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

A Conversation with will.i.am Global Music Artist, Entrepreneur and Philanthropist “Entrepreneurship is about taking risks, pushing boundaries, and not being afraid to fail,” Sir Richard Branson told me, adding that it’s “a combination of passion, vision, creativity and a sense of adventure,” that drives entrepreneurs to do what they do….

 

A Conversation Matthew W. Barzun Ambassador of the United States of America to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland Originally published in British Airways Business Life, September 2016 We often hear policy-makers talk of the ‘special-relationship’ between the United States of America and the United Kingdom, and…

 

How we can fix our broken nations, economies, societies and cultures.  In these exclusive interviews we speak to Professor Theodore Zeldin (International Best-Selling Author and Scholar), Rutger Bregman (Author, ‘Utopia for Realists’), Paul Mason (Award Winning British Journalist, Broadcaster and Author), Andy Stern (President Emeritus, Service Employees International Union) and…

 

In these exclusive interviews we talk to Dr. Vint Cerf (Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist for Google, widely known as one of the "Fathers of the Internet"), Professor Robert ‘Bob’ Metcalfe (Co-inventor of the Ethernet, founder 3COM), Dr. Jeff Jaffe (CEO, W3C – The World Wide Web Consortium), Kevin…

 

Steve Ballmer served over 20 years at Microsoft.  During his tenure, the company pioneered personal computing and democratized enterprise computing, growing from a small start-up to a company that today employs more than 110,000 people, with a market capitalisation approaching $100 billion.  After retiring from this role in 2014, he…

 

In these exclusive interviews, we speak to Dr. Christopher Wild (Director of the International Agency for Research on Cancer, IARC - an intergovernmental agency forming part of the World Health Organisation of the United Nations), Prof. Nic Jones (Director of the Manchester Cancer Research Centre and former Chief Scientist of…

 

In this exclusive series of interviews, we speak to four world experts on religion and science.  Fr. José G. Funes (Director of the Vatican Observatory), Prof. Alister McGrath (Director, Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion at Oxford University), Dr. Deborah Haarsma (President of the BioLogos Foundation), Prof. Justin Barrett…

 

In this exclusive series of interviews, we speak to six world experts on theatre and performance. Sir Howard Panter (Founder of the Ambassador Theatre Group Ltd, Chairman of Rambert Dance Company), Gilles Ste-Croix (co-founder of Cirque du Soleil), Joanna Read (Principal of the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art…

 

Explore an archive of more than 3,000 quotes.

We go to war not because we ignore the costs, but because we know there are costs, but we are willing to pay those costs because we get something from the war which we wouldn't get otherwise.

— Christopher Blattman
Economist specializing in conflict, development, and poverty research

It sounds strange but my system came to me in a sort-of almost otherworldly way. It was very powerful.

— Jordan Belfort
Stock Broker Convicted of Fraud; Subject of "The Wolf of Wall Street

inequality [was] a better predictor of violence than economic development… Increasing inequality was found to predispose more to lethal violence

We are now living with a great deal of uncertainty, which will increase. As a society, though, we have to be prepared for threats we cannot conceive, we must build resilience not just in developed countries, but particularly in conflict areas.

This year our footprint has gone down, but that has come at a huge human cost. There's no way we can aspire to decarbonise the way we have done this year, that's not responsible, the human cost cannot be sustained. We need responsible decarbonisation that creates jobs, creates wellbeing, and leaves the climate net better at the end.

— Christiana Figueres
Former UN Climate Change Executive Secretary & Global Climate Action Leader

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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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