Just over a year ago, Francesca Geno was, there's really no other way of putting it. She was a superstar, an academic superstar at least. of at Harvard and all of her public speaking and her books.

Her reputation was perfect.

She was synonymous with the highest levels of research in organizational behavior.

She's just a giant in the field.

The field in which Geno is a giant,

where her reputation was perfect,

is variously called behavioral science or decision science or

organizational psychology.

According to her website at the Harvard Business School, where she has been a professor

of business administration.

Geno's research focuses on why people make the decisions they do at work

and how leaders and employees can have more productive,

creative, and fulfilling lives. Who wouldn't want that?

Geno became a superstar by publishing a great number of research papers in academic journals

as well as a couple of books.

Her latest is called Rebel Talent, Why It Pay Is to Break the Rules at Work and in Life.

She produced the kind of camera-ready research that plays perfectly into the virtuous

circle of academic superstars. A journal article is amplified by the publisher or

university into the mainstream media which feeds a headline to all the

firms and institutions who are eager to exploit the next behavioral science insight.

And this in turn generates an even greater appetite for more useful research.

The academic who is capable of steadily producing such work is treated almost like an oracle.

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