What is Big Think?  

We are Big Idea Hunters…

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.

Big Think Features:

12,000+ Expert Videos

1

Browse videos featuring experts across a wide range of disciplines, from personal health to business leadership to neuroscience.

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World Renowned Bloggers

2

Big Think’s contributors offer expert analysis of the big ideas behind the news.

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Big Think Edge

3

Big Think’s Edge learning platform for career mentorship and professional development provides engaging and actionable courses delivered by the people who are shaping our future.

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Power Games Posts

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Power Games

An All-Star Panel on Cybersecurity

Cybersecurity
12 months ago

The former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, characterized “cyber” as an “existential threat to the United States of America” in a recent issue of Fortune Magazine: The challenge for me and many other leaders is to really understand it….We are vulnerable in the ...

Power Games

China vs. India: the “Contest of the Century”

Dragon%20vs
12 months ago

Thus did the Economist characterize the dynamic between China and India, arguing that how they “manage their own relationship will determine whether similar mistakes to those that scarred the 20th century disfigure this one.”  It’s not surprising that the two countries invite incessant ...

Power Games

Was the “Rise of the Rest” Inevitable?

Brics
12 months ago

In a word: no—at least no more than the “great divergence” that preceded it.  Some calibration between developed and emerging economies was indeed inevitable, if only because the former couldn’t indefinitely sustain higher rates of growth than the latter.  But if, by the rise of the rest, we’re ...

Power Games

Anxious Eagle, Rising Dragon

U.s-1
about 1 year ago

Most commentary on U.S.-China relations understandably focuses on the challenges that a rising China poses to America’s superpower position and the incentives that America has to prevent China from displacing it.  But what about the challenges that a weak China poses to America and the possibility ...

Power Games

Let the Games Begin: Introducing “Power Games”

Power_games
about 1 year ago

Near the end of his 2001 book, Does America Need a Foreign Policy? , Henry Kissinger quotes Otto von Bismarck’s observation about the limits of diplomacy: “The best a statesman can do is to listen to the footsteps of God, get a hold of the hem of His cloak, and walk with Him a few steps of the way ...