Original Thinking Podcast

Knowledge-intensive startups are well known to be a source of novel technological innovations and economic growth. Yet, such startups face significant challenges when trying to grow and become large global technological leaders and many of them fail.

In this talk, Niron Hashai, visiting Professor of International Business at Alliance MBS, goes over 20 years of his own work on the topic and addresses the question of how knowledge-intensive start-ups can successfully grow to become industry leaders. 

He will explore the challenges knowledge-intensive firms face in terms of international expansion, new product introduction, and alliance formation at the wake of fierce competition from large foreign multinationals.

The podcast will be facilitated by Mario Kafouros, Professor of International Business and Innovation and Head of the CIB group at Alliance MBS.

Today’s podcast was recorded at a special Women Leading in Business webinar in partnership with WIN Manchester.

Opened by Alliance MBS’s Head of School, Fiona Devine, and hosted by Claire-Marie Boggiano, we hear from three keynote speakers - Kristin Engvig, CEO & Founder of WIN & the WIN Conference, Lucy Danger, CEO of EMERGE and Nazir Afzal OBE, International Adviser on Rule of Law & Former Chief Prosecutor – who give their take on the conference’s theme this year ‘Leading with courage’.

In this annual Grigor McClelland podcast, we will explore how current business practices are encouraging short-termism, ignoring nature and harming customers.

The sense that capitalism needs to change, post-pandemic, reflects widespread concerns about the way business operates. In particular, many sectors of the economy are increasingly dominated by big companies, and this has been accompanied by the productivity slowdown, an absence of pay increases - except for executives - and a sense that innovation has stopped benefiting consumers. There are calls for businesses to rediscover their sense of corporate purpose and sign up to ESG reporting. But while businesses should of course behave ethically, a reset of the social contract requires governments to play an important part. Shaping the kind of market society we want after the pandemic involves political choices, not just technical measurement frameworks.

The podcast will be given by Professor Diane Coyle, Bennett Professor of Public Policy, University of Cambridge. Diane was a Professor of Economics at the University of Manchester from 2014 – 18. She played a pivotal role in bringing the Productivity Institute to AMBS and now sits on its leadership team.

This series was introduced in our 50th Anniversary year in 2015 in honour of the School’s founding Director, Professor Grigor McClelland. During his twelve years as Director and Professor of Business Administration at Manchester Business School, Grigor shaped management and education for the next generation. He was a strong advocate of the principle that business cannot be divorced from society and that managers should be ethical and socially responsible.

Our previous guest speakers for this series include Co-op Group’s CEO Steve Murrells; Sir George Bain, former Chair of the Low Pay Commission which introduced the Minimum Wage in 1998; Craig Bennett, Chief Executive of Friends of the Earth; Torsten Bell, Director of the Resolution Foundation, Anna Dixon, Chief Executive of Ageing Better and Martin Wolf, Chief Economics Commentator at the Financial Times. All have based the core themes of their lectures on this principle.

Facilitating the event, Bruce Tether, Professor of Innovation Management, Alliance MBS.

In the unique and challenging world of a global pandemic, the continuity of services and organisational resilience has been critical to maintaining successful operations for both response organisations, providers of essential local services and critical infrastructure (including travel).

In this, the first in a three-part series of podcasts co-produced with the British Standards Institute (BSI), we examine the inter-dependencies between business continuity and resilience planning, and look at how we will move beyond the responses to the Covid-19 pandemic. Our speakers will share their views on the key opportunities for enhancing continuity and resilience and the perspectives of local government, organisational resilience development, small business networks and travel risk management sectors.

Panel:

Nicola Dawson - Public sector resilience for responding organisations, Somerset County Council

Rick Cudworth – Organisational resilience, Deloitte

Hannah Tankard – Resilience of small business networks, Business in the Community

Kevin Myers – Managing Travel Risks , International Standards Organisation

Hosted by David Powell - Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute (HCRI), University of Manchester

Looking to make new connections and speak with other inspiring and aspiring business people?

Brush up on your people skills and join us online for the networking event of the month! Speak to like-minded business women for an amazing online event. Discuss your ideas, share your knowledge and your expertise. Prepare your digital business cards and make new connections in an informal setting.

 This month we will be joined by Codilia Gapare, an entrepreneurial breast cancer survivor who has revolutionised the beauty industry by creating the first ever false lashes range for chemotherapy patients.

The mother-of-two had always dreamed of becoming a lawyer and started studying when she came to the UK from Zimbabwe. Hours before her interview for University, Codilia was diagnosed with cancer at the age of 36, and it was through this intensely difficult time in her life that she realised that there were no fake eyelash options for cancer patients.

