feet. While these are clearly not high sensation-seeking activities,
you can tell by talking to him that Corey gets a kind of thrill out of
it. It may not be the same as inserting tubes into the chest of
a severely injured person, but it does have deep meaning and
purpose for him. Corey has taken his desire to help people, his
integrity, and his fearlessness with him into his life in new ways,
and has become something of a hero for it.Risky Business
Does the personality and quest for thrill of sensation-seekers make
them poor leaders? It’s easy to thinkthat high sensation-seekers may
cause problems in business. Quite the contrary. Jayanthi Sunder,
Shyam Sunder, and Jingjing Zhang from McGill University discovered
that high sensation-seeking can have a positive impact on
companies.^12
Why is this the case? According to McGill University’s
Jingjing Zhang, sensation-seekers tend to embrace innovation and
change, which could make them better CEOs. The researchers
looked at the performance of 88 CEOs who were also pilots and
1,123 non-pilot CEOs in US firms over a period of a decade. What did
they find? The companies with pilots as CEOs increased the number
of patented products by 66.7, showing evidence of inspiring greater
innovation. Their research suggests that businesses with
a sensation-seeker CEO are likely to be more innovative. “Our
research demonstrates that companies led by sensation-seekers,
who display the same thrill-seeking tendencies as pilots, are able
to generate more patents with greater market impact than their
peers.” Zhang explains, “This is because CEOs with this particular
personality typically improve innovation effectiveness and pursue
more diverse and original projects.”
“Managers with an inclination for creativity in corporate set-
tings are far more successful when innovating. An openness to new
ideas, and a willingness to pursue new methods of working overrides
their desire to maintain structured and repetitive situations. They are
also likely to be more innovativeconsumers, unafraid to try new
products and always aware of alternatives,” she explains.^13
Remember Munir fromChapter 3? He’s my former student
who tricked his then girlfriend into eating goat brain. He said his
high sensation-seeking personality influences his work and career
decisions.132 / Buzz!Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Access paid by the UCSF Library, on 11 Nov 2019 at 14:18:48, subject to the Cambridge