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        <title>INSEAD Knowledge</title>
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        <description>The business school for the world</description>
        <lastBuildDate>Wed, 13 May 2026 11:32:03 +0800</lastBuildDate>
        <language>en</language>
        <item><title>Can Your Audience Stifle Your Creativity?</title>
                  <link>https://knowledge.insead.edu/operations/can-your-audience-stifle-your-creativity</link>
                  <description> <![CDATA[Independent creators strive to attract an audience but often find themselves struggling to manage expectations and opinions once their work gains widespread appeal. We want to trust expert estimations and forecasts but shouldn’t take aggregated estimates at face value. In other research featured this month, INSEAD faculty unveil fresh insights on charge anxiety – the new range anxiety – in the adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) and how the market rewards companies that invest in AI and advanced analytics.From range anxiety to charge anxietyIs range anxiety still the main factor limiting EV adoption? Charge anxiety seems to have taken over. It arises from five factors: Hardware: Will the charger’s plug fit my vehicle, and does it work?Software: Will my app or card work at the specific charger?Location: Is a charger conveniently located?Time: How long will charging take?Price: How much will it cost? Anton S. Ovchinnikov and his collaborator present three empirically grounded analytical models, each fitted to real data from industry partners, to analyse key issues in the current state and potential trajectory of public EV charging infrastructure. In particular, they focus on the speed of fast charging, the scale of a fast-charging station and driver arrival patterns.Read the full paperHow independent creative workers negotiate audience relationshipsIndependent creative workers, from visual artists to musicians, need to achieve widespread appeal. But once they do, managing the relationship with their audience is the next challenge. In a study of independent creators who share their work on digital platforms, Spencer Harrison and his co-authors discovered that after attaining a substantial audience, they get deeply “entangled” with their audience, which then affects their approach to creating. This dysfunctional entanglement is characterised by an oppressive dependence on audience reactions, struggling with platform volatility and experiencing distressing emotions. But all’s not lost. Strategies such as distancing themselves from audience input, depersonalising audience critiques and connecting more deeply with their own ideals can help creators move towards a better state, allowing them to once again capture meaning from their audience and to view platform work as sustainable.Read the full paperShould you aggregate expert estimates and forecasts?How frequent are large disagreements in human judgement? Miguel Sousa Lobo and his co-author found that the frequency with which an individual judgement differs substantially from the consensus looks less like a bell curve (or a normal distribution, as widely claimed), but instead is asymmetrical (fat-tailed distribution). The findings have important implications for the aggregation of expert estimates and forecasts, highlighting why we cannot simply rely on averaging. The researchers propose a simple heuristic, which performed well for the range of distributions they studied: 73 data sets from four different sources that included over 169,000 estimates and forecasts.Read the full paperHow the market values AI and advanced analytics investmentsHow do capital markets respond when firms in traditional industries integrate AI and advanced analytics (AIAA)? Having analysed stock market reactions to 397 announcements by biopharmaceutical firms between 2001 and 2020, Michael Freeman and his co-authors found that average returns following the integration are modest, at 0.58 percent. But the average masks variations arising from firms’ characteristics and deal attributes. For instance, are the firms positioned to capture value or are they destroying wealth? Are they organisationally ready, as suggested by their R&D intensity and asset turnover? Are the investments focused on opportunity discovery or simply optimising current operations? The findings highlight the nuanced relationship between AIAA deals and market valuation.Read the full paper]]></description>
                  <pubDate>Wed, 22 Apr 2026 01:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
                  <guid isPermaLink="false"> 48536 at https://knowledge.insead.edu</guid>
                  <comments> https://knowledge.insead.edu/operations/can-your-audience-stifle-your-creativity#comments</comments>
