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: How do you maintain a sense of intimacy with your parishioners?

Rick Warren: The key to powerful communication is to be personal. The more personal it is, the more powerful it is. People don’t relate to statistics; they relate to stories. And what they love are life stories. It’s not an accident you go into any grocery store, the most popular magazine are gossip magazines. Why? We have an intense interest in hearing about other people.

And I always tell speakers, pastors, or anybody, whenever you’re talking to an audience and you start to lose them, just start telling a story. All of a sudden everybody will perk up and start listening again. You give a point for the head and a picture for the heart, a point for the head and a picture for the heart. And you layer it like cake. And these are just some of the techniques. I actually have a full week’s training on this – a five day seminar on how to communicate to change lives.

Recorded on: December 11, 2007