Wisdom in fragments

There is a certain conventional wisdom about the way that humanity evolved over time. The puzzling element is that much of the gain that we made in the technological realm were converted into more people, rather than into richer people up until very, very recently. World income per capita has increased 14-fold in the past 200 years, whereas over 300,000 years of human existence, it hardly changed.

Economist known for unified growth theory explaining long-term economic development

The politics of identity has gone very wrong in many cases. Politicians often forget that people are much more complex, and are a mix of many identities – and each of these identities can be of differing importance to the individual. A Muslim man from Somalia, who is a chess player, may have his chess-playing as his main source of identity, for example.

Magical thinking is a bi-product of cognitive process that were useful in our evolutionary survival. We're so good at pattern matching that we see patterns everywhere, even when they don't exist. It's better to believe the movement in the dark is a tiger, rather than the wind blowing thru a bush. Its better to be wrong on that, than the other way around.

We have to be aware of our cognitive fallacies to build some immunity to our cognitive traps. One simple thing we can all do is work on our own confirmation bias from time to time. I try to read things by people I disagree with for example, because I want to hear their best arguments and see whether my beliefs and values stand-up to them.

We are a product of evolution, and the mechanism of evolution is natural selection. Evolution is selecting for survival, and the qualities we have are evolved to help us survive as well as possible. Our cognitive capability to reason has not evolved to find truth, it evolved to help us survive and that means that we sometimes find it easier to stay with a group rather than believe the correct thing.

Truth is a quality of reality. It has nothing to do with what I believe. Truth, when it comes to empirical issues, is an objective thing. Whether something is true or not is independent of whether I think it is true or not, and a lot of people confuse this. People say that we cannot trust science because once-upon-a-time scientists held it true that the earth was flat; that's not correct. It was never true that the earth was flat, even if people believed it.

Focus is critical when you are building a business. The whole NFT industry is moving incredibly quickly. What happens in a month in the crypto-world, may take a couple of years in other industries.

Co-Founder and CEO of OpenSea, leading NFT marketplace platform

We've heard stories from folks who have paid off their student debt by becoming digital artists and selling NFTs. If you think about the jobs of the future – there will be people who will be making money as VR sculptors, virtual land real estate agents… People are already creating those jobs now!

Co-Founder and CEO of OpenSea, leading NFT marketplace platform

You could take a sword from one game and move it to another. In the events industry, you can imagine having event tickets operating as these collectible, persistent, immutable objects you can carry between markets, with different benefits… potentially even being redeemable against real-world assets.

Co-Founder and CEO of OpenSea, leading NFT marketplace platform

For the creator economy, NFTs represent a way for creators and producers of content to directly engage with the people who support them. It's a completely different model… a way for artists and creators to monetise much more effectively than incumbent platforms.

Co-Founder and CEO of OpenSea, leading NFT marketplace platform

Web3 and blockchain are as big of a fundamental shift as the internet was in 1999-2000. Crypto and NFTs create open systems with distributed ownership that can be used to build a practically infinite number of applications. We're at day zero of a gigantic wave.

Co-Founder and CEO of OpenSea, leading NFT marketplace platform

Today, American capital markets are a detriment for competitiveness. The private markets are doing well, but we need a new way forward for competitiveness that works better for companies and the people.

Management theorist & former Dean of Rotman School of Business

Right now, is the absolute best time in human history to be a disruptor. The world is awash with cash chasing disruptive ideas and most companies have one (if not both) hands tied behind their back.

Management theorist & former Dean of Rotman School of Business

The only way to innovate is to follow Aristotle's prescription. To create a future that is different to the past is to imagine possibilities and choose the one for which the most compelling argument can be made, not the one for which there is the most data. If companies want to innovate, they need to realise that data analytics is killing innovation yet is lauded and used increasingly.

Management theorist & former Dean of Rotman School of Business

The biggest mistake is thinking that some people at the top make strategy, while everybody else executes it. It feels intractable at this point, it's so ingrained in our way of thinking. You don't want people who sit there faithfully executing strategy, you want people who lead their part of the organisation and who engage in good communication.

Management theorist & former Dean of Rotman School of Business

If those assets are not being productively converted into goods and services that make the world a better place, it's a missed opportunity. Over the past half-century, we've standardised on a 'way' to do things – and that's clearly flawed but continues. We need managers and leaders to up their game if we're going to hope to tackle the environmental, inequality and other crises we face.

Management theorist & former Dean of Rotman School of Business