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.
Big Think’s contributors offer expert analysis of the big ideas behind the news.
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How business is done in the 21st century
People tend to be driven or inspired by one of four modalities of decision-making and self-awareness. You could be driven by heart; you could be driven by smarts; you could be driven by guts, or luck. In terms of the smarts-dominant trait, these are really people that are not necessarily book ...
If you’re trying to understand what this cult of personality is in North Korea, think about George Orwell's 1984. This is a case of a country in which the leadership has eyes everywhere and they try to not only influence how you behave in society but how you think. And you are only allowed to ...
The Intangible: Earn Trust. Be Relatable. Be Influential. Be Creative. Level Status. Resolve Conflict. Leverage Talent. Build Strong Teams. The Tangible: “Yes, And…” Outside of an awfully good oxymoron, and with all due respect to a “red herring,” there are few two-word expressions that ...
The American Founders were deeply suspicious of Democracy, and structured a Constitution designed to protect both personal liberties and property from the tyranny of the majority. But the critical problem confronting America today is not the majority using its popular vote to seize property from ...
Time was when being an entrepreneur or an achiever, was something that was frowned upon by "the snobs at the top and those who where envious at the bottom," says Jeffrey Archer, the former member of Parliament and author of Prison Diaries. Margaret Thatcher changed all of that, Archer says, who ...
If your house got blown away by a hurricane, you’d probably want to build a stronger house next time, right? The same should be true for financial markets. The government is regulating banks and other financial institutions more strictly now, but what else is it doing to make sure there’s no repeat ...
Everybody tells you that a mentor is important for your development, but finding one is often another matter. In fact, it is much easier to give advice about the value of a mentor than to actually find one. I had the good fortune of having a mentor who significantly influenced me as a young leader ...
Why did you start a business? To pursue your passion? To make money? That's all fine, but your passion will go unrealized and you'll never get rich if you're unable to serve your customer better than your competitor. As CEO at Proctor and Gamble, A.G. Lafley had this realization, and he acted on ...
Imagine a group of senior vice presidents sitting around a massive conference table in their company’s board room. The CEO suddenly resigned and it’s up to this huge and now sequestered bunch to vote in a new chief executive by a two-thirds-plus-one majority. These folks can vote up to four ...
While Michael Bloomberg's plan to limit the sale of large sodas was shot down by a judge, Big Think Chief Economist Daniel Altman tackles the economic ideas behind this plan. Would it have worked? Watch the video here: Image courtesy of Shutterstock.
What's the Big Idea? "You're probably living in an upper middle class bubble if..." A variety of patterns of behavior can be inserted to complete this sentence, such as Downton Abbey watching or the consumption of boutique beer. And yet, even more telling behaviors are the types of activities ...
New data shows Americans haven’t a clue how stunningly massive the wealth gap in their country really is. An excellent video blowing up on YouTube depicts this disparity and explains how badly Americans tend to underestimate it. No matter how many statistics you’ve read on the subject, the video ...
It's been almost 50 years since the War on Poverty began, and it’s a legitimate question to ask why we haven’t made more progress in attacking this problem. In my view, there are three broad factors that help explain our poor record. First, stagnant or falling earnings for low-skill men since ...
I had to plumb memories of a SchoolHouse Rock video this morning to sort out exactly what was so out of place at the Supreme Court during Wednesday morning’s oral argument. The justices tangled with lawyers over the future of the Voting Rights Act — landmark civil rights legislation that has served ...
Here's an all-too-common business scenario: A seemingly bright and charismatic CEO has a good run at a company. The numbers look good. In fact, most of the external indicators of success look good. That is why the news that the board has decided to dump this particular CEO is met with surprise ...