Anil Gaba
The ORPAR Chaired Professor of Risk Management INSEAD
Speaker
Anil Gaba has been a Professor at INSEAD
since 1989 and is currently the Orpar Chaired Professor of Risk Management,
based on the Asia Campus in Singapore. He also directs the Centre on Decision
Making and Risk Analysis, at INSEAD which fosters research and development in
that area.
His research is concerned with the assessment and use of subjective
information, analysis of decisions and judgments under uncertainty and risk,
evaluation of tournaments and contests, design of incentive schemes, and risk
management. His work has appeared in several academic journals and in the
popular press.
He teaches courses on Uncertainty, Data, and Judgment, Probability and
Statistics, and Bayesian Analysis. He also teaches modules related to decision
making, risk management, and negotiation dynamics in several executive
development programmes all over the world including Europe, United States,
China, Singapore, Malaysia, and the Middle East. He has won the award for best
teacher award in the INSEAD MBA programme eight times.
He is a regular consultant and keynote speaker at various multinationals in
areas of financial management and general management.
Presentation Summary
The business leader is perceived to be in
control. It is the leader’s role to prepare for the future, grasping its
opportunities and avoiding the risks. But the future is not always predictable.
Uncertainty is constant. Falling prey to the illusion of control is a
risk in itself. The illusion of control makes us believe we have more control
than is possible. It also leads us to underestimate the limits of possibility.
When trying to manage risk, it can be helpful
to consider two classes of uncertainty: subway
uncertainty, events whose likelihood can be measured and quantified and coconut uncertainty: events as random
and as unpredictable as being knocked on the head by a coconut.
Attempting to control too much is not only a
fruitless and frustrating exercise, it closes the leader to the beneficial and
perhaps innovative outcomes that may occur when a person accepts that not everything
can be controlled.
