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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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What kinds of incentives are necessary to get people to lead more environmentally responsible lives? Ernst Weizsäcker, co-chair of the U.N. International Panel for Sustainable Resource Management, says that we have to start by thinking of our children and grandchildren—and focus less on quarterly earnings. More than profit, he says, we should "want to have an elegant kind of life, not a wasteful, squandering kind of life."

Instead of changing the products we own, altering the way we use those products might be enough, he says. For example, Weizsäcker's family is part of a car-sharing program which allows them to have access to a car when they need it without the costs of ownership. He envisions this sharing idea could go even further: "I could imagine that aluminum will not be sold any longer in the future, but leased and returned after use," he said." So, for instance, the airplane manufacturers could rent the aluminum they need and when the lifetime of the airplane is over, it will be returned. And then, of course, they all have a strong interest in doing the optimal mix alloys of the metal so that the reuse is without any problem."

This interview is part of a series on business sustainability, "Balancing People, Planet and Profit: The Future of Business Sustainability," sponsored by Logica. So far, the series has featured interviews with Peter Brabeck, the Chairman of Nestle; Gro Harlem Brundtland, Special Envoy on Climate Change, U.N.; Sir Martin Sorrell, CEO of WPP Group; and Fatih Birol, Chief Economist at the International Energy Agency. The series examines ways that business interests can be better aligned with the greater social good.

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