In this interview I speak to Ajaz Ahmed, Founder & CEO of AKQA, a design & innovation agency who now employee over 7,000 people in 50 countries – and work with more than half of the Fortune 500 top 20 companies. Ajaz has co-authored and written three books about business, creativity, scaling and technology: Velocity (2012), Limitless (2015), and Defeat (2019). Ajaz has also been involved in philanthropy since the start of AKQA for over two decades, and launched ajaz.org which has made over 15 grants since it was launched in August 2021. In addition to his own charitable organisation, Ajaz sits on the board of Mission 44 (founded by Sir Lewis Hamilton: empowering young people from underserved groups to succeed), Elton John AIDS Foundation (founded by Sir Elton John & David Furnish, funding frontline partners preventing infections, fighting stigma and providing treatment) and Virgin Unite (founded by Sir Richard Branson, uniting people & entrepreneurial ideas to change the world). In this interview, I speak to Ajaz Ahmed MBE on what it takes to build a global creative business, the power of creative industries as a force for good, and his learnings from working with some of the world’s greatest brands.

Thought Economics

José Neves started his first business aged just 19, creating software for business in the North of Portugal.  His family had a history in shoemaking, and it was perhaps inevitable that fashion would play a role in his career – but few could have predicted the decade long-journey, beginning in the depths of the global financial recession, that would see José take the idea for a luxury fashion eCommerce marketplace and build it into Farfetch; a business with close to 3,000 employees, 3m customers, almost U$1bn in listed merchandise, and a market capitalisation approaching U$6bn – making José a billionaire in well-under 10 years from a standing start. I caught up with José to learn more about his entrepreneurship journey, and building a global luxury brands business.

Thought Economics

In these exclusive interviews, we speak to Claudia Schiffer (a globally renowned model, icon andbusinesswoman), Robin Givhan (Pulitzer Prize winning fashion writer and former special correspondent for Newsweek/Daily Beast) and Dov Charney (CEO and Founder of American Apparel). We discuss the very fundamental questions of ‘what’ fashion is, and how it has become such an important part of human culture and identity. Digging deeper, we also look at issues ranging from brand, to sexuality and even the business of fashion itself.

Thought Economics

An Interview with Interbrand Chairman, Rita Clifton In February 2012 in a paper titled, “The Role of Brands in Human Culture” I noted the significance of branding in our world.  To illustrate this, we should note that the top 10 global brands (as measured by the Interbrand index) have a…

Thought Economics

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