PUBLICATIONS

Felin T, Sako M & Hullman J (2025). Artificial intelligence and actor-specific decisions. SSRN working paper. [html]

Sako M & Felin T (2025). Does AI prediction scale to decision making? Communications of the ACM. [html] [pdf]

Felin T, van Doorn A & Koenderink J (2025). Generative organisms in action. Working paper.

Ehrig T, Felin T & Zenger T (2025). Causal reasoning and the scientific entrepreneur: Beyond bayes. In Bayesian Entrepreneurship. MIT Press. [html]

Edited by Ajay Agrawal, Arnaldo Camuffo, Alfonso Gambardella, Erin Scott & Scott Stern.

Tucci C, Snihur Y, Novelli E & Felin T (2025). A debate: Does lean startup represent a great leap? Industry and Innovation. [html]  

Santangelo G, Phene A, Coviello N, Tung R & Felin T (2025). Microfoundations as a toolkit for international business research. Journal of International Business Studies. 

Felin T & Holweg M (2024). Theory is all you need: AI, human cognition, and causal reasoning. Strategy Science. [html] [pdf]

Felin T, Gambardella A, Novelli E & Zenger T (2024). A scientific method for startups. Journal of Management. [open access]

Felin T, Gambardella A, & Zenger T (2024). Theory-based decisions: Foundations and introduction. Strategy Science. [pdf]

Felin T & Holweg M (2024). AI thinks differently than people do. Harvard Business Review (online). [html]

Mastrogiorgio A, Mastrogiorgio M, Kauffman S & Felin T (2024). Quantum cognition: Implications for strategy and management. European Management Review.

Felin T & Kauffman S (2023). Disruptive evolution: Harnessing functional excess, experimentation and science as tool. Industrial and Corporate Change. [pdf]

Selected as "Editor's Choice" 

article [html]

Wuebker R, Zenger T & Felin T (2023). The theory-based view: Entrepreneurial microfoundations, resources, and choices. Strategic Management Journal [ssrn] [doi]

Felin T & Koenderink J (2022). A generative view of rationality and growing awareness. Frontiers in Psychology. [html]

Felin T, Kauffman S & Zenger T (2022). Resource origins and search. Strategic Management Journal. [html]

Felin T & Foss N (2022). Microfoundations of ecosystems: The theory-led firm and capability growth. Strategic Organization. [ssrn] [doi]

Mastrogiorgio A, Felin T, Kauffman S & Mastrogiorgio (2022). More thumbs than rules: Is rationality an exaptation? Frontiers in Psychology. [html]

Felin T, Koenderink J, Krueger J, Noble D & Ellis GFR (2021a). The data-hypothesis relationship. Genome Biology. [html]

Felin T, Gambardella A & Zenger T (2021). Value lab: A tool for entrepreneurial strategy. Management & Business Review. [html]

Felin T, Koenderink J, Krueger J, Noble D & Ellis GFR (2021b). Data bias. Genome Biology. [html]

Felin T & Kauffman S (2021). The search function and evolutionary novelty. Oxford University Press. 

Felin T, Gambardella A, Stern S & Zenger T (2020). Lean startup and the business model: Experimentation revisited. Long Range Planning. [open access] 

Felin T & Felin M (2020). Seeking rationality: $500 bills and perceptual obviousness. Handbook of Bounded Rationality.

Chapters also by Dan Sperber, G Gigerenzer, Cristina Bicchieri, Cass Sunstein, Phil Johnson-Laird, Nancy Nersessian, Paul Thagard, Richard Nelson, etc

Felin T & Zenger T (2020). Open innovation: A theory-based view. Strategic Management Review. [pdf]

Hallberg N & Felin T (2020). Untangling infinite regress and the origins of capability. Journal of Management Inquiry.

