HEC in the press

Groupthink may often be tragic, warns HEC Paris and former McKinsey partner Olivier Sibony in his book “You’re About to Make a Terrible Mistake!", in an interview with The Inquirer. Instead, says Sibony, focus on changing the environment. Break down silos, and work on processes to ensure optimal decisions.  

“Research demonstrates that family businesses show greater resilience and achieve better results. This success can be attributed to a combination of various elements: longer-term and dynamic entrepreneurship with a conservative allocation of asset management,” says Philippe Pelé Clamour, an adjunct professor at HEC Paris, in an interview with Executive Courses. 

Noise is the major source of variability in judgment and, thus, a major cause of decisions that miss their mark, according to the professorial supergroup (henceforth, KSS). Kahneman was awarded a Nobel Prize for his work as a behavioral economist; Sibony is an expert on decision-making who teaches at HEC Paris and Oxford’s Saïd Business School; and Sunstein is the Harvard prof whose work on nudges has been influential in public policy. Noise is also the title of the trio’s new book, a 400-page tome that should leave executives who take the time to wade through it more than a little unsettled, writes Strategy + Business. 

Society has devoted a lot of attention to the problem of bias — and rightly so. But when it comes to mistaken judgments and unfortunate decisions, there is another type of error that attracts far less attention: noise, write HEC Paris Strategy Professor Olivier Sibony with Daniel Kahneman and Cass R. Sunstein, in an opinion piece for the New York Times. 

Psychological research shows that judgment is surprisingly dependent on mood—and that being in a bad one has a silver lining, write HEC Paris' Olivier Sibony, Daniel Kahneman and Cass Sunstein, in an op-ed for the WSJ. 

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos famously remarked that whenever he spoke with entrepreneurs interested in working with the tech giant he was always looking for "missionaries" rather than "mercenaries". He believed that the best startups had founders that were focused on making great products or services that would fundamentally change the world for the better. The money side would then largely take care of itself.

One might imagine that such intrinsic motivation is even more prevalent among social entrepreneurs, who by their very definition are focused primarily on improving various social, environmental, or cultural issues. It's a heuristic that's examined in recent research from HEC Paris, which sets out to understand what motivates social entrepreneurs, writes Forbes. 

Most organizations today have tapped into the zeitgeist for corporate social responsibility, albeit with varying levels of gusto and success.  New research from HEC Paris explores the key role the CEO can play in the success of CSR initiatives and finds that the boss can actually provide up to a 30% boost in CSR performance, writes Adi Gaskell. 

HEC Paris marketing professor Anne-Sophie Chaxel conducted two experiments with 1,400 American workers, asking them to respond to allegations that the Covid-19 virus was man-made and that hydroxychloroquine can eliminate the symptoms, she writes, in an op-ed published in Forbes. 

In France and Norway, financial support came from governments, rather than business schools. HEC Paris, for example, was able to join France’s national employment fund training initiative (FNE) for furloughed staff, which allowed companies to claim full training costs up to €6,000 per worker. This enabled HEC to enrol more than 500 participants on 20 different courses, writes the Financial Times. 

While the strategies that private equity firms bring to the table for reviving sports businesses, such as tackling fragmentation and improving access to digital content, may not be novel, they do bring expertise in execution, said Oliver Gottschalg, a professor at HEC Paris business school who focuses on private equity investments, in an interview with CNN.