universities and research institutes. For every dollar of public R&D, roughly another dollar of private investment follows, typically as researchers from publicly funded institutions move into startups to commercialise what they developed. This is why the aggregate return on public R&D is more than double the return on private R&D, even though government-funded patents are only two percent of the total.The Solyndra and Tesla parallel is used to illustrate why anecdote-based arguments about public R&D are unreliable. Solyndra — a solar energy company that received a US government loan guarantee and then failed spectacularly — is a frequently cited example of government waste in innovation funding. Tesla received a loan guarantee in the same round of funding and became one of the most valuable companies in history. Surico's broader point is that the government's logic for innovation investment is high-risk, high-reward: it should expect and accept a large number of failures, because the gains from the successes — when they are large enough — more than compensate for the losses. Evaluating public R&D by its failures misses this; evaluating it by its headline successes also misses it. Systematic analysis across the whole portfolio is required.Philippe Aghion's Nobel Prize lecture is cited by Surico on the relationship between innovation, competition, and market structure. Aghion, who shared the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2018, developed Schumpeterian growth theory — the idea that economic growth is driven by creative destruction, with new entrants displacing incumbents through innovation. The key implication Surico draws on is that incumbents have a structural incentive not to innovate disruptively, because doing so would destroy the market position they already hold. Startups, which have no existing position to protect, are the natural vehicle for disruptive innovation. This is why the paper finds that government-funded startups generate larger macroeconomic impacts than government-funded incumbents: startups have both the mandate from public funding and the commercial incentive to take market share.DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) is the US defence department's high-risk research arm, responsible for funding some of the most consequential technologies of the post-war era, including early internet infrastructure. Surico mentions a less celebrated DARPA project — an attempt to embed microchips into bags for tracking, before drone technology made the approach obsolete — as an example of a genuine failure. It illustrates the high failure rate that comes with high-risk public R&D, and the importance of evaluating the portfolio rather than individual projects.The Draghi report on European competitiveness is cited by Surico as a potential catalyst for a different model of European public investment in innovation. Europe's problem, in his analysis, is not the level of public spending but its composition: too much goes to procurement and too little to basic research and later-stage startup support. Europe has the talent, the research institutes, and the early-stage startups. What it consistently lacks is the capacity to fund the scaling-up phase, which causes European innovations and innovators to be commercialised in the United States. A reallocation of spending toward public R&D that acts as a venture catalyst for later-stage startups — analogous to what Vannevar Bush's framework did for the US after 1945 — is what Surico believes the Draghi report could enable, if acted on.

Eye-opening conversation with Nell 3D (Nell Derick Debevoise Dewey) — leadership advisor, Forbes Senior Contributor, keynote speaker, and self-described Subtraction Activist.With degrees from Harvard, Cambridge, Columbia Business School, and London Business School, and 25+ years advising Fortune 500 executives at Google, Bank of America, American Express, Coca-Cola, and more, Nell has helped high-achieving, impact-driven leaders across the globe break through invisible success ceilings.After her own near-fatal wake-up call from chronic overdoing, she created the Systematic Subtraction™ and Lead in 3D™ frameworks (ME / WE / WORLD) that teach ambitious women how to stop adding more effort and start subtracting what no longer serves them — creating structural change, conserving energy, and generating compounding results in life, teams, and organizations.In this episode, Nell shares why “doing more” stops working for high performers, how to identify and release the hidden drains on your time and energy, and practical ways to align your purpose so success finally feels as good as it looks. Whether you're a leader, entrepreneur, or mission-driven professional feeling stretched thin, this conversation will give you the permission and tools to do less while mattering more.https://www.nell3d.com/Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/i-am-refocused-radio--2671113/support.Subscribe now at YouTube.com/@RefocusedNetworkThank you for your time. 

In this week's MBA Admissions podcast we began by discussing the current state of the MBA admissions season. We are continuing to see MBA programs release their final decisions. This upcoming week, UNC / Kenan Flagler, Georgia Tech / Scheller and Oxford / Said are releasing final decisions. MBA programs are also continuing to their next admissions rounds, including SMU / Cox and UPenn / Wharton for their deferred admissions program. Graham highlighted upcoming Clear Admit events. On May 11, Clear Admit is hosting our in-person admissions event in Atlanta. Most top MBA programs are scheduled to attend. We are also hosting several Application overview events in May, on May 19 and 20, and May 26 and 27. Signups for these events are here: https://www.clearadmit.com/events We then discussed some deferred enrollment admissions advice, featuring admissions officers from Johnson and Sloan. Finally, Graham continued with the Real Humans Alumni series. This week focuses on two alumni from Tuck / Microsoft and Wharton / Tesla, as well as several students in London Business School's new one year MBA program. For this week, for the candidate profile review portion of the show, Alex selected three DecisionWire entries: This week's first MBA admissions candidate currently has several offers including Simon and Smeal. They are waiting to hear from Scheller and Kelley. This week's second MBA applicant is deciding between Anderson, Haas and Stern. They are seeking a tech strategy role. This week's final MBA candidate is deciding between Ross, Haas and Sloan. They want to focus on tech, sustainability and climate. This episode was recorded in Paris, France and Cornwall, England. It was produced and engineered by the fabulous Dennis Crowley in Philadelphia, USA. Thanks to all of you who've been joining us and please remember to rate and review this show wherever you listen!