                <enclosure url="https://knowledge.insead.edu/sites/knowledge/files/styles/panoramic_large/public/2026-04/wound_up_man.jpg?itok=6Omc0aNg" type="image/jpeg" length="600585" /><dc:creator>Lily Fang</dc:creator></item><item><title>The Role of Business in the Humanitarian New Normal</title>
                  <link>https://knowledge.insead.edu/responsibility/role-business-humanitarian-new-normal</link>
                  <description> <![CDATA[Since the United States withdrew its support for the international humanitarian community in early 2025, it has cut US$709 million in life-saving grants. The United Kingdom, Germany and the European Union have followed, slashing over 30 percent of their aid budgets and channelling part of those funds to re-armament. Unfortunately, the US’ spectacular success in fighting disease in low- and middle-income countries in the last 30 years is now reversed. In this “new normal”, we’ve seen the collapse of global response capacities and the disruption of the UN cluster’s efforts to coordinate with NGOs on the ground – at a hefty cost. By June 2025, the funding cuts to USAID health programmes had led to the deaths of nearly 270,000 adults and over 560,000 children, at a rate of 88 deaths per hour.  The funding cuts could result in more than 14 million additional deaths by 2030, according to a Lancet study. In the words of Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee, both Nobel-prize-winning economists and poverty researchers: “For many throughout the world, this is a bloody time”.Unintended consequencesThe mortality figures are appalling, but the indirect consequences also deserve our attention. We are seeing the emergence of unintended risks to our social and economic systems: the loss of efficiency, reliable information and influence. On the ground, the nearly 42-percent cut in funding has led to layoffs of 12,000 humanitarian workers and closure of at least 22 humanitarian organisations, representing a critical loss of talent and institutional memory. Take the US’ construction of a floating pier for the delivery of 2 million meals to Gaza per day. Its almost immediate shutdown (attributed to insufficient training, planning and equipment failures) was followed by slow and non-transparent food distribution by military contractors on the ground. This shows that defence and foreign policy bureaucracies face a steep learning curve in responding quickly to emergencies. When the lines between humanitarian and military activities are blurred, it quickly becomes apparent that military capacity is not inherently designed, or equipped, to save lives.  In addition, access to reliable information is compromised due to the politicisation of humanitarian work fuelling misinformation. Since state-led initiatives are not subject to the same rigorous audits and restrictions as international humanitarian organisations, the result is less transparency and accountability, such as the impact of the US$230 million of taxpayers’ money spent on the failed pier project. In the current geopolitical context, the unintended consequences of the new normal – the erosion of neutrality, impartiality and independence – directly impact the integrity of our modern society.  Global citizens cannot stand by as hard-won humanitarian gains and institutions are discarded.We’re all connectedBusiness is intricately linked to economic development. With globalisation, the integration of global supply chains has boosted economic growth, enabling each country to invest in its strengths and source the rest from the world. More importantly, in the last 30 years, it has lifted over a billion people out of poverty. Then there is the interconnectedness between aid providers and the local businesses and economy. For decades, international businesses have benefited from the spillover effects of USAID’s engagement in less developed countries. When local suppliers are contracted by humanitarian aid projects, it gives them the opportunity to expand their business and this in turn drives local economic growth. The entry of aid providers can trigger the development of institutional capacity, which in turn, enables international firms to operate in these emerging markets.Recent large-scale global crises such as the Covid-19 pandemic have made us acutely aware of our interconnectedness. They taught us that no one is safe until everyone is safe, and that trade has helped solve shortages as they occurred around the world. Even rich countries may one day need the kind of emergency relief that depends on the kindness of strangers. The question is how to benefit from the linkages while mitigating the risks. The difference that business makes Could humanitarianism, which directly contributes to an equitable, peaceful and rule-based system, be defined as a public good, like the environment? As global citizens, we should preserve it. And business leaders are uniquely qualified to