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

In entrepreneurship, delegation is often seen as perhaps something akin to a four-letter-word. I have met countless founders over the years who have been nothing short of insistent that they should know every last detail about every part of the business. We’ve all met the sort before, the archetypal ‘micro…
Thought Economics

 

“Macroeconomics has not done well in recent years…” writes Nobel Laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz, “The standard models didn’t predict the Great Recession; and even said it couldn’t happen. After the bubble burst, the models did not predict the full consequences.”  In a hugely relevant recent paper titled “Reconstructing Macroeconomic Theory…

Thought Economics

 

In this exclusive series of interviews, we speak to Javed Abidi (Chair, Disabled People's International DPI), Sir Philip Craven MBE (President, International Paralympic Committee IPC) and Professor Hugh Herr (Head of the Biomechatronics research group at MIT Media Lab and Founder of BiOM Inc). We discuss the human rights and…
Thought Economics

 

  Many of recent history’s most significant market events have manifest in what was (previously) the extreme of the market.  These “bubbles” and “crashes” follow power laws, meaning that (in theory) they could reach any size and fundamentally threaten the functionality of the entire financial system. Typical central-bank and policy…

Thought Economics

 

It’s quite conceivable that the grandparents (or even parents) of the future will be  made to feel even more archaic as the young of that generation look at them quizzically and state “…are you serious? You used to use bits of paper as money?!” Money is a cultural abstract.   It…

Thought Economics

 

In these exclusive interviews, we speak to Dr. Julio Frenk (Dean of the Harvard School of Public Health, and former Minister of Health of Mexico), Sir Richard Thompson (President of the Royal College of Physicians), Baron Peter Piot (Director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine) and Dame…
Thought Economics

 

The perception that we learn from our mistakes is just one in a long-list of cognitive and behavioural biases that exist in the human mind. As WIRED reported in 2009, “Researchers from MIT have shown that the brain learns more after a success than a failure. This study indicates, contrary…

Thought Economics

 

To really understand how economies behave, we must therefore understand the psychology of entrepreneurs and other key market participants.  To learn more, I spoke with Professor Daniel Kahneman, who is widely regarded as being the world’s most influential living psychologist.  In 2002 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics…
Thought Economics

 

In this exclusive interview, we speak with Prof. Jill Tarter (Co-Founder and Bernard M. Oliver Chair of the SETI Institute). We discuss her lifelong work with the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute and look at mankind's quest to answer the fundamental question of whether we are alone in the…
Thought Economics

 

All Interviews  (597)
Business & Economics  (351)
Culture, Society, Sports & Arts  (240)
In this interview I speak to Sahil Bloom, author of “The 5 Types of Wealth: A Transformative Guide to Design Your Dream Life" which Apple CEO Tim Cook calls, “a powerful call to action to think deeply about what lights you up—and a guide for how to build a life…

In this interview I speak to Nissan Formula E Team Principal, Tommaso Volpe. Formula E is the world’s sole all-electric single-seater FIA World Championship and provides an elite motorsports platform for automotive manufacturers to accelerate EV innovation while delivering races in the heart of some of the world’s most iconic…

Health & Medicine  (68)
Nobel Laureates  (20)
Politics & Policy  (162)
In this interview, I speak to Baron Jon Moynihan on his new book, Return to Growth Volume One: How to Fix the Economy. We discuss the UK’s decades-long stagnant economy and looks at what can be done to resuscitate it. In our conversation, we explore the key dynamics affecting economic…
Science & Technology  (123)
Professor Brian Cox is widely recognized as the foremost communicator for science, cosmology and astronomy in the world, and is Professor of Particle Physics at the University of Manchester, The Royal Society Professor for Public Engagement in Science and a Fellow of the Royal Society. In this interview, we discuss…