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Professor Sim Sitkin explains why leaders need to explain difficult decisions and acknowledge conflicting expectations to build trust You expect a company to deliver consistent service, but you also want it to adapt when your needs change. You want a company to listen to your opinions, but you also expect it to rely on experts when making decisions. These competing expectations can erode trust even when an institution has done nothing intentionally wrong. In this episode, Professor Sim Sitkin of Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business discusses why institutions lose trust and how leaders can address the contradictions behind that erosion. A professor of management and faculty director of Fuqua’s Coach K Center on Leadership and Ethics, Sitkin explains how trust makes everyday life more functional and enables collaboration. Trust is “a willingness to be vulnerable under conditions of uncertainty,” he said. When people trust an institution, they can rely on it without constantly questioning whether their interests will be protected. Sitkin identifies five inherent contradictions institutions face: stability versus adaptability, inclusion versus exclusivity, standardization versus customization, expertise and authority versus participation, and protection of sensitive information versus transparency. Meeting one expectation can violate another. For example, customers may expect quick, standardized service while also wanting special treatment for their individual needs. To address these tensions, Sitkin outlines four actions: explore people’s concerns, explain the contradictions and the institution’s responses, experiment with different approaches, and execute decisions well. Leaders should understand what makes people feel vulnerable and explain why difficult choices are necessary. His leadership research shows that leaders do not explain enough, and those with more power explain less. “I need to explain if I want to get trust,” he said. When a department must absorb budget cuts for the organization to survive, leaders should explain the alternatives considered and provide support to those affected. For business leaders, building trust requires ongoing interaction, acknowledging mistakes and being willing to adjust as circumstances change. Sitkin points to distrust in science and universities as examples of why explaining experimentation matters: new findings can improve today’s best answer. For MBA students, he recommends learning from classmates who disagree with them and choosing courses and projects that stretch their abilities. Trying unfamiliar approaches, including those that fail, can create opportunities to learn. Duke Fuqua Insights features digestible conversations with our faculty about the most impactful research from their careers, including studies they teach in Fuqua classes. New episodes every other week in season. For more from Duke Fuqua, visit us on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Bluesky, and the Duke Fuqua Insights newsletter.

Professor Xu Jiang explains how disclosure rules shape companies’ decisions, competition and the way investors process information. Corporate disclosures include more than financial statements. Companies also share information about environmental, social and governance activities, product development and other issues that matter to investors, employees, customers and suppliers. But deciding how much to disclose can be difficult: information that excites investors may also help competitors piece together a company’s strategy. In this episode, Professor Xu Jiang of Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business discusses how mandatory and voluntary disclosure affect companies and their stakeholders. Regulators establish minimum requirements, but companies retain discretion over what they consider “material” and how much detail to provide. Pharmaceutical companies, for example, may use press releases to share progress on a drug before they can recognize related revenue in their financial statements. The frequency of disclosure can also influence managerial decisions. If companies report earnings every quarter, managers may face pressure to meet analysts’ forecasts by cutting promising research and development projects. Reporting less frequently may reduce that pressure, but more frequent reporting can also help investors monitor managers and discourage them from using company resources for projects that do not benefit shareholders. “The important trade-offs are how would the disclosure affect the firm's real investment decisions, and how would that affect competitors' investments — which may in turn further affect the firms’ decisions,” Jiang said. The way information is presented matters, too. Detailed disclosures may benefit institutional investors with the resources to analyze them, while making it harder for individual investors to find important information. In some cases, less detailed disclosures such as summaries may reduce this gap. For MBA students and business leaders, Jiang emphasizes the importance of considering managers’ incentives and the long-term effects of disclosure rules. “Do not get easily fooled by the manager,” he said. Sometimes, improved earnings may reflect cost-cutting “that sacrifices the firm’s long-term future.” Duke Fuqua Insights features digestible conversations with our faculty about the most impactful research from their careers, including studies they teach in Fuqua classes. New episodes every other week in season. For more from Duke Fuqua, visit us on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Bluesky, and the Duke Fuqua Insights newsletter.

