Research challenges

Transforming Behavior

Current research questions around the theme of Transforming Behavior include:

  • What tangible business benefits can we create by making a sleep-based intervention with individuals or groups of people under stress?
  • What tangible business benefits can we create by making an emotional-intelligence based intervention with individuals or groups of people in leadership positions?
  • What pedagogical factors drive long-term retention and behavioral change?
  • How can principles underlying Ashridge’s Leadership Experience be used to drive capability development in Hult and Ashridge classrooms?
  • What practices for coping with uncertain and unstable business environments enhance organizational performance?
  • What key elements of the Hult leadership development program drive lasting change?
  • Does the program distinguish our graduates in workplace performance? What can we do to improve this?

Creating Disruption

Current research questions around the theme of Creating Disruption include: 

  • Information monopoly is disrupting financial markets. The latest technological innovation that enables information monopoly is High Frequency Trading ("HFT"). How should low frequency investors, executives of public companies and regulators anticipate and react to HFT?
  • How can the UK government health policy disrupt economic development? Does financial crisis create a transitory deviation or a permanently divergent path of health and happiness? Are these lessons transferable to emerging markets? What impact do the UN Global Goals have on business strategy and company-government relations? Are these principles creating new markets and disrupting old ones?
  • How has climate change disrupted traditional business practices and promoted the shift to sustainable routines in rural communities in Mexico? How have the surrounding communities adapted to the impacts of climate change?
  • What methods and activities during the Hult Prize competition are most important for driving subsequent entrepreneurial success in students of varying cultures and characteristics? Do competitions create subsequent long-term impacts and disruptions on participants, business ecosystems, and wider society?
  • As the Sharing Economy invades and disrupts more industries and product types, will the same business models still work? What is Sharing Model 2.0?
  • How does entrepreneurial education in disruptive business models impact students’ desire and confidence to take business risk?
  • The market for financial services has been radically disrupted by innovations that involve social groups: peer-to-peer lending, micro-lending, crowdfunding, etc. Do the commonalities across these innovations point to a recipe for creating, anticipating, or accelerating disruptive innovations in financial services?
  • How can South African bank regulations spur local economic development? Will these regulations disrupt or entrench incumbents? Are these lessons transferable to other economies?
  • How can healthcare professionals—especially female nurses—most effectively start private companies outside of the hospital as both a driver and a reaction to the disruption in healthcare delivery systems?
  • As companies attempt to raise financing from public market, what non-financial factors determine their selection of bonds over equity? How might these decisions unexpectedly and unintentionally disrupt financial markets? How should investors, analysts, and managers anticipate and react to these disruptions?