In our "Managing Innovation in Organizations" course, we have a class on how innovation shapes society and organizations (and yes, that is such a huge question that we just barely scratch the surface). In the class this year, we had Zlatko Bodrozic guest lecturing on how technological revolutions shape management models (this paper) and what … Continue reading Automation podcast

I was recently interviewed for The Annex, a sociology podcast hosted by Joseph Cohen at Queens' University. We talked about entrepreneurship (mostly these two pieces) and veered into a discussion of the effects of Covid on innovation in first-responder organizations (this piece). Here's a link to the episode.

Following on from some of our recent work on entrepreneurship (here and here), I wrote a short opinion piece of sorts, making the argument that entrepreneurship is a terrible idea for most people, most of the time. The piece just came out in Contexts. You can see it here. Leaving aside questions of what the … Continue reading A terrible idea

We have a new working paper on how the Entrepreneurship Industry might impact entrepreneurial learning out on SSRN. Here's the abstract: "This conceptual study challenges the assumption that entrepreneurial learning increases entrepreneurial effectiveness. Entrepreneurial learning is filtered through myths about entrepreneurship brought about by the Entrepreneurship Industry. When this is the case, entrepreneurial learning can … Continue reading Learning, distorted.

A paper co-authored with Dan Kärreman and André Spicer and (fittingly) slow in the making has just been published: Slow Management. Here's the abstract: Management is a practice that runs on ideas. Unfortunately, ideas that organizations must constantly change are prevalent. This can easily lead to junky ‘Fast Management’: management that is change-obsessed, attention-starved and … Continue reading Slow Management

The second assignment a course I teach asks students to theorize and analyze, again in a 1000-word essay. This time, the evidentiary basis for their essays is an interview with Impossible Foods CEO Patrick Brown on Vergecast, but the rules are same as the first assignment. By now, students have had more classes and have … Continue reading Analyze

The first assignment for a course I teach on managing innovation in organizations asks students to compose a 1000-word essay (i.e. the much maligned five paragraphs) where they theorize an innovation-related issue in a given podcast. The 'rules' for the assignment are pretty clear: use theory from class (i.e. theory that your reader also knows), … Continue reading Theorize

There is absolutely no doubt that the organizations on the frontlines of responding to the Corona Pandemic have been faced with immense challenges over the past year, and many still are. Mia Hartmann and I have a new paper out on what these challenges might mean for police organizations in particular, building on the work … Continue reading Frontline innovation in times of crisis

I was interviewed by the Wall Street Journal for a piece about the (maybe) declining quality of entrepreneurship in the US, based on a recent working paper. It's a good piece with a nicely nuanced take: it highlights an interesting fact to be explained and understood, raises some (methodological) issues with the state of that … Continue reading Six theories of why fast-growing start-ups are disappearing

Today, I interviewed Dan Kärreman of Copenhagen Business School about academic reading. We talked about why reading academic papers is difficult (by design, almost), the different genres of academic papers and how papers are actually meant to be read. In these times, where the interactive parts of university education are locked-down and studying is homework … Continue reading How to Read