Podcasts

“I just make the time to read a book and it gives me this burst of fire in the belly to give me another two or three hours of creativity or productivity.” This cry of passion by author Robin Sharma is a call to arms four HEC researchers have heard throughout their respective careers. Gilles Deleuze, Norbert Elias, Sherry Turkle and E.O. Wilson are so many references inspiring our academics in their devotion to further their disciplines. They share their passion for books in this first Breakthroughs podcast of 2025.

By interrogating the dominance of English and the myth of meritocracy, professors Daniel Martinez and Keith Robson uncover how language and social systems perpetuate exclusion in academia and professional settings. These insights call for a systemic rethinking of norms to promote true equity and inclusion. This conversation is critical, not just for accounting but for global academia and the broader professional world (as exemplified in a recent op-ed by Martinez in Forbes). Here are extracts from the Knowledge@HEC podcast series Breakthroughs.

HEC research professor Craig Anderson has been exploring the impact of “awe” on well-being for over a decade. The specialist in affective science recently published a paper on culture and awe, comparing the emotional approach of Americans and Chinese to this phenomenon. Anderson’s research was at the heart of a 2023 National Geographic documentary “Operation Arctic Cure” which traces the use of awe to alleviate PTSD in veteran soldiers. The American academic shares his insights into a new science reshaping policies in sustainability, marketing and health.

This summer’s eruption of violence in the UK has renewed searching questions on the role social media plays in our society. It has also accelerated calls for new or revamped regulation of the country’s social media platforms, encapsuled in the UK’s Online Safety Act. But online violence and brutalization do not confine themselves to politicized and stigmatized communities. HEC Professor Kristine de Valck has explored, with fellow academics Olivier Sibai (University of Bath) and Marius K. Lüdicke (WU Vienna), the presence of direct, cultural, and structural violence in an online community that few researchers would imagine: the British electronic dance music community. Kristine shares her decade-long research on one such leisure-oriented community, on a phenomenon also observed on Reddit, Twitch and Discord platforms. She suggests ways to mitigate such online brutalization of consumers.

Our podcast series, Breakthroughs, dedicates a special episode to the launch of a new elective on sports and commerce for students. Titled “Sport & Business,” this six-month program includes theoretical work followed by fieldwork in partnership with the French professional football club Racing Club de Lens. Professor Luc Arrondel oversees the academic content of the elective. This researcher shares his pedagogical approach centered on the economics of football. In the second part of the podcast, we follow the first gathering of the Sports Economy Summit titled Sport Definition. HEC leaders, students, and alumni attended sessions dedicated to the school's research, teaching, and actions in this flourishing sector.

HEC Paris Professors Laurence Lehmann Ortega and Hélène Musikas have been working together for over 15 years on a business framework they call Odyssey 3.14. This strategy helps companies better invest in business models that promote innovation and sustainability. The result is a book which entered its third edition in September, entitled “(Re)invent Your Business Model with Odyssey 3.14”. The two academics describe the three pillars and 14 directions which have evolved significantly in the past decades.

Ever since he published “Strategic Management”, Edward Freeman has been at the forefront of a theory that stakeholders are interconnected. For his collective body of work, the economist from Darden School, Virginia, received an Honorary Doctorate from HEC Paris, adding his name to the 48 illustrious scholars on the HEC Honoris Causa list. The March 4 ceremony was followed by several thousand spectators, both live and online. Freeman’s visit to the Jouy-en-Josas campus was the occasion to discuss his stakeholder vision with a prism of the 21st century. Extracts from the exceptional Breakthroughs podcast, recorded for Knowledge@HEC.

Artificial Intelligence is revolutionizing all fields of business, forcing academics and practitioners to revise their fundamentals. To discuss these new challenges, HEC Associate Professor Carlos Serrano and his colleague Thomas Åstebro organized a groundbreaking workshop inviting some of the world’s top researchers to compare their approach to those of leading industrialists. In our latest Breakthroughs, we discuss some of the takeaways with Serrano, an academic in the school’s Department of Economics and Decision Sciences.

How can the E.U. respond to the growing clamor for more citizen participation in its institutions? In a wide-ranging podcast, the Jean Monnet Professor in EU Law, Alberto Alemanno, proposes a permanent European Citizens Assembly to bring E.U. voters and their representatives closer together. The HEC professor also explores how lobbies can become a force for promoting social change. And he points out structural problems within the E.U. which are stymying the continent’s youth. Finally, Alemanno’s research with fellow academic Elie Sung pinpoints the oft-neglected impact of lobbies on judicial courts by interest groups– which are having devastating effects on societal issues like women’s and LBGTQI+ rights. Extracts.