Alex Edmans

Speaking topics

Presentations listed below include in-person and virtual keynotes, as well as workshops, fireside chats, and other presentation formats.

• The Power of Purposeful Business

  Purpose is the corporate buzzword of today, with politicians, the public, and even shareholders calling on businesses to serve wider society. But purpose is also controversial because companies have a responsibility to deliver returns to investors. Is there a trade-off between purpose and profit, or is it possible for companies to achieve both?

  This talk will critically examine the case for purposeful business, using rigorous evidence and real-life examples to show what works and what doesn’t. It will discuss practical ways for businesses of all sizes to put purpose into practice and ensure it guides a company’s day-to-day decisions, is embedded throughout the organization, and enhances rather than jeopardizes long-run shareholder returns.

• Sustainable Investing: Does it Work and How to Do It?

  Interest in sustainable investing is at an all-time high, with savers flocking to ESG funds under the promise of both higher returns and positive social impact. At the same time, there’s a growing chorus of criticism with concerns that funds are “greenwashing” and making false promises.

  This talk will use rigorous evidence and real-life examples to explain what sustainable investing can realistically achieve, and the best way to do it. It will discuss how to implement sustainable investing in practice — how to handle controversial sectors such as energy and defence, how to overcome the challenges with unreliable data and inconsistent ESG ratings, and how to distinguish companies that are truly purposeful from those that are greenwashing.

• ESG: The Beginning, the End, and the Future

  ESG is at a peak. Companies are prioritizing ESG issues, sometimes even more than mainstream business topics. Investors are selecting companies based on ESG rather than financial criteria and engaging with companies to improve their ESG. But is ESG an unnecessary distraction that’s at the expense of financial performance? Isn’t it enough for a company to focus exclusively on profit, as long as it takes a long-term approach to profit?

  This talk will critically examine the case both for and against ESG, and explore the future of ESG — how companies and investors can reap its benefits while avoiding the controversies and politics.

• Bias-Free Investing

  Textbook finance theory assumes that investors are rational and markets are efficient. However, real-world investors are human and thus prone to biases. This talk will highlight the main biases that distort our trading decisions, and how to address them to make better investments, at both an individual and a team level. It will also illustrate how the biases of other investors cause markets to be inefficient — stock and bond prices can be overvalued or undervalued — and explain tried-and-tested investment strategies that take advantage of these mistakes.

• Facts, Data, and Evidence: Knowing What to Trust

  One of the most dangerous phrases is “evidence shows that…”, because you can almost always find evidence to support any viewpoint. Experts are similarly untrusted because they may have motives other than the truth.  These problems are particularly severe in the digital age where people are bombarded with data and supposed expert opinions.

  This talk will explain the common mistakes people make in interpreting data, and the biases that cause us to make them. It will provide a practical guide for how to discern whether a particular study or expert opinion is trustworthy — even if we’re pressed for time and don’t have specialist knowledge in the field — and how to create a culture that actively promotes a diversity of thinking.

• Time Management in the Digital Age

  Classic time management frameworks advise us to focus on the important rather than the urgent. However, these frameworks seem not to be applicable to the 21st century, where technology means that we are constantly bombarded with deadlines, and it is not realistic to simply ignore the urgent.

  This talk will explain how to focus on important long-term goals but at the same time meet urgent short-term deadlines, how to use email as an effective communication tool without being overwhelmed with it, and how to instil superior time management practices within the teams we lead. It is based on insights from behavioural economics that demonstrate the most effective ways to develop new habits.