Humor is a phenomenon experienced by most, if not all, human beings. Throughout human history humor has played a role in communication and interactions between people, yet how often do we actually take the time to consider what is humor, and more to the point, what is humorous?

To discuss this, I am delighted to be joined on the Brain for Business podcast by Matt Nadel.

About our guest...

Matt Nadel is a doctoral candidate and adjunct professor at St. John's University in New York studying communication in organizations. Prior to joining St John’s University, Matt worked as a CPA and auditor at a Big 4, and ran a phenomenally successful baseball blog.

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Creativity is – for a very good reason – often seen as something positive and even joyful. Yet like many things in life there is also a flipside to creativity – a dark side, if you will. To explore the concept of dark creativity I am delighted to be joined today by Dr Hansika Kapoor.

About our guest…

Hansika Kapoor is a Research Author at the Department of Psychology, Monk Prayogshala, a not-for-profit research organisation in Mumbai. Hansika’s work has been published in leading journals including Creativity Research Journal, Thinking Skills and Creativity, and Personality and Individual Differences and she regularly contributes to popular media publications, including Psychology Today, Mint, and The Wire.

You can find out more about Hansika’s research, including on the topics of creativity and dark creativity, on her website: https://www.hansikakapoor.in/

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As regular listeners will know, the Brain for Business podcast focuses primarily on research by academics and others into the brain, behavioural and organisational sciences. Key to what we do is an underlying assumption that the people we interview and the research that we discuss with them is supported by a strong degree of academic legitimacy. In other words, the research is at the very least robust and evidence-based. Yet in recent years, questions of academic legitimacy have bubbled to the surface with ever greater frequency and is the focus of a recent pre-print paper currently under review at a leading journal by our guest today, Dr Raffaele Ciriello.

About our guest...

Dr Raffaele Ciriello is a tenured Senior Lecturer in Business Information Systems at the University of Sydney. Raffaele’s research explores the intersection of digital innovation, decentralized governance, and ethics, blending rigorous interdisciplinary work with qualitative and dialectical inquiry to address complex sociotechnical dilemmas.

The pre-print article referred to in the interview - Safeguarding Academic Legitimacy: Editorial Conflicts of Interest as a Principal-Agent Problem in Elite Business Journals - is available here: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5315585

Webpages for Raffaele and his collaborator, Vitali Mindel, are available here:

• https://www.sydney.edu.au/business/about/our-people/academic-staff/raffaele-ciriello.html
• https://bit.vt.edu/faculty/directory/mindel.html

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A recent open access article in the Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization reported on results from research comparing the effect of (the same) opinions expressed by visibly senior, female versus male experts. Common wisdom might hold that women suffer from an “authority gap” compared to their male peers, but is that really the case?

To explore the findings of this research I am delighted to be joined by one of the authors of the study, Professor Hans Henrik Sievertsen.

About our guest…

Hans Henrik Sievertsen is an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Bristol, and is also a senior researcher at the Danish Center for Social Science Research and a Research Fellow at the Institute of Labor Economics in Bonn. Hans is an applied microeconomist, working mainly on topics related to education, health, and gender.

The articles discussed in the interview are as follows:

• "Do female experts face an authority gap? Evidence from economics"
• with Sarah Smith, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organisation (2025). Available to read here: https://www.hhsievertsen.net/content/papers/Sievertsen_Smith_2025.pdf
• "The gender gap in expert voice: evidence from economics"
• with Sarah Smith, Public Understanding of Science (2024). Available to read here: https://www.hhsievertsen.net/content/papers/Sievertsen_Smith_2024.pdf

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Despite the old saying that “curiosity killed the cat”… the importance of curiosity for information seeking and gathering in organisations is well established. Yet little is known about the role that CEO curiosity plays in strategic choices and decision-making. To explore this further and to discuss the findings of a recent paper in the journal Strategic Organization, I am delighted to be joined today by Professor Dr. Patricia Klarner.

About our guest...

Professor Dr. Patricia Klarner is Director of the Institute for Organization Design at the Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU Vienna). Prior to her current position, she worked on the faculties of the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University, and the University of Munich (LMU).

Professor Klarner’s research focuses on corporate strategy and adaptation, corporate governance, strategic organization design, and strategic leadership. She particularly examines how organizations can remain agile and successful in times of increasingly volatile and unpredictable business environments. Her research provides insights into how organizations can balance change and stability in their organization design and how key strategic actors – top management teams and boards of directors – influence strategic adaptation and growth decisions over time.

