Dr. Vikas Shah MBE DL Interviews the world's leading thinkers, and the people shaping the century.

Francis Ngannou is a remarkable individual. He is currently the heavyweight champion of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), and is ranked as having the hardest punch in the world. Francis Ngannou was born in the village of Batié (Cameroon), and grew up with very little: no home, no formal education, and…

 

Albert Wenger is a managing partner at Union Square Ventures (USV), a New York-based thesis-driven venture capital firm, where his investments have included Etsy, Twilio and MongoDB. Before joining USV, Albert was the President of del.icio.us from founding through the company’s sale to Yahoo. Albert graduated summa cum laude from…

 

Alibaba combines the economic might of Amazon, the penetration of Facebook, the ubiquity of Google and the cultural significance of YouTube. In China alone, Alibaba has over close to 1billion active customers and over 250,000 employees. At peak, the platform processed over 583,000 orders per second. Each year, Alibaba receives…

 

Jody Michael is one of the world’s top leadership coaches. She’s an internationally credentialed Master Certified Coach, Board Certified Coach, University of Chicago trained psychotherapist, and Licensed Clinical Social Worker. She has delivered over 40,000 hours of coaching over the last 25 years, including 15 years working in corporate leadership…

 

Dandapani is a Hindu priest, entrepreneur and a former monk of 10 years. After graduating university with a degree in Electrical Engineering he left it all behind to become a Hindu monk under the guidance of one of Hinduism’s foremost spiritual leaders of our time, Sivaya Subramuniyaswami. For 10 years…

 

Mary Bekhait is one of the most powerful figureheads in the global entertainment industry. As Chief Executive of YMU Group, she leads an international business representing household name clients across music, sport, entertainment, literary, social, art and business management. In this interview, I speak to Mary Bekhait about the secrets…

 

Explore an archive of more than 3,000 quotes.

Each time we learn something new or encounter a fresh experience, we trigger a reconfiguration of our brains. Neuroplasticity is highest during youth, explaining why children and young adults up to the age of 25 absorb knowledge so rapidly. Their learning capacity is immense, akin to sponges soaking up water.

— Dr. Rudolph Tanzi
Alzheimer's disease researcher and Harvard Medical School neuroscientist

Opportunities generally arise from landscape change. But entrepreneurial ideas can come from anywhere. They can come from recognizing where the pain points, the bottlenecks, and the inefficiencies are. They can come from late-night conversations with friends, or from random eureka moments.

— Robin Li
Founder and CEO of Baidu, China's leading search engine company

Don't give away a majority shareholding the way I had to with HomeServe. I ended up giving away 52% of the shares with my partner for a £500,000 investment we took when we'd run out of money—a terrible time to raise capital.

It's the ultimate invention—the last one we'll ever need to make—because once we have AI that is generally intelligent and then superintelligent, it will do the inventing far better than we can. In that sense, it's a handing over of the baton.

— Nick Bostrom
Philosopher & Director of Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford

The world simply cannot manage Covid-19 without international cooperation around the production and distribution of medical equipment, research and distribution of a vaccine, and the cooperation between economies needed to ensure that we all return to growth.

— Ngaire Woods
Director of the Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford University

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Long-form Interviews with the World's Leading Thinkers — Thought Economics


The Wisdom Series

Ten in-depth articles distilling insights from over 550 interviews with the world's leading thinkers, creators, and changemakers.

The Wisdom of Leadership The Wisdom of Entrepreneurship The Wisdom of Creativity The Wisdom of Technology The Wisdom of Meaning The Wisdom of the Mind The Wisdom of Justice The Wisdom of Science The Wisdom of Geopolitics The Wisdom of Health
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