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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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How business is done in the 21st century
I think having a background as a physicist is kind of fortuitously good for people who work on Wall Street because there are a lot of fields that use mathematics, but physics is sort of the field par excellence. It has made the best use of mathematics. And I think physicists understand what’s a ...
We know that diversity on corporate boards is good for business and good for the world, so what steps can we take to boost women’s representation on boards worldwide? A roadmap was unveiled at the third annual WomenCorporateDirectors (WCD) Global Institute that is being held this week in New ...
"This is not a "touchy-feely book," says Robert Kaplan, referring to his latest work, What You're Really Meant to Do: A Roadmap for Reaching Your Unique Potential. Think of it instead as a workout. "I'm trying to get you in shape and dust off some of the muscles you haven't used for reaching your ...
Who gets to define success? Harvard Business School’s Robert Steven Kaplan argues in his new book, What You're Really Meant to Do: A Roadmap for Reaching Your Unique Potential , that success is not about meeting someone else's definition, but reaching your potential by defining it on your own ...
Hey, listen, for the young MBA students, there’s a study that came out not too long ago, I’m sorry to say, 80 percent of MBA students in America identify with what they call Machiavellian values. That means me first all the way. But let me tell you. If you look at where that’s gotten Wall Street ...
The hedge fund industry basically started in 1949 with a guy named A.W. Jones and his ultra-high net worth friends. As it evolved in the ’50s and ‘60s and into the ‘70s, it was primarily for the ultra rich. Most of these guys are fairly reclusive guys that run money. They’re more analytical ...
For me, economics is about people. The models are beautiful but we always have to remember that in macroeconomic statistics we care about things like growth and unemployment because ultimately they affect peoples’ lives. For me, my very first economic lesson came when I was seven or eight ...
Robert Kaplan is amazed at how often an executive will take a business trip with underlings and learn nothing about them. The former Goldman Sachs vice chairman says he is often surprised by his students at Harvard Business School as well. Students tend to come to him asking advice on a serious ...
The idea of true altruism in evolutionary biology applies pretty well to bats. We are not bats. There is not much evidence of true altruism among the homo sapien population. I don’t deny that there is some true altruism, but among folks who aspire to high office or political power, they are ...
You could argue that capitalism in general and free markets are premised on the fact that when you harness your selfishness you can be more successful. That's Libertarianism. You could say it’s free market capitalism. And I think it’s a pretty good reading of human nature that when we’ve done ...
What's the Latest Development? At this week's Intelligent Cities "UnConference," a participant-run event hosted at the annual meeting of the American Planning Association, workplace strategist Adam Stoltz asked: "[W]hat happens when our behavior changes, when the ways that people move through ...
One of the challenges when our team joined Take-Two was the company had had a very volatile set of results. In the year in which they released a Grand Theft Auto title, they’d make a lot of money, and in years in which they didn’t, they would typically lose a significant amount of money. And that ...
Harvard Business School’s Robert Steven Kaplan, leadership expert and author of the highly successful book, What to Ask the Person in the Mirror, regularly advises executives and students on how to tackle these questions. In his indispensable new book, What You're Really Meant to Do: A Roadmap for ...
Tax day is no one's favorite day. But perhaps we can take this opportunity to examine how we can reform one of the most complex tax systems in the world. Big Think chief Economist Daniel Altman has a suggestion to end this long national nightmare: get rid of the corporate income tax. As Altman ...
When we talk about the importance of global business education, most people think about the integration of international business concepts into the curriculum, or opportunities to take students abroad. Increasingly important, though, is the degree of international diversity in the classroom. A ...