Systems Thinking

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Systems Thinking

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Book cover titled "Governing Pandora" by Andrea Bonime-Blanc featuring a colorful, geometric open box on a black background with white text—reflecting themes relevant to the Age of Pandora.
Business
Move fast and mend things
Why we should balance innovation with stewardship — while reframing the “techno-optimists versus doomers” polarization.
Andrea Bonime-Blanc
Collage with people in meetings, giving presentations, and arranging cards, interspersed with abstract blue, green, and purple network diagrams—highlighting leadership development.
Big Think+
The six elements of a successful leadership development system
A practical blueprint for developing leaders through systems, not sessions.
Scott J. Allen, Ph.D. & David V. Day
A woman in a red dress is gracefully ice skating on a frozen lake.
Starts With A Bang
Why ice skating is a miracle of physics
While ice itself is slick, slippery, and difficult to navigate across under most circumstances, skaters easily glide across the ice.
Ethan Siegel
A person wearing a light-colored cloak stands in a dense, green forest, surrounded by tall trees and moss-covered ground—an ideal setting for quiet reflection and systems thinking.
Business
The 14 rules for navigating complex systems
Welcome to The Nightcrawler — a weekly newsletter from Eric Markowitz covering tech, innovation, and long-term thinking.
Eric Markowitz
Two women stand and speak in front of a projector screen displaying a graph titled "YIMBY Action’s Ladder of Engagement" at a presentation or workshop.
The Present
Rethinking how we think about progress
To build a better world, we first have to understand how change actually happens.
Jeff Fong
Collage with "The Nightcrawler" text, an image of a tree, two photos of elderly hands working with clay—reminiscent of Warren Buffett’s wisdom—and partial faces of an older person, all highlighted by orange accents.
Business
Lessons from two of the greatest investors of all time
Welcome to The Nightcrawler — a weekly newsletter from Eric Markowitz covering tech, innovation, and long-term thinking.
Eric Markowitz
A man in a suit is centered in a blue-tinted square, surrounded by red and orange circles connected by arrows on a dark patterned background.
Members
Class
The SEAL Playbook for Building Resilient Teams
In a crisis, trust, resilience, and accountability are essential, as emphasized by CEO and former Navy SEAL Brent Gleeson, who believes that cultivating a strong culture is key to achieving these qualities.
Brent Gleeson
A grid of four squares featuring an image of Earth, a geometric pattern, an orange flower, and a grayscale portrait of a woman.
Members
Class
Raising Your Cultural Intelligence
Cultural psychologist Michele Gelfand illustrates that a system's tightness or looseness correlates with the threats it faces, and understanding this framework can enhance collaboration, reduce tensions, and improve organizational health.
Michele Gelfand
Abstract geometric design featuring concentric circles, quartered background, and scattered solid and outlined dots in blue, green, and white hues.
Members
Class
The 6 Disciplines of Strategic Thinking
Strategic thinking, as defined by Michael Watkins, involves critically and creatively envisioning potential futures beyond the current situation, and he outlines six specific disciplines to intentionally cultivate this mindset.
Michael Watkins
Abstract illustration featuring a large, dark blue paint drip over a light green and white textured, wavy background with a halftone pattern.
Members
Class
Getting Unstuck at Work
Professor Cass Sunstein defines "sludge" as the unnecessary bureaucracy and frictions, like long wait times and excessive paperwork, that hinder access to desired outcomes, suggesting organizations can improve experiences by minimizing these obstacles.
Cass Sunstein
A woman with long blonde hair wearing a bright orange blazer and a silver necklace, smiling at the camera against a plain light background.
Members
Class
Grow Your Business with the Experience Mindset
Tiffani Bova emphasizes that fostering employee satisfaction is crucial for enhancing customer experience, advocating for the integration of customer experience (CX) and employee experience (EX) to achieve predictable growth.
Tiffani Bova
A blue and green dot drawing of a woman looking through a microscope.
Members
Class
Thinking Like a Scientist
This class explores human cognition and decision-making through insights from experts like Michio Kaku on magical thinking, Madhavan on systems-level thinking, Mlodinow on elastic thinking, Konnikova on deductive reasoning, and Summers on structured decision-making, promoting a scientific mindset for effective problem-solving.
Dr. Michio Kaku
Collage featuring "THE NIGHTCRAWLER" text, a black-and-white photo of a person, tree roots reminiscent of smart forests, and code fragments, all overlaid on a gray grid background.
Business
What the forest can teach us about resilience
Welcome to The Nightcrawler — a weekly newsletter from Eric Markowitz covering tech, innovation, and long-term thinking.
Eric Markowitz
Abstract illustration of translucent human figures standing in line, with a mix of a natural outdoor scene and geometric digital elements in the background.
Neuropsych
Why AI gets stuck in infinite loops — but conscious minds don’t
The overlooked reason why "AI consciousness" isn't coming anytime soon.
Anil Seth
Halftone close-ups of a person's smiling mouth and eyes, with a small silhouette of people climbing a hill—evoking the adventurous spirit of Brad Feld—set against abstract backgrounds.
The Long Game
The Brad Feld interview: Meaning, mentorship, and giving first
A conversation with the legendary VC on his latest book, his work at Techstars, and why “give first” is more than a motto — it’s a mindset.