Felin T, Felin M, Koenderink J & Krueger J (2019). On surprise-hacking. Perception. [open access pdf]

Chater N, Felin T, Funder D, Gigerenzer G, Koenderink J, Krueger J, Noble D, Nordli S, Oaksford M, Schwartz B, Stanovich K & Todd P (2019). Mind, rationality and cognition: An interdisciplinary debate. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review. [html] [pdf]

Felin T & Foss N (2019). Microfoundations for institutional theory? Research in the Sociology of Organizations. 

Felin T & Lakhani K (2018). What problems will you solve with blockchain? MIT Sloan Management Review. [html]

Devins C, Felin T, Kauffman S & Koppl R (2018). The law and big data. Cornell Journal of Law & Public Policy. [html]

Felin T & Zenger T (2017). The theory-based view: Economic actors as theorists. Strategy Science. [html] [pdf]

Felin T, Koenderink J & Krueger J (2017). Rationality, perception, and the all-seeing eye. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review. [html] [pdf]

Felin T & Zenger T (2017). What sets breakthrough strategies apart. MIT Sloan Management Review. [pdf]

Felin T, Lakhani K & Tushman M (2017). Firms, crowds, and innovation. Strategic Organization. [pdf]

Felin T & Zenger T (2016). Strategy, problems and a theory for the firm. Organization Science.

Felin T & Powell T (2016). 

Designing organizations for 

dynamic capabilities. California Management Review. [html]

Felin T, Kauffman S, Mastrogiorgio A & Mastrogiorgio M (2016). Factor markets, actors and affordances. Industrial and Corporate Change.[html]

Felin T (2016). When strategy walks out the door. MIT Sloan Management Review. [html]

Stirling W & Felin T (2016). Satisficing, preferences and social interaction: A new perspective. Theory & Decision. [html]

David R, Felin T, Langley A, Rowley T, Verona G (2016). The strategic organization of strategic management scholarship. Strategic Organization.

Koppl R, Kauffman S, Felin T & Longo G (2015b). Economics for a creative world: A response to comments. Journal of Institutional Economics.

Felin T, Foss N & Ployhart R (2015). Microfoundations movement in strategy and organization theory. Academy of Management Annals.

Received the 2025 "Decade Award"

Koppl R, Kauffman S, Felin T & Longo G (2015a). Economics for a creative world. Journal of Institutional Economics.

This paper received the 2016 Elinor Ostrom Prize [html]

Felin T (2015). Valve Corporation: Strategy tipping points and thresholds. Journal of Organization Design. [html]  

Commentary on article by Phanish Puranam and Dorthe Håkonsson.[html]

Devins C, Koppl R, Kauffman S & Felin T (2015). Against design. Arizona State Law Journal. [html]

Responses to this article by: Steven Calabresi [pdf], Sanford Levinson [pdf], Vernon Smith [pdf]

Felin T, Kauffman S, Koppl R & Longo G (2014). Economic opportunity and evolution: Beyond landscapes and bounded rationality. Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal. [html] 

Mark Buchanan discusses this paper in Nature Physics, see here

Felin T & Zenger T (2014). Closed or open innovation? Problem solving and the governance choice. Research Policy. [open access]

Barney J & Felin T (2013). What are microfoundations? Academy of Management Perspectives. [pdf]

Argyres N, Felin T, Foss N & Zenger T (2012). Organizational economics of capability and heterogeneity. Organization Science. [html]

Felin T (2012). Cosmologies of capability, markets and wisdom of crowds. Managerial & Decision Economics. [html]

Interdisciplinary special issue with contributions from David Sumpter, Scott Page, Robb Willer, Claudio Castellano, Peter Leeson, Bruno Frey, Margit Osterloh and others 

Felin T & Foss N (2012). The (proper) microfoundations of routines and capabilities: a response to Winter, Pentland, Hodgson and Knudsen. Journal of Institutional Economics. [pdf]

King B, Felin T & Whetten D (2010). Finding the organization in organization theory: a meta-theory of the organization as social actor. Organization Science. [pdf] [html] 

Felin T & Foss N (2009). Performativity of theory, arbitrary conventions, and possible worlds: a reality check. Organization Science. [pdf] [html]

Felin T & Zenger T (2009). Entrepreneurs as theorists: on the origins of collective beliefs and novel strategies. Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal. [pdf] [html] 

Felin T, Zenger T & Tomsik J (2009). The knowledge economy: emerging organizational forms, missing microfoundations and key considerations for managing human capital. Human Resource Management.