do so by translating good intentions into plans with realistic resource allocations and measurable results. Targeted social projects by businesses, such as Walmart’s support for hurricane response in the US, are not new. Global logistics companies have joined the Logistics Emergency Team network to offer transport capacity for emergency operations. Companies like Takeda Pharmaceutical Group have co-funded public health supply chain capacity-building with governments in Africa. These companies are not only contributing resources to emergency operations; they are helping to develop capacities. In less developed countries, as they build infrastructure and trade with local firms, they are in fact promoting supplier development. And as these markets develop, their increased economic participation and growth combine to create a virtuous cycle, increasing access to goods and services, and ultimately benefiting the local communities and businesses. Business can also use its know-how (and know-who), to work with governments and key stakeholders to design more resilient systems that are not dependent upon single donors. For example, in response to drastic funding cuts, a public-private supply chain leadership group convened by the European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations  has identified over 100 measures to improve aid distribution. But dedicated expertise is needed for public-private partnerships to succeed. In particular, governments will need to deepen their managerial capacity, make better stockpiling decisions and enable cross-border pooling of essential medicines ahead of the next global pandemic. Agents of changeAdam Smith is known for writing the classic “The Wealth of Nations”, but he also stressed the importance of empathy, fairness and community, because efficiency without virtue undermines the economic system. Our research in humanitarian operations reveals that virtue without efficiency is equally unacceptable. As the business school for the world, INSEAD has a role in informing policymakers, business and the public, empowering them to make the needed change to make humanitarian systems more resilient. For decades, our Humanitarian Research Group has worked on improving structures and processes in both commercial and humanitarian organisations to improve performance. Beside strengthening collaboration between organisations extending aid, our knowledge, built on decades of rigorous scientific studies, is translated into action by partners such as the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. Practical contributions include analysing how much stock to pre-position in crisis-prone regions, devising more efficient use of humanitarian transport fleets, and updating asset replacement rules to reduce costs and carbon footprint in humanitarian operations. Our body of knowledge is fodder for new business models. Business can be a force for good if they adapt commercial practices of supplying food, shelter or medical care to meet the needs of crisis-prone regions. But it’s not just about ideals. The current geopolitical situation and ongoing war in the Middle East drives home the message: The destabilising effects of disease, starvation and political upheaval – on economies, communities and individuals – are real. ]]></description>
                  <pubDate>Thu, 16 Apr 2026 01:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
                  <guid isPermaLink="false"> 48531 at https://knowledge.insead.edu</guid>
                  <comments> https://knowledge.insead.edu/responsibility/role-business-humanitarian-new-normal#comments</comments>
                <enclosure url="https://knowledge.insead.edu/sites/knowledge/files/styles/panoramic_large/public/2026-04/lifeboat_0.jpg?itok=rfelb8FJ" type="image/jpeg" length="753539" /><dc:creator>Bublu Thakur-Weigold</dc:creator><dc:creator>Luk Van Wassenhove</dc:creator></item><item><title>Is the Asian Economic Model Breaking?</title>
                  <link>https://knowledge.insead.edu/economics-finance/asian-economic-model-breaking</link>
                  <description> <![CDATA[Here’s a question for you: In which economies do exports account for more than half of GDP? If you guessed Germany (41 percent) or China (20 percent), you’d be wrong. The answers are Vietnam (90 percent), Cambodia and Malaysia (70 percent), Thailand (60 percent) and Singapore – which, at 175 percent, exports more than it produces, the economic equivalent of a magic trick. These aren’t merely export-oriented economies. They are the beating heart of globalisation. Strip away the flows of goods, capital and technology of the last five decades, and you strip away the Asian model itself. For more than 50 years, that model delivered the most compressed period of mass prosperity in human history. It rested on three pillars: open trade, a stable geopolitical order