INSEAD Knowledge Podcast

You’ve just been promoted to a manager. Now what? The truth is that new managers hardly receive formal training before taking on their roles. Instead of hitting the ground running, most of them try to figure out how to lead as they go along, says Vibha Gaba, The Berghmans Lhoist Chaired Professor of Entrepreneurial Leadership and Professor of Entrepreneurship at INSEAD.In this podcast, Gaba takes a deep dive into leading, especially for first-time managers. Being a leader in the contemporary workplace clearly requires new competencies; technical expertise alone is no longer enough. As the director of INSEAD’s “Learning to Lead” executive programme, Gaba has been training executives, complementing their existing technical chops with people management skills –  from how to assign tasks to the right team members to coaching people and managing conflicts. 

In this episode, Ben Charoenwong, Associate Professor of Finance at INSEAD and former pod shop veteran, discusses his case on Millennium Partners, and looks at how their adoption of the “pod shop” model has allowed the firm to become one of the most successful hedge funds in the world.As well as exploring the strengths of this plug-and-play approach, Charoenwong highlights the fact that this model has now been adopted by many hedge funds and is impacting the broader financial services industry. Private banks and asset managers are among those taking a similar structural approach, where independent advisory teams are managed under a large organisational umbrella that handles compliance, technology and other functions.However, while the model has brought great success, it also carries inherent risks. Charoenwong raises concerns about market fragility due to the consolidation of trading power among a few key players. This concentration can lead to sudden and dramatic market movements, or “blips”, when a major pod is forced to liquidate positions, as observed in a recent event involving the Japanese yen.

Does artificial intelligence enable organisations to do things differently, or to do different things?In the first episode of the new podcast series “The INSEAD Perspective: Spotlight on Asia”, Sameer Hasija, Dean of Asia at INSEAD, speaks to Hyunjin Kim, INSEAD's Assistant Professor of Strategy,  about arguably the most pressing topic affecting business and society today: The impact of AI on business and entrepreneurship. There's a spectrum of views about the impact of AI, but where its effect on entrepreneurship is concerned, few share the vantage point with Kim, whose research covers a cross-section of over 500 start-ups and their interactions with AI.Despite Asia’s relatively young population and drive, the “Asian Century” hasn’t come to fruition, notes Hasija. Kim remarks that the biggest challenges entrepreneurs face are access to capital and labour. AI can reduce these frictions and help build more capital- and labour-efficient businesses, bringing new opportunities to the region.

In a special episode of the INSEAD Knowledge podcast, we shine a spotlight on a sister podcast series, The Age of Intelligence. Hosted by Theodoros Evgeniou, Professor of Technology and Business at INSEAD, and Tim Gordon, co-founder of Best Practice AI, the series features insightful conversations with notable guests from a range of different fields. Its aim is to look at how AI is rebalancing our world – from disrupting national powers and influencing business competitiveness to impacting individual lives. In this episode, Evgeniou and Gordon speak with computer scientist and MIT professor Pattie Maes. Their discussion centres on Maes’ pioneering work in AI and her unique perspective that technology should be used to augment human intelligence, not replace it.

The "kill zone" refers to the space near a tech giant’s core business where start-ups risk being copied or crushed simply for getting too close. But what if survival were possible?In this episode, Associate Professor of Strategy Michaël Bikard walks us through a case that begins with a promising partnership between Airbnb and Sofar Sounds, but ends with the two companies going head to head.London-based start-up Sofar Sounds built its brand on intimate secret gigs in living rooms and other low-key spaces around the world. “It's all about human offline connections through music, bringing together people in a very intimate setting,” said Bikard. “There is some fairy dust there.” A partnership with Airbnb seemed like a perfect match. Airbnb would gain some of Sofar Sounds’ cool factor. Sofar Sounds could scale through Airbnb’s global reach. But the alliance didn’t last.A few months later, Airbnb came up with their own version of Sofar Sounds, Airbnb Concerts. It looked like the classic tech “kill zone” scenario. “At the time… it felt like they [Sofar Sounds] were gonna be eaten alive, frankly,” said Bikard. “And the interesting thing is that exactly the opposite happened.”