Grow the Pie - The Future of Value Creation | Prof. Alex Edmans, PhD

Utopia is Now

Alex Edmans is a professor of finance at London Business School and the author of the book, "Grow the Pie: How Great Companies Deliver Both Purpose and Profit". He is an expert in corporate governance, executive compensation, corporate social responsibility, and behavioral finance. He has spoken at the World Economic Forum in Davos, at the World Bank Distinguished Speaker Series and in the UK House of Commons, and given multiple TED Talks. Alex graduated from Oxford University and then worked for Morgan Stanley in investment banking (London) and fixed income sales and trading (New York). After a PhD in Finance from MIT Sloan as a Fulbright Scholar, he joined Wharton in 2007 and was tenured in 2013 shortly before moving to LBS. Learn more about Alex at: alexedmans.com

Timestamps:

0:00 - Introduction

05:51 - Laurie Hodrick's Influence on Alex

09:41 - What drives Alex as a Professor?

12:46 - Role of Technology in Dissemination of Knowledge

18:36 - About Alex's Book - Grow the Pie

21:10 - Addressing the Dilemma of Purpose vs Profits

24:23 - Short-term vs Long-term Value

29:13 - Grow the Pie Mentality for Individuals and Startups

32:25 - Using Metrics to get Feedback

37:10 - Can we rely on companies to stay committed? (Corporate Ethics)

45:18 - What does Alex's Utopia look like?

Mentioned in the Podcast:

1) Laurie Simon Hodrick is a Visiting Professor of Law and Rock Center for Corporate Governance Fellow at Stanford Law School, a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and the A. Barton Hepburn Professor Emerita of Economics in the Faculty of Business at Columbia Business School.

2) 10 Questions: www.ft.com/content/c5c386a8-64fb-11e0-9369-00144feab49a

3) Mathew Syed - Matthew Syed is an author and highly acclaimed speaker in the field of high performance. He has written six bestselling books on the subject of mindset and high performance – Rebel Ideas, Bounce, Black Box Thinking – and has worked with many leading organizations to build a mindset of continuous improvement.

4) Quantified Self Revolution - The Quantified Self is an international community of users and makers of self-tracking tools who share an interest in “self-knowledge through numbers." quantifiedself.com

5) Merck & Co., Inc - d.b.a. Merck Sharp & Dohme outside the United States and Canada, is an American multinational pharmaceutical company and one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world.

6) Unilever - Unilever is an Anglo-Dutch multinational consumer goods company headquartered in London, England, and Rotterdam, Netherlands.

7) Paul Polman - Paulus Polman is a Dutch businessman. He is a former Procter & Gamble president for Western Europe. In 2006 Polman joined Nestlé as chief financial officer and became vice president for the Americas in February 2008

8) Alan Jope - Alan Jope is a Scottish businessman, and the CEO of Unilever since January 2019, succeeding Paul Polman.

9) Roy Vagelos - Pindaros Roy Vagelos, better known as P. Roy Vagelos or Roy Vagelos, is an American physician and business executive, who was president and chief executive officer and chairman of the American pharmaceutical company Merck & Co. Since 1995, Vagelos has served as chairman of the board of Regeneron Pharmaceuticals.