The article discussed in the interview is open access and is available here:

CEO Curiosity and Strategic Change: The Differential Role of Curiosity Types and TMT Characteristics

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/14761270251325238

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A 2023 opinion piece in the journal Nature Psychology challenged the prevailing perspective on success and achievement, essentially arguing that we have it all wrong! So, where does the truth about success and achievement really lie??? To discuss this I am delighted to be joined by one of the co-authors of that article, Professor Brooke Macnamara.

About our guest...

Brooke Macnamara is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychological Sciences at Purdue University. In her research, Brooke is interested in how various factors predict skilled performance variance – both performance changes within an individual and performance differences across individuals.

• The Nature Psychology opinion piece discussed in the interview can be accessed here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s44159-023-00255-z
• You can find out more about Brooke's work at the Skill, Learning and Performance Lab at Purdue University here: https://hhs.purdue.edu/skill-learning-and-performance-lab/

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Balancing exploration and exploitation is a fundamental strategic challenge for organizations operating in dynamic environments. Managers must decide how often and when to search for new technologies and products, weighing the costs of exploration against the risk of missing trends that could render their business models obsolete

To dig deep into this topic I am delighted to be speaking today to Professor Axel Zeijen.

About our guest…

Axel Zeijen is a Lecturer at the Department of Management, Technology, and Economics at ETH Zurich in Switzerland.

With a background in industrial engineering and innovation sciences, Axel is broadly interested in technological change and its organizational implications. In particular, he attempts to understand where and how technological forces and firm strategy interact, and how this process plays out. His research projects cover industries where new

technologies change the capabilities of firms, create new opportunities for change, and affect how competition plays out.

The articles discussed in the podcast area as follows (both open access):

• Zeijen, A., Romagnoli, M., & Marengo, L. (2025). Signposts for problemistic search: Reference points and adaptation in rugged landscapes. Strategy Science. https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/full/10.1287/stsc.2023.0072
• Denrell, J., Zeijen, A., Romagnoli, M., & Marengo, L. (2025). Absolute, average‐based, and rank‐based aspirations. Strategic Management Journal. https://sms.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/smj.3715

Websites for Axel and each of his co-authors are as follows:

• Axel Zeijen - https://timgroup.ethz.ch/people/senior-researchers/dr-axel-zeijen.html
• Jerker Denrell - https://www.wbs.ac.uk/about/person/jerker-denrell/
• Manuel Romagnoli - https://www.wiwi.uni-jena.de/en/11462/dr-manuel-romagnoli
• Luigi Marengo - https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=OKWSBtQAAAAJ&hl=en

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A recent article in the Journal of Business Venturing sought to address the question of: Why and how does founder age perception influence funding outcomes?

To discuss the importance of this question and the key findings of the paper I am delighted to be joined by Dr Michael Matthews, Assistant Professor at the University of Texas, Rio Grande Valley.

About our guest...

Michael Matthews, Ph.D., studies leadership and the intersection between work and life. Michael received his B.S. (Brigham Young University) and M.S. (The University of Oklahoma) in information systems. Later, he received his Ph.D. in Business Administration (University of Oklahoma) with a particular focus on organizational behavior. Currently, he is an Assistant Professor at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. His writing has been featured in outlets such as the Journal of Management, Leadership Quarterly, and Harvard Business Review. Prior to entering academia, Michael worked as a computer programmer for several technology companies. In particular, Michael has coded for organizations such as ExxonMobil and Proofpoint.

More information:

• Just a number? Using artificial intelligence to explore perceived founder age in entrepreneurial fundraising (from Journal of Business Venturing): https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0883902623000757
• Research Powered by AI Shows Age Discrimination in Entrepreneurial Fundraising (from California Management Review): https://cmr.berkeley.edu/2024/03/research-powered-by-ai-shows-age-discrimination-in-entrepreneurial-fundraising/

Two other papers mentioned in our conversation:

• Eren, O., & Mocan, N. (2018). Emotional judges and unlucky juveniles. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 10(3), 171-205.
• Nault, K. A., Pitesa, M., & Thau, S. (2020). The attractiveness advantage at work: A cross-disciplinary integrative review. Academy of Management Annals, 14(2), 1103-1139.

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