Professor Rick Larrick explains how to focus on high-impact climate decisions and communicate them effectively. Climate change can leave people feeling that they must do everything or that nothing they do matters. The scale of the problem, other people’s inaction, and alarming media coverage can all make people feel overwhelmed and lead them to avoid thinking about climate altogether. In this episode, Professor Rick Larrick discusses a more practical approach: focusing on environmental decisions that have the greatest impact. Larrick, whose research examines judgment, decision making, social psychology, organizational behavior, and environmental decisions, also describes his forthcoming course in Duke’s Master in Business, Climate and Sustainability. Larrick identifies transportation, food, and home heating as three large categories of personal carbon emissions. For transportation, he points to driving less when possible and considering the next car purchase; for food, he highlights eating less beef and moving toward more plant-based protein. For homes, he describes opportunities such as heat pumps, insulation, and smaller homes that require less heating. The goal is not an all-or-nothing approach. “The perfect can be the enemy of the good,” Larrick says. He contrasts high-impact choices with actions with little impact on carbon emissions, such as recycling and turning off lights. He cites “single-action bias”: when people choose one visible environmental action, they may feel they have done enough while in fact they are leaving more substantive sources of emissions untouched. Larrick’s research on the “miles-per-gallon illusion” shows why the metric can lead consumers to overlook the largest fuel savings. Replacing a 10-mpg vehicle with a 20-mpg one saves five gallons per 100 miles, while replacing a 20-mpg vehicle with a 50-mpg only saves three. The biggest gains, he says, come from moving vehicles out of the teens and into the 20-to-30-mpg range. To make those savings clearer, updated vehicle labels show five-year fuel use, cost, and how a vehicle compares with the average. In Duke’s Master in Business, Climate and Sustainability program, Larrick will focus on how people with environmental knowledge can influence organizations, even when they are not the ones making the final decisions. The course will examine how to communicate environmental issues so that others understand their value and why they should care, helping students shape better decisions with good information. Duke Fuqua Insights features digestible conversations with our faculty about the most impactful research from their careers, including studies they teach in Fuqua classes. New episodes every other week in season. For more from Duke Fuqua, visit us on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Bluesky, and the Duke Fuqua Insights newsletter.

Professor David McAdams explores how information overload changes what we know, with lower-quality ideas receiving less scrutiny before spreading Every day, people decide which headlines to read, which social media posts to believe, and which recommendations deserve attention. As information becomes faster and cheaper to produce, the challenge is deciding what is worth trusting. In this episode of Fuqua Insights Podcast, Professor David McAdams of Duke University's Fuqua School of Business discusses his research on how information spreads through social interactions and what happens when the volume of information overwhelms people's limited attention. Drawing on game theory and what he describes as economic epidemiology, McAdams centers the conversation on his recent paper examining how changes in the information environment shape collective knowledge. The paper's central finding is that increasing the volume of information can reduce the reliability of what people collectively know. McAdams argues that information spreads through "social transmission chains," where people decide whether to remember, share, or ignore what they encounter. As more information floods the system, people have less capacity to process each idea, causing those transmission chains to become shorter. The result is a trade-off in which "people know more, but they're dumber," he said. McAdams explains that limited attention is the mechanism driving this outcome. Because people cannot fully process an endless stream of information, they rely less on careful social filtering. "When there's an abundance of information, there's a scarcity of attention," he explains. With fewer opportunities for information to be evaluated and passed through multiple people, ideas receive less scrutiny before spreading. He also notes that AI may further change this dynamic by making information easier to produce, access, and summarize, while also reshaping how people interact with information networks. McAdams emphasizes that organizations should intentionally design how information is shared rather than relying on informal conversations alone. He points to approaches that encourage independent judgment, structured evaluation, and thoughtful dissemination of information before decisions are made. At the same time, he notes that social interactions remain valuable because they help refine and improve ideas over time. As organizations increasingly adopt AI tools and navigate growing information flows, designing effective information environments becomes an increasingly important leadership challenge. Duke Fuqua Insights features digestible conversations with our faculty about the most impactful research from their careers, including studies they teach in Fuqua classes. New episodes every other week in season. For more from Duke Fuqua, visit us on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Bluesky, and the Duke Fuqua Insights newsletter.

