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

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

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

About our guest…

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

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

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

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

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

· https://www.velcu.fi/

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Key insights:

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

About Henning

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

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

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

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

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

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

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