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In this wide-ranging interview, one of the world's leading business psychologists describes the value of becoming a 'first-class Noticer'. Doing so, he argues, enables one to avoid the perils of 'inattentional blindness', 'motivated blindness' and 'bounded awareness'-all of which are pervasive in modern organizations, he says. He also defines 'leadership-driven noticing', why it is such a vital skill, and the ways in which it is absent on many corporate boards and in the auditing industry.

In his youth Chambers had no interest in technology--until an IBM recruiter suggested that he think of it as a tool for helping customers transform their businesses. Then stints at IBM and Wang taught him that even great companies are imperiled if they miss a market transition, such as the shift from mainframe computers to minicomputers or from minicomputers to PCs. In the 20 years since he became Cisco's CEO, a whole series of transitions have occurred in the kinds of technology companies rely on and in how organizations consume solutions. Anticipating those transitions and getting ahead of them has driven Cisco's evolution from routers and switches to mobile and video technology to application-centric infrastructure and cloud computing. The company has three ways to adapt: (1) If it sees a shift early enough, it develops the new technology in-house, as part of the traditional R&D process. In addition, its Entrepreneurs in Residence program financially supports and mentors early-stage entrepreneurs working in areas where Cisco sees huge potential, such as big data analytics and enterprise security. (2) It may make an acquisition--as it has done 174 times. (3) It may use a "spin-in," assembling some engineers and developers to work on a specific project outside the company, as if they were at a start-up. "You have to be bold," Chambers writes. And you need "a resilient culture with an appetite for change."

The use of 3-D printing, also known as additive manufacturing, has moved well beyond prototyping, rapid tooling, trinkets, and toys. Companies such as GE, Lockheed Martin, and BMW are switching to it for industrial production at scale. More companies will follow as the range of printable materials continues to expand. Already available are basic plastics, photosensitive resins, ceramics, cement, glass, numerous metals, thermoplastic composites (some infused with carbon nanotubes and fibers), and even stem cells. In this article the author makes the case that additive manufacturing will gain ground quickly given advantages including greater flexibility, fewer assembly steps and other cost savings, and enhanced product design possibilities. Managers, he writes, should now be engaging with strategic questions on three levels: (1) Sellers of tangible products should ask how their offerings could be improved, whether by themselves or by competitors. (2) Industrial enterprises should revisit their operations to determine what network of supply chain assets and what mix of old and new processes will be optimal. (3) Leaders must consider the strategic implications as whole commercial ecosystems begin to form around the new realities of 3-D printing. Many of the biggest players already in the business of additive manufacturing are vying to develop the platforms on which other companies will build and connect. Platform owners will be powerful because production itself is likely to become commoditized over time. Those facilitating connections in the digital ecosystem will sit in the middle of a tremendous volume of industrial transactions, collecting and selling valuable information.

Everyone from CEOs to frontline workers commits preventable mistakes-for example, underestimating how long it will take to finish a project or focusing too much on information that supports their current view. It is extraordinarily difficult to rewire the human brain to undo the patterns that lead to such mistakes. But there is another approach: Alter the environment in ways that encourage people to make decisions that lead to good outcomes. Leaders can do this by restructuring how work is performed, say Harvard Business School's John Beshears and Francesca Gino. In this article, they offer a five-step process for mitigating the effects of cognitive biases and low motivation on decision making: Understand the kinds of systematic errors people make and the factors that affect motivation. Define the problem to determine whether behavioral issues are at play. Diagnose the specific underlying causes. Design a way to tweak the environment to reduce or mitigate the negative impact of cognitive biases and insufficient motivation on decisions. Rigorously test the proposed solution.

