IESE Insight - Research Papers

How to escape the success trap -- and not fall into another one

Enrique Ide Research suggests that current success can be detrimental to innovation, even in a completely "rational" or "hyper-paranoid" organization. IESE's Enrique Ide offers advice to escape the success trap.

Patently underrepresented: Why humankind needs more female inventors

Rembrand Koning; Sampsa Samila; John-Paul Ferguson New research in Science finds that patents filed by female inventors are more likely to focus on women's health, but that relatively few women are filing patents. The paper points to untapped opportunities for innovation.

What's in a number? Numerical nudging to boost motivation and decision-making

C. Lembregts; Jorge Pena Marin Try expressing your goals in large numbers to help put yourself in the right mindset to achieve them. And to prod customers to make sales decisions, try presenting them with round numbers first and then precise ones close to the point of purchase.

The sweeping change of net zero emissions

Miguel Duro Can the Big Three asset managers -- BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street -- influence companies to clean up their acts and lower their carbon emissions? Miguel Duro discusses his research on how they do it and why you should pay heed.

Overconfident? Underconfident? Here's how we tend to miss the mark in predicting performance

Isabelle Engeler; Gerald Häubl Why do most people believe they drive better than average? Are we wrong about our own abilities or about others'? New research uncovers the sources that drive our erroneous performance predictions relative to our peers.

Portrait of an ideal CEO to lead after the crisis

Luis Huete, Antonio Nuñez A survey of more than 1,000 CEOs of leading Spanish companies suggests the model of leadership needed for the post-pandemic business world.

Starry right? The real story behind online ratings

Christoph Schneider; Markus Weinmann; Peter N. C. Mohr; Jan vom Brocke From Amazon to Airbnb, we expect previous-customer ratings to help us understand the quality we can expect. But stars can be misleading, particularly when compared between different systems.

How a company's financial structure affects its stock returns

Teng Huang; Anil Kumar; Stefano Sacchetto; Carles Vergara To diversify a portfolio of stocks, choose companies with different financial structures. Why? Because the stock returns of companies with similar levels of financial flexibility are more closely correlated. This finding is even more pronounced in times of crisis.

Rethinking supply chains after COVID-19

Weiming Zhu; Weiyin Yang The pandemic has exposed weaknesses in our global supply-chain system. Inspired by Donella H. Meadows' classic work on system thinking, we proffer three keys to rebuild more sustainable businesses after the crisis.

The Big Picture: How to flourish in your career

IESE Insight A career path doesn't always advance in a linear or upward fashion. Follow these tips to lay the ground for a career that will blossom over time.