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.

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Transcript

Question: What would you do if you were starting your career now?

Steven Rattner: If I were starting my career again, I would go to China. There was a famous newspaper man who, I think Horace Greeley, who once said, “Go West young man,” meaning go to the frontier because that where, in America, the great opportunity was. And that’s how I feel about China. I’ve only been there twice, I think, but I’ve certainly spent time trying to learn about it, meeting with people and it’s a very controversial subject because there are many people who think China is a big Ponzi Scheme or is on an unsustainable course, or this or that. I think China is the real thing. And I think it – I think it is the great future growth story of the world, for the foreseeable future of the countries anyway. And if I was just starting out I my career, whether I be a journalist or a banker or a businessman, or even a government, I would be focused on China.