When making decisions, we all rely too heavily on intuition and use flawed reasoning. But it's possible to fight these pernicious sources of bias by learning to spot them and using the techniques presented in this article, gleaned from the latest research. They'll open up your thinking about possible outcomes, objectives, and options and lead to better choices. To broaden your perspective on the future, the authors suggest, you can use proven tactics for improving the accuracy of estimates and preparing for contingencies. You'll think more expansively about your objectives if you come up with many possibilities before deciding what's most important, get input from others, and then carefully examine one goal at a time. And you'll generate better options if you identify several and evaluate them side by side. Don't settle for the first one that's acceptable; imagine that you can't pursue it, and you might find an even stronger alternative. Strong emotional attachments or investments make cognitive biases even harder to overcome. When that's the case, use checklists and algorithms to stay focused on the right things, and set "trip wires" to trigger planned responses at key points in the decision-making process.

We interpret the past--what we've experienced and what we've been told--to chart a course for the future. It seems like a reasonable approach, but it could be a mistake. The problem is that we view the past through filters that distort reality. One filter is the business environment, which focuses on outcomes rather than the processes that lead to them and celebrates successes while ignoring failures, thus making it hard for us to learn from mistakes. Another is our circle of advisers, who may censor the information they share with us. A third filter is our own limited reasoning abilities. We tend to focus on evidence that confirms our beliefs and gloss over information that contradicts them, and we read too much into our personal experience, which inevitably involves a small sample of incidents. We can base our decisions on a clearer view of the world if we study failures and near misses--especially the processes behind them; encourage all employees to pursue preventive measures instead of just solving problems; surround ourselves with people who will speak frankly; search for evidence that our hunches are wrong, and encourage employees, data scientists, and consultants to do the same; and broaden our perspective in order to give new meaning to our varied experiences.

When we make decisions, we make mistakes. We all know this from personal experience, of course. But in case we didn't, a stream of experimental evidence in recent years has documented the human penchant for error. This line of research is probably best known for its offshoot, behavioral economics. Its practitioners have played a major role in business, government, and financial markets. But that isn't the only useful way to think about making decisions. The academic arena alone contains two other distinct schools of thought, one of which has a formal name--decision analysis--and the other of which can be characterized as demonstrating that we humans aren't as dumb as we look. Each school of thought brings vital insights to bear. Managers need to understand when to make decisions formally, when to make them by the seat of their pants, and when to blend those approaches. This article briefly tells the story of where the three schools arose and how they have interacted, beginning with the explosion of interest in the field during and after World War II and continuing to the present day, when companies such as Chevron have hundreds of decision analysts on staff. Its aim is to make readers more-informed consumers of decision advice--which in turn should make them better decision makers.

Social entrepreneurship has emerged over the past several decades as a way to identify and bring about potentially transformative societal improvements. Ventures in this realm are usually intended to benefit economically marginalized segments of society that can't transform their prospects without help. But the endeavors should be financially sustainable, because there's no guarantee that subsidies from taxpayers or charitable givers will continue indefinitely. Grameen Bank is a famous example of a social venture that met both goals. In studying the winners of the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship, the authors found that they all focus on changing two features of an existing system: the economic actors involved and the enabling technology applied. For example, the children's rights activist Kailash Satyarthi realized that reaching ethically concerned consumers through Rugmark (now GoodWeave International) could help foil exploitative labor brokers in India's carpet weaving industry. And through the Kiva platform, Matt Flannery and Jessica Jackley enabled small-scale lenders in wealthy countries to lend to small-scale borrowers in poor countries. Today GoodWeave operates globally, and Kiva is on track to facilitate more than $1 billion in microloans within the next couple of years.