Professor Sharon Belenzon examines how the U.S. innovation ecosystem became fragmented and why large firms still have a role to help solve today's technological challenges How should the United States organize its innovation ecosystem to solve the biggest scientific and technological challenges? According to Professor Sharon Belenzon, the answer depends not only on funding research, but also on how different organizations—from universities to startups to large corporations—work together to translate science into products. In this episode of Duke Fuqua Insights Podcast, Belenzon, a strategy professor at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, discusses the mechanics of government procurement alongside ideas from his forthcoming book, Inventing Prosperity, on the past 150 years of American innovation. He argues that understanding today's innovation challenges requires understanding how the U.S. innovation system has changed, from one in which large firms carried out many stages of innovation to one in which specialized organizations perform different tasks.  Belenzon explains that this more specialized model has produced important successes in some sectors, particularly the life sciences, where different organizations can efficiently contribute their expertise. But he argues that other fields—including materials science, battery technology, and clean energy—may require a greater degree of vertical integration, with large firms serving as anchors of the innovation ecosystem. His research on government procurement offers a complementary example of how organizational structure influences innovation, showing that under specific conditions, government procurement contracts can create incentives for firms to pursue ambitious technological challenges. A central takeaway is that firms with both research and manufacturing capabilities can, in certain circumstances, organize innovation more efficiently than separating those activities across different organizations. As Belenzon puts it, "Some problems cannot be solved by startups alone," and policymakers should avoid treating all large firms the same. Instead, they should identify those that serve as anchors for scientific and technological progress.  For business leaders, the conversation offers a framework for thinking about innovation beyond R&D spending alone. Organizational design, incentives, and the relationships among firms, universities, investors, and government all shape whether scientific discoveries become technologies with broad economic impact.  Duke Fuqua Insights features digestible conversations with our faculty about the most impactful research from their careers, including studies they teach in Fuqua classes. New episodes every other week in season. For more from Duke Fuqua, visit us on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Bluesky, and the Duke Fuqua Insights newsletter.

Professor Kimberly Wade-Benzoni explains how reflecting on long-term impact shapes motivation, behavior, and decision-making Many people ask themselves, “does my work actually matter?” Concerns about engagement, burnout, and job satisfaction are common, and they relate to a basic need to feel that work has an impact not only today, but also in the future.  In this episode of Fuqua Insights Podcast, Professor Kimberly Wade-Benzoni of Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business discusses her research on the psychology of legacy. She defines legacy as “an enduring impact attached to one’s identity that persists after one has left the context in which the lasting effect was created.” Her research examines how thinking about legacy influences decisions, especially those involving tradeoffs between present and future outcomes.  One of the main findings of Wade-Benzoni’s research is that when people reflect on the legacy they want to leave, their work feels more meaningful. They are also more satisfied in their jobs and more likely to help others. These results come from studies showing that activating legacy motivation can produce positive outcomes in workplace settings.  Legacy reflection changes how people think about their work. As Wade-Benzoni explains, “it’s a way that our actions can have impact that outlasts our individual lives.” This process allows people to think about how part of their identity can continue through others, which helps create meaning and shifts attention from immediate tasks to longer-term goals.  The research also identifies practical applications. A structured reflection exercise—for example, asking individuals to write about how they want to be remembered and the impact they want to have—can activate legacy thinking. This approach can be used in leadership development, career planning, and other organizational contexts. It also encourages people to behave in a more future-oriented and other-oriented way, helping counter short-term, self-focused decision-making, and supporting more meaningful and lasting impact. Duke Fuqua Insights features digestible conversations with our faculty about the most impactful research from their careers, including studies they teach in Fuqua classes. New episodes every other week in season. For more from Duke Fuqua, visit us on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Bluesky, and the Duke Fuqua Insights newsletter.