Abell P, Felin T & Foss N (2008). Building microfoundations for the routines, capabilities, and performance links. Managerial & Decision Economics. [pdf] [html]

Felin T & Hesterly W (2007). The knowledge-based view, nested heterogeneity, and new value creation: philosophical considerations on the locus of knowledge. Academy of Management Review. [pdf] [html]

Felin T & Foss N (2006). Individuals and organizations: thoughts on a microfoundations project for strategic management and organizational analysis. Research Methodology in Strategy and Management.

Felin T & Foss N (2005). Strategic organization: a field in search of micro-foundations. Strategic Organization. [pdf]

Commentary by Jay Barney and Bruce Kogut

PRESENTATIONS ETC

Univ of Bath and Oxford seminars on "Artificial intelligence and actor-specific decisions" - June 2025

Bocconi Bayesian Entrepreneurship Conference, March 2025 [html]

BYU-Utah Winter Strategy Conference, presenting with Mari Sako: AI and strategy [html]

"Theory-Based View" conference, Park City Jan 9-11, 2025 [pdf]

American Finance Association panel on "Neurofinance and cognition" [html]

Oct 2024 Strategic Management Society panel: "AI and entrepreneurship" with Annamaria Conti, Alfonso Gambardella, Carlos Serrano, Felipe Csaszar

Sept 2024 Boston Univ Digital Business Seminar, "AI and cognition" [html]

Oxford lecture - "AI and strategy: What every decision maker needs to know" July 2024

June 2024 EconTalk podcast episode "When prediction is not enough" [html] 

June 2024 Presentation at Lawrence-Tushman conference at Harvard

May 2024 Aalto University presentation on AI and Strategy

April 2024 presentation at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Strategy Science conference and special issue on "theory-based view" (with Alfonso Gambardella and Todd Zenger) - Oct 2023, Milan, Italy [html]

"Generative rationality and evolution" - Sept 2023, University of Helsinki

"Scientific reasoning, evolution and the human mind" - March 2023, University of Oxford

Foundations of Value Summit, Univ of Oxford, Jan 2023 - "Evolutionary origins of (perceiving) value"

"Rationality in uncertain ecologies" - presentation @ Brunswik Society, Dec 2022

The fallacy of obviousness 

Aeon [html]

"Experimentation in human evolution" - joint lecture with Stuart Kauffman at the Huntsman School, Oct 2022 

Organizing for Novelty keynote at ODC conference, Oct 2022 [details here]

"Generative rationality and growing awareness" - presentation at Oxford Univ, May 2022

Strategy: A Very Short Introduction book under contract with Oxford University Press

co-founder of "Foundations of Value & Values"-initiative, housed @ Blavatnik School, Oxford Univ -  faculty group now includes Ruth Chang, Paul Collier, George Ellis, Cecilia Heyes, Colin Mayer & Denis Noble

2019-2021, worked on Future of Industrial Strategy research project with Julian Allwood & U of Cambridge Engineering (total EPSRC funding £5 million) 

Aug 2019: presented at conference celebrating Stu Kauffman's work, Santa Fe Institute [html] - talk titled "Mind and Economy"

co-taught (with Nir Vulkan) online Oxford Blockchain Strategy course [html] 2017-2020

May 2019: London50 conference - debate about the concept of ecosystems with Gary Dushnitsky

March 2019: Utah Winter Strategy Conference [html] - "state of field" panel presentation with Jay Barney and Joanne Oxley

Oct 2018: open innovation conference, UC Berkeley

Jan 2019: strategy for startups and SMEs, Strategy Insight Lab project [html] - with Arnaldo Camuffo, Alfonso Gambardella, Elena Novelli, Chiara Spina

