Amar Bhidé

Professor of Business Emeritus at Tufts University

Topics:

Digital Technologies, AI, Cyber, Quantum

Expertise:

Innovation, Technology, Entrepreneurship

Clear, simple and wrong is a good description of economic theories that exclude uncertainty. “If I can merely put uncertainty back into the conversation, and say it’s at least as important as incentives, would consider that a win.” – Amar Bhidé

Amar Bhidé is Professor of Health Policy at Columbia University, previously he was the Lawrence Glaubinger Professor of Business at Columbia University (from 2000 to 2009) and the Thomas Schmidheiny Professor of Business at Tufts University (from 2010 to 2023).

He also served on the business school faculties of Harvard and Chicago universities. During his most recent Harvard appointment (as HBS Visiting Professor, 2020-21), Bhidé created and taught an elective course, ‘Lessons from Transformational Medical Advances.’ The course drew on his research on the nature and development of productive knowledge. has researched and taught about innovation, entrepreneurship, and finance for over three decades.

He now focuses on teaching, developing, and disseminating case histories of transformational technological advances.

A member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a founding member of the Center on Capitalism and Society at Columbia – and a founding editor of Capitalism and Society, Bhide’s latest Uncertainty and Enterprise, Venturing beyond the Unknown was published in December 2024 and has received rave reviews.

His earlier books include A Call for Judgment: Sensible Finance for a Dynamic Economy , The Venturesome Economy: How Innovation Sustains Prosperity in a More Connected World, The Origin and Evolution of New Businesses and Of Politics and Economic Reality

From the the early 1980s, he has written numerous articles for the Harvard Business Review, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and The Financial Times. He has periodically appeared on Bloomberg TV and CNBC.

His professional experience includes directorship of a FTSE 100 company. In the 1980s, Bhidé was a Senior Engagement Manager at McKinsey & Company, a Proprietary Trader at E.F. Hutton, and served on the Brady Commission staff, investigating the 1987 stock market crash.

Bhidé earned a DBA and MBA from Harvard Business School with High Distinction and a B. Tech from the Indian Institute of Technology (Bombay).

His ten Harvard Business Review articles include “The Judgment Deficit”, “Efficient Markets, Deficient Governance,” “How entrepreneurs craft strategies that work,” “Bootstrap Finance: the Art of Start-ups,” and “Hustle as Strategy.

Uncertainty, doubt about what is or could be, fuels our ambitions and fears. Tantalizing possibilities spur us to innovate and explore. Yet, we also strive to reduce uncertainty. Mountain climbers and deep-sea divers plan carefully. Rules, routines, and research in business, the law, and medicine are designed to increase predictability and forestall unpleasant surprises.

Mainstream economics, however, hides from uncertainty, banishing it to the mystical world of unknown unknowns or reducing it to mechanistic calculation. Its textbooks ignore everyday problems that lack demonstrably correct solutions. But resolute responses to such problems require confidence. Where does confidence come from, especially when we go beyond the known? How do we justify our fallible judgments to ourselves and others?

Drawing on more than thirty years of teaching and research, Amar Bhidé offers compelling answers. Inspired by, while modernizing, the forgotten ideas of the economist Frank Knight and other great twentieth-century thinkers, Bhidé challenges both hyper-rational economic orthodoxy and claims of pervasive behavioral biases. He shows that while big bets require more justification, the facts alone don’t persuade skeptics. Instead, narratives that combine reason, contextual evidence, and creative interpretations align our imaginations.

Bhidé’s framework and rich examples explain neglected and surprising features of entrepreneurship. He shows how startups and giant corporations coexist; how seemingly bureaucratic procedures encourage the giants to undertake complex high-stakes initiatives; and, how vividly described possibilities help make the imagined real. Cutting through esoteric theories but avoiding glib prescriptions. Uncertainty and Enterprise examines the foundations of bold yet reasonable action.

“A compelling argument for recognizing uncertainty as a key factor in economic analyses, and how to build it into our strategies. This is a magisterial synthesis of forgotten theories, and a persuasive appeal for reform in the economics profession. It offers thought-provoking insights for anyone seeking to navigate our turbulent times.” – Gillian Tett, Provost, King’s College, University of Cambridge, and Columnist, Financial Times