We're all familiar with the tropes around innovation and how it starts. You just need a garage in Silicon Valley, a few geniuses and visionaries, maybe some good snacks. Our guests today help us debunk that myth. Rich Braden and Tessa Forshaw wrote a book called Innovation-ish, and that little “-ish” is doing a lot of work. Rich Braden is a design strategist who's taught innovation at Stanford and advised companies around the world. Tessa Forshaw is a cognitive scientist whose lab studies the psychology of creativity — why we lose it, and how we get it back. In this conversation, we talk about why most innovation doesn't have to be a moonshot — and why chasing moonshots might actually be holding your team back. We dig into the neuroscience of what Tessa calls “innovation hesitation,” the tiny amygdala response that makes us reach for certainty instead of possibility. Bios Tessa Forshaw As a co-founder of the Next Level Lab at Harvard University, Tessa specializes in using cognitive science to develop creative and innovative potential in the workforce. She draws upon her academic research as a cognitive scientist and extensive background as a former designer at IDEO CoLAb and Accenture to turn the cognitive processes involved in design, creativity and innovation into practical insights that can be applied in the flow of work. These insights are also the foundations of what she teaches as a design educator at Stanford University and now Harvard University. Recognized for her impactful design projects, Tessa is the recipient of multiple design awards: a Fast Company Design Award for General Excellence, two Core77 Industrial Design Magazine Design Awards, and the Australian American Chamber of Commerce Innovation Awards. Rich Braden Rich Braden is the founder of People Rocket LLC, a strategic innovation firm based in San Francisco. With over 15 years of academic experience, Rich is a recognized thought leader in design thinking, leadership, and innovation. He is a design educator at renowned institutions including Harvard University, Stanford University, and London Business School, helping shape future leaders. As CEO of People Rocket, he works with clients such as Airbnb, Google, the United Nations, Microsoft, Coca-Cola, Starbucks, and Red Cross to drive strategic innovation and responsible AI solutions. Rich holds degrees in Computer and Electrical Engineering from Purdue University and resides in the San Francisco Bay Area. *** Premium Episodes on Design Better This ad-supported episode is available to everyone. If you'd like to hear it ad-free, upgrade to our premium subscription, where you'll get an additional 2 ad-free episodes per month (4 total). Premium subscribers also get access to the documentary Design Disruptors and our growing library of books. New premium benefit: get a behind-the-scenes pass to every episode with The Roundup, where each week we bring you insights and actionable tactics from recent episodes. You'll also get access to our monthly AMAs with former guests, ad-free episodes, discounts and early access to workshops, and our monthly newsletter The Brief that compiles salient insights, quotes, readings, and creative processes uncovered in the show. And subscribers at the annual level now get access to the Design Better Toolkit, which gets you major discounts and free access to tools and courses that will help you unlock new skills, make your workflow more efficient, and take your creativity further. Upgrade to paid

In this week's MBA Admissions podcast we began by discussing the current state of the MBA admissions season. We are continuing to see MBA programs release their final decisions. This upcoming week, UPenn / Wharton, London Business School, Stanford, MIT / Sloan, UVA / Darden and Vanderbilt / Owen are releasing their Round 2 decisions. MBA programs are also continuing to their next admissions rounds, including Cambridge / Judge, Berkeley / Haas, UPenn / Wharton, Northwestern / Kellogg, Georgetown / McDonough, Texas / McCombs, UVA / Darden, Vanderbilt / Owen, Minnesota / Carlson, Arizona / Carey, Chicago / Booth and Rice / Jones. Graham highlighted the Spring MBA applicant survey that Clear Admit is conducting. You can access the survey here: https://bit.ly/surveymba26 Graham then noted upcoming Clear Admit events. On May 11, Clear Admit is hosting our in-person admissions event in Atlanta. We are also hosting several Application overview events on May 19 and 20, and May 26 and 27. Signups for these events are here: https://www.clearadmit.com/events Graham then highlighted an MBA admissions tip that focuses on choosing between several MBA program offers. Finally, Graham continued with the Real Humans Alumni series. This week focuses on two alumni from Kellogg / PepsiCo and London Business School / Meta. For this week, for the candidate profile review portion of the show, Alex selected three DecisionWire entries: This week's first MBA admissions candidate wants to work in Consulting and be on the West Coast, post MBA. Their offers include Darden, Mendoza, Goizueta and Merage. This week's second MBA applicant is deciding between Johnson and Scheller. They want to be in the northeast, post MBA. This week's final MBA candidate is deciding between Fuqua and IESE. They are from Latin America and are focused on Health Care. This episode was recorded in Paris, France and Cornwall, England. It was produced and engineered by the fabulous Dennis Crowley in Philadelphia, USA. Thanks to all of you who've been joining us and please remember to rate and review this show wherever you listen!

