Brain for Business

Internationally, healthy adults are consistently falling below national and international recommendations for physical activity and failing to meet guidelines for dietary intake. Interventions to address behaviour change in these fields typically target clinically at-risk individuals, yet these do not always work and obesity levels in developed countries continue to rise with significant implications for both individuals and societies. So what then are some of the barriers and facilitators to healthy eating and exercise, and how can we as societies help people to sustain positive physical activity and healthy eating behaviour change?To explore this I am delighted to be joined by Dr Sarah Snuggs of the University of Reading.Drawing on a novel online community health programme and survey, recent research undertaken by Sarah and colleagues (https://psyarxiv.com/pq4bs/) across five countries found that:-Key motivators for positive health behaviours include enjoyment of health behaviours, positive emotions before and after activities, and clear reward structures-Barriers included difficulties with habit-breaking, giving in to temptation and negative affective states, i.e. a bad mood!-Changes in physical activity and eating behaviour were mutually supportive-Those with a high BMI placed more importance on social motivators (e.g. social pressure) than those with healthy BMISarah and colleagues consequently concluded interventions to support adults who are not chronically ill but who would benefit from improved diet and/or increased physical activity should not focus exclusively on health as a motivating factor. Emphasis on enjoyable behaviours, social engagement and the role of reward will likely improve engagement and sustained behaviour change. About Sarah…Dr Sarah Snuggs is a Chartered Health Psychologist and Lecturer in the School of Psychology & Clinical Language Sciences at the University of Reading. Her research interests include children and family eating behaviours and other health behaviours.You can find out more about Sarah’s work and research at these sites:-https://research.reading.ac.uk/kids-food-choices/ -Twitter: @sarah_snuggs-Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/familyfoodin5/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In a 2019 article published in Business Horizons our guest today on the Brain for Business podcast, Dr Adrian Klammer, together with colleagues Thomas Grisold and Stefan Gueldenberg argued that organisations need to introduce a “stop doing” culture. But what is a “stop doing culture”? and what does it mean for leaders and their organisations?Originally from Austria, Adrian has a doctorate in business economics from the University of Liechtenstein and is affiliated with the Liechtenstein Business School. Adrian’s academic research is focused on Organizational unlearning and learning in different contexts, especially innovation; Organizational change; Organizational development. Adrian has published widely in top tier journals including Harvard Business Review, California Management Review, Business Horizons, Management Learning, Industrial Marketing Management, Journal of Knowledge Management, International Journal of Innovation Management, European Journal of Innovation Management.The article discussed – Introducing a ‘Stop Doing’ Culture: How to free your organization from rigidity – can be accessed here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0007681319300357 You can find out more about Adrian’s work via these links:LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/adrian-klammer/ Google Scholar – https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=FavrW2IAAAAJ University of Liechtenstein – https://www.uni.li/en/who-s-who/@@person_detail/1531774.67 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Like many podcasts, Brain for Business is based around a conversation – a conversation between me as host and the various guests who join us. Each are experts in their fields and through the conversations that ensue we try to delve deep into their research as well as into their way of seeing and understanding the world around them, most particularly as it relates to the questions that they have chose to explore.It consequently made perfect sense for us to interview our guest today, Professor Shane O’Mara. Shane has not only played a key role in the Brain for Business initiative – both the events and the podcast – but more importantly for today’s conversation his latest book, “Talking Heads: The new science of how conversation shapes our worlds”, explores the impact that conversation has on our our worlds!Shane O’Mara is Professor of Experimental Brain Research at Trinity College, Dublin - the University of Dublin. He is a Principal Investigator in, and was formerly director of the Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience, one of Europe’s leading research centres for neuroscience and is also a Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator and a Science Foundation Ireland Principal Investigator. Shane has published more than 140 peer-reviewed academic papers as well as a number of books including “Why Torture Doesn’t Work”, “A Brain for Business, A Brain for Life, and “In Praise of Walking”.“Talking Heads: The new science of how conversation shapes our worlds” is published by Bodley Head and is released in Europe on 3rd August, 2023. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I first came across the work of today’s guest one Monday morning at around 4am as I browsed the website for The Guardian newspaper on my phone. Unlike some people who make a point of waking that early in order to get a head start on the week, for me this was just another Monday morning when I woke far too early with far too many thoughts about work buzzing through my head. What perhaps made it worse is that I had also struggled to get to sleep early the night before as those same thoughts kept spinning around!To discuss this phenomenon, sometimes called the Sunday Night Blues, I am delighted to be joined by Professor Ilke Inceoglu. About Ilke…Professor Ilke Inceoglu is a Professor in Organisational Behaviour & HR and Director of the Exeter Centre for Leadership at the University of Exeter Business School. Her research focuses on employee well-being and work behaviour, and has been published in leading journals such as Leadership Quarterly, Journal of Occupational Health Psychology and Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.Ilke is currently also Primary Investigator on the ongoing Banishing the Sunday Night Blues research programme commissioned by Channel 4 in the UK and delivered in close partnership with Investors in People. The Banishing the Sunday Night Blues project aims to investigate the experience and impact of the Sunday Night Blues and develop a toolkit with guidance for employees, line managers and HR Directors to help banish the Sunday Night Blues.You can find out more about the Banishing the Sunday Night Blues research project at these links:https://news.exeter.ac.uk/faculty-of-environment-science-and-economy/sunday-night-blues-caused-by-weekend-emails-and-blurred-boundaries-study-reveals/https://business-school-expertise.exeter.ac.uk/banishing-the-sunday-night-blues/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sometimes in life things go wrong… mistakes, accidents, even disasters will occur. From festivals that fail due to poor advance planning, product launches that simply fail to, well, launch through to public construction projects that seem to drag on for ever and end up costing much more than originally envisaged. And typically when things do go wrong there are calls for inquiries, accountability and the apportionment of blame, sometimes leading to demands for heads to roll. To explore these questions further and to dig deeper into the question of blame games, we are joined on the Brain for Business podcast by Assistant Professor Sandra Resodihardjo of Radboud University.About Sandra…Sandra Resodihardjo is an Assistant Professor of Public Administration at the Institute for Management Research, Radboud University. Her research focuses on questions relating to safety/security issues and public policy. Sandra has written on agenda-setting, policy reform, inquiries, local safety policies, and blame games following crises. Sandra is currently working on resilience & crisis management, blame games, and NGOs and disaster management.For more information on Sandra’s work on Blame Games, take a look at the following links:Google scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=PxO8KoYAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao Read Sandra’s book Crises, Inquiries and the Politics of Blame: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-17531-3Or read Sandra’s latest open access chapter Blame Games. Stories of Crises, Causes, and Culprits: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/oa-edit/10.4324/9780429355950-25/blame-games-sandra-resodihardjo Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A recent project in the US sought to map collective wellbeing. Supported by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Mapping Collective Wellbeing Project aimed to better understand the wellbeing ecosystem in the United States and globally. In so doing, the project aimed to address a number of key questions: “How do we co-create a vision and appreciation of the roles we play in working toward collective wellbeing? What might deepen, strengthen, and broaden this work? Where are there connections in unlikely places? Where and how do we begin?To explore the question of collective wellbeing in greater detail, I am delighted to be joined by Theo Edmonds who contributed to that research.About Theo…Theo Edmonds is a skilled, energetic Culture Futurist™ and innovator with over 25 years senior-level strategic national and international leadership experience spanning the private, public, and nonprofit sectors. A seasoned communicator, Theo’s unconventional background traverses and connects scholarly research with pop culture across scientific disciplines, data analytics, creativity, and cultural wellbeing in the places we work, learn, heal, and explore. As Directing co-founder of University of Colorado Denver’s Imaginator Academy - a cultural analytics, strategy, and futurist innovation hub, Theo is a weaver of ideas who scouts global networks of entrepreneurs, companies, scientists, artists, creative innovators, and change-makers of all kinds in order to find hidden opportunities that others miss.An experienced builder of industry-university collaborations, Theo and collaborators have been recognized across many areas – ranging from “Trailblazer” awards in research for culture analytics innovation inside a National Science Foundation-sponsored lab to a number of national grants and vision awards in arts and creative economy.You can find out more about Theo and his work at: www.theoedmonds.comMore information about the Mapping Collective Wellbeing Project is available on their website: https://mappingcollectivewellbeing.org/Details of the Brain Capital Innovation Summit can be accessed here: https://www.broadreach-global.com/braincapital Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Over the last few years of the Covid pandemic we all became used to the idea of contagion and, in particular, how viruses spread through communities. But have you ever thought about how change – most especially behavioural change – spreads through networks, societies and, indeed, organisations? To explore this further we are joined on the Brain for Business podcast by one of the world's leading thinkers in this area, Professor Damon Centola.About our guest…Damon Centola is the Elihu Katz Professor of Communication, Sociology and Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is Director of the Network Dynamics Group and Senior Fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics. Damon’s research centers on social networks and behavior change. His work has received numerous scientific awards and, in addition to his positions at the University of Pennsylvania, is a fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University.Popular accounts of Damon’s work have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Wired, TIME, The Atlantic, Scientific American and CNN, among other outlets. He is a series editor for Princeton University Press and the author of How Behavior Spreads: The Science of Complex Contagions and Change: How to Make Big Things Happen.Damon’s U Penn webpage can be accessed here: https://www.asc.upenn.edu/people/faculty/damon-centola-phd The Scientific