Between Worlds

I had an interesting coffee with Eric Schoenberg in New York recently. He is an adjunct professor who teaches about family wealth at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and also a member of a group known as the Patriotic Millionaires, who believe counter-intuitively, that he and other wealthy people, should be made to pay more tax. Facts like that twenty Americans own more wealth...

Memory has also fascinated me - from the stories of the memory palaces of famous classical orators and artists, to the vast armada of 21st century tools that allow us to capture, process and share moments in our lives. In London for a few days, I met up with Dr Julia Shaw, who is a senior lecturer and researcher in the Department of Law and Social Sciences at London South Bank University. Author o...

With every new connected device, messaging application or digital service that enters our lives - it becomes increasingly difficult to resist the seductive lure of technology on our attention. For Natasha Schull, a cultural anthropologist and associate professor in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University, the addictive nature of devices, whether slot machines or...

If you are a fan of animated comedy, chances are you have laughed at a joke written by Mike Reiss. Mike Reiss is the four-time Emmy award-winning producer, a 28 year veteran of ‘The Simpsons’ and has contributed to more than two dozen animated films — including four ‘Ice Age’ movies, two ‘Despicable Mes’, ‘The Lorax’, ‘Rio’, ‘Kung Fu Panda 3’, and ‘The Simpsons Movie’ – with a worldwide gross of $...

I met Seth at this secret, underground gathering of thinkers in New York, known as ‘The Influencers’ where he was giving a disturbingly funny talk entitled ‘you can tell a lot about a man by the sex bot he makes for himself.’ Seth Porges is a journalist covering a wide range of topics from pop culture to emerging technologies. He has written for everyone from TechCrunch to Maxim, and is a regular...

When Roy walked into my apartment in Hong Kong. it felt like I was about to get a spirited lesson from the blind sensei Stick, from the comic series Daredevil. I had grown up watching Roy as a kid, playing characters in the Bruce Lee and Jackie Chain Kung Fu movies I loved. Since retiring from film, Roy has gone on to become a global expert in creativity and innovation, founding Innovea, a company...

Talking to Robyn Benincasa about performance - a world champion adventure racer, a CNN hero and a full time firefighter - was a bit like interviewing Sarah O’Connor about her thoughts on Judgement Day. Robyn is the ultimate adventure addict. She holds three Guinness World Records for distance paddling, and has competed in the extreme sport of adventure racing from the jungles of Borneo to the Hima...

Ted C. Fishman is a global expert on populations, demographics and emerging markets. When we met up in Chicago, he slipped through the crowded hotel lobby to greet me, in a wonderful Indonesian batik shirt - like a covert character from a Graham Greene spy novel. Ted is a veteran journalist, essayist and former member and trader of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. His most recent book, Shock of Gr...

Sage and I used to hang out in Shanghai years ago, when he was an analyst covering the Chinese market. Since then, he has returned to the US where he now runs China Luxury Advisors, a consultancy that helps brands and destinations prepare for the next wave of Chinese consumers. Sage first visited China in 1987, and has studied and embraced the language and culture ever since. He has worked in Chin...

You might say Jeremy always had activism in his blood. At the tender age of 8, he pressed his family’s fax machine into service to lobby leaders on issues like children's rights and nuclear non-proliferation. Since then, he has founded GetUp, an Australian political organization and internationally recognized social movement phenomenon that today has more members than all of Australia's political...

Chetan Dube is the cool math professor you always wished you had at college. Impeccably attired and capable of switching between anecdotes about a childhood spent in New Delhi, Paris and London with deep dive explanations of probabilistic vs deterministic neural networks - he is one of the most interesting personalities in the emerging world of AI and cognitive computing. After founding his compan...

Valerio Cometti is one of the world’s foremost industrial designers. Founder of V12 Design and based in Milan, he and his team have created product designs for some of the world’s leading furniture, fashion and luxury automotive brands. Having originally trained as a mechanical Engineer, Valerio bases much of his approach on a product engineering core, thanks to a deep understanding of manufacturi...

Andy Stalman is an expert in launching and nurturing brands in Latin America. Author of “Brandoffon. Branding the Future” and CEO of Cato Partners Europe & LatAm, he also lectures as a visiting professor at a number of business schools and companies worldwide. We have spoken and shared meals together a number of times, from Bogota to Madrid, and I was keen to get his views on the challenges of eng...