anchored by American power, and the assumption that technology would continue to flow from rich to poor countries, allowing catch-up growth.Unfortunately, all three pillars are currently under strain as the world undergoes a structural break. The break isn’t yet visible in headline growth numbers, which is precisely what makes it dangerous. The IMF projects that most of Asia will grow respectably through 2026. However, many factors that sustained GDP growth last year – tariff exemptions, TACO (Trump Always Chickens Out), stockpiling and the AI boom – may all wane in the years ahead, curtailing growth.The trade pillarDonald Trump’s first stint as President of the United States was annoying but manageable. Tariffs were narrow, targeted, telegraphed in advance and phased in slowly. Crucially, firms could plan for them, with many rerouting supply chains through Vietnam and Malaysia. Trump 2.0 is different. The tariffs are sudden, volatile, whimsical and coercive. Unpredictability is a feature, not a bug. The current conflict in the Middle East has only deepened the sense of chaos and uncertainty.After the tariffs were announced last year, countries raced to strike deals: Vietnam accepted 20-percent tariffs in exchange for zero tariffs on its goods and commitments to buy American liquefied natural gas and aircraft. Malaysia agreed to 19-percent tariffs, giving Washington a say over its export controls. Japan and Korea got 15 percent in exchange for investment pledges, while Singapore, despite its free trade pact with the US, quietly accepted a 10-percent baseline tariff. Last month, the Supreme Court stepped in and deemed these tariffs unconstitutional. Almost immediately, Trump invoked presidential powers under a 1974 trade law to impose blanket 15-percent global tariffs. Everyone now gets 15 percent, and the trade deals and bilateral concessions, extracted under duress, are in limbo. Some will be slow-walked, some renegotiated, others reneged on. However, even these tariffs are likely illegal, as they are used to address balance-of-payments issues that the US simply doesn’t face. They expire in 150 days, and what happens after that is anyone’s guess.Beyond tariffs, the more immediate threat is transhipment. Goods in Asian supply chains cross borders an average of six times before becoming a final product. Transhipment tariffs of 40 percent, designed to prevent rerouting and reclassification, expose Singapore, Vietnam and Thailand to a compliance nightmare they are only beginning to map. The advice for companies is to invest heavily in data, trace what fraction of your inputs originate from each source, and prepare for rules that will change before the compliance systems are built.Indonesia's position deserves a separate note. Its 2020 nickel ore export ban was a device to force Chinese and Western battery manufacturers to invest in downstream processing within Indonesia. It didn’t want to be an upstream commodity exporter, susceptible to the resource curse and Dutch disease of deindustrialisation. In fact, it wanted the entire value chain. The complication is that Chinese firms currently control an estimated 70 to 80 percent of Indonesia’s nickel processing capacity. The mineral is Indonesian; the value chain is largely not. Battery facilities have been slow to ramp up, while Chinese electric vehicle manufacturers are shifting to battery chemistries that use far less nickel.The geopolitical pillarJapan and South Korea built their entire defence posture around one assumption: that the American security umbrella would be deployed in times of need. That assumption is now a question mark. The recent behaviour of the Trump administration – the Venezuela operation, the Greenland threats, the treatment of NATO allies as supplicants rather than partners – has communicated something specific to every Asian capital: Sovereignty has a price, and the US no longer considers itself unconditionally bound by the architecture it built.The Taiwan issue concentrates this anxiety. A recent article in The New York Times put a number on what a Taiwan crisis would cost: an 11-percent decline in US GDP, while China’s economy would contract by 16 percent. Taiwan produces roughly 90 percent of the world’s high-end chips and underpins an estimated US$10 trillion of global GDP. Such a scenario would not merely threaten its flagship chipmaker TSMC; it would detonate the entire regional supply chain, including Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand and the Philippines.ASEAN countries don’t primarily buy from TSMC to consume chips. Rather, they sit downstream of it, specialising in the assembly, testing and packaging (ATP) of chips before re-export to end markets globally. In 2024, Taiwan exported close to US$40 billion in semiconductors and components to ASEAN. Roughly 80 percent of these exports flowed to Singapore and Malaysia