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.
Browse videos featuring experts across a wide range of disciplines, from personal health to business leadership to neuroscience.
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How business is done in the 21st century
Several weeks ago, you may have read Frozen. Canada’s Anti-Spam Reporting Centre: 5 Reasons Why The Fed’s Latest Flight of Fancy is Dead on Arrival by Claudiu Popa on this site. Popa capably outlines the notion of The Freezer, a repository of ISP & user-reported spam, operated by Industry Canada ...
What’s the Big Idea? A subtle but undeniable shift has been taking place in American corporate management theory. Roughly, the change corresponds to psychology’s shift from punishment & reward focused Skinnerian behavioralism to a focus on human relationships and development. Not surprisingly ...
Who would have thought that Oprah Winfrey, of all people, was not yet ready for primetime? And yet, that's exactly the mistake she says she made -- along with supposedly 100 others -- in prematurely launching the OWN network with Discovery 15 months ago. Oprah told CBS This Morning that her ...
Albert W. Florence was riding in the passenger seat of his car when his wife was pulled over for speeding. When the investigating officer searched his records he found Mr. Florence had a warrant out for his arrest for an unpaid fine. It turns out Mr. Florence had, in fact, paid the fine, but that ...
Have a quick read of available coverage and you might be tempted to think “The Freezer”, the Canadian government’s plan for a national Anti-Spam Reporting Centre is a great initiative whose time has come. Headlines already abound with such emphatic language as “crack-down” and “getting tough on ...
Do you remember the scene in the The Breakfast Club in which Brian, the lovable geek played by Anthony Michael Hall, is asked what he would need a fake I.D. for? "So I can vote," he answers. That joke was funny in 1985. Today, Brian might very well be accused of taking part in some sort of ...
What's the Big Idea? Sometimes you have to be bad in the service of being good, say coauthors and cofounders Frances Frei (a professor at Harvard Business School) and Anne Morriss. To research their book, Uncommon Service: How to Win By Putting Customers at the Core of Your Business , they ...
By Chris Rivard and Karl Rebay (Partners, Moss Adams) The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is two years old. Is it a success? A failure? Has health care been reformed? Is reform on its way? These are but a few of the questions being asked on the second birthday of this monumental and ...
What’s the Big Idea? An iPad can calculate faster than the human brain, but in the areas of creativity and abstract thought, even massive supercomputers lag far behind the average human three year old. Still, the size of our computer databases and their processing power is increasing so rapidly ...
What's the Big Idea? This week in Washington D.C. the United States Supreme Court is hearing oral arguments on the constitutionality of federal health care legislation. It's a case that could impact every American, and prove to be the most significant Supreme Court decision of the decade ...
What's the Big Idea? A door to solving several public-policy challenges opens if health insurance is separated from employment. It’s an approach with features attractive to both major parties- and every American. In the realm of health care reform, the term “decoupling” refers to separating ...
There are many explanations for today’s uncertain economy. But Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz of Columbia University has advanced an analysis that’s starting to resonate. In a recent article, Stiglitz says that our problem is “rooted in the kinds of jobs we have, the kind we need, and the kind we ...
Editor's Note: Dennis N.T. Perkins is an explorer and author of Leading at The Edge, Leadership Lessons from the Extraordinary Saga of Shackleton's Antarctic Expedition. "For scientific discovery give me Scott; for speed and efficiency of travel give me Amundsen; but when disaster strikes and ...
What's the Big Idea? What motivates you to get up every morning and go to work? To earn a buck? Sure. But that is not always the most powerful motivator, says Harvard Business School Professor Teresa Amabile, who studies the psychology of everyday work life. In fact, seemingly mundane events ...
Back in 2004, Jon Stewart famously hijacked CNN’s hyper-partisan “Crossfire” show, calling on the hosts to “stop, stop, stop, stop hurting America.” Rather than fostering real debate on the issues of our time, Stewart zinged, “Crossfire” offered “theater” and “partisan hackery.” “Crossfire” was ...