Innehållsförteckning för Winter 2026 från Rotman Management

Vincent Kaiser: Classic models such as Black-Scholes-Merton are based on idealized assumptions (frictionless markets, absence of arbitrage, constant volatility). With the rise of stochastic models (Heston, SABR, etc.), do traditional models retain their relevance in today’s markets? John Hull: Black-Scholes-Merton (BSM) will continue to be widely used. Its big advantage is that it has only one unobservable variable (volatility). It converts volatilities to prices and vice versa. It underlies much of the way traders talk about the market. Rather than say that an option sells for $X, traders will usually specify its implied volatility as Y% because this is more immediately meaningful. Implied volatilities are and will continue to be important descriptors of the market. The increasing complexity of exotic derivatives and structured products leads to the development of more…

Amidst all the excitement around AI, most people acknowledge that, as powerful as it is, AI cannot be left to its own devices. Humans must remain in the loop, and in many cases, we need to ensure that a human, not a machine, makes the ultimate decision. While this mindset is conceptually appealing, from a Neuroscience standpoint, it doesn’t align with reality. That’s because humans are cognitive misers: We tend to think about and solve problems in the least effortful ways possible and are prone to decision fatigue, which means the quality of our decisions deteriorates over prolonged periods of mental activity. Put a human together with an AI, and there will be a natural tendency for the human to overrely on the automated system, even though the AI may…

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI) HAS RAPIDLY EMERGED as a transformative force in global business, generating both enthusiasm and apprehension among corporate leaders. In his 2024 annual report letter, Jensen Huang, CEO and founder of AI powerhouse NVIDIA Corporation, noted excitedly that the advent of large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT had ushered in an era where “computers can now generate information based on human prompts … [and have] learned to understand human language, prior knowledge, and even some common sense from massive amounts of text.” Despite Huang’s upbeat view, excitement for AI applications such as ChatGPT has been tempered by widespread fears and cautions. One major fear is that ChatGPT and similar platforms such as Copilot, DeepSeek and Grok 3 will draw upon ‘deepfakes’ to create convincing-but-false information that can…

DECISIONS, DECISIONS, DECISIONS. Even for the best of us, many things get in the way of making good ones. In an ideal world, an optimal decision-making process would involve taking every possible option and weighing it carefully using numerical weightings at various stages. But for busy leaders, it’s just not realistic to say, ‘Hold on; I just need a few days to consider all the options, think about all their possible outcomes and assign percentage weightings to the likelihood of each option under each scenario.’ Decision-making models can help, but most include so many steps that they’re not easy to commit to memory. As a leader, you need a model that is simple enough to know by heart so you can capture everything important in a half an hour or…

IN THE SUMMERS OF 2023 AND 2024, as wildfires turned Canada’s skies apocalyptic red and extreme heat strained the power grid to the brink, a hard truth became undeniable: Our energy system is not built for the future hurtling towards us. Countries that invest in reliable, carbon-free baseload power will weather the coming storms of energy demand and climate change. Those that don’t will face blackouts, economic turmoil and a dwindling ability to compete on the world stage. Nuclear power should be Canada’s saving grace. It’s one of the only technologies capable of providing massive amounts of clean, 24/7 energy. It could anchor energy independence, slash emissions and fuel a green industrial revolution. As we approach the mid-21st century, the question is this: Will Canada seize the opportunity, or will…

IN OUR CURRENT MOMENT of frenzied AI adoption, how do we ensure that the needs and interests of people are being met? Across industries, organizations large and small are working to integrate generative AI (‘genAI’) into every aspect of their operations. From customer service to compliance, product design to procurement, this race to adoption is often technology first, strategy later. But just as human-centred design reshaped business thinking a generation ago, we now need a reframing of our relationship with AI; one that centres the different needs of the humans involved. Centering human context isn’t just about doing what’s right, it is about doing what works. When AI strategies ignore human context, adoption stalls, trust erodes and ROI suffers. Because while AI may promise speed and scale, it also indelibly reshapes…

FOR THE PAST 25 YEARS, PR firm Edelman has released an annual Trust Barometer, which examines the state trust across society — trust in government, media, business and NGOs. Unfortunately, the 2025 edition shows our trust in institutions and individuals alike is on the decline. Just 37 per cent of Canadians had trust in CEOs, down from 46 per cent a decade earlier. And globally, Edelman found that fewer people are trusting of their workplace: 25 per cent said they don’t trust their employer ‘to do what’s right’ — up three per cent from 2024. “There has been systemic decline in trust,” says Bill McEvily (pictured above), a Professor of Strategic Management at the Rotman School. “What’s behind it? Is it that we think our leaders are corrupt and are…

