Teppo Felin


Teppo Felin is a Professor of Strategy at the Saïd Business School, University of Oxford. His current research focuses on cognition, rationality, perception, organizational economics, markets and strategy.

Life and work

Born in Helsinki, Finland, Felin obtained a Ph.D. from the David Eccles School of Business of the University of Utah.
After his graduation in 2005, he was appointed Associate Professor at the Marriott School of Management, BYU. In 2013 he was appointed Professor of Strategy at the Saïd Business School of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. He has been Visiting Professor at the Goizueta Business School of the Emory University in 2004-05, and at the Helsinki University of Technology in 2007. He is Co-Editor of the journal Strategic Organization and Associate Editor of Academy of Management Annals. His research has been published in Academy of Management Review, Journal of Management, Organization Science, PLOS ONE, MIT Sloan Management Review, Journal of Management Studies, Erkenntnis, and other research outlets. In 2012 he edited a special issue on markets, aggregation and the wisdom of crowds which included contributions from political scientist Scott E. Page, economist Bruno Frey, economist Nicolai J. Foss, economist Peter Leeson, social psychologist Steve Kozlowski, organizational scholar Margit Osterloh, physicist Claudio Castellano, biologist David Sumpter, sociologist Robb Willer, and many others.
In the early 2000s Felin Nicolai J. Foss and Peter Abell were engaged in research on the foundations of organizations and strategy, which resulted in the 2005 article "Strategic organization: A field in search of micro-foundations." He is doing research with biologist Stuart Kauffman on the emergence of novelty in economic settings. This work has recently been applied to the context of the United States Constitution and the problem of designing laws. This article received responses from Constitutional scholars Steven G. Calabresi and Sanford Levinson and Nobel Laureate Vernon L. Smith. In 2015, Teppo Felin interviewed entrepreneur and venture capitalist Peter Thiel at the University of Oxford.
Felin is also doing research with mathematician Jan Koenderink and psychologist Joachim Krueger on the nature of cognition, rationality and perception. A general audience version of this research was published in Aeon Magazine, under the title "The Fallacy of Obviousness". Related to this essay, Felin was interviewed by economist Russ Roberts for the podcast EconTalk.

Selected publications

Articles, a selection: