Wisdom in fragments

I learn every single day from my girlfriend, my family, from graduates coming into the business… I try to learn relentlessly.

Founder and CEO of Gymshark, fitness apparel company

Entrepreneurs and founders have to learn to be the most adaptable people in their business- that's really important – otherwise, the business will outgrow the founder, or the founder will cause the business to stagnate or slow.

Founder and CEO of Gymshark, fitness apparel company

If you only listen to the voices around you, you'll amalgamate them into something that already exists… My view was that consensus isn't going to build something that will change the game.

Founder and CEO of Gymshark, fitness apparel company

I realised that athletes were my customers- they were the people I wanted to sell too. We wrote to them with a 15% discount offer, and the chance to become an agent to help fund their club. I must have got 200 agents signed-up and the business started to grow.

When I came back, it didn't take me and my brother long to see that this was a failing business. It had been making the same product since the 1930s. The business was dying.

I'd never even heard the word 'entrepreneur' growing up – I didn't know what that meant. If I go back to my grandfather – he was the real entrepreneur. He developed things… he made spiked running shoes when he was only 15 (in 1895!).

Building a business is about perseverance. When Jeff and I set off in late 1958, the sport of the world was football. Adidas had claimed that – and sports stores didn't need another brand in that category. We had to make customers and stores need our brand.

Whether it's real-life viruses, or dangerous ideas, they tend to be spread by super spreaders. We know that 20% of infected people do 80% of the spreading of COVID-19. We also know that on Facebook, there is a relatively identifiable cohort of super spreaders of disinformation and misinformation.

British historian and author specializing in financial and military history

Disasters keep coming along at random intervals, they are not normally distributed. They either come randomly (in the case of war) or they are governed by power-laws (pandemics and earthquakes). That's hard for our brains to deal with… we don't like the idea that history is just a lot of random shocks without any predictable features.

British historian and author specializing in financial and military history

We've built two great contagion machines. Firstly, international travel which has enabled vast numbers of people to fly over great distances. Secondly, the internet – and in particular, the way the internet has evolved... we saw the rapid growth of clickbait, sensationalist content, and the internet became a machine for disseminating contagious ideas.

British historian and author specializing in financial and military history

Today's civilisation is more fragile as a result of its complexity. We've created an astonishingly networked world in which we communicate and travel in ways which were unimaginable for most of human history... The story of modernity is a story of scientific advance – but in reality, with every step forward, we're taking half a step backward in terms of making ourselves more fragile.

British historian and author specializing in financial and military history

I genuinely believe that anyone can build grit or- indeed- any other trait such as kindness, empathy, curiosity, energy or cheerfulness. I don't want to say that we can all end-up being the exact same-person, but we can be different tomorrow to the person we are today.

Psychologist & Author of "Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance

People who learn fast and who have some level of 'natural' talent may go home from practice early because they don't have to work as hard as others to get to their target level of achievement, but when you study super-achievers, you find that instead of going home early, they work late, and really pull-away from the crowd.

Psychologist & Author of "Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance

Most people we have worked with who have accomplished great things have an other-centred purpose, and that's never just 'make a lot of money…' – it could be to make women's lives easier, to close the inequality gap, to change the world, it's something which isn't strictly personal and selfish.

Psychologist & Author of "Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance

The idea of grit is being able to sustain effort and commitment to goals that take a really long time. That's the part of the equation that sometimes gets overlooked.

Psychologist & Author of "Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance

If you have a doctor who is very ready to find people as having heart disease, and thus overdiagnoses and overtreats them – that's a mistake, risks safety and wastes resources. Similarly, if you have a doctor down the hall who underdiagnoses, that endangers lives.

Legal Scholar & White House Office of Management & Budget Administrator