Featured Faculty
Gordon and Llura Gund Family Professor of Entrepreneurship; Professor of Strategy
Innovation Entrepreneurship Mar 3, 2021
Podcast: How Can We Ramp Up Innovation?
On this episode of The Insightful Leader: what the data say about successful entrepreneurs and the types of policies that best support them.
0:00
/
14:57 
Innovation. We can all agree it helps businesses—and entire societies—succeed. But how would you define it? And if you compared definitions with someone else, would they match? Innovation can feel like a big, unwieldy topic without a clear-cut definition or system of reference.
Words like innovation and creativity can seem almost magical—and like they might defy systematic insight. But thanks to a whole lot of big data at researchers’ fingertips, Kellogg professor Ben Jones says that’s changing.
“We just have great data suddenly, that we didn’t have before,” he says. “So we have data on every new business started in United States in the last 10 years. And every founder of all those businesses. We have data on every patent and all the inventors. We have data on every scientific article published around the world, and all the scientists, all the funders.”
And it turns out, all this data is producing some pretty interesting insights into where innovation comes from, and what we can do as a society to see more of it. In this episode of The Insightful Leader, Jones shares some of what he’s been able to learn from mining this wealth of data.
Note: The Insightful Leader is produced for the ear and not meant to be read as a transcript. We encourage you to listen to the audio version above. However, a transcript of this episode is available here.
Featured Faculty
Most Popular This Week
-
What Went Wrong at Silicon Valley Bank?And how can it be avoided next time? A new analysis sheds light on vulnerabilities within the U.S. banking industry.
-
How Are Black–White Biracial People Perceived in Terms of Race?Understanding the answer—and why black and white Americans may percieve biracial people differently—is increasingly important in a multiracial society.
-
Podcast: Workers Are Stressed Out. Here’s How Leaders Can Help.On this episode of The Insightful Leader: You can’t always control what happens at work. But reframing setbacks, and instituting some serious calendar discipline, can go a long way toward reducing stress.
-
3 Things to Keep in Mind When Delivering Negative FeedbackFirst, understand the purpose of the conversation, which is trickier than it sounds.
-
Will AI Eventually Replace Doctors?Maybe not entirely. But the doctor–patient relationship is likely to change dramatically.
-
What Went Wrong at AIG?Unpacking the insurance giant's collapse during the 2008 financial crisis.
-
Which Form of Government Is Best?Democracies may not outlast dictatorships, but they adapt better.
-
What Happens to Worker Productivity after a Minimum Wage Increase?A pay raise boosts productivity for some—but the impact on the bottom line is more complicated.
-
Why Do Some People Succeed after Failing, While Others Continue to Flounder?A new study dispels some of the mystery behind success after failure.
-
Why Well-Meaning NGOs Sometimes Do More Harm than GoodStudies of aid groups in Ghana and Uganda show why it’s so important to coordinate with local governments and institutions.
-
How Much Do Campaign Ads Matter?Tone is key, according to new research, which found that a change in TV ad strategy could have altered the results of the 2000 presidential election.
-
When You’re Hot, You’re Hot: Career Successes Come in ClustersBursts of brilliance happen for almost everyone. Explore the “hot streaks” of thousands of directors, artists and scientists in our graphic.
-
At Their Best, Self-Learning Algorithms Can Be a “Win-Win-Win”Lyft is using ”reinforcement learning” to match customers to drivers—leading to higher profits for the company, more work for drivers, and happier customers.
-
How Peer Pressure Can Lead Teens to Underachieve—Even in Schools Where It’s “Cool to Be Smart”New research offers lessons for administrators hoping to improve student performance.
-
Marketers, Don’t Be Too Hasty to Act on DataDon’t like the trends you’re seeing? It’s tempting to take immediate action. Instead, consider a hypothesis-driven approach to solving your problems.
-
How Has Marketing Changed over the Past Half-Century?Phil Kotler’s groundbreaking textbook came out 55 years ago. Sixteen editions later, he and coauthor Alexander Chernev discuss how big data, social media, and purpose-driven branding are moving the field forward.
-
Podcast: "It's Hard to Regulate U.S. Banks!"Silicon Valley Bank spectacularly collapsed—and a new analysis suggests that its precarious situation is not as much of an outlier as we’d hope. On this episode of The Insightful Leader, we learn what went wrong and what should happen next.
-
Immigrants to the U.S. Create More Jobs than They TakeA new study finds that immigrants are far more likely to found companies—both large and small—than native-born Americans.
-
Leaders, Don’t Be Afraid to Admit Your FlawsWe prefer to work for people who can make themselves vulnerable, a new study finds. But there are limits.
Add Insight to your inbox.
