Anita talks with Brent Goldfarb, Dean's Professor of Entrepreneurship and Academic Director of the Dingman Center at the University of Maryland's Smith School of Business. They cover three main topics:

1. Short-Termism and Innovation Goldfarb discusses his Management Science paper on how short-term investor pressure is causing fewer firms to pursue radical, long-term innovation. Rather than a general decline in breakthrough innovation, the finding is that such innovation is becoming increasingly concentrated among a smaller number of firms. He argues that radical innovation requires time to solve the many sub-technological problems that make a breakthrough viable — time that short-term-oriented firms simply don't have.

2. The Reliability Crisis in Science Goldfarb reflects on how scientific research suffers from a phenomenon called "optional stopping" — researchers find a promising result and stop looking, which distorts statistical findings. He describes this not as malicious behavior, but as a natural human tendency reinforced by publication incentives. His proposed remedy is for researchers to make more modest claims, treat results as curious starting points rather than definitive conclusions, and triangulate findings with qualitative and historical context.

3. Entrepreneurship and Inequality The conversation touches on a paper arguing that entrepreneurship can deepen inequality by luring people — particularly from lower-income backgrounds — into ventures (like gig work) that promise upward mobility but often don't deliver it. Goldfarb acknowledges the concern while noting that no better alternative economic system has been found, and that innovation-driven capitalism has produced remarkable improvements in human welfare and longevity.

The conversation closes with Goldfarb reflecting on what energizes him: the privilege of academic life and his current fascination with epistemology — how we know what we know.