Alumni Thought Leadership Event Series

The School of Business Alumni Thought Leadership Series is designed to strengthen our long-term engagement with our alumni community through intellectually engaging, professionally relevant, and globally accessible online events.

The series will consist of a series of online events focused on a contemporary business challenge or emerging issue of international relevance. 

Forthcoming sessions:

 Making Difficult Decisions Together: Lessons from High-Stakes Healthcare
Thursday 5 November 2026, 13:00 - 14:00 (UK time)

This session presents some recent research insights from Dr Gemma Hughes, Associate Professor in Healthcare Management which explores the growing importance of shared decision-making in high-stakes professional environments. Drawing on an innovative programme of research into shared decision-making in major surgery and healthcare management, Gemma explores how professionals and the public make difficult decisions in situations characterised by uncertainty, risk and competing priorities. The research investigates what happens when traditional models of professional authority and expertise are replaced by to more collaborative forms of decision-making involving patients, families, professionals and wider institutional pressures. Through an empirical study of clinical consultations, the session examines how decisions are shaped not only by technical expertise, but also by communication, trust, organisational culture, perceptions of risk, and the wider systems and social context within which decisions take place. These research themes have broader relevance beyond healthcare settings for leaders and professionals across business, consulting, finance, technology and the public sector, particularly in an era where organisations face increasing demands for transparency, participation and stakeholder engagement. The session explores how cutting-edge research at ULSB is generating new insights into the relationship between expertise, authority and collaboration in contemporary organisations, while also highlighting the practical implications of this work for leadership, governance and organisational decision-making in complex and uncertain environments.

Data Spills and Market Failures: The Economics of Cybersecurity
Thursday 3 December 2026, 13:00 - 14:00 (UK time)

This session presents research by Dr Jacob Seifert, Lecturer in Economics, which applies economic analysis to one of the defining challenges of the digital age: why do firms so often fail to adequately protect the consumer data they collect and share, and what can regulators do about it? Cybercrime generates an estimated £7.9-13.4 trillion in global harms each year, yet cybersecurity is still widely treated as a purely technical rather than an economic problem. This research shows that cybersecurity outcomes are fundamentally shaped by market incentives: firms’ decisions about how much to invest in security interact systematically with their data-sharing choices and wider competitive pressures, meaning that policies designed to improve cybersecurity in isolation can inadvertently make society worse off. A counterintuitive but important finding is that higher minimum security standards can produce outcomes that are worse, not better, for society by encouraging firms to share consumer data more freely. A related strand of the research examines how cyber risks are measured and quantified at an organisational and sector level, highlighting the importance of market context and the potential for market-based mechanisms to improve how risks are assessed. The session explores what these findings mean for professionals across finance, technology, consulting and the public sector who are navigating an economy where data has become one of its most valuable and most contested assets. Jacob particularly welcomes conversations with alumni who are interested in exploring how economic research and professional and regulatory practice can inform one another in the area of cybersecurity. Further details of the research and its policy implications can be found at https://cybereconinsight.co.uk/

What's Really Holding Back the Energy Transition? Lessons from the Developing Economies
Thursday 7 January 2026, 13:00 - 14:00 (UK time)

This session presents recent research by Dr Gregory James, Associate Professor in Finance, which asks why renewable energy adoption remains stubbornly slow across developing and emerging economies, and uses Ghana as a revealing lens on a challenge shared from sub-Saharan Africa to South Asia. With emerging and developing countries accounting for around 70% of global energy demand, and clean-energy investment needing to rise from roughly $150 billion to $1 trillion a year by 2030 to keep net-zero within reach, the question of what holds the transition back has become one of the defining economic problems of the decade. Drawing on a two-round Delphi survey of Ghanaian energy experts and a fuzzy synthetic evaluation approach, a method designed to convert imprecise, qualitative expert judgement into ranked, quantitative priorities, the research identifies and weighs 44 distinct barriers to adoption. Its central and somewhat counterintuitive finding is that the binding constraints are not primarily technical. The most important barriers are matters of policy, finance and institutions: inconsistent and poorly implemented strategies, the absence of market-driven support, and above all the economics of capital; high commercial interest rates, short loan tenors, currency depreciation and a lack of affordable financing that can make even cheap renewable technology uneconomic to build. In effect, the cost of capital becomes a hidden tax on the energy transition. These themes resonate well beyond Ghana and beyond energy, speaking to professionals across finance, development and climate finance, consulting, and the public sector who are grappling with how capital, policy design, and institutional credibility shape investment outcomes in volatile, fast-growing markets. The session explores what a rigorous, evidence-based ranking of barriers offers policymakers and investors seeking to prioritise reforms and mobilise capital, and how the same decision-making tools can bring clarity to other high-stakes choices made under deep uncertainty.