In addition to teaching Operations Management at the Rotman School, you recently co-founded a start-up called SiMLQ, which, according to your website, is “Revolutionizing process management.” How are you going about this? We believe transforming process management is an important strategic direction to take at this moment in time. Our vision is to become the tool of choice for the analysis of business processes using a ‘digital twin.’ Digital twins replicate physical objects, processes or systems using real-time data to simulate and mirror their real-life counterpart. Many organizational systems today are both highly complex and highly congested. In the past, managers could build simplified models of all the activity going on within a system and then take steps to impact its efficiency. Today, mountains of data are being generated that…

A FEW MONTHS AGO, I had dinner in Chicago with some friends including ‘Eric’, a fan of my Playing to Win/Practitioner Insights series on the Medium platform with whom I had corresponded before. This was the first time we met in person. The discussion at dinner had touched on what to do about people who get so deeply entrenched in a position that they are unwilling to contemplate anything else. My assertion was that anyone who is entirely uninfluenceable should live as a hermit, because they cannot be a productive member of society. Being alone would be best for both the individual and society — a strong claim to be sure. Eric and others at the table were intrigued and encouraged me to write about it. I am doing so…

STRATEGY FORMULATION has traditionally been thought of as the ultimate human function. CEOs and generals imagine the future, articulate bold visions and persuade others to follow them. At the same time, AI systems are increasingly proficient at tasks once deemed uniquely human. They spot patterns in oceans of data and draft coherent language. Could an AI strategist prove sharper than its human counterpart? If so, what does that mean for organizations today? This article distills the findings of a formal paper in which I explored a hypothetical question: What would it take for an AI to serve as a firm’s strategist? The starting point was to imagine an AI far more capable than today’s systems, one that could form opinions, learn from data and communicate with people. To ground the exercise…

WHEN WE REFLECT on the products that impact our lives or wonder how unimaginably complex systems are created (How do tens of thousands of daily flights around the world get scheduled?), the question we usually ask is, ‘How did they think of that?’ We want to know who came up with these incredible ideas — and more importantly, how. Creators and scientists who study creativity agree that asking about idea generation is not the most relevant question for understanding successful creativity. Rather, the key to creativity is what scientists call problem-finding — the process of asking questions, identifying opportunities for creation or examination, and framing and reframing questions in ways that interrogate existing ways of doing something and exploring new ones. The term ‘problem finding’ can seem counterintuitive. We think…

THE WAY THAT WE’VE BEEN THINKING over the past 25 years about corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become a lightning rod for controversy. With shocking speed, our framework for CSR has slid into the background. Yet underneath the surface, many business leaders continue to find extraordinary value in pursuing solutions to complicated public problems. There is momentum accumulating for a new movement for supporting corporations and other private-sector actors in engaging with the public interest. Leaders want to be smart about this. They want to learn from the past. They want to engage new technologies, especially artificial intelligence (AI), to make things happen at scale and on a much faster timetable than tended to occur under the old CSR framework. They don’t want to argue about woke-antiwoke polarization. They want…

Ladies and gentlemen, esteemed shareholders, and distinguished guests, I stand before you today as the CEO of our publicly-traded coal mining company, and I am honoured to address you at this Annual General Meeting. As we gather here, it is crucial that we delve into the topic of ethics and leadership in the coal mining industry, a subject of immense significance not only for our organization, but also for the broader world we serve. Let me begin by acknowledging that our industry has faced its fair share of challenges and criticisms in recent years. Concerns surrounding environmental impact, sustainability and climate change have rightfully put us under scrutiny. As responsible leaders, we must address these concerns head-on and make a positive impact on the communities we operate in and the…

OPENAI’S LAUNCH OF CHATGPT in 2022 was the starting gun for a once-in-a-generation disruption that is only beginning to reshape how the world works. Yet despite AI’s transformative potential to redefine every industry, most companies remain stuck in experimentation mode. Quarter after quarter, our survey of enterprises tells the same story: Fewer than 20 per cent have scaled their generative AI (‘genAI’) efforts in any meaningful way. The business world is stuck. We know many of the reasons for this gridlock: technology deployed without a clear tie to business outcomes, pilots lacking focus or specificity and an overwhelming sprawl of use cases with no prioritization across the vast AI landscape, to name a few. But at the heart of the matter lies a problem that is easy to diagnose and…

THOUGH WE’RE SELDOM CONSCIOUSLY AWARE of it as we go about our days, our beliefs affect everything we do. They influence our decision-making and our values, the way we approach challenges and the way we solve problems, the way we learn and the way we lead. If we were to peel back the onion on every action and interaction, every emotion, every opinion and value judgment, and even our self-image and our memories, we’d find a belief at the centre, exerting influence in ways large or small. Perhaps the most influential exploration of the effects of beliefs on performance and achievement comes from Stanford Psychologist Carol Dweck’s pioneering work on mindset—the internal set of beliefs we have about ourselves. “Mindset permeates every part of your life,” she says, and “profoundly…

You spent more than a decade working in marketing at Google, rising to Head of Marketing for Canada. How would you describe Google’s culture and its approach to innovation? Unlike organizations that push innovation through rigid, top-down plans, Google’s foundation was more like a university or research lab. It encouraged small ideas to sprout and grow across the company, with minimal bureaucracy. Other companies might hesitate due to the ‘strategy tax’ that often comes with such a free-flowing approach, but Google embraced it. It was perfectly acceptable to have multiple, even competing, visions of the future—think YouTube versus Google Play Music. While this certainly had its challenges, especially in complex areas like Android with numerous partnerships, Google’s ultimate belief was clear: True innovation is what users decide works best for…

Describe your journey to discovering ‘the experimental mindset.’ I divide my life in two separate chapters. In the first one, I had a very linear approach that was driven by traditional definitions of success. I did my best to do well in school, got a good job at Google and then tried to climb the corporate ladder, getting a promotion, working on the best projects possible. From an external standpoint, I should have been happy, but I wasn’t. I was feeling empty inside. I was both bored and burned out. I left my job at Google thinking that I should try to do something different, not realizing that I was following yet another script of success. I decided to start a start-up. But again, I didn’t find happiness by following…

A RECENT ECONOMIST COVER STORY portrays our tumultuous times as the ‘Age of Chaos.’ Across our planet, geopolitical challenges and climate change, as well as economic, social, healthcare, supply chain and technological disruption are causing leaders to radically alter their approach. Even top leaders struggle to harness opportunity, plan and marshal strategies into life. Change is coming at us daily in a tsunami of unpredictable and potentially catastrophic waves. All of us are feeling less in control and becoming more and more reactive. As Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon said recently, “The level of uncertainty is too high. It’s not healthy and it’s affecting investment, spending and planning, and that will have an effect on growth and the economy.” Chaos also impacts our mental health, as evidenced by soaring rates of depression…

For those who aren’t familiar with it, how would you define Quantum Computing and the value it can bring to the world? I get asked this a lot, and I always begin with the name. Quantum Computing (‘QC’) is done with a quantum computer. We’re all familiar with computers—they’re all around us, in our devices and they complete tasks for us throughout each day. It would be difficult to imagine life without them. The key point with QC is that normal computers are based on the laws of traditional Physics. Those laws tell us what we can and cannot do with a computer and we’ve used them to build up all the computers that surround us. The quantum part of QC signals that we are no longer working with the…

The Hull-White model was co-created by you and Rotman Professor Emeritus Alan White back in 1990, but it remains popular today. How do you explain its ongoing value? Perhaps I can answer that by first talking a little about the famous Black-Scholes-Merton model, which was published in 1973. This was a really important development. It proposed a one-factor model to value European options on non-dividend paying stocks. It had just one non-observable variable, volatility. Extensions to the model were quickly produced. For example, variations on the model were developed to value European currency options, European futures options and European options on dividend-paying stocks. Numerical procedures such as binomial trees were developed to handle American-style options and more complicated derivatives. The advantage of the Black-Scholes-Merton model was its simplicity. It was…

LEADERS OF MANY ORGANIZATIONS are urging their teams to adopt agentic AI to improve efficiency, but are finding it hard to achieve any benefit. Managers attempting to add AI agents to existing human teams may find that bots fail to faithfully follow their instructions, return pointless or obvious results or burn precious time and resources spinning on tasks that older, simpler systems could have accomplished just as well. The technical innovators getting the most out of AI are finding that the technology can be remarkably human in its behaviour. And the more groups of AI agents are given tasks that require cooperation and collaboration, the more those humanlike dynamics emerge. Our research suggests that, because of how directly they seem to apply to hybrid teams of human and digital workers,…

The Pi2 website offers over 100 half-hour-long conversations with top-tier scholars and leaders. Here are some highlights: CONVERSATIONS ABOUT ASPIRATION Kate Cummings, Partner, Equal Opportunity Ventures Roger Martin, Professor Emeritus and former Dean, Rotman School of Management Leo Pongeluppe, Assistant Professor and Leonard J. Horwitz Faculty Scholar, University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School CONVERSATIONS ABOUT STAKEHOLDERS Sandro Cabral, Professor of Strategy and Public Management, INSPER, Sao Paolo, Brazil Olga Hawn, Associate Professor of Strategy, Entrepreneurship and Sustainability, University of North Carolina Kenan-Flagler Business School Sarah Kaplan, Professor Emerita of Strategic Management and Fellow, Lee-Chin Family Institute for Corporate Citizenship, Rotman School of Management CONVERSATIONS FOR SUSTAINABILITY Sophie Bacq, Professor of Social Entrepreneurship and Coca-Cola Foundation Chair in Sustainable Development, IMD Daphné Baldassari, Assistant Professor, University of Southern California Marshall School of Business…

