Thinking With Mitch Joel

Welcome to episode #1018 of Thinking With Mitch Joel (formerly Six Pixels of Separation). At a moment when burnout is normalized and productivity is still measured by hours rather than impact, the five-day workweek is starting to look less like a foundation of modern life and more like an outdated design choice. Joe O'Connor is the CEO of Work Time Revolution and one of the world's leading archite...

Welcome to episode #1017 of Thinking With Mitch Joel (formerly Six Pixels of Separation). At a time when technology promises limitless capability yet leaves so many people mentally depleted, the question is no longer whether digital tools are powerful, but whether we know how to live with them. Paul Leonardi is a leading expert on digital transformation, the future of work, and organizational netw...

Welcome to episode #1016 of Thinking With Mitch Joel (formerly Six Pixels of Separation). At a moment when artificial intelligence is reshaping not just how markets operate but how people think, feel, decide and connect, understanding the human consequences of that shift has become essential. Mark Schaefer is a keynote speaker, educator, strategist, and a voice in modern marketing, with more than...

Welcome to episode #1015 of Thinking With Mitch Joel (formerly Six Pixels of Separation). At a moment when scarcity shapes everything from opportunity to attention, understanding who gets what (and why) has become one of the most consequential questions in modern life. Judd Kessler is the inaugural Howard Marks Endowed Professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania , an award-wi...

Welcome to episode #1014 of Thinking With Mitch Joel (formerly Six Pixels of Separation). At a moment when careers feel increasingly precarious and algorithms quietly dictate how value is created and captured, it's worth learning from someone who has spent more than two decades helping creators and entrepreneurs reclaim ownership of their work and their futures. Joe Pulizzi  is the founder of mult...

Welcome to episode #1013 of Thinking With Mitch Joel (formerly Six Pixels of Separation). At a time when organizations are wrestling with fractured cultures, hybrid work, and teams struggling to stay connected, it helps to learn from someone who has spent three decades proving that collaboration is not a personality trait but a designed environment, which is why this episode turns to the work of V...

Welcome to episode #1012 of Thinking With Mitch Joel (formerly Six Pixels of Separation). Amid a moment when uncertainty defines every industry and leaders everywhere are confronting fear disguised as strategy, it is worth turning to someone who has spent his career decoding how individuals and organizations find the courage to act, which is why this week's guest, Ranjay Gulati , offers such rare...

Welcome to episode #1011 of Thinking With Mitch Joel (formerly Six Pixels of Separation). We tend to romanticize leadership as an act of personal brilliance, but the deeper story is often about the people who understand what truly moves human beings toward one another. Jon Levy has built a career around that question. A renowned human behavioral scientist, consultant and creator of the long-runnin...

Welcome to episode #1010 of Thinking With Mitch Joel (formerly Six Pixels of Separation). What if the search for our "true selves" has been leading us away from who we actually need to become? That's the tension at the heart of Dr. Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic 's work, a globally respected authority on people analytics, talent, leadership, and the Human–AI interface whose career spans ManpowerGroup , D...

Welcome to episode #1009 of Thinking With Mitch Joel (formerly Six Pixels of Separation). The future isn't something to predict... it's something to practice. Few people embody that idea more completely than Nick Foster , a designer, futurist and author whose work has quietly influenced some of the most innovative companies on the planet - from Sony , Nokia , and Dyson to Google X , where he serve...

Welcome to episode #1008 of Thinking With Mitch Joel (formerly Six Pixels of Separation). What if artificial intelligence didn't just build faster startups... but redefined what it means to be an entrepreneur? Henrik Werdelin has been exploring that question for years. As the co-founder of Bark (the company behind BarkBox and the new Bark Air ) and Prehype (the startup studio that helped launch ve...

Welcome to episode #1007 of Thinking With Mitch Joel (formerly Six Pixels of Separation). The debate over hybrid work has become one of the most emotionally charged topics in business... but few people have studied it as deeply as Peter Cappelli , the George W. Taylor Professor of Management at the Wharton School and Director of its Center for Human Resources . In his latest book, In Praise Of The...

Welcome to episode #1006 of Thinking With Mitch Joel (formerly Six Pixels of Separation). Disruption isn't always loud. It's often quiet, slow and deeply human. That's one of the lessons Scott Anthony has spent his career unpacking. As a leading voice on innovation and the managing partner emeritus at Innosight (the consultancy founded by the late Clayton Christensen ), Scott has helped global com...

