unSILOed with Greg LaBlanc

What is the extent to which good fencing makes good neighbors? How much of your innovation process should you make public? Henry Chesbrough, the developer of the term Open Innovation, discusses open innovation processes in practice. The author provides examples from companies like Microsoft, AWS, and P&G using open innovation within the company. During his discussion with Greg La Blanc, he delved...

Women from different species, including humans, who had better help and support have better chances of survival. What can we learn from mother nature? Sarah B. Hrdy professor emerita at the University of California Davis, and Associate in the Peabody Museum of Archeology and Ethnology at Harvard talks about her books: Mothers And Others, The Woman That Never Evolved , and Mother Nature . Listen to...

Can overconfidence harm you? Despite popular belief, psychologists and experts state that overconfidence can also lead to failure. Avoiding a different perspective can limit your judgment. How much confidence is good? How do you make sure you're not underconfident? Don Moore, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at Berkeley Haas talks about his book called Perfectly Confident: How To Calibrate Your...

What happens when you confine an animal in a box with nothing to do but push a lever to disperse food? According to a study by the American psychologist B.F. Skinner, he discovered that the caged animal would most likely press the lever vigorously. How does this relate to human work environments? Barry Schwartz, psychologist, author, and professor analyzes and dissects factors that affect people's...

Taking a one-sided approach to entrepreneurship and business won't work. The key to success in business is to put different skill sets from your toolbox into play. But how do you apply that in real life when a lot of things happen all at the same time? Are there things that business school didn’t teach you? Jay Barney, Presidential Professor of Strategic Management, and Pierre Lassonde Chair of So...

What clues can carry trading give us about the past two decades of international economic downturns? Kevin Coldiron is a Lecturer at UC Berkeley's Haas Business School. He’s also the is the co-owner of Algert Coldiron Investors. After 25 years in quantitative finance, Coldiron has a new book called The Rise Of Carry: The Dangerous Consequences Of Volatility Suppression And The New Financial Order...

How does the First Amendment really work? Why is it important to understand the difference between free speech and free action? What role, if any, should social media companies like Twitter or Facebook play in policing the online speech? Stanley Fish is a literary theorist, legal scholar, and New York Times best-selling author. He is also a professor of law at Florida International University and...

A Demon Of Our Own Design is a provocative title for a first book. But that's just the kind of work Richard Bookstaber does. Richard has been a practitioner in the world of finance for many years. He is currently the Head of Risk at Fabric RQ, and previously worked at Bridgewater, Morgan Stanley, Solomon brothers, and was the Chief Risk Officer at the University of California. These roles have put...

Publishing a book with no graphs is quite the feat in the world of economics. But that’s part of Charles Wheelan’s mission: using storytelling to get his point across. In this episode, Charles Wheelan joins host Greg LaBlanc. Charles is a senior lecturer and policy fellow at the Rockefeller Center at Dartmouth College and teaches courses on education policy, health care, tax policy, income inequal...

Stanford health economics professor Jay Bhattacharya has said that the coronavirus is one of the biggest failures of the economics profession. And whether or not that’s an exaggeration, it’s true many economics have stayed quiet throughout the course of this virus. But not Joshua Gans. Joshua Gans is a Professor of Strategic Management and holder of the Jeffrey S. Skoll Chair of Technical Innovati...

In 2020, venture capitalists invested about $150 billion into U.S. start-ups, according to the data company, Crunchbase. According to the San Diego Union-Tribune, local startups in Southern California are securing more investment dollars in a single quarter than they used to get in an entire calendar year. This surge of capital is not necessarily a new trend, but it has shifted power from the inve...

Although it’s usually associated with teenagers, psychologists and economists have long understood that “peer pressure” is not limited to adolescence. When we grow up, we want our kids in the best schools, we want beautiful homes, cars, and weddings even though none of those things are directly related to happiness. In his new book, economist and author Robert Frank explores how social influence i...

How can the distinct habits of chimps and bonobos inform us about human evolution and behavior? Today we speak with Richard Wrangham, a research professor in the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard. For more than three decades, the English anthropologist, primatologist, and author has studied primate behavior as it relates to human social behavior, evolution, and warfare. Richard W...

Terry Burnham is a Professor of Finance at Chapman University, and an author whose works include  Mean Genes  and  Mean Markets And Lizard Brains. But he was also in the military, a former Goldman Sachs employee, and founded a startup; all experiences which lend to his unique perspective on biology, economics, and psychology. In this episode of unSILOed with Greg LaBlanc, we talk about his time at...

The average life expectancy of a company on the S&P 500 is less than half of what it was 60 years ago. How have some companies managed to adapt and evolve while others have gone by the wayside? Today we speak with Charles O’Reilly, professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He is also the co-author of several books including Lead And Disrupt: How To Solve The Innovator's Dilemma . In t...

The ethics of teaching are in the news daily as the pandemic continues to upend everything we know about education. Looking forward, how can we better prepare and build teachers looking to join this complex and ever-evolving field? Joining us today is Dan Willingham. He is a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia, and also the author of numerous books, including The Reading Mind, Wh...

When was the last time you learned a new skill? Maybe you’ve always wanted to teach yourself how to rollerblade, to speak French, or to woodwork. What’s stopping you? Today, we speak with journalist and author Tom Vanderbilt. His most recent book is called Beginners: The Joy and Transformative Power of Lifelong Learning . Inspired by his daughter, Tom tries to learn how to sing, surf, juggle and d...