Codilia transformed her idea into an actual product, ‘C-Lash’, and partnered with beauty brand Eylure. The company has since launched the range in the UK, USA, Australia, Finland, Norway, Sweden and Poland, making the cosmetic industry more accessible for women with cancer. C-Lash won several awards including National Diversity Award - Entrepreneur of Excellence 2019 and Allure USA - Breakthrough Award 2020.

Sponsored by DWF and Capita, Vital Topics is Alliance MBS' series of prestigious business lectures, bringing powerful ideas and original thinking to audiences from the Manchester city-region and beyond.

The next Vital Topics event takes an in-depth look at how industry and academia are working increasingly closely to tackle the huge challenges – technical, economic, and social - around cyber security.

Such challenges are rapidly evolving for businesses across all sectors, not least because of the rapid acceleration of online services across a vast swathe of sectors in the wake of the pandemic. During our debate we will bring together leading figures from industry, government and academia to discuss these issues, and also look at the relationship between cyber security and productivity.

Panel:

Alban Tramard, Chief Information Security Officer, The Hut Group

Victoria Knight, Greater Manchester Cyber Advisory Group

Dr Elvira Uyarra, Reader in Innovation Policy and Strategy, Alliance Manchester Business School

Professor Adam Joinson, Director of the UKRI Digital Security by Design Social Science Hub

Chair: Emma Barrett, Professor of Psychology, Security & Trust, University of Manchester

In the latest of our series of podcasts (in partnership with The International Emergency Managers Society – TIEMS, and Capacity Building International - CBI) our speakers will explore more of the key lessons and themes that have emerged from the Covid-19 crisis, concentrating on the perspectives of strengthening resilience planning and the implications for the emergency management profession going forward.

We will examine how Covid-19 has required different ways of resilience partnership working in the UK, placing new demands on emergency managers; the dynamics of national direction of responses to a health-led emergency, and some of the early challenges of planning for recovery and renewal at the local level.

In introducing a subject that we will explore in further detail with TIEMS, later in this series, we also ask the question of how prepared for Covid-19 the Emergency Management profession feels it was, the challenges that may have arisen for members of TIEMS, and the opportunities for further enhancing the work of the profession.

Panel:

Duncan Shaw - Professor of Operational Research and Critical Systems, Alliance Manchester Business School

David Powell - Principal Advisor in Recovery, Renewal, Resilience, Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute

Harald Dragar – President of The International Emergency Managers Society (TIEMS)

In April 2020, at the height of the first wave of COVID-19 across Europe, academics at Alliance Manchester Business School and the Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute at The University of Manchester launched The Manchester Briefing, a UK funded research project influencing global and local recovery and renewal strategies.

A year on from when the crisis first struck, this special podcast is specifically aimed at students who are interested in hearing how academic research can have a real-world impact through the application of tools, theories and social science.

Our speakers will explore the key lessons and themes that have emerged from the crisis, talk through the societal benefits of this important and timely academic work, and share their views on the big questions that the world faces right now. What makes Covid-19 so different from other disasters? What we are learning from global responses and early recovery efforts? And how do you develop specific guidance on recovery, renewal, resilience?

After the presentations students are given the opportunity to engage with our panellists through a Q&A session.

Panel:

Duncan Shaw - Professor of Operational Research and Critical Systems, Alliance Manchester Business School

David Powell - Principal Advisor in Recovery, Renewal, Resilience, Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute

Roisin Jordan – Project Co-ordinator in Recovery, Renewal, Resilience, University of Manchester

Dr Nat O’Grady – Lecturer in Human Geography and Disaster, Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute

Hosted by Claire-Marie Boggiano, Lurig Change & Development

Looking to make new connections and meet other inspiring and aspiring business people?

Brush up on your people skills and come join us for the networking event of the month! Meet like-minded business women for an amazing event in Manchester. Discuss your ideas, share your knowledge and your expertise. Bring along your business cards and make new connections in an informal setting.

We will hear from Heather Waters, Enterprise Manager, Natwest. With over 20 years B2B experience, Heather is now part of the Women In Business team developing and delivering the strategy to support female entrepreneurs across the U.K.

Following the launch of the Rose Review, her role will see her working with key national and regional organisations that support female entrepreneurship to start and scale. This will include the Back Her Business Programme.

This episode will be hosted by Mark Healey, Professor of Strategic Management at Alliance MBS. His research focuses on cognition in organisations, particularly applied to strategic decision making and the wider strategic management process.

What does it take to think and act strategically? Strategic thinking is one of the most coveted skills in business but it remains poorly understood.

In this lecture, Mark will argue that the classical view of the strategic thinker as an aloof cool calculator provides a misleading view of the skills required for effective strategic thinking and action in today’s dynamic and complex business world. Rather, we need to see strategic thinking as an adaptive, embodied and collective process, which involves regulating the thoughts and feelings of oneself and others to think and act flexibly in an increasingly changeable world. Mark will draw on his own research to examine what we know about the capability for strategic thinking – and what more we need to know.