Psychology

More than just being a luxury item, they are pieces that represent milestone moments- that's why they're important.

The truth is nobody needs a diamond. You don't need a diamond to heat your home, run your car or power your cell-phone. As a business, it's clear to us that there is only one source of value for diamonds- and that is the consumer's desire for the product.

The human species is different now to thirty years ago, we have an electronic extension to our DNA that gives so many distractions, so much multi-tasking, and so little time to focus on a single thought for any extended period of time.

Founder of Palo Alto Software and business planning expert

We've found that innovation really happens when you constrain a problem very specifically and then throw it out to the world to solve. It's a slightly different way of thinking.

When you put a prize out there, you legitimise the pursuit of something which is often pretty audacious. Legitimacy also brings about renewed focus and vigour on the problem at hand- it's a little like the context of a 4 minute mile… nobody thought it was possible until it was achieved.

Markets have an incredible capacity to forget, so who knows if it will stay like that… Markets forget, they get over-leveraged, they extend themselves, we will see other bubbles.

Prominent Economist & Former Vice Chair of Federal Reserve Board

What I mean by that is compensation systems- especially for traders- that created go for broke incentives. If you won big, you became fabulously wealthy- and if you lost big- you got a comparative slap across the wrist.

Prominent Economist & Former Vice Chair of Federal Reserve Board

There's a disease shared between individuals who consider themselves the smartest people in the room that makes them think they'll be the ones that get out just in time, while others are left holding the bag. That was true for a few people, but in general… someone will always be left holding the bag.

Prominent Economist & Former Vice Chair of Federal Reserve Board

There is a naïve form which doesn't recognise the bubble, and thinks that real-estate will go up forever. There is then a second order overconfidence where someone recognises a bubble but feels they will escape it when other people don't.

Nobel Prize Winner in Economics for Behavioral Economics Research

One of the sources of overconfidence in our ability to forecast the future is the great ease with which we find explanations for the past. That's a very significant mechanism that produces overconfidence.

Nobel Prize Winner in Economics for Behavioral Economics Research

Many entrepreneurs are deluded about their odds of success, that evidence is very clear. This creates problems… Should a government subsidise entrepreneurs who greatly over-estimate their chances of success?

Nobel Prize Winner in Economics for Behavioral Economics Research

You cannot understand entrepreneurial activity without understanding optimism. Research has shown that optimism and overconfidence in individuals is directly linked to their engagement in entrepreneurial activity.

Nobel Prize Winner in Economics for Behavioral Economics Research

Bubbles are driven by people piling into ideas now, that they think will make them lots and lots of money in the future. The more people that pile in, the more quickly innovation can spread... But if the capital is misallocated? then when the money meets common sense, you get a bust.

What crises actually do is expose the underlying fragility and structural flaws within an economy and society. Some of this is endemic – financial markets are fragile because they are giant pools of sentiment and leverage at their heart.

We always think of every crisis as being somehow different and unique to us. That is human myopia. The reality is that the perennial pattern we see is universal and immemorial.

...in situations of high uncertainty, personal information exchange may reach market-wide impacts, as the examples of bank runs and speculative attacks on national currencies show.