Podcasts

HEC Paris Professors Laurence Lehmann Ortega and Hélène Musikas have been working together for over 15 years on a business framework they call Odyssey 3.14. This strategy helps companies better invest in business models that promote innovation and sustainability. The result is a book which entered its third edition in September, entitled “(Re)invent Your Business Model with Odyssey 3.14”. The two academics describe the three pillars and 14 directions which have evolved significantly in the past decades.

Ever since he published “Strategic Management”, Edward Freeman has been at the forefront of a theory that stakeholders are interconnected. For his collective body of work, the economist from Darden School, Virginia, received an Honorary Doctorate from HEC Paris, adding his name to the 48 illustrious scholars on the HEC Honoris Causa list. The March 4 ceremony was followed by several thousand spectators, both live and online. Freeman’s visit to the Jouy-en-Josas campus was the occasion to discuss his stakeholder vision with a prism of the 21st century. Extracts from the exceptional Breakthroughs podcast, recorded for Knowledge@HEC.

Artificial Intelligence is revolutionizing all fields of business, forcing academics and practitioners to revise their fundamentals. To discuss these new challenges, HEC Associate Professor Carlos Serrano and his colleague Thomas Åstebro organized a groundbreaking workshop inviting some of the world’s top researchers to compare their approach to those of leading industrialists. In our latest Breakthroughs, we discuss some of the takeaways with Serrano, an academic in the school’s Department of Economics and Decision Sciences.

How can the E.U. respond to the growing clamor for more citizen participation in its institutions? In a wide-ranging podcast, the Jean Monnet Professor in EU Law, Alberto Alemanno, proposes a permanent European Citizens Assembly to bring E.U. voters and their representatives closer together. The HEC professor also explores how lobbies can become a force for promoting social change. And he points out structural problems within the E.U. which are stymying the continent’s youth. Finally, Alemanno’s research with fellow academic Elie Sung pinpoints the oft-neglected impact of lobbies on judicial courts by interest groups– which are having devastating effects on societal issues like women’s and LBGTQI+ rights. Extracts.

On the eve of the 11th annual D-TEA conference, promoting Dialogues between Theory, Experimental findings and Applications of decision-making (hence the acronym), we talk to its co-organizer Professor Itzhak Gilboa. Last year, the professor of decisions sciences was ranked by Stanford University in the world’s top six theoretical economists. Gilboa’s research centers on decision under uncertainty and decision models whereby uncertainty can’t be quantified. That is called non-Bayesian decision models – as opposed to the Bayesian approach which assigns probabilities based on experience or best guesses. The HEC Paris academic questions these axioms, or self-evident truths. He believes his research can help answer unforeseen crises, called black swans, like the war in Ukraine, health pandemics or the climate crisis. Extracts.

HEC Paris Associate Professor Guillaume Vuillemey explores the ways the maritime shipping industry has evolved in the past 40 years to systematically evade its corporate responsibilities. In his groundbreaking research he reveals how this industry – which handles over 80% of global trade flows – uses flags of convenience and limited liability to flout international and moral law. This has repercussions on the environment and basic human rights. In a 30 minutes interview, Vuillemey outlines his approach of this industry and its links to what some are calling the “dark side of globalization”. Extracts.

Top personalities from the political and academic worlds, including Pascal Lamy, Peter Altmaier, John Denton and Merit Janow, were amongst the 17 speakers at a September 29 conference at HEC Paris on constitutionalism. Over three intense sessions, the policymakers and professors of law explored reforms in governance of public goods. In this article, however, our focus was on how innovative research in faculties should and sometimes does lead to concrete policy proposals.

The COP27 summit begins on November 6 in Sharm al Sheikh, Egypt, exactly a year after COP26 in Glasgow. A year is a long time and challenges have piled up: a world divided by war in Europe, where the world sees an acceleration of climate changes and global warming has beaten all modern records. In this light, Knowledge@HEC discusses the 12-day summit’s agenda and objectives with two guests: Igor Shishlov, Academic Co-Director for HEC’s Climate & Business Certificate; and Shiraz Moret-Bailly, co-president of Esp’R, an HEC student association devoted to sustainability and social economy.

Bertrand Quélin is professor of Strategy and the holder of the Bouygues-HEC Paris Chair in ‘Smart City and the Common Good’. He has been spearheading research on ways public bodies and private companies partner up to create both social and economic value. We discuss how the partnerships rely on a form of hybridization relying on three mechanisms: contractual, institutional and the ability to regularly partner up with public authorities.