From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
We estimate that between 2010 and 2015, there will be 150million new Chinese entering the middle-class. That's a middle-class which increasingly buys diamonds as a gift of love and as a memento of stature.
I want to take African rhythm and put it into classical music, European jazz, and symphonies. I want people to come together from all over the place, through music. That's my legacy.
If you get the culture right, most of the other stuff — including building your brand to be about the very best customer service — will happen naturally on its own. But if you don't get the culture right, then you're not going to accomplish any of the other stuff.
Researching the story of empire didn't make me hate Britain, rather it gave me a deeper sense of belonging because it made me realise that we (brown people) have been here for centuries.
Social synchrony is a big feature of human behaviour—it's a weird thing if you think about it, but we do things like marching in time and parading and singing in choirs in ways that are highly coordinated and synchronised.
We humans are a musical species no less than a linguistic one. We integrate all of these and 'construct' music in our minds using many different parts of the brain. And to this largely unconscious structural appreciation of music is added an often intense and profound emotional reaction to music.
A brand has to be authentic and be born of a personal passion. If you, its creator, doesn't want the product, no one else will. If you want it, chances are it will be wanted around the world. Desires are universal and speak in every language.
Our thought was simple; why don't' we send ill-informed comedians to look at these social issues? And that turned out to be the magical idea – because people were used to experts and journalists, talking in terms of agricultural yields and geopolitics… we sent out normal people, who were very well known, to talk about human issues and human problems.
Cinema and drama are also changing perceptions in India. This certainly happened with Made in Heaven which was commercially entertaining, but had a main character who was Gay. It blew everyone away and started an important conversation which was really encouraging.
Without music, life would be hollow. Music is like food, we need it. It's essential. It's invisible, and doesn't require our attention, and so it gets threaded into our lives. Music becomes a strong part of our memories, our sense of self, and identity.
We took bold risks with unconventional styles and vibrant hues, but the crux of the matter remained that our marketing image always resonated with a particular sense of cool. It created this compelling narrative: if you owned a pair of UGG boots, you were undoubtedly cool.
Honesty! It has a greater share of integrity than most pop phenomenon- and consistently. They coined an expression early, that people had this attitude of '…keeping it real…'. People always said they do art, but they don't do art for money… what was real was that they wanted to get ahead- so their poetry reflected what was in their hearts.