Rory Sutherland, Vice Chairman of Ogilvy & Mather UK, advises business school students to think like biologists to reinforce conventional economic theory.
In an interview for Cambridge Judge Business School’s website, Mr Sutherland described current economic theory as narrow and blind to ethics, psychology, path-dependence and to marketing.
You have this very, very narrow almost aspergic science which dominates business thinking. If you also, alongside that, take on some of the thinking found in the most interesting aspects of evolutionary biology, evolutionary psychology and behavioural science but it will at least give you binocular vision. You will at least have a different way of looking at problems which in many cases is the most liberating approach if you're stuck.
Rory Sutherland was a guest speaker at the Cambridge Leadership Seminars at Cambridge Judge Business School.