Professor John Graham explores how AI is affecting productivity, hiring, and firm strategy based on new CFO survey data Artificial intelligence is everywhere—from automating routine tasks to generating insights in seconds. Yet despite the hype and anxiety, especially around job loss, the real impact of AI on companies may be more nuanced than headlines suggest. In this episode of Duke Fuqua Insights, Professor John Graham of Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business draws on data from The CFO Survey, which included responses from nearly 750 financial executives across industries. The survey, conducted in late 2025, asked how firms are currently using AI and what they expect in 2026. By focusing on CFOs—"leaders who know what the spending is on AI,” Graham said—the research offers a grounded perspective on how AI is affecting productivity, workforce composition, and investment decisions.  The central finding: AI is expected to boost productivity without causing widespread job losses—at least in the near term. CFOs forecast productivity gains of up to 3% in 2026, “a significant increase,” Graham said, while overall employment remains largely stable. Instead of mass layoffs, firms anticipate modest declines in routine clerical roles, partially offset by hiring in technical positions. Interestingly, the AI-driven productivity gains aren’t fully reflected in increased revenue forecasts. Graham points to a modern “productivity paradox.” As he explains, “we’re hearing more about productivity than we’re seeing it in the revenue numbers,” suggesting a lag between implementation and financial results. Companies may improve output per worker first, but it takes time for those gains to translate into sales due to production cycles and human-driven sales processes. For business leaders and MBA students, the implications are that AI’s value today lies less in cost-cutting and more in enhancing quality, innovation, and customer satisfaction. To students, Graham suggests focusing on core strengths: “Do what you do really well, and improve it through AI.” Technical skills are increasingly valuable, but equally important are critical thinking, communication, and the ability to interpret AI-generated outputs. In a world where “anybody can produce numbers,” the real advantage lies in understanding and explaining them.   Duke Fuqua Insights features digestible conversations with our faculty about the most impactful research from their careers, including studies they teach in Fuqua classes. New episodes every other week in season. For more from Duke Fuqua, visit us on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Bluesky, and the Duke Fuqua Insights newsletter.

Professor Jordan Etkin explains how “time-first budgeting” can help people improve performance and set smarter goals It’s a familiar pattern: You begin your morning with a lengthy to-do list and a plan to complete it, and somehow the day ends with unfinished tasks and a sense that time slipped away. Is there a better way? Professor Jordan Etkin, a consumer behavior scholar at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, explores why people consistently misjudge how much they can accomplish. Drawing on her research on motivation and performance, she proposes a simple shift: “time-first budgeting.” Instead of starting with goals and assuming the time will follow, she suggests beginning with a realistic assessment of how much time you have, then allocating it across tasks.  Etkin finds that people routinely overestimate how much they can do because they ignore real time constraints. In experiments, participants’ estimates of how long tasks would take exceeded their available time by as much as 50%. When people instead budget their time first, they set more realistic goals and report greater progress.  Etkin explains that people often fail to account for everything a task involves, from transitions to competing priorities. “If I'm thinking about a workout, I might not account for the getting to the gym piece, the washing my hands afterwards piece, needing a few minutes to clean up and move on with my day,” she said. Time-first budgeting works because it flips that process: “What if we start by thinking about what time I have available, and given that available time, how much time am I willing to spend on those different types of goals?” The approach applies broadly, from managing personal workloads to professional settings where colleagues depend on what you deliver. As Etkin puts it, “we can’t do things we don’t have time for,” making it critical to treat time as a finite resource when setting expectations. Duke Fuqua Insights features digestible conversations with our faculty about the most impactful research from their careers, including studies they teach in Fuqua classes. New episodes every other week in season. For more from Duke Fuqua, visit us on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Bluesky, and the Duke Fuqua Insights newsletter.