June 2018: Strategy Science 

conference at Wharton, UPenn [html] - panel with Arnaldo Camuffo, Alfonso Gambardella, Todd Zenger and Scott Stern

BBC interview related to big data, artificial intelligence and the fallacy of obviousness [html]

April 2018: Big Data symposium [html]

interview with Geoff Mulgan at the Oxford Literary Festival: book Big Mind (Princeton U Press) [html]

"Creating a hive mind" - blurb about some of my research, written by Rob Brown [html]

speaking at Edith Penrose book launch in Oxford, 16 Nov 2017 [html]

EconTalk podcast with Russ 

Roberts (Hoover, Stanford Univ): Blindness, rationality, 

and perception [html]

Sept 2017 Strategy Science conference at Apple, Cupertino, CA: origins of great strategy [html]

Sept 2017 plenary with Nick Chater and Adam Oliver: behavioral science and public policy [html]

90 mile Oxford-Cambridge charity bike ride, British Heart Foundation [donate here]

FURTHER PUBLICATIONS

Devins C, Koppl R, Kauffman S & Felin T (2016). Still against design: A response to Steven Calabresi, Sanford Levinson and Vernon Smith. Arizona State Law Journal. [pdf]

Felin T (2015). A forum on minds and institutions. Journal of Institutional Economics. [html] 

intro to forum with papers by Cass Sunstein & Reid Hastie and Giovanni Dosi & Luigi Marengo

Abell P, Felin T & Foss N (2014). Microfoundations of social theory: A response to Jepperson and Meyer. Sociologica. [html]

Stirling W & Felin T (2013). Game theory, conditional preferences and social influence. PLoS ONE. [html]

Felin T & Knudsen T (2012). A theory of nascent entrepreneurship and organization. Managerial & Decision Economics. [pdf] [html] 

Felin T, Foss N, Heimeriks K & Madsen T (2012). Microfoundations of routines and capabilities: individuals, processes and structures. Journal of Management Studies.

Stirling W, Giraud-Carrier C & Felin T (2012). A framework for the design and synthesis of coordinated social systems. Social Informatics.

Felin T & Foss N (2011). The endogenous origins of experience, routines and organizational capabilities: the poverty of stimulus. Journal of Institutional Economics. [pdf] [html]

three responses to the above article: S Winter, Problems at the Foundation? Comments on Felin & Foss and B Pentland and G Hodgson and T Knudsen

Felin T & Zenger T (2011). Information aggregation, matching, and radical market-hierarchy hybrids. Strategic Organization.

[pdf] [html]

Zenger T, Felin T & Bigelow L (2011). Theories of the firm-market boundary. Academy of Management Annals. [html] [pdf]

Abell P, Felin T & Foss N (2010). Causal and constitutive relations and the squaring of coleman's diagram: reply to Vromen Erkenntnis. [html] [pdf]

Felin T & Foss N (2009). 

Social reality, the boundaries of self-fulfilling prophecy, and economics. Organization Science. [pdf] [html]

response by Ferraro, Pfeffer & Sutton. How and why theories matter: a comment on Felin and Foss [see here]; editor introduction [see here]

Felin T & Foss N (2009). Organizational routines and capabilities: Historical drift and a course-correction toward microfoundations. Scandinavian Journal of Management. [html]

King B, Felin T & Whetten D (2009). Comparative organizational analysis. Research in the Sociology of Organizations. [pdf]

review of volume by P Foreman in Administrative Science Quarterly (2010)

Felin T & Spender JC (2009). An exchange of ideas about knowledge governance: seeking first principles & microfoundations. In Knowledge Governance, edited by Foss et al. Oxford University Press.

Whetten D, Felin T & King B (2009). Theory-borrowing in organizational studies. Journal of Management. [pdf] [scribd]

theory-based view

"generative rationality"

strategy and artificial intelligence

generative rationality

artificial intelligence and strategy

AI and strategy

where does strategy come from

what is strategy

origins of strategy

AI AI 

Generative rationality

theory-based view

neural networks 

large language models

"theory-based view"

causal reasoning 

causal logic