Welcome to Revise and Resubmit, the podcast where we break down the world’s most cutting-edge business research—one paper at a time.
Today, we’re diving into a fascinating study that challenges how we perceive creativity, innovation, and judgment. It’s called The Misfit Bias, written by Bryan K. Stroube, Keyvan Vakili, and Michaël Bikard, and published in Organization Science—one of the elite FT50 journals, the gold standard in business research.
Have you ever dismissed a song just because the album felt disjointed? Or overlooked a stunning photograph because the gallery lacked cohesion? This paper reveals a hidden cognitive bias—the tendency to penalize individual elements simply because they don’t “fit” well together. Drawing on real-world data from the music industry and controlled experiments with photography, the authors uncover how this bias shapes our perception and decision-making in ways we rarely notice.
If we unconsciously judge parts based on the whole, what does that mean for innovation? Could some of our greatest ideas be overlooked just because they don’t fit the mold?
Stay tuned as we unravel these insights. A special thanks to the authors and Informs PubsOnLine for bringing this research to light.
If you love discovering the hidden forces that shape business and creativity, make sure to subscribe to Revise and Resubmit on Spotify and follow our YouTube channel, Weekend Researcher. You can also find us on Amazon Prime and Apple Podcasts.
Reference
Stroube, B. K., Vakili, K., & Michaël Bikard. (2025). The Misfit Bias. Organization Science. https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2023.17462
Full Paper and supplements Open Access https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/epdf/10.1287/orsc.2023.17462
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