Marketers are increasingly pessimistic about the economy, with sentiment reaching its lowest level since the pandemic in 2020. In response—and facing organizational pressures for returns—marketing activities are contracting, lowering spending and prioritizing existing customers over expansion opportunities. At the same time, companies are accelerating adoption of artificial intelligence, projecting that AI will account for more than half of all marketing activities within three years. Yet this rapid technological progress is outpacing organizational readiness, with no marketing technology activity currently delivering at its full potential. These are among the findings of the 35th edition of The CMO Survey, directed by Professor Christine Moorman of Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and co-sponsored by Deloitte and the American Marketing Association. The survey was conducted from January 7 to January 29, 2026. It polled 308 marketing leaders at for-profit U.S. companies, 97% of whom are VP-level or higher. Duke Fuqua Insights features digestible conversations with our faculty about the most impactful research from their careers, including studies they teach in Fuqua classes. New episodes every other week in season. For more from Duke Fuqua, visit us on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Bluesky, and the Duke Fuqua Insights newsletter.

Professor Christine Moorman on why keeping marketing secrets may cost more than letting them go Companies spend billions safeguarding their marketing secrets—from customer insights to pricing algorithms—assuming these secrets are key to competitive advantage. The global data loss prevention market is valued at an estimated $1.5 to $2 billion annually and continues to grow. But does locking down knowledge undermine performance rather than protect it? In this episode of Duke Fuqua Insights, Professor Christine Moorman of Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, a leading scholar of marketing strategy and the director of The CMO Survey, examines whether protecting marketing knowledge is worth the cost. Drawing from in-depth interviews with senior executives across industries, Moorman and her co-authors explore how firms manage three types of marketing knowledge: customer and competitor insights, marketing plans, and marketing know-how, such as pricing algorithms. Their research challenges the conventional wisdom that tighter control always leads to stronger advantage. The research found that efforts to prevent knowledge leakage often generate significant costs, while the external benefits may be overstated. Firms frequently rely on “leakage prevention strategies” that restrict who can access or share information. But Moorman finds these controls can create a set of “hidden costs” that can undermine decision quality, slow execution, and even weaken morale. Protection can also unintentionally block learning as well as leaks. “If you put up all of these barriers, those same barriers are going to also prevent information from coming to you,” she said.  On the benefit side, Moorman points out that these benefits may be overestimated. The reason is that even when information escapes, competitors must first notice it, interpret it correctly, and have the resources to act on it before any real harm occurs.  Moorman suggests that instead of obsessing over preventing leaks, companies should first weigh a careful assessment of these costs and benefits. Companies should also consider alternative knowledge protection strategies that do not have these costs. These include investing in harm prevention strategies, like refreshing their marketing knowledge faster than competitors can use it, and out-executing rivals even when information escapes. Competitive advantage may depend less on secrecy and more on speed. Duke Fuqua Insights features digestible conversations with our faculty about the most impactful research from their careers, including studies they teach in Fuqua classes. New episodes every other week in season. For more from Duke Fuqua, visit us on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Bluesky, and the Duke Fuqua Insights newsletter.

Professor Anna Cieslak explains how central bank communication shapes financial markets, even when rates stay the same When the Federal Reserve meets, markets obsess over one question: Will interest rates go up or down? But sometimes, market moves happen even when rates don’t change at all. In uncertain times, a subtle shift in tone can ripple across global financial markets. In this episode of Duke Fuqua Insights Podcast, Professor Anna Cieslak of Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business explores how central bank communication shapes financial conditions beyond formal rate decisions.  Her research examines how the Fed uses “policy tilts”—signals about future intentions—to influence investor expectations and long-term interest rates. Drawing on decades of data—including the late 1990s productivity boom and the post-COVID recovery—her research shows how policy tilts shift investor risk perceptions and long-term Treasury yields, with effects that can rival formal rate decisions.    She explains that the Fed follows a “risk management approach,” assessing not just the most likely forecast but also low-probability, high-cost scenarios. By signaling vigilance, policymakers reduce fears that they will fall behind inflation. The stakes of getting communication right are high. In 2021, the Fed's 'lower for longer' messaging diverged from rising inflation concerns, tightening financial conditions even as rates held steady. As former Fed Chair Ben Bernanke observed, monetary policy is '98% talk and 2% action'—which means parsing Fed language is as important as watching the rate decision itself. Duke Fuqua Insights features digestible conversations with our faculty about the most impactful research from their careers, including studies they teach in Fuqua classes. New episodes every other week in season. For more from Duke Fuqua, visit us on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Bluesky, and the Duke Fuqua Insights newsletter.