American article referred to in the interview is available here: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-25-revolution-how-big-does-a-minority-have-to-be-to-reshape-society/The underlying research in that article is available via this link: https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.aas8827 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It is now almost 20 years since the first podcast was launched, and if the available statistics are anything to go by, podcasts are definitely having a moment, with a reputed 2.5 million podcasts listed in Apple podcasts.When we think about who listens to podcasts, data from the US indicates that podcast listeners are 68% more likely to have a postgraduate degree, and 45% of podcast listeners have a household income over $250,000.And why do people listen to podcast? Apparently 74% of people listen to podcasts in order to learn new things.To discuss podcasts in more detail, and in particular consider how leaders can leverage business podcasts to enhance organizational performance, I am delighted to be joined by Professor Jake Waddingham.Jake Waddingham is an Assistant Professor of Management at McCoy College of Business at Texas State University. Jakes research explores how organizations and entrepreneurs manage stakeholder perceptions and his research has been published in the Journal of Management, Journal of International Business Studies and Business Horizons amongst others.Jake can be contacted via one of the following sites:•Google scholar - https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=XFWZXWYAAAAJ•LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jwaddingham/ The Business Horizon’s article referenced in the discussion is:Insights on the go: Leveraging business podcasts to enhance organizational performance by Jacob A. Waddingham, Miles A. Zachary, David J. Ketchen Jr. It is available to access here: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/339444655_Insights_on_the_go_Leveraging_business_podcasts_to_enhance_organizational_performanceThe podcast statistics quoted above are from this site: https://nealschaffer.com/podcast-statistics/The various podcasts mentioned during the discussion include:•Masters of Scale with Reid Hoffman – https://mastersofscale.com/•The Indicator from Planet Money - https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510325/the-indicator-from-planet-money•Worklife with Adam Grant – https://adamgrant.net/podcasts/work-life/•Business Wars with David Brown - https://wondery.com/shows/business-wars/•Freakonomics with Stephen Dubner – https://freakonomics.com/series/freakonomics-radio/ •Econtalk with Russ Roberts - https://www.econlib.org/econtalk/ •Axios Sports with Kendall Baker – https://www.axios.com/authors/kbaker Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We all know that to a certain extent cultures differ between countries. When we travel or work with people from different backgrounds we often gain unexpected insights into different traditions and different ways of doing things. Yet what is “culture”? How can it be understood? And how can leaders strengthen their Cultural Intelligence and that of the organisations they lead? To dig a bit deeper into these questions I am delighted to be joined on the programme by Professor Eimear Nolan of Trinity Business School.Eimear Nolan is Assistant Professor of International Business and Director of the Flexible Executive MBA at Trinity Business School in Dublin. She gained her PhD in International Management from the University of Limerick, where she investigated the cultural adjustment and fit of internationally trained doctors working in Ireland. Prior to joining Trinity Business School Eimear held academic positions in the UK and the USA. Eimear is a co-country investigator (for Ireland and the UK) on the world renowned GLOBE Project 2020. Her research interests are in expatriate adjustment, cultural intelligence, recruitment and retention strategies, ethics, and the health care sector. You can find out more about Eimear’s work here:-Culture Shocked Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/3bD8L2mrm66hcfmxPkmqJG -LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eimear-nolan/-The Globe 2020 Project: https://www.globeproject.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

While often seen as discrete and distinct phenomena, could it be that creativity and innovation are just variations on the same theme? Absolutely yes, says Dr Zorana Ivčević Pringle, and what is more rather than being purely logical and rational processes, both creativity and innovation are impacted by emotions in ways that many of us fail to recognise. Starting with a deceptively simple definition of creativity, this episode of Brain for Business charts a course from personal creativity and problem solving through to the role of leaders in supporting greater creativity and innovation in the teams and organisations they lead. Along the way, we discuss innovation in a hospital context and the creativity of some of history’s great artists, not to mention the important role played by emotional contagion and leader self-compassion. Dr Zorana Ivčević Pringle is a Senior Research Scientist at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. Zorana studies the role of emotion and emotional intelligence in creativity and well-being, as well as how to use the arts (and art-related institutions) to promote emotion and creativity skills. Zorana has published her research in journals such as Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Journal of Personality, Applied Cognitive Psychology, Creativity Research Journal, Journal of Creative Behavior and others. Her work has been featured in the Harvard Business Review, ArtNet, US News, Education Week, Science Daily, El Pais, and others, and she is a regular contributor to Psychology Today and Creativity Post. You can find out more about Zorana's work at these links: Personal website: https://www.zorana-ivcevic-pringle.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zorana-ivcevic-pringle/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/ZoranaPsychUpdate 30th October, 2023 - Zorana has just launched a Substack newsletter which definitely worth subscribing to! creativitydecision.substack.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.