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

Tanya Steel: The James Beard Foundation is a group of food professionals who really want to foster the community of cooking, and food, and fine cuisine; and to help young students, more than anything else, get into culinary schools and learn the joys of cooking and hopefully make it a profession. So that’s kind of what it is at its core. It’s become a very important group in the food industry because it anoints chefs and restaurants around the country. And every year it gives awards to the best chefs both regionally and then nationwide, as well as restaurants and wine service. So it’s always been a very good barometer of rising stars and who are kind of at the top of their game.