Professor Elia Ferracuti explains how activist investors reshape corporate research, and why it matters for long-term innovation. Why would a company famous for breakthrough discoveries suddenly pull back from bold research in favor of safer bets? Research shows shareholder pressure plays a role. The tension between short-term financial pressure and long-term scientific progress is at the heart of many hedge-fund-led activist campaigns and may explain why companies retreat from basic research, with effects across the broader innovation ecosystem. In this episode, Professor Elia Ferracuti, an accounting scholar at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, discusses new research—co-authored by Fuqua’s Rahul Vashishtha and Kevin Standbridge of the University of Utah—on how hedge fund activism affects corporate science. Drawing on large-scale data linking activist investor campaigns to corporate research outputs, Ferracuti and his coauthors examine what happens inside firms after activists push for operational and governance changes. Their analysis spans multiple industries, with particularly rich evidence from pharmaceuticals, where innovation choices are easier to observe and compare.  The research found that after firms are targeted by activist hedge funds, they produce significantly less scientific research. Measured through publications in academic journals, corporate science declines overall—and drops most sharply in top-tier journals. In pharmaceuticals, targeted firms also shift away from novel drugs toward more incremental “me-too” compounds that closely resemble existing treatments. “Activism pushes corporations away from risky activities with long gestation periods and large spillovers,” Ferracuti said. Why does this happen? Hedge fund activists typically acquire minority stakes but exert outsized influence, pressing managers to boost near-term returns. According to Ferracuti, this pressure changes internal priorities: “Foundational scientific research may be among the first activities to go.” Because basic research is uncertain, slow to pay off, and often benefits society more than any single firm, it becomes vulnerable when managers face intense scrutiny to deliver quick results. The effects don’t stop with targeted firms. Rival companies in the same industry also scale back research, likely because they fear becoming the next activist target.  Shareholder activism can improve efficiency—but it also carries hidden costs for innovation, economic growth, and social welfare. Ferracuti cautions against “fiddling” with the functioning of capital markets, instead pointing to the growing importance of sustaining and incentivizing fundamental research, especially at universities, at a time when public support for science is under pressure.  Duke Fuqua Insights features digestible conversations with our faculty about the most impactful research from their careers, including studies they teach in Fuqua classes. New episodes every other week in season. For more from Duke Fuqua, visit us on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Bluesky, and the Duke Fuqua Insights newsletter.

Professor Simon Gervais explains how active managers can grow the economy, even when they don’t beat the market Many investors are told that active funds rarely outperform passive index funds after fees. So why bother paying for them?  In this episode of Duke Fuqua Insights podcast, Professor Simon Gervais, a financial economist at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, challenges the narrow way we evaluate active money management. Drawing on his paper, “Money Management and Real Investment”, Gervais argues that focusing only on fund returns misses a critical role active managers play in the economy: improving how capital is allocated across firms and industries. Rather than acting as passive observers, active managers influence real corporate investment decisions through the information embedded in stock prices.   The central insight of Gervais’s research is that active money managers can create economic value even if their funds generate negative net returns after fees. By trading on information about industries, competition, and macroeconomic trends, active managers help direct capital toward more productive uses. The result is a “bigger economic pie,” even if investors receive a slightly smaller slice of it.  Active managers trade on information that corporate executives may not fully have, pushing stock prices up or down. Firms then learn from these price movements and adjust investment decisions accordingly. As Gervais puts it, if a firm announces a merger and its stock went down, maybe that is the signal that the merger was a bad idea.  For MBA students and business leaders, the takeaway is a broader view of value creation. Passive investors may benefit indirectly from better capital allocation, but unlike active managers, they don’t automatically adjust as the economy changes. The research calls into question how regulators, investors, and institutions evaluate asset managers. If active management improves productivity and risk allocation, then traditional performance metrics like alpha may be incomplete. As Gervais suggests, the real challenge is learning how to measure not just who captures value, but who creates it. Duke Fuqua Insights features digestible conversations with our faculty about the most impactful research from their careers, including studies they teach in Fuqua classes. New episodes every other week in season. For more from Duke Fuqua, visit us on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Bluesky, and the Duke Fuqua Insights newsletter.