alone. The two countries differ in an important way, however. Malaysia remains almost entirely a back-end operation: It handles global chip ATP but produces almost no wafers itself. Singapore is further up the value chain and hosts multiple active wafer fabrication plants, or fabs, with more under construction. But even in Singapore, the fabs are foreign-owned and dependent on an unbroken supply of wafers and equipment from Taiwan, the Netherlands and the US.What makes this especially uncomfortable is that ASEAN is exposed to the downside of both the current system and the transition away from it. A Taiwan crisis would cut off inputs. But a successful American reshoring effort (the Trump administration is pushing for 50 percent of chips to be made on US soil) would also shrink the flow of Taiwanese inputs through Asian ATP hubs.The question ASEAN planners aren’t yet asking loudly enough is: What is our exposure not to a Taiwan invasion, but to a Taiwan disruption – elevated tensions before any shots are fired, when shipping insurance spikes, investment freezes, flows of chips are disrupted, and the great powers start asking smaller states whose side they are on?The AI technology pillarAn AI Impact Summit was organised in India just last month. The summit dismissed the idea of “superintelligence soon” as an American imperialist narrative and instead bet on the diffusion of small models, open-source models and the need for some edge compute. This may be right. But what if it happens to be wrong?American hyperscalers including Microsoft, Google, Meta and Amazon collectively committed over US$300 billion to AI capital expenditure in 2025 and US$690 billion in 2026. The Stargate Project alone commands US$500 billion over four years. These are investments in recursively self-improving systems and building “god in a box”. Again, it’s right to question the fragility and sustainability of this investment and lament the relentless AI hype. Then again, Claude Cowork and Claude Code wiped out US$300 billion in software company valuations in a week!Against this, Singapore’s recent commitment of S$1 billion over five years to its national AI strategy is a rounding error. This isn’t a criticism of the city-state; it simply can’t match American numbers. The question is whether "good enough" local models will be sufficient as the frontier accelerates, or whether economies that make this bet find themselves locked into technological dependence on whoever controls frontier systems – almost certainly either the US or China – at precisely the moment when AI-driven productivity gains are widening the gap between frontier and non-frontier economies faster than any previous technology.China is exerting a different kind of pressure. Its relentless application of AI-enabled automation in manufacturing has compressed the low-cost labour advantage that Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines and India are counting on. Robot density in Chinese manufacturing rose from 25 per 10,000 workers in 2015 to roughly 392 in 2023 – nearly matching Germany, the world’s most automated large manufacturing economy. The window for labour-cost-based manufacturing competition may be closing faster than anyone in Jakarta or New Delhi is prepared to acknowledge.India’s position is the most paradoxical. Its US$250 billion IT services sector, employing five million people, was built on one comparative advantage: large numbers of English-speaking engineers who could do, at lower cost, what Western firms needed. That advantage is being structurally eroded by the very AI systems India now hopes to deploy for growth. And it’s being built by the major AI companies, staffed and often led by Indians. The middle rung of the ladder is being pulled up while the climbers are still on it.My fear is not that AI disrupts. Every technology disrupts. My fear is that the disruption arrives before the adaptation does, and that governments currently building five-year AI roadmaps premised on a plateau that may not materialise will look up in 2028 and find that the world they planned for no longer exists.The Asian trilemmaEvery piece about Asia in crisis is supposed to end on a positive note, with every challenge reframed as an opportunity. But sometimes, a crisis is just a crisis. And compulsory or compulsive optimism is a form of denial.The threats to Malaysia and Singapore in semiconductors and to Japan and South Korea on security are real. So are the opportunities for India and Indonesia. The fracturing of the China-centric supply chain creates space. The demand for alternative manufacturing bases, mineral suppliers and technology partners is genuine. But the opportunity is narrow, time-bound and conditional on decisions that no government has fully committed to: continued investment in logistics, reforms and state capacity in India’s case, diversification away from Chinese processing dominance in Indonesia’s.The Asian miracle was built on the assumption that the system would hold. The trilemma is the likelihood that it won’t. What is new for firms and governments in this region is that the pillars are cracking, and the pivot has to happen faster than the displacement.Read a longer version of this article.]]></description>