WHERE DOES CREATIVITY come from? Ask most people, and they’ll tell you that great ideas come from within us—a mysterious well of human ingenuity and spirit. This view casts creativity as a sort of inner magic, a rare gift possessed by a special few. And admittedly, that’s how it can feel to have a new idea. A switch flips, a spark ignites, an epiphany happens and an idea that didn’t exist before, suddenly does. But listen closely to history’s most celebrated creators and you’ll hear something different. They describe their greatest work not as something they conjured, but as something they found. Not as invention, but as discovery. They talk of standing on the shoulders of giants, of patiently searching for just the right combination of elements, of capturing that…

“Buy the best small-footprint food blender for $200 or less.” “Rebook my flight with a change fee of under $150.” Prompts like these are becoming possible for consumers as they direct AI assistants not just to search but also to make purchases on their behalf. A significant development came in 2024, when Perplexity Pro integrated shopping features into its search results, enabling one-click purchases. By early 2025, Visa and Mastercard had joined the fray with the likes of OpenAI and Skyfire to accelerate the shift to AI-enabled and agentic payments. Equipped with integrated payment options, security and spending limits, AI assistants will soon be able to autonomously handle product search, discovery and purchasing decisions based on consumers’ instructions. This wave of agentic AI commerce has the potential to redefine who…

DISRUPTION IS A PERENNIAL ENGINE of progress. Wave after wave of it promises continual changes to the global economy. By making the complicated simple and the expensive affordable, it transforms how we work, play, live and communicate—and there is no going back. If we asked him to make sense of AI, autonomous vehicles and more, what would the late founding father of disruptive innovation, my mentor and friend Clay Christensen, say? I believe there are three things Clay would do. As a consummate storyteller, he would start with a story. I think he’d probably use one of his classics, like the one he liked to tell about Andy Grove. He would start the story by describing how the legendary Intel CEO asked him to share the results of his research with…

AS PREVIOUS TECHNOLOGICAL WAVES brought greater speed, scale and efficiency, they did so by answering well-defined problems. Generative AI disrupts this pattern—not by offering solutions, but by posing new and unresolved questions. Its presence compels leaders to re-evaluate not only what their organizations do, but why they do it—and who they become in the process. This article reframes AI not as a tool of productivity, but as a mirror of belief, intention and ethical agency. In an age where machines can create, decide and simulate, what remains distinctly human? And more importantly, what becomes worth doing? Leadership today is not about adoption—it is about authorship. Before genAI, most technologies arrived as answers. They entered our lives to solve tangible problems—clean water, faster transport, efficient communication. These tools were grounded in clarity:…

AS I WRITE THIS, it cannot be overstated how much leaders from all sectors are being bombarded with a myriad of issues—some demanding immediate attention and others that, if not addressed, could seriously impede their operations and competitive viability. These issues can come in many shapes and sizes, and impact organizations in varying degrees. Leaders need to be diligent, adaptive and nimble in addressing them. In a chapter of my recently published book, Leadership Reset, I focus on four ‘alphabet soup’ issues that leaders must take into account if they are to continue to successfully balance their short-term objectives and goals against long-term considerations for organizations and society: • AI (Artificial Intelligence), • CBDC (Central Bank Currency), • DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) and • ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance).…

IN OUR CONSULTING WORK with teams at all levels—especially senior leadership—my colleagues and I have noticed teams grappling with an insidious challenge: a lack of effective prioritization. When everything is labeled a priority, nothing truly is. Employees feel crushed under the weight of competing demands and the relentless urgency to deliver on multiple fronts. Requests for prioritization stem from both a lack of focused direction and the challenge of efficiently fulfilling an overwhelming volume of work. Over time, this creates a toxic cycle of burnout, inefficiency and dissatisfaction. The instinctive response to this issue is to streamline, reduce the number of initiatives, and focus. While this is a step in the right direction, it doesn’t fully address the problem. Prioritization isn’t just about whittling down a to-do list or ranking activities…

RECENTLY, I STEPPED INTO a futurist-in-residence role for a major tech company that was eager to infuse ‘futures thinking’ throughout an already innovative organization. This initiative, aimed at exploring what the next 10 to 15 years might bring, allowed me to leverage the full spectrum of a futurist’s tools as well as those of an organizational designer—simultaneously exploring their design question while teaching and integrating foresight capabilities. Being a futurist means spotting signals that may only be whispers today but could become profound shifts tomorrow—shifts that companies will have to be prepared to navigate. When playing this role, my IDEO colleagues and I use a mix of facilitative, creative and analytical tools that not only identify emerging patterns, but also embed foresight into the organization itself, helping shape the culture…