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We live in a time of information abundance, which far too many of us see as information overload. With the sum total of human knowledge, past and present, at our fingertips, we’re faced with a crisis of attention: which ideas should we engage with, and why? Big Think is an evolving roadmap to the best thinking on the planet — the ideas that can help you think flexibly and act decisively in a multivariate world.

A word about Big Ideas and Themes — The architecture of Big Think

Big ideas are lenses for envisioning the future. Every article and video on bigthink.com and on our learning platforms is based on an emerging “big idea” that is significant, widely relevant, and actionable. We’re sifting the noise for the questions and insights that have the power to change all of our lives, for decades to come. For example, reverse-engineering is a big idea in that the concept is increasingly useful across multiple disciplines, from education to nanotechnology.

Themes are the seven broad umbrellas under which we organize the hundreds of big ideas that populate Big Think. They include New World Order, Earth and Beyond, 21st Century Living, Going Mental, Extreme Biology, Power and Influence, and Inventing the Future.

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Cue the Future Posts

Technology and marketing in the world of tomorrow

Previous | 1 3 12

Cue the Future

Oracle acquires Eloqua

Cloudrollout
5 months ago

Some interesting news this morning - Oracle acquired Eloqua for just over 800mm. This is a huge validation of enterprise marketing technology and is going to have impact on the industry. This gives Oracle a critical piece of the marketing technology stack and far-and-away the most mature (and ...

Cue the Future

So you want to be a Growth Hacker?

Main-thumb-1485-200-t2whsz05burckcqfujis8fcfim1d57cl
10 months ago

A friend recently asked twitter for some recommendations on what to read if they want to learn about Growth Hacking. Being a great marketer (fine, fine "growth hacker) is about nurturing two very different skill sets in yourself: (1) creatively coming up with novel ways to engage and delight ...

Cue the Future

The Trick to Viral Growth

Time%20to%20100%20million%20users%20graph
11 months ago

I recently helped a friend prioritize their measurement framework for a series of growth experiments. Here's a lightly edited version of my advice. When looking to focus on user growth, it's generally helpful to look at 3 key metrics. Time to first share length of sharing period k ...

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No Technology Dies

Mechanical%20oscillograph
12 months ago

Kevin Kelly's "What Technology Wants" is one of the most important books I've read in the past decade. If you're at all involved in technology innovation, it's required reading. I use several of the ideas originating from this book on a weekly basis. One of the ideas that I often revisit is the ...

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Karma could mean billions for Facebook.

Facebook-karma
12 months ago

Facebook acquired mobile commerce startup, Karma. This acquisition didn't get nearly the attention it deserved. As Chris Dixon wrote about Facebook's Business Model: The key question when trying to value Facebook’s stock is: can they find another business model that generates significantly ...

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Growth Hacking

Shutterstock_86227513
about 1 year ago

Andrew Chen has the valley all atwitter with his most recent post: Growth Hacker is the new VP Marketing. The post is well worth reading, and Andrew adds a fantastic starting point that will get a lot more people involved in the discussion about how marketing teams are being reshaped. If you're ...

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The New Literacy Rate

Literacy%20ss
about 1 year ago

If I were to send you back in time to 1500, a time when people were just learning how to cope with the recent disruptive invention of the moveable type printing press, you could have lived a very respectable and comfortable live (by the standards of the time) without being literate.  In fact ...

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The Law of Accelerating Media

Sing
about 1 year ago

Regular Readers If you are a regular reader here, you might be interested in reading a guest essay I wrote in Forbes. It's about how marketers are being challenged by the increasing the number of channels available to engage consumers on. It takes about 3.5 minutes to read and covers a lot of ...

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Hire Moms

Mom%20ss
over 1 year ago

Building a great team is the ultimate competitive advantage. Steve Jobs famously thought that his greatest creation wasn't a great device, but rather was a company filled with people capable of making great devices. If you want to create an entity that is valuable and makes an impact, there's no ...

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Robot Apocolypse

Exponential
over 1 year ago

The technologies that contribute to automation are likely to follow an exponential pattern, which means that more industries will start to lose jobs at an astounding rate as machines get more and more capable. Let's say Automation could reduce the number of employees needed for the Retail ...

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Potential Radicals

Che
over 1 year ago

Occupy Wall Street is becoming a meaningful movement these days, with large numbers of people out on the street in several major cities and many more engaging cautiously, curious about what the movement's message is. That curiosity is a rough proxy for potential radicalization - it stems from a ...

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Video of Celebration of Steve Jobs

Steve-jobs1
over 1 year ago

On October 19th, there was an event on Apple's campus celebrating Steve Jobs's life. This event was not secret, but the live video feed that connected all employees of Apple Stores to the event was not widely shared. The event is great, and each contributor is fantastic. It's a great way to ...

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Chinese Import Tariffs are a Bad Idea

Shutterstock_8209264
over 1 year ago

I just got back from a vacation and during that time I got to do something I love - read all sorts of intellectually stimulating stuff. It re-affirmed some simple knowledge: I love the Economist... One of the most interesting stories I read was one I hadn't been following at all prior to my trip ...