                  <pubDate>Mon, 09 Mar 2026 01:30:00 +0000</pubDate>
                  <guid isPermaLink="false"> 48396 at https://knowledge.insead.edu</guid>
                  <comments> https://knowledge.insead.edu/economics-finance/asian-economic-model-breaking#comments</comments>
                <enclosure url="https://knowledge.insead.edu/sites/knowledge/files/styles/panoramic_large/public/2026-03/shutterstock_2624487499.jpg?itok=LW8e_rH7" type="image/jpeg" length="1005483" /><dc:creator>Pushan Dutt</dc:creator></item><item><title>Can AI Align Sustainability and Profits?</title>
                  <link>https://knowledge.insead.edu/operations/can-ai-align-sustainability-and-profits</link>
                  <description> <![CDATA[In 2020, Spacemaker, a Norwegian start-up applying machine learning to architecture, was acquired by Autodesk for US$240 million. Despite exciting developments in AI and machine learning, few companies were focusing on AI applications for construction and real estate. Spacemaker was an exception.According to McKinsey, construction was by far the weakest sector as measured by productivity growth since 1995. “If you look at the efficiency curve in [the construction] industry, it is sinking,” said Janne Aas-Jakobsen, founder and CEO of Consigli, a software-as-a-service (SaaS) provider for real estate developers and contractors. She added that 85 percent of projects face cost overruns, with almost 50 percent experiencing cost overruns of more than 15 percent. The sector is primed for disruption.In a webinar with Aas-Jakobsen, we explored this untapped opportunity at the intersection of technology, construction and finance, and how her company applies AI to the early-stage design of new building projects to massively reduce costs and carbon emissions.Ripe for reinventionWhen planning to construct a new building, developers need to solicit bids from contractors, obtain building permits and get investors’ buy-in. Early-stage calculations and plans are prerequisites to develop specifications on which contractors could develop binding bids. At the same time, developers contract engineering consulting firms to provide detailed specifications of technical systems – from electrical to ventilation, heating, cooling, water and fire prevention. An estimated 10 percent of total new real estate development costs are tied to early-stage engineering – a figure that’s fairly consistent across geographies. It’s a highly complex task with many disciplines involved, and regulatory requirements add more complexity to the mix. For instance, counties and municipalities in the United States had reportedly over 93,000 different building codes, which means companies building prefabricated houses must adapt to the specific codes of each jurisdiction. “We have been doing things the same way for years, regardless of whether we are using pen and paper or computer-aided design programs,” said Aas-Jakobsen. As information is sequentially passed on from one party to the next, it’s inevitable that quality and complexity in the final design are lost. Fortunately, everything within that complexity is known: the laws of physics, the building standards, what global suppliers can provide and so on. The design process in construction engineering was ripe for reinvention. “Finding an optimal solution to a complex puzzle of knowns is what AI is good at,” she surmised. As Aas-Jakobsen searched for methods to solve these problems, she took inspiration from ship construction, where algorithms were used to size and design engine rooms. In 2020, she founded Consigli, which uses AI to facilitate early-stage mechanical and electric design – from lighting and sprinklers to ventilation. Engineering a solutionThe SaaS product, the “autonomous engineer”, enables real estate developers and construction contractors to reduce their expenses while maximising usable space. It’s capable of reorganising rooms and parking areas for space optimisation, which is more complex than what appears on paper: cars need to be able to move out of parking lots, guests need to be able to escape from their hotel rooms in an emergency, and plant rooms need to be large enough to operate and maintain – but no bigger than necessary due to the high costs.In addition, the AI co-worker provides a wide range of services, including generating reports customers expect from construction engineers and ensuring consistency and compliance. It flags inconsistencies between the building model and tender materials, misalignment between tenants’ needs and the spatial design, and non-compliance of designs and specifications with building codes. Real estate developers can log in to the web-based software, create a project and upload the building information model (BIM) from the architect, along with relevant information such as tenant specifications, room mix or technical details such as energy requirements. The autonomous engineer would then update the BIM to include optimal room layouts and systems such as electrical, cooling and fire prevention.  