With the help of technology, companies today sweep up huge amounts of customer data. But they tend to be opaque about the information they collect and often resell, which leaves their customers feeling uneasy. Though that practice may give firms an edge in the short term, in the long run it undermines consumers' trust, which in turn hurts competitiveness, say authors Morey, Forbath, and Schoop. In this article, the three share the results of a survey of 900 people across five countries, which looked at attitudes about data privacy and security. It examined what people knew about the information trails they leave online, which organizations they did--and did not--trust with their data, and which data they valued the most. The results show that the value consumers place on different data depends a lot on what it is and how it is used. In general, the perceived value rises as the data's breadth and sensitivity increases from basic, voluntarily shared information to detailed, predictive profiles that firms create through analytics, and as its uses shift from benefiting the consumer to benefiting the company. If data is used to improve a product, consumers generally feel the enhancement itself is a fair trade, but they expect more in return for data used to target marketing, and the most in return for data sold to third parties. To build trust, companies must be transparent about the data they gather and offer consumers appropriate value in exchange for it. Simple legal disclosures aren't enough, however; companies must actively educate their customers and incorporate fairness into their products and models from the start. Companies that get this will win consumers' goodwill and business and continued access to their data. Companies that don't will find themselves at a serious disadvantage, and maybe even shut out.

The author was Apple's second software "evangelist" and is now the chief evangelist for Canva, an online design firm. He believes that all managers can adopt the practice, with great benefit to their organizations and their careers. No matter what your company, it probably offers something valuable and differentiated and therefore worth evangelizing about: if not goods or services, then corporate values, cutting-edge accounting practices, or flexible work-at-home policies. Kawasaki outlines three ways to effectively evangelize: (1) Schmoozing. This requires you to get out of your office, ask questions, unveil your passions, follow up with people, e-mail effectively, make it easy to get in touch with you, and do favors. (2) Public speaking. You need to deliver quality content, omit the sales pitch, customize the speech for your audience, focus on entertaining your listeners, tell stories, circulate in the audience beforehand, control scheduling and venue when you can, and practice and speak all the time. (3) Social media. When posting you should offer value, be interesting, take chances, keep it brief, be a mensch, add drama, tempt with headlines, use hashtags, and stay active.

The Oscar-winning producer of "Splash" and "Apollo 13" on curiosity, delegation, and rising to the top.

An investor in the electric car company Tesla recently issued a friendly challenge to HBS professor Clayton Christensen, the father of the theory of disruptive innovation: Does Tesla represent a new model of disruption, in which products start at the high end and move down? Christensen's research associates investigated by posing five questions used to evaluate disruptive innovations, concluding that Tesla is actually a classic sustaining innovation--a product that offers incrementally better performance at a higher price. But the research did point to something that could disrupt the auto industry. "Neighborhood electric vehicles"--low-speed vehicles that resemble souped-up golf carts--are adding some features of automobiles and could, the team believes, eventually steal significant market share. This reprint contains three additional Idea Watch articles. "Why Job Postings Don't Equal Jobs" visually depicts hires and postings for select industries, showing that in some (typically tech and other white-color industries) there are many more postings than actual jobs, while in others (typically low-skill, blue-collar roles) the pattern is reversed--meaning that this economic indicator is a poor proxy. "How Power-Hungry Bosses Keep Their Power" describes insecure managers who tend to isolate subordinates for fear of being challenged and suggests how companies can curb this tendency. "Financial Rewards Can Spur Innovation" highlights research showing that the right incentives can boost creative, conceptual work.

Has our obsession with health gone too far? A researcher explains why efforts to encourage employees to meet the new ideal of fitness may backfire.

Bridging cultural differences demands exceptional emotional intelligence. This chart shows the percentage of leaders in each of seven global regions--the U.S., the Middle East, India, Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, Europe, and China--who demonstrated strength in a range of hard and soft skills, according to a study by YSC, a corporate psychology consultancy.

When it comes to new government budgets, politicians are usually criticized regardless of whether they undertake new spending or embrace austerity. Canadian Finance Minister Joe Oliver’s spending restraint should be appreciated, however, at a time when world debt has jumped $57 trillion since the so-called Age of Austerity started in 2007, with governments accounting for $25 trillion of the extra liabilities. Oliver has been criticized for his plans to cut the small business tax rate, because the move will widen the gap between what small businesses and large businesses pay in taxes and will possibly incentivize businesses to stay small. But new research discussed in this article shows that a nation’s strongest, largest companies get hit with a lower rating after a sovereign downgrade faster and more often than firms with ratings that are worse than that of the state. This asymmetric effect leads to a greater reduction in investment for a nation’s healthiest firms, while also increasing their cost of capital by pushing up their bond yields. In light of these findings, this article argues that companies big and small stand to benefit from Canada’s return to surplus under Joe Oliver.

