IQS Harvard Talks: Pedagogical Innovation and Academic Excellence               

During the 2025-26 academic year, the IQS School of Management launched a new lecture series: the IQS Harvard Talks. This program serves as a continuation of the inaugural IQS Cambridge Talks and featured distinguished speakers from Harvard University, all of whom possess exceptional academic credentials and international renown. Attendance for all sessions was remarkably high, mirroring the success of the first edition. However, the true value of this project lies not only in the sessions themselves but in the comprehensive preparatory work and pedagogical innovation that supported them, articulated through various coordinated initiatives.

Just as the Cambridge Talks series was dedicated to sustainability, this edition of the IQS Harvard Talks focused on the field of human relations and the major social and economic challenges of our time. The conferences were open to the entire university ecosystem of Barcelona as well as the business community, providing a forum to explore and debate topics of high complexity and significant practical relevance.

Claudia Goldin, the ‘Henry Lee’ Professor of Economics at Harvard University and winner of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Economics, delivered the opening lecture of the IQS Harvard Talks series in October. Under the title “Conversations with Claudia Goldin“, the round-table session explored dynamics related to gender, professional careers, and labor markets. The discussions provided key insights into the factors that continue to shape inequality and opportunity today, highlighting how academic research can contribute to building a fairer and more equitable future.

This conference was organized in collaboration with the UPF-BSM School of Management of the Pompeu Fabra University, featuring the participation of its Vice-Dean, Professor Libertad González.

In November, Professor Joshua Greene, one of Harvard University’s most prominent academics, delivered the second encounter titled “Engineering cooperation: Strategies for building inductive democracies”, a topic that, in Professor Greene’s words, “could not be more timely and relevant today.”

Professor Greene is a leading figure who has transformed our understanding of how humans make moral and ethical decisions. In his talk, he shared his pioneering work that bridges experimental psychology, neuroscience, and moral philosophy. He discussed his ideas and projects regarding economics and psychology, the design of ethical systems, and strategies to improve leadership, negotiation, and decision-making within today’s complex societies.

Within the same area of expertise, the third “talk” was led by Professor Mina Cikara from Harvard University’s Department of Psychology and Director of the Harvard Intergroup Neuroscience Lab. Her lecture, “Reference dependence in coalitions: How do we know to which groups we belong? How do we assign others to groups?”, offered valuable perspectives on how the mind and brain respond when social perception shifts from «you and I» to «us and them». Her insights help us better understand the roots of empathy, prejudice, and intergroup conflict, providing a fresh perspective in the pursuit of ethics within pluralistic societies. Professor Cikara’s research has been featured in prestigious publications and has significantly influenced current understanding of phenomena such as the lack of empathy, “malicious joy” in the failures of others and moral judgment.

The IQS Harvard Talks series concluded with a lecture by Professor Amy C. Edmondson, the Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at Harvard Business School. This chair was established to promote the study of human interactions that foster successful companies contributing to societal progress.

Under the title “Right Kind of Wrong: Embracing Smart Failure to Innovate”, Prof. Edmondson delivered an inspiring and insightful talk on the concept of psychological safety. She explored how organizations can foster environments where individuals feel empowered to voice their opinions, learn from mistakes, and collaborate more effectively.

In her award-winning book, Right Kind of Wrong, Prof. Edmondson introduces the concept of the “science of intelligent failure.” She provides a framework that distinguishes productive failures from preventable ones, arguing that learning, innovation, and excellence depend on sensibly accepting that human nature is inherently prone to error.

The success of this edition of the IQS Harvard Talks turned them into ‘public classes’ attended by representatives of other universities, in addition to the collective of professors and students of IQS. “In this new cycle we have had the opportunity to improve the pedagogical model of these conferences, which have become integrated sessions of pedagogical innovation, with a high level of preparation from both professors and students,” states Dr. Flavio Comim, dean of the IQS School of Management and promoter of the initiative of these prestigious conferences.

Among the aspects of pedagogical innovation, it is worth highlighting the creation of Reading Clubs, organized in collaboration with the IQS Library, where, prior to the conferences, articles and publications by the speakers were studied, with the very active participation of professors and doctoral students. Furthermore, on this occasion all sessions were accompanied by lunches with the speakerswith the participation of professors and doctoral students from the IQS School of Management. In the days following the conferences, exchange coffees were also held in which professors and doctoral students from other universities could interact with IQS colleagues and the speakers, to open new avenues of collaboration and relationships with other centers.

In summary, it can be stated that the IQS Harvard Talks have not been simply isolated conferences, but rather an articulated and coherent project, closely linked to the preparation of faculty in areas of excellence of the IQS School of Management, such as Business Ethics, Neuromarketing, Organizational Behavior and Leadership. “This initiative has provided our faculty with unique opportunities for interaction with international benchmarks, as well as memorable educational experiences for our students. Likewise, the invitation extended to colleagues from other centers in Barcelona has generated concrete results, laying the groundwork for the future development of new joint initiatives”