This flow of communication isn’t too different from how one might work with consultants, but speed is of the essence. Whereas engaging with consultants can take months, the autonomous engineer can produce actionable output in one to two days, saving 15 to 20 percent in costs. A vision for more sustainable construction The beauty in the tool isn’t only in lowering the risks and costs of real estate development, but also its carbon footprint – by reducing the use of concrete, ducts, pipes and cables, alongside potentially decreased cooling needs.  “We do the boring stuff, the boring part of sustainability. It’s about using less,” said Aas-Jakobsen. But in the context of the construction sector, which is responsible for 40 percent of annual global emissions, the impact of using less materials is anything but mundane or negligible. Consigli’s vision is to reduce construction materials by 20 percent and, in doing so, decrease embodied carbon in the industry. Resistance to change is inherent among real estate companies. After all, it takes time to change workflows. Moreover, risk and liability are common concerns, since real estate development projects involve developers, engineering consultants and contractors who are liable for various aspects of the project. This is where a tool to help developers focus on optimising the early stages of the design process can reduce risks considerably.In one instance, Consigli helped a client identify discrepancies in the insulation capacity of materials (U-value) and the conditions of green financing. Had the variance not been flagged at the design stage, the building would have been built outside the scope of the financing conditions, which could result in major reworking and waste. Financial gains may be more apparent in some cases, such as the example of Norwegian real estate company Entra. It had bought a hotel and sought Consigli’s services to find ways to increase the property’s value. The solution offered was to design spaces to incorporate more hotel rooms, which didn’t only result in increased operating revenue, but a huge premium when the property was later sold.As improved planning lowers risks and costs while increasing efficiency, sustainability follows naturally. With a clear business case for sustainability, little convincing is needed. Indeed, Consigli caught the attention of global infrastructure engineering giant AECOM, which acquired the start-up in November 2025 for an estimated US$390 million. Ultimately, its ability to boost construction efficiency and margins, while generating solid sustainability benefits is not only a clear strategic differentiator for AECOM, but is also in line with its sustainable legacy strategy, helping it  to leave “a positive, lasting impact for communities and our planet". ]]></description>
                  <pubDate>Tue, 03 Mar 2026 01:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
                  <guid isPermaLink="false"> 48386 at https://knowledge.insead.edu</guid>
                  <comments> https://knowledge.insead.edu/operations/can-ai-align-sustainability-and-profits#comments</comments>
                <enclosure url="https://knowledge.insead.edu/sites/knowledge/files/styles/panoramic_large/public/2026-02/ai_in_construction_engineering.jpg?itok=8n_v1ekM" type="image/jpeg" length="893681" /><dc:creator>Karel Cool</dc:creator><dc:creator>Atalay Atasu</dc:creator></item><item><title>INSEAD Insights: Strong Cultures, Supply Chains and Surprise</title>
                  <link>https://knowledge.insead.edu/leadership-organisations/insead-insights-strong-cultures-supply-chains-and-surprise</link>