Alibaba is one of the world’s most dynamic and powerful digital brands today, and yet it originates not from Silicon Valley but from China. As a former Vice President at the business, Porter Erisman had front-row seats to the development of Alibaba from Jack Ma’s apartment into what it is today. In his book, ‘Alibaba’s World’, Porter details the rise of the company against the backdrop of China’s...

Bryan Kramer is one of the most social people around - not only in person, but with over 300,000 fans and followers, a maven in the personal branding and marketing space. His latest book, “Shareology: How Sharing is Powering the Human Economy”, explores the history, art and science of sharing, and illustrates why sharing is what gives us a unique competitive advantage as individuals and brands. In...

Adam Alter is the author of the New York Times bestseller ‘Drunk Tank Pink: And Other Unexpected Forces That Shape How We Think, Feel, and Behave’, which examines how the world shape our thoughts and feelings beyond our control. I met up with him at NYU Stern, where he is an Associate Professor of Marketing with an affiliated appointment in the New York University Psychology Department. We spoke a...

Cindy Gallop is one of the most brilliant and controversial minds in advertising today. Starting as a theatre publicist in the UK, she went on to forge a 30 years career in brandbuilding, marketing and entrepreneurialism, as well as launching a number of provocative platforms including IfWeRanTheWorld and MakeLoveNotPorn. Never shy to throw a few punches, her Twitter bio reads simply: ‘I like to b...

Alex Rosson is a legend in the music business, having founded one of the world’s best headphone brands, Audeze, and is now responsible for starting up a new audio division for Detroit based watch and lifestyle brand, Shinola. I met up with Alex at the famous Village recording studios in West Los Angeles. The Village has been home to most of the greatest names in rock, from The Doors to Guns N’ Ros...

Gordon Watson has taken over the reins at luxury phone brand Vertu at a crucial junction for the company. I previously encountered the brand, famous for its high end communications devices, when I presented at EQT’s annual conference, a Swedish private equity group that had acquired the company from Nokia. Late last year, Vertu was bought by Chinese investors and is on the verge of launching a new...

Ankur Kothari is a pioneer in the area of robotic process automation and the design of digital back offices. A co-founder of Automation Anywhere, he has been working over the last decade on transforming entire industries by introducing them to a digital workforce and human–robot partnerships that can help them scale efficiently. We met up in Hyderabad, a city in India where many of the world’s big...

One day Rob Lilwall, an ordinary geography high-school teacher, decided to drop everything to cycle from Siberia to London via China, Australia and Afghanistan. The journey took 3 years, covering over 50,000 km. He didn’t stop there. Soon after, he attempted another trip from Mongolia to Hong Kong. 5,000 km. In winter. On foot. An adventurer, author and motivator - Rob and I caught up to talk abou...

Professor Ian Goldin is Professor of Globalisation and Development and Director of the Oxford Martin School at the University of Oxford. Previously he was Vice President of the World Bank, and also served as an adviser to President Nelson Mandela on economics and development. He is the author of 20 books on innovation, globalisation and economics - and it was his latest title, ‘Age of Discovery: N...

When I wrote my last book, ‘The Dictionary Of Dangerous Ideas’, I wanted to find a platform that represented the future, rather than the dusty past of publishing. That brought me to Blurb, and many years later to their offices in San Francisco where I met up with their founder, Eileen Gittins. Starting her career in imaging at Eastman Kodak, Eileen left to found a number of successful digital comp...

This week, I had coffee in Hong Kong with Philippe Schaus, the CEO of the DFS Group. DFS, owned by LVMH, is one of the world’s leading travel retail brands and has been a key player in the globalization of luxury, driven initially by the rise of the Japanese middle class, followed by the rapid growth in mainland Chinese travellers. Formerly a President at Louis Vuitton in Europe, and also a curren...

Author of ‘The Inner Gym’, Light Watkins is a renowned expert in Vedic meditation who has personally coached over 2,000 people, from bankers and artists, to comedians and rockstars. He recently founded The Shine, a community event centered around inspiration in Los Angeles. At TEDxVeniceBeach last year, Light gave a popular talk on ‘Debunking the 5 Most Common Meditation Myths’. We caught up in We...