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

The Most Important Tool We Have. In these exclusive interviews we speak to Professor Jon Kabat-Zinn (scientist, writer and meditation teacher), Matthieu Ricard (Buddhist monk, photographer and author), Andy Puddicombe (Founder of Headspace), Dr. Danny Penman (award winning writer, journalist and meditation teacher) and Mallika Chopra (media entrepreneur, public speaker…

 

Leadership sits at the very heart of everything we do as a civilisation, and to understand more we spoke to a group of the world’s foremost experts on leadership across the military, business, government education and research: General Stan McChyrstal (Founder, McChrystal Group & former commander of US and International…

 

For centuries, great artists, scientists, writers, entrepreneurs and thinkers have seemingly tapped into somewhere else, beyond the realities faced by ‘the rest of us,’ to do the seemingly unimaginable – from creating great works of art, to solving complex problems or even building multi-billion-dollar businesses.  To understand more about this mindset…

 

My interview with Stephen A. Schwarzman - He’s the man who took $400,000 and co-founded Blackstone, the investment firm that manages over $545 billion. He’s the CEO whose views are sought by heads of state. He’s the billionaire philanthropist who founded Schwarzman Scholars, this century’s version of the Rhodes Scholarship,…

 

In one of the darkest moments of modern civilisation, over six million Jews were killed by Nazi Germany in a state-sponsored genocide.  This event (The Holocaust) killed over two-thirds of Europe's entire Jewish population. It took decades for the Jewish people and the rest of the world to make-sense of…

 

In these exclusive interviews, I speak to the leaders of five of the world’s most influential civil sector organisations. Brian Gallagher (CEO of United Way Worldwide, the world’s largest privately-funded non-profit), William “Bill” Drayton (Founder & CEO, ASHOKA), Gilles Carbonnier (Vice President of the ICRC, International Committee of the Red…

 

In 2014, Whitney Wolfe Herd launched Bumble as, “the only dating platform where women make the first move…” Today, Bumble has over 55 million users in 150 countries.  As Whitney notes herself, “Bumble has now grown far beyond a dating app into a networking platform, allowing people of all genders…

 

Explore an archive of more than 3,000 quotes.

The crux of the matter is the internal liberation that comes from acknowledging that there will always be more to do than we can handle, and that certainty about the future is unattainable. It's a form of defeat, yet immensely productive, because as long as you believe mastering everything is just extremely challenging, you'll continue to struggle.

— Oliver Burkeman
Guardian columnist & author on psychology, time management, and happiness

I define culture is three primary parts. The first part is behaviour. It's the behaviours of your employees that get embedded into all the processes we are already doing. The second part is processes. Think of the interview process – hiring, onboarding, recognition, promotion, feedback. All of those should have the behaviours integrated in them, ideally. The last piece is practices. These are kind of the daily, more informal ways that that we interact and connect – how we meet, how we communicate, how we make decisions and even how we learn.

When it comes to the growth of knowledge, you need to double down on the capacities you already have; you want to build on cities that possess a foundation. When you build in a remote location, costs skyrocket, attractiveness is hard to engineer, and the complementarities that help knowledge stick to a place simply aren't there.

— César Hidalgo
Physicist & Director of MIT Media Lab Connection Science group

I believe that the entrepreneurial life, even when running a large company, is a dual experience of joy and pain—two sides of the same coin. The joy lies in putting yourself out there and leading an organisation in a specific direction, but with that comes the burden of responsibility.

— Ron Shaich
Founder and former CEO of Panera Bread Company

I don't have to outrun the Tiger, I just have to outrun you. When you look at many of the financial centres such as The City of London, Wall St, and their counterparts, they think of things in Economic terms.

— Marc Chandler
Chief Strategist & Senior Currency Strategist at Bannockburn Global Forex

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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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