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

Technology push also brings with it a range of unintended or unexpected consequences, particularly at a time (as we are now) where technology can grow from the germination of an idea to sweeping ubiquity at a frightening pace.  As a society, we seemingly cannot adapt ourselves, our culture, economy and…

 

The greatest humanitarian crisis in history, is also the greatest crisis of our humanity.  To learn more about our global refugee and migration crisis, we speak to Gulwali Passarlay (Afghan refugee, author & Co-Founder of My Bright Kite), Professor François Crépeau (Former United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of…

 

From humble beginnings in 1984, TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) has grown to become the centre of gravity for the intellectual curious of our digital era. Their flagship TED conference, and global network of TEDx events have created hundreds of thousands of unique pieces of video content, watched billions of times,…

 

Scott Farquhar is the archetypal entrepreneur.  He and his Co-Founder Mike Cannon-Brookes started Atlassian in 2002 (after meeting whilst studying at the University of South Wales, Sydney).  Deciding neither of them wanted a corporate job, they took out $10,000 on on credit cards and bootstrapped Atlassian; a company which has now…

 

In these exclusive interviews, we talk to five of the world's most successful international footballers: Giorgio Chiellini, Louis Saha, Philip Neville, Leighton Baines and Hope Solo along with Jürgen Griesbeck (Founder, Street Football World). We discuss life as a footballer, how the game has grown to become the world's most…

 

Slack launched in 2014 and has become the fastest growing business application in history- allowing millions of people in tens of thousands of organisations around the world to get work done. I caught up with Slack Co-Founder, Stewart Butterfield to learn more about his entrepreneurship journey, and the changing global…

 

My conversation with Alfred Lin, Partner at Sequoia Capital- who have partnered early and at every stage of growth with the founders of companies that now have an aggregate, public market value of over $3.3 trillion.  Some of the firm’s most successful investments have been Apple, Google, Oracle, PayPal, Stripe,…

 

Sheryl Sandberg is a remarkable person.  Alongside leading a $500 billion business, with 24,000 employees and 2 billion monthly active users, she has mobilised millions of women around the world to achieve their ambitions and fight for a more gender equal society.  Sheryl’s own story of resilience came to light…

 

In this exclusive interview series, we speak to some of the world's most successful entrepreneurs: Sir Richard Branson (Founder of Virgin Group), Robin Li (Founder of Baidu), Sir James Dyson (Founder of Dyson), Professor Muhammad Yunus (Nobel Peace Prize Winner and Founder of Grameen Bank), Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw (Founder of Biocon), N. R. Narayana…

 

Explore an archive of more than 3,000 quotes.

Within each of us is a deep, complex network of capillaries, veins and arteries which extend a distance equivalent to more than 3 times the circumference of the Earth, and because our body has lost its conditioning to nature, our hearts have to pump 20-30 times a minute more than if we regularly exposed our body to cold water.

— Wim Hof
Extreme athlete known for ice exposure & breathing technique methods

For the most part, there are more average celebrities than superstars. When most people think of celebrities, they think of A-listers, but there's also B-list, C-list, D-list, F-list and even Z-list... he gets all the perks of celebrity, without much of the negativity that comes from being an A-lister.

— Perez Hilton
Celebrity gossip blogger and media personality known for celebrity news website

A model that's really strong at mathematical reasoning is likely to be strong at coding. And a model that's excellent at both math and code is often very good at analysing the nuts and bolts of legal reasoning as well. The third and deepest reason this matters is the ability to bridge different levels of abstraction. All of these domains involve multiple layers of abstraction, and the ability to move fluidly between those layers is likely to be extremely commercially valuable.

That's a very simple yet complicated question. Architecture exists to create the physical environment in which people live. Obviously that's a very simple answer, but if we deep digger we see the complexities. What is the built environment? what constitutes quality of life? how do architects determine whether something is positive, helpful or relevant for individuals and collectives?

I dreamt of Farfetch for the love of fashion. I was absolutely determined to create something in the intersection of both fashion and tech – my two passions. I think the idea really came when I was in my showroom in Paris during fashion week and I could see all these boutiques who were just not going to survive as the internet and e-commerce really started to change the fashion industry.

— José Neves
Founder and CEO of Farfetch, luxury fashion e-commerce platform

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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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