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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