                  <description> <![CDATA[From understanding the role of surprise in organisations to finding ways to improve disease tracking and analysis, this month’s selection of recently published research by INSEAD faculty spans a diverse array of topics. Other papers explore how context shapes the effectiveness of fiscal rules; how market-based incentives can drive the energy transition; and how firms with less hierarchical structures manage to get their employees pulling in the same direction.The role of surprise in organisationsFrom Aristotle to Charles Darwin, surprise has been a topic of fascination and the source of many questions in philosophy, the social sciences and beyond. However, a history of inconsistent definitions and fragmented perspectives has led to conceptual confusion, limiting our understanding of how surprise affects individuals in organisations.In a paper published in the Journal of Applied Psychology, Spencer Harrison and his co-authors blend insights from psychology, management and other related fields to provide a comprehensive understanding of surprise in organisational contexts. They explore the cognitive and emotional mechanisms that underlie surprise and identify how key factors – such as organisational memory and emotional capabilities – shape how it is experienced and managed within organisations.Read the full paperImproving disease surveillance in Sub-Saharan AfricaPathogen genomic sequencing is central to disease surveillance, enabling laboratories to track the spread of diseases and inform public health responses. A study by Luk Van Wassenhove and his co-authors evaluates two types of donor interventions aimed at improving underdeveloped pathogen genomic sequencing supply chains in Sub-Saharan Africa: in-kind donations and supply chain management capability-building. The study, published in the International Journal of Operations & Production Management, revealed that although in-kind donations can mitigate acute shortages, frequent use risks creating dependency and suppressing learning. In contrast, supply chain management capability-building brings more sustainable improvements, particularly for laboratories that are unlikely to improve without external support.Read the full paperWell-designed fiscal rules are no silver bulletFiscal rules have been shown to improve government budget balances and restrain debt growth. But while they generally improve a country’s cyclically adjusted primary balance, their impact depends on both the time horizon and the context in which they are adopted, according to research by Antonio Fatás and his co-authors published in the Journal of International Money and Finance.In advanced economies and countries with strong political institutions, the effects strengthen over time. But in emerging markets and developing economies – especially those with weaker institutions – their impact tends to fade as time passes. This suggests that fiscal rules introduced during periods of economic hardship or under highly concentrated political power are often less effective in the medium term.Read the full paperHow firms redeploy assets in response to industry shocksHow should firms respond when a core industry experiences a downturn? Research by Aldona Kapačinskaitė, published in the Strategic Management Journal, examines how energy giants reacted to the 2014 oil price crash. Focusing on oil and gas companies that diversified into wind power, she shows that these firms reduced investment in oil and gas – especially in offshore projects – while increasing investment in wind power.Importantly, firms were more likely to invest in newer, higher-capacity wind technologies when these could be co-located with existing offshore oil and gas assets. This shows how firms facing industry shocks redeploy resources into more promising sectors. However, their willingness to do so may depend on the possibility of leveraging existing assets – meaning that market-based incentives alone may be insufficient to drive the switch to renewable energy sources.Read the full paperThe ties that bind less hierarchical firmsInstead of depending on traditional forms of managerial hierarchy to align the work of employees, can strong cultures – made up of systems of widely shared beliefs and values – do the job? To investigate this, Phanish Puranam and his co-author analysed 1.5 million Glassdoor employee reviews and 42 million professional social media profiles from 23,000 American firms.Their research, published in the Strategic Management Journal, found that organisations with stronger cultures do indeed have a lower proportion of managers to total employees. This suggests that attempts to flatten organisational hierarchies by eliminating layers of managers is more likely to succeed if accompanied by efforts to build strong cultures. This can be facilitated in various ways, including the careful selection and socialisation of employees.Read the full paper]]></description>
                  <pubDate>Mon, 16 Feb 2026 01:10:00 +0000</pubDate>
                  <guid isPermaLink="false"> 48336 at https://knowledge.insead.edu</guid>
                  <comments> https://knowledge.insead.edu/leadership-organisations/insead-insights-strong-cultures-supply-chains-and-surprise#comments</comments>
                <enclosure url="https://knowledge.insead.edu/sites/knowledge/files/styles/panoramic_large/public/2026-02/shutterstock_2100721102.jpg?itok=afP9-t-x" type="image/jpeg" length="1008987" /><dc:creator>Lily Fang</dc:creator></item>
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