Artificial intelligence promises massive productivity gains, but not everyone can immediately jump in to reap its benefits. While some firms and countries race ahead with new tools, others deliberately stick with older technologies, a choice may be entirely rational. In this episode of the Fuqua Insights podcast, Professor John Coleman of Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business joins host Sarah Kern to discuss how economies and businesses choose technologies based on the skills of their workforce.  Drawing on his paper The World Technology Frontier, co-authored with Francesco Caselli of the London School of Economics, Coleman explores why countries with access to the same global technologies nonetheless adopt very different production methods and experience sharply different income levels. Coleman’s central finding is that technology adoption is often an optimal choice, not a failure. Coleman distinguishes between skilled and unskilled labor, economic terms based primarily on formal education levels rather than the actual difficulty or value of work. In this framework, "skilled" workers have training that allows them to adapt to and leverage new technologies, while "unskilled" refers to workers with less formal education who may be highly capable but less equipped to use tools like AI. Advanced economies tend to develop and use technologies that favor skilled labor, while less-developed economies rely on older, less skill-intensive tools because those technologies better match their labor force. As Coleman explains, a poorer country may “optimally choose to adopt what seems to an advanced economy to be a backward technology”, because using more advanced tools without the right skills can actually reduce productivity. While technologies developed a long time ago are most suitable for labor that is mostly unskilled, newer technologies are designed for highly educated workers, Coleman notes. This framework applies directly to AI: “AI was developed by advanced economies that have the skilled labor that would benefit most from AI,” he says. Without that skill base, adopting AI may not pay off. Business leaders should remember to align innovations with workforce capabilities. “Adopting AI without a well-developed plan to integrate it into your workforce would likely be a disaster,” Coleman warns. Globally, AI may widen gaps in the short run, but Coleman emphasizes that technology is not a zero-sum game. Over time, moving up the technology frontier can create opportunities for growth across economies. Editor's Note: This episode was recorded prior to the extradition of Nicolás Maduro on January 3, 2026. Duke Fuqua Insights features digestible conversations with our faculty about the most impactful research from their careers, including studies they teach in Fuqua classes. New episodes every other week in season. For more from Duke Fuqua, visit us on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Bluesky, and the Duke Fuqua Insights newsletter.

Professor David Brown explains how simple strategies can guide better decisions even when information is incomplete  New job postings appear daily. Real estate markets update constantly with fresh listings. In an environment where alternatives continuously multiply and options can seem endless, the hardest decision is knowing when to stop searching and commit. In this episode, David Brown, the Snow Family Business Professor of Decision Sciences at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, discusses how people and organizations can make better decisions when information is scarce or costly.  Building on economist Martin Weitzman’s classic “Pandora’s Box Problem,” Brown and his co-author, Fuqua Ph.D. student Cagin Uru, found that straightforward search rules perform nearly as well as complex algorithms. Their research shows a surprisingly simple solution: commit upfront to search a specific number of alternatives based on search costs, then simply rank what you've seen and choose the best.  What makes their approach practical and appealing is its simplicity: it requires only the ability to rank alternatives you've seen and the discipline to stop searching at the right point, not probability calculations or complex data analysis. This applies broadly, from navigating job searches to booking flights to hiring contractors. The conversation also explores when sophisticated algorithms are truly necessary. Their research shows that, across several search settings, their simple, transparent rules perform nearly as well as those based on more complex approaches (e.g., AI), raising questions about when algorithmic solutions are worth the investment. Duke Fuqua Insights features digestible conversations with our faculty about the most impactful research from their careers, including studies they teach in Fuqua classes. New episodes every other week in season. For more from Duke Fuqua, visit us on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Bluesky, and the Duke Fuqua Insights newsletter.