In this episode of the Talking Strategy podcast, Fiona Murray, associate dean for innovation, discussed how innovation can be an effective strategy against an industrially and economically strong China.

Professor John Sterman said: "If oil production goes up, climate change will get worse sooner, and everybody loses, including the people of Venezuela. The climate damages suffered by Venezuela, along with other countries, will almost certainly outweigh any short-term economic benefit of selling a bit more oil."

Generative AI uses should be taken on more carefully because they carry greater risks, said professor of the practice Rama Ramakrishnan. "The first mistake is being overly aggressive and essentially deploying the LLM for a task without enough scrutiny," he said. On the other extreme, Ramakrishnan said, are people "who are so apprehensive about the hallucinations and the error rates, they literally are paralyzed. They don't want to do anything."

Senior lecturer Steven Spear said the key is identifying problems at the point of care, then finding systemic solutions. "Leaders in institutions have to get out of their offices and stop thinking they can lead by looking at metrics on a dashboard and a spreadsheet," Spear said.

Senior lecturer Jonathan Ruane cautioned that if too many investors chase "safety" in the same places, prices get bid up. Consequently, "the only stocks with low prices relative to dividends are those with unsafe dividends, making them a poor investment choice" for those seeking security. He suggested that while buying based on broad characteristics is fine, picking individual "safe" winners often requires the expertise of high-skill fund managers.

Some experts argue that AI cannot be rigged like older traditional search engines, making the consolidation of a "rulebook" somewhat impossible, professor Vivek Farias explained. But this can provide for a broader learning experience. Unlike SEO, which is keyword-specific, LLMs understand context like age and finances. "Just tell the truth. Tell everything you can about it. Do it succinctly. And that's more or less it," Farias said.

"We are living through a singularly turbulent time," said Institute Professor Daron Acemoglu. China has an advantage over the United States when it comes to the number of well-trained engineers and "Europe has a huge innovation problem in the tech sector," he said.

Associate professor Haoxiang Zhu said there is demand for overnight trading from retail and international investors. "For example, investors in Korea, Japan, or in Europe, wish to trade in the U.S. market when their time zone has daylight," he said. Zhu said that's putting pressure on exchanges to offer a longer trading day.

A recent study by IDE research scientist Frank Nagle showed exactly how good open AI models have become. They are on average six times cheaper to use than equivalent closed models. And they are narrowing the performance gap within a few months of each new closed-model release. The speed of this catch-up cycle is accelerating.

Professor Retsef Levi said: "I think that the intention behind this is that parents should carefully think about whether they want to take the risk of giving another vaccine to their child, and many of them might decide that they want to wait far more than two months, maybe years and maybe up to adulthood. I think that's going to be up to them and their physician."

Associate professor Jackson G. Lu and co-authors wrote: "As generative AI becomes woven into global workflows, cultivating employees' metacognition will be what separates organizations that are merely adopting AI from those that are truly unlocking its creative power."

Senior lecturer Shira Springer wrote: "At the end of 2025, if you still need proof that women's sports have our attention and investment, it begs the question, 'Where have you been this year?'"

Research scientist Christian Catalini wrote: "Much like the music industry had to be dragged kicking and screaming from CDs to streaming — only to realize streaming was a goldmine — banks are fighting a transition that will ultimately save them. The moment they realize they can charge for the speed rather than the delay, they will learn to love it."

Research scientist Ranjan Pal and co-authors wrote: "Quantum capability can be said to threaten confidentiality 'in the far future,' but it also destroys trust in the entire digital supply chain. It turns your vendor supply chain network into a long-term liability, and weaponizes authenticity. Further, it creates a forced migration in cryptographic resources which your operations teams are structurally incapable of executing."

Recently appointed Mozilla CEO Anthony Enzor-DeMeo (EMBA '22) said: "Priority one is still building the best browser. I am very pragmatic that that is our core business, and it would take a lot to prove otherwise. People want software that is fast, modern but also honest about what it does. Mozilla and Firefox can be that choice."

Douglas Leone (SM '88) is one of the most internationally recognized names when it comes to venture capital. His talent for identifying innovative realities with untapped potential was confirmed during the 26 years he led Sequoia Capital between 1996 and 2022.

Senior lecturer John Davis argued that the current wave of technological, economic, and social disruption places family businesses at a critical stage in their evolution. Only those that know how to navigate this evolution will survive.

Professor Robert Merton fundamentally changed the way we view pensions. He defined pensions not as "money to be saved," but as a stream of income paid over a lifetime. The purpose of pensions is not to build large assets. Rather, it is to ensure continuity in life, preventing abrupt changes in living standards before and after retirement.