INSEAD Knowledge Podcast

The world’s leading aerospace company shows that successful innovation is not just about technical breakthroughs. Consumer demand, financial viability and a functioning ecosystem are crucial for an innovation to move from the drawing board to a commercially viable reality.

That’s according to INSEAD professors Manuel Sosa and Adrian Johnson, in their conversation with Harsh Shah, a leading expert on Hydrogen fuel in the aviation sector. In this INSEAD Knowledge podcast, they discussed Airbus’s 2020 public commitment to bring the world’s first hydrogen-powered commercial aircraft to market by 2035.  

Despite making major strides in developing the technical innovations needed to achieve this aim, Airbus ultimately had to push back their deadline due to challenges beyond their control. Sosa explains that this case underlines the fact that any company introducing innovations needs to consider the desirability, feasibility and viability framework of innovation if it has any real chance of success.

As Shah put it, they were faced with a classic chicken-and-egg scenario: Airlines wouldn't commit without infrastructure, and infrastructure wouldn't get built without demand. His proposed solution was greater government intervention and financial incentives that absorbed cost premiums in the early stages, similar to those in other sectors, such as wind energy.

As Johnson concludes, pushing back a deadline shouldn’t be seen as failure; it's what learning through experimentation actually looks like when the stakes, and the ambition, are this high.

Read the related INSEAD Knowledge article and the two INSEAD Cases exploring the challenges faced by Airbus.

Two words appear in entertainment headlines more than almost any other excuse, but are they doing more harm than good?

When a director exits a film "due to creative differences", everyone reads it the same way: something happened, and we're not meant to know what. Spencer Harrison, Professor of Organisational Behaviour at INSEAD, calls it the "aloha" of Hollywood, a phrase flexible enough to mean hello or goodbye, used precisely because its vagueness protects everyone involved. In the latest episode of the INSEAD Knowledge podcast, he explains what the research reveals about whether that protection actually works.

Passion and drive helped Rishi Naleendra achieve initial culinary success, but it was only when he learnt to trust his team and change himself that his restaurant climbed to the next level –Michelin recognition. In this episode of the INSEAD Knowledge Podcast, Professors Michael Jarrett and Andy Yap chat with Sri Lankan restaurateur Naleendra.

Growing up in war-torn Sri Lanka, he went from a childhood dream to be a pilot to becoming the chef and owner behind noted Singapore restaurants Kotuwa and Cloudstreet.

Naleendra recounts his bold decision to close down a successful bistro that had already achieved one Michelin star and how his singular vision won buy-in from an experienced team and demanding investors. Yet his passion and high standards had a negative side: high turnover and burnout of staff and a team culture built on fear rather than ownership.

It was only when Covid-19 struck that he was forced to stop and reflect. An intervention by a trusted colleague made him confront an uncomfortable reality and come to realise that he needed to change both as a leader and a person. It was only by trusting those around him and creating the conditions for others to perform that he could ever hope to achieve two Michelin stars. 

A new-found leadership maturity helped him tackle the transition from running a small “mom and pop” business to leading a professional organisation. He now acts as the bridge between investors, creative talent and operational teams, and has to find ways to manage expectations and emotions on all sides.

For Naleendra, the mark of a good leader ultimately comes down to one unglamorous word: practice. Not talent, title nor experience – but practice. The soft skills needed to speak honestly to investors, inspire loyalty in your team and hold your nerves under pressure are all habits that are built over time.

His advice for the next generation: Don't wait for the position before you start behaving like a leader. Train for the role before anyone hands it to you, stay curious and never become too important to learn from the person next to you. 

Read the INSEAD Knowledge article.
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In the new edition of “The INSEAD Perspective: Spotlight on Asia” podcast series, Sameer Hasija, Dean of Asia at INSEAD, speaks with Winnie Jiang, Assistant Professor of Organisational Behaviour, about how organisations and individuals in Asia are changing the way they think about work, training and careers.

In particular, Jiang identifies a fundamental shift from "institutionalised" to "uninstitutionalised" career transitions. Unlike the past, where career changes – such as moving from journalism to law or banking to baking – followed clear routes and required standard qualifications, today’s job landscape has been totally upended by AI and geopolitical uncertainty.  

This makes identifying "safe" next steps, or a stable career that can guarantee success nearly impossible, creating real anxiety. AI’s transformation of how skills are learned and a global reduction in entry-level hiring are further feeding a growing unease among many employees about their futures. 

For Jiang, the key to navigating this disruption is not to resist technology but to actively embrace experimentation. By becoming experts in specific AI tools, individuals don’t just increase company productivity, they can also enhance their own roles and add greater meaning to their work.

The shift towards "uninstitutionalised" careers may offer another positive. In many of Asia’s collectivist and "face" cultures, where career choices have historically been tied to family pride and stability, current uncertainty may ironically liberate younger generations to pursue work that they find personally fulfilling.  

Schools like INSEAD have an important role to play in this transformation. It is their responsibility to help people and organisations turn technological disruption into an opportunity for professional growth that benefits both the firm and the individual.

Read more at https://knowledge.insead.edu/career/ai-and-career-reinvention.
Or watch the video: https://youtu.be/7Yg8O_wv60E.

In the latest episode of “The INSEAD Perspective: Spotlight on Asia” podcast series, Sameer Hasija, Dean of Asia at INSEAD, sat down with Pushan Dutt, Professor of Economics and Political Science, to discuss how the new world order is creating a complex economic environment, where traditional business strategies are being upended by unpredictable political and technological shocks.  

As an expert in international trade, Dutt offers his insights on the impact of the fast-changing United States tariff policies for the Asian region. Ultimately, he advises firms to adopt a "wait and see" approach, suggesting that rash operational moves to counter temporary political swings could end up being a costly, and ultimately unnecessary, mistake.  

For him, a bigger concern is the massive investment by American and Chinese firms into AI, which could create a significant technological gap between those leaders and other countries. Organisations are historically slow to adapt, but firms in Asia need to fully understand the speed of exponential technological growth and the urgency of being prepared for the "gale of creative destruction" it will bring.   In the same vein, countries like India and Indonesia need to overcome the slow pace of their bureaucratic democracies to become more agile and responsive. Whether it’s pivoting India’s IT sector to adapt to rapidly changing needs, or Indonesia’s efforts to move upstream in the nickel supply chain, speed is going to be key.  

With the prospect of an incoherent and uncertain future, at least for the short term, business leaders cannot afford to be delusional about "crises being opportunities". Instead, they need to make sure they have the slack, both in terms of finances and time, to make quick decisions in response to unexpected or unknown crises as and when they arrive.  

Note: This conversation was recorded before the start of the ongoing Middle East conflict.

View a video of the discussion.
Read the related INSEAD Knowledge article.