When you walk up to a table with a group of people, you probably pick a seat without thinking much about it. But where you sit can subtly shape how others perceive you and how the interaction unfolds. There's actually a simple strategy to choosing a seat that can give you an advantage — whether the table is round, square, large, or small. https://lifehacker.com/always-choose-the-best-seat-at-any-multi-person-table-5990596 No matter how rational you try to be, your thinking is shaped by biases you can't fully escape. These biases influence what you believe, the decisions you make, and even what you consider to be “true.” Alex Edmans, professor of finance at London Business School and author of May Contain Lies: How Stories, Statistics, and Studies Exploit Our Biases―And What We Can Do About It (https://amzn.to/3vprIz3), explains how easily our biases can be manipulated by data, headlines, and persuasive stories — and how to become a more careful, independent thinker in a world full of misinformation. When you think of elite performers — Navy SEALs, top athletes, high-level leaders — what stands out is their ability to stay focused, calm, and effective under pressure. That kind of mental discipline may seem out of reach, but it isn't. Eric Potterat, a clinical and performance psychologist and retired Navy commander who helped design the mental toughness training used by the SEALs, explains how these skills are built. He breaks down the habits and mindset shifts that allow people to perform at a high level — even in stressful, uncertain situations. Eric is author of Learned Excellence: Mental Disciplines for Leading and Winning from the World's Top Performers (https://amzn.to/3TV4Qka). Toothpicks seem harmless — just small wooden tools to clean your teeth. But they can cause more problems than you might expect. In fact, once you hear what can happen, you may think twice before reaching for one again. https://acedentaloftexas.com/why-are-toothpicks-a-danger-for-your-oral-health PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS POCKET HOSE: Text SYSK to 64000 for your two free gifts with the purchase of any Pocket Hose Ballistic hose! DUTCH: If your pet is still scratching and you've tried everything at the pet store –it's time to stop guessing and go prescription.Support us and use code SYSK for $40 off your membership at ⁠⁠https://Dutch.com⁠⁠ RULA: Thousands of people are already using Rula to get affordable, high-quality therapy that's actually covered by insurance. Visit ⁠⁠https://Rula.com/sysk⁠⁠ to get started. QUINCE: Don't keep settling for clothes that don't last! Go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Quince.dom/sysk ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada, too! SHOPIFY: See less carts go abandoned with Shopify and their Shop Pay button! Sign up for your $1 per month trail and start selling today at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Shopify.com/sysk⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ EXPEDITION UNKOWN: We love the Expedition Unknown podcast from Discovery! Listen wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this week's MBA Admissions podcast we began by discussing the current state of the MBA admissions season. We are now seeing more MBA programs releasing their final decisions for Round 2. This upcoming week, Rice / Jones, Harvard, Northwestern / Kellogg, Boston College / Carroll, Chicago / Booth, Berkeley / Haas, Texas / McCombs, UCLA / Anderson, Cornell / Johnson and Washington / Foster are releasing decisions. MBA programs are also beginning their next admissions rounds, including Michigan / Ross, London Business School, Washington / Foster, Dartmouth / Tuck, Columbia and Michigan State / Broad. Graham highlighted Clear Admit's upcoming livestream “Decision Day Watch Party” scheduled for  Wednesday, you can subscribe to Clear Admit's YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@ClearAdmitMBA On May 11, Clear Admit is hosting our in-person admissions event in Atlanta. We are also hosting several Application overview events in May. Signups for these events are here: https://www.clearadmit.com/events Graham then highlighted an MBA admissions tip that focuses on the impact of scholarships for MBA candidates, as they make their final decisions on where they will attend. Finally, Graham continued with the Real Humans Alumni series. This week focuses on two alumni from Booth / Microsoft and Mendoza / Amazon. For this week, for the candidate profile review portion of the show, Alex selected one ApplyWire entry and two DecisionWire entries: This week's first MBA admissions candidate is applying for deferred admissions at top MBA programs, but has a GRE score of 310. This week's second MBA applicant wants to work in the Middle East after their MBA and has an offer from Stern for their program in Abu Dhabi. This week's final MBA candidate is deciding between Kenan Flagler and Tepper and waiting for Kellogg. This episode was recorded in Paris, France and Cornwall, England. It was produced and engineered by the fabulous Dennis Crowley in Philadelphia, USA. Thanks to all of you who've been joining us and please remember to rate and review this show wherever you listen!