Uncertainty and Enterprise with Amar Bhidé

Thinkers & Ideas

In Uncertainty and Enterprise: Venturing Beyond the Known, Amar Bhidé revisits and modernizes the concept of Knightian uncertainty. Introduced more than 100 years ago, the concept offers great potential for better understanding corporate decision-making.

A renowned expert on innovation, entrepreneurship, and finance, Bhidé is a professor of Health Policy at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, as well as a professor emeritus of Business at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University.

In his conversation with Martin Reeves, chairman of the BCG Henderson Institute, Bhidé discusses the important distinction between repeated and unique events, the relationship between uncertainty and imagination, how corporations can use persuasive narratives and social routes to navigate the future, and whether AI will help or hinder these practices.

Key topics discussed:

01:16 | The definition of uncertainty

04:49 | The relation between uncertainty and imagination

09:32 | The power of corporate routines

15:57 | The changing nature of uncertainty

17:25 | How AI impacts uncertainty

21:02 | Corporate implications

22:38 | Implications for business education

Additional inspirations from Amar Bhidé:

• A Call for Judgment: Sensible Finance for a Dynamic Economy (Oxford University Press, 2010)
• The Venturesome Economy: How Innovation Sustains Prosperity in a More Connected World (Princeton University Press, 2008)
• The Origin and Evolution of New Businesses (Oxford University Press, 2000)
• Flourishing in an Uncertain World: How Entrepreneurs Overcome Doubts and Disagreements (The Kansas City Public Library Lecture, 2025)