Eric Markowitz
A collage featuring an open book, a light source, and images of the moon captures post-AI wisdom, with the title "The Night Crawler" at the top.
Business
Creating wisdom infrastructure for the next 100 years
Welcome to The Nightcrawler — a weekly newsletter from Eric Markowitz covering tech, innovation, and long-term thinking.
Eric Markowitz
Collage featuring a snail, two hands gripping a baton symbolizing succession, and a boat, overlaid on a pink and black grid pattern with the text "THE NIGHTCRAWLER" at the top.
Business
Inside the subtle art of succession
Welcome to The Nightcrawler — a weekly newsletter from Eric Markowitz covering tech, innovation, and long-term thinking.
Eric Markowitz
Two glowing spheres connected by a thin line suggest a quantum link above a red, knotted rope, with abstract wave patterns in the background.
The Long Game
The “quantum long game”
A meditation on quantum physics, creative endurance, and the unseen forces that shape what lasts.
Eric Markowitz
A collage featuring a subway train, a person in elaborate costume, stylized crows, and the text "The Nightcrawler" on a dark grid background explores the myth of leadership in an urban landscape.
Business
The myth of leadership
Welcome to The Nightcrawler — a weekly newsletter from Eric Markowitz covering tech, innovation, and long-term thinking.
Eric Markowitz
Book cover of "The Systems Leader" by Robert E. Siegel, featuring overlapping orange geometric shapes and the subtitle exploring systems leadership and cross-pressures in today's companies.
Business
Why “Systems Leadership” is hard in the best possible way
The corporate world is no cake walk — as a leader you need a framework that can equip you for the cross-pressures.
Robert E. Siegel
Circular astronomical image showing constellations and celestial objects labeled against a dark sky, reminiscent of a NASA PUNCH video sun corona visualization, with a timestamp of 2025-06-03 01:52 at the bottom left.
Starts With A Bang
Video: NASA’s PUNCH mission sees the Sun’s corona in action
Launched in March, the PUNCH mission has viewed two incredible coronal mass ejections, tracking them farther from the Sun than ever before.
Ethan Siegel
Two men in suits stand in front of a graphic collage featuring technical drawings and a building with solar panels, overlaid with the text "The Nightcrawler," evoking innovation that stands the test of stellar age.
Business
The end of extraction and the rise of abundance
Welcome to The Nightcrawler — a weekly newsletter from Eric Markowitz covering tech, innovation, and long-term thinking.
Eric Markowitz
Collage with clocks, footprints in sand, a hand drawing a world map, binary code, and the text "The Nightcrawler" at the top—an evocative piece rethinking civilization and our journey through time.
Business
Rethinking civilization: A new architecture for humanity
Welcome to The Nightcrawler — a weekly newsletter from Eric Markowitz covering tech, innovation, and long-term thinking.
Eric Markowitz
A collage with "The Nightcrawler" text, historic photos of Indigenous people, a blue-toned statue reminiscent of Leonardo da Vinci's art, and blue ocean waves overlapping the images.
Business
How to “outlast”: What Leonardo da Vinci can teach us
Welcome to The Nightcrawler — a weekly newsletter from Eric Markowitz covering tech, innovation, and long-term thinking.
Eric Markowitz
A split image features a sketched portrait of a bearded man above, with rippling water merging into Leonardo Da Vinci-style sketches below.
The Long Game
What Leonardo’s obsession with water teaches us about longevity
What made Leonardo da Vinci last wasn’t magic — it was process — and his study of fluids can help us win the long game.
Eric Markowitz
An open magazine reveals a woman wearing a hijab and headphones on one page, with de-bias technology illustrations mapping the faces of three individuals on the opposite page.
Business
We can’t “de-bias” our brains but we can change our systems
By designing smart systems, we can help ourselves live up to our best intentions — and perform even better in our workplaces.
Iris Bohnet & Siri Chilazi
A green and abstract background with connected molecular diagrams and labeled sections: "Building block" and "Assembly pool," with an "Assembly index: 8.
13.8
The pre-life puzzle: Tracing the rise of complexity in a lifeless world
We need a "theory that explains the evolution of evolution," argues theoretical physicist Sara Imari Walker.
Adam Frank
An elderly man with white hair and a beard, hands clasped in prayer, with the equation “1 + 1” glowing above his hands.
2mins
The Well
How math brings order to our universe
Statistician Talithia Williams on how math is the clearest path to understanding our existence.
Talithia Williams
Black-and-white photo of a smiling man centered against a colorful digital background with fragmented pixels, a stylized sun, and graphs on the lower portion, symbolizing elements of an AI strategy.
Business
Why long-term vision and “fusion teams” are crucial to your AI strategy
Vijay Tella — CEO of enterprise orchestration unicorn Workato — joins Big Think Business for an exploration of our “agentic” future.
Mike Hodgkinson
A brown rock with two googly eyes attached to its upper half, set against a plain black background.
3mins
The Well
Are non-living things… evolving? Yes, says leading mineralogist
The mind-blowing theory that everything is evolving—from minerals to music—explained in 3 minutes by a Carnegie scientist.
Robert Hazen
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