When it comes to the development of future leaders, even the best CEOs can fail to give pipeline building the attention it deserves. Leadership pipelines should be viewed in the same way that an energy firm thinks about building pipelines that carry oil to market. In other words, it requires time, attention and significant financial resources. This article offers three steps that executives can follow to build a leadership pipeline. First, when developing a strong leadership pipeline, it is important to identify and target employees with the most potential for leadership positions. Second, organizations need to ensure that employees are able to develop in roles that push them beyond comfort zones. Finally, firms must invest in their leadership pipelines through executive development programs, executive coaching and mentorship initiatives. Such investments signal a commitment to future leaders, and when valued employees see this they double down on commitment to the organization. Smart companies do not spend money on leadership development in an attempt to buy employee loyalty; they invest money because not investing in people will always come back to haunt them.

For Eva Kor, one of the Mengele Twins used in horrific Nazi experiments after being torn away from her family as a 10-year-old, forgiveness is not just key to peace on Earth — it also clears the minds of decision makers. After the Holocaust survivor thanked a former Nazi doctor who agreed to go on record about working at Auschwitz, the “Book-keeper of Auschwitz” gave Kor a kiss that was tweeted around the world, creating a mixture of hope and outrage. But as far as the 81-year-old Kor is concerned, forgiveness is for victims, who have the right to be free. Although forgiving is rarely easy, Kor sees it as key to achieving internal peace, which improves quality of life, not to mention management skills and productivity in both our professional and personal lives.

Though only a minority of the world’s population works in sea-related occupations today, seaborne trade and naval capacities are at historic levels in human history. Meanwhile, beneath the sea, a vast amount of digital commerce hums invisibly through a global network of sunken fibre-optic cables. Climate change is revolutionizing trade routes while opening the door to more national conflicts, particularly in the Arctic, which represents an estimated 13 per cent of the world’s undiscovered oil and 30 per cent of the world’s undiscovered gas. Superpowers and coastal states are making aggressive new claims on island chains and seaways and investing heavily in the latest generation of naval power in order to be able to back up these claims militarily. This article explains how all of these factors will have a significant impact on how businesses run. Now is the time to plan for disruptions to any part of the maritime ecosystem, which could create a big, unexpected shock to national economies while imposing serious damage on private-sector operations.

We're never surprised to hear about unethical executives whose lapses eventually ruin their careers and companies. But is the opposite true? Do highly principled leaders and their organizations perform especially well? The answer is yes, according to new research by the leadership consultancy KRW International. CEOs whose employees gave them high marks on four key traits--integrity, responsibility, forgiveness, and compassion--had an average return on assets that was nearly five times as much as what CEOs with low character ratings had. This article describes the research findings and offers recommendations for how leaders can increase their self-awareness and overcome character deficits--for the benefit of their careers, their employees, and, it's now clear, their companies, too. This reprint contains three additional Idea Watch articles. "How Consumers Understand (and Misunderstand) Pricing Cues" describes research into how retailers unwittingly send misleading signals about whether they are high- or low-priced--something they need to understand and manage in order to compete. "Connected Cities Are Economically Healthy Cities" discusses a study showing a correlation between an area's average number of LinkedIn connections per user and its job growth. "Hello? Anyone in HQ Listening?" visually depicts several specific factors responsible for dissatisfaction and high turnover among Asian executives of Western multinationals, suggesting that parent companies needn't take a fatalistic view of this pervasive problem after all.

When you do good, you treat yourself with a cookie, new research shows.