“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.”

— Roger L. Martin

Management theorist & former Dean of Rotman School of Business

The quote archive

Technology

A growing archive of 3,000+ moments, drawn from every interview.

It may be an overused phrase, but the only way social media can work is if you are incredibly authentic. If you try and cultivate and curate too much it can be very obvious and transparent.

— Sophie Ellis-Bextor

British Pop Singer & "Murder on the Dancefloor" Artist

The potential for blockchain is to accelerate the digitization of financial markets. Blockchain gets everyone excited as it has the potential to convene these different parties together to reach the necessary agreements, in that sense it is a unique enabler, a coordination mechanism. That has massive implications on the structure of our financial markets.

— Michel Rauchs

There are two key features of blockchain that make it, potentially, a very useful technology from an economic perspective. First, the data about transactions are posted on many public sites thus giving these data an immutability that makes disputes easy to avoid. Second, although the data are in some sense public, they can be encrypted so that a particular party learns only those aspects that she needs to know.

— Eric Maskin

Nobel Prize Winning Economist & Game Theory Pioneer

I remember one particular interview with a boy, Peter, aged just 14. He told me how he posted on Instagram and then waited and waited for someone to like his posts. When they didn't' it made him feel awful and invisible. It's so heart-wrenching to think of that.

— Noreena Hertz

Economist & Author on Globalization, Corporate Power & Digital Society

Social media platforms are the tobacco companies of the 21st century, and they need to be regulated – especially when it comes to children. These platforms are selling a highly addictive product and continue to allow abuse and hatred on their platforms. Over 33% of all UK 18–24-year-olds have experienced abuse on Facebook.

— Noreena Hertz

Economist & Author on Globalization, Corporate Power & Digital Society

Digital technologies can actually draw attention to our humanity as we take so much of this for granted. How we behave really affects others, and has repercussions, and by understanding behaviour as deeply as we need to, it can draw attention to ourselves and make us more mindful as a result.

— Dr. Mark Sagar

Creator of AI baby "Baby X" & facial animation technology pioneer

We take ethics very seriously – and it's important to never fool the user. It must be clear that you are dealing with a digital person, not a real person, and at the same time you cannot create any dependency.

— Dr. Mark Sagar

Creator of AI baby "Baby X" & facial animation technology pioneer

Creating digital people is really hard. The quality really matters, especially when it comes to the face. We're so attuned to seeing faces that we pick up anything that doesn't look right. Faces communicate so much- when we see someone else, our imaginations go into overdrive.

— Dr. Mark Sagar

Creator of AI baby "Baby X" & facial animation technology pioneer

I believe my legacy will be BitTorrent and Tron. I'm building one of the financial infrastructure layers for the next generation. I hope our network will be used like SWIFT and that future generations settle their financial transactions on our blockchain layer. It's going to be very cool.

— Justin Sun