Society

There is a problem with business leaders and the economics profession where we have celebrated the gains from neoliberal policies whilst only paying lip-service to compensating those left-behind.

Dean of Columbia Business School & Economic Policy Advisor

There's some psychological evidence which shows that people who have experienced very little suffering in their lives often have very low tolerance for difficulty and strangely enough, lower kindness.

Psychologist specializing in moral development and human nature research

We're starting to realise that business is a major force in deciding the sort of society we live in- and so the role of business must be more in tune with political, social and moral norms of the day.

While people have been worried about AI being embedded in humanoid robots from the science fiction world, our lives have been shaped and influenced by AI which makes tens of billions of decisions each day about what we see, and how we communicate.

Dean of Cornell Tech & Computer Science Leader

We haven't really had a technology like AI in the history of technological development – the closest analogy would be the movable type printing press, which came to the fore at the beginning of the enlightenment, some five hundred years ago.

Dean of Cornell Tech & Computer Science Leader

The average person works more than five days a week… they're burned out by the weekend, they end up drinking too much alcohol, too much caffeine, they don't look after themselves, they're reacting to how they feel instead of preparing for the tasks ahead.

Founder of Practice of the Practice & Mental Health Business Consultant

If you love yourself – and feel good about yourself, it will help you enhance your future, life, and relationships. Loving yourself makes you feel worthy and if you love yourself, you're far more likely to love others.

This isn't about shareholders becoming like Greenpeace but realising that return on investment requires you to understand your risks and that requires you to understand, and act on, your relationship with society.

Your social mission has to genuinely deliver for society and genuinely deliver for business. If your social mission isn't rooted in delivering for the business, it simply isn't going to last.

Today's workers don't want their own reputation soiled by working for a company that doesn't have a good reputation. They want to feel their work has meaning, and the companies they work for have a purpose.

If you're sourcing trainers from sweatshops, those sweatshops can be filmed on a mobile phone and that can go viral in hours, destroying shareholder value. There are no dark-corners in which supply chains can hide anymore.

Digital media has allowed a complete bypass of those structures – there's less control around power – and people can amass huge followings for totally irrational reasons.

Political scientist & author specializing in authoritarianism and democracy

If someone is commanding in their presence, it directly correlates to how a group judges their skill level! Someone who is commanding in presence is often followed over someone who is far more effective but who is quiet, hesitant, or timid.

Political scientist & author specializing in authoritarianism and democracy

If our senses are really how we understand the world, and there are differences in those sensory windows, then our internal world will be different. Perhaps these differences explain the diversity of beliefs.

Sleep medicine specialist and NHS consultant neurologist studying sleep disorders

Consciousness is at the root of human identity. Fundamentally, we relate to each other as beings with feelings and experiences. Consciousness is at the root of everything that really matters in life from deep emotions, subtle thoughts, these are the things that make life worth living.

Philosopher specializing in consciousness and panpsychism

We seem to be in a strange period of history where our official world view, our official picture of the universe denies the reality of the thing that's most evident and the thing that gives life value. I think people do feel this at an intuitive level, and it can lead to a deep sense of alienation.

Philosopher specializing in consciousness and panpsychism