Welcome to episode #1005 of Thinking With Mitch Joel (formerly Six Pixels of Separation). Every major leap in human connection starts as a simple question: what if? For Rouzbeh Yassini-Fard , that question led to the invention of the cable modem and the birth of broadband internet access as we know it. Often called the "father of the cable modem," Rouzbeh is a visionary engineer and entrepreneur w...

Welcome to episode #1004 of Thinking With Mitch Joel (formerly Six Pixels of Separation). What does it really mean to lead with values when so much of modern business seems built on quarterly results and surface-level culture? Robert Glazer has spent his career proving that sustainable performance isn't just about financial results. It's about the alignment between who you are and what you stand f...

Welcome to episode #1003 of Thinking With Mitch Joel (formerly Six Pixels of Separation). When you look closely at leadership, it often seems like a conversation about others… how to motivate, how to manage, how to inspire. But what if the real work starts somewhere far more intimate… with yourself? Margaret Andrews , a distinguished educator, consultant and leadership expert, has spent years maki...

Welcome to episode #1002 of Thinking With Mitch Joel (formerly Six Pixels of Separation). What if code isn't just software, but the culture script of our age shaping what we notice, how we decide and who holds power? That's the provocation at the heart of Sam Arbesman 's new book, The Magic Of Code - How Digital Language Created And Connects Our World - And Shapes Our Future, which he uses to reve...

Welcome to episode #1001 of Thinking With Mitch Joel (formerly Six Pixels of Separation). Toby Stuart is a Distinguished Professor of Business Administration at the Haas School of Business , UC Berkeley , where he directs the Berkeley-Haas Entrepreneurship Program and the Institute for Business Innovation . Over his career, he has also taught at Harvard , Columbia , Chicago Booth and MIT Sloan , a...

Welcome to episode #1000 of Six Pixels of Separation - The ThinkersOne Podcast. Patrick Tanguay is a self-described generalist, synthesist and curator whose lifelong curiosity and love of reading have led him across multiple careers, and now shape one of the most thoughtful newsletters in the futures-thinking space. As the creator of Sentiers , a weekly "futures thinking observatory" (and one of m...

Welcome to episode #999 of Six Pixels of Separation - The ThinkersOne Podcast. Noah Giansiracusa is an associate professor of mathematics at Bentley University and a visiting scholar at Harvard who has built a reputation for translating the hidden power of algorithms into plain language that empowers individuals. With a PhD in algebraic geometry from Brown, he's always bringing a mathematician's e...

Welcome to episode #998 of Six Pixels of Separation - The ThinkersOne Podcast. Annie Wilson is a marketing professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and co-author, with Ryan Hamilton , of The Growth Dilemma - Managing Your Brand When Different Customers Want Different Things . Her work examines the deep interplay between consumer behavior, culture and brand identity, helpin...

Welcome to episode #997 of Six Pixels of Separation - The ThinkersOne Podcast. What happens when nearly everything a marketer or strategist does today becomes instant, automatic… and nearly free? That's the premise of AI First , the new book from Adam Brotman (my guest this week) and his co-author Andy Sack , which confronts the existential shift that AI is bringing to brand strategy, customer exp...

Welcome to episode #996 of Six Pixels of Separation - The ThinkersOne Podcast. Christie Smith is a former senior executive at Apple , Deloitte  and Accenture with over three decades of leadership experience across industries including life sciences, consumer goods and finance. She holds a doctorate in Social Work and Organizational Psychology and now leads The Humanity Studio , a leadership adviso...

Welcome to episode #995 of Six Pixels of Separation - The ThinkersOne Podcast. Nelson Repenning has built his career at MIT Sloan and Shift Gear by asking a simple but haunting question: why do so many smart, capable organizations fail to get the right work done? In his new book, There's Got to Be a Better Way , Nelson (along with his co-author, Don Kieffer ) introduces dynamic work design: a prac...

Welcome to episode #994 of Six Pixels of Separation - The ThinkersOne Podcast. Vicki Tan has designed experiences for some of the most influential companies in the world ( Pinterest , Airbnb , Headspace , Lyft , Google ) and her work has always focused on helping people make better choices in complex environments. Her new book, Ask This Book A Question , continues that mission in a radically creat...