Between Worlds

Siimon Reynolds - a successful entrepreneur, an award winning author and speaker and now a leading high performance coach for CEO's and entrepreneurs, is also one of my good friends. After becoming a Creative Director of a top advertising agency at just age 21, Siimon went on to win almost every major advertising award for creativity in the world, including the Gold Lion at Cannes, TV Commercial O...

Kristen Ashburn is an award-winning documentary photographer and humanitarian, whose photographs and stories from the Middle East, Europe, and Africa have appeared in many publications worldwide. She began photographing the impact of HIV/AIDS in southern Africa in 2001 and released a book of this work in 2009 entitled I Am Because We Are with a forward by Madonna. Ashburn's work has also taken her...

An Australian Entrepreneur of the Year and magician, Vinh Giang is a renown stage performer and also the brains behind the online learning platform, Encyclopedia of Magic. Coming from the humble beginnings of a Vietnamese refugee family saved by a boat captain off the coast of Australia, Vinh has since re-invented himself as a master magician and global business coach. We caught up in Cancun, Mexi...

Gemma O’Brien is an Australian artist and designer specialising in lettering, illustration and typography. Known for her hand lettering skills, she has worked for everyone from QANTAS to The New York Times. If you were a fan of my recent book, ‘The Dictionary of Dangerous Ideas’, you might also recognise her hand in the design of the custom alphabet created for the project. In this episode we spok...

Peter Baines is an extraordinary individual. A former forensic investigator, he led international identification teams into Indonesia and Thailand following acts of terrorism and the South East Asian Tsunami. It was his experience of meeting youth left orphaned by that horrific natural disaster in Thailand that compelled Peter to create an Australian charity called Hands Across the Water which has...

Henry Mason spends his days trying to figure out what consumers might want next. Author of the book ‘Trend-Driven Innovation’ and head of the research firm, Trendwatching, he and his team scour the world for new ideas, business model innovation and the impact of disruptive technologies. Over a cup of tea in London, we spoke about the viral impact of great experience design, how to look outside you...

Geoff Colvin is the author of the bestselling book, ‘Humans Are Underrated’, which outlines the capabilities that will keep human beings from being made utterly obsolete by tomorrow’s robots, algorithms and machine intelligences. A longtime editor and columnist for Fortune, Geoff is also the author of ‘The Upside of the Downturn’, ‘Angel Customers & Demon Customers’, and ‘Talent is Overrated’. We...

Matt McFadyen was youngest Australian to ever reach the North Pole. Since then, he has become a seasoned sailor and polar adventurer - leading a number of record-breaking expeditions both on some of the most extreme environments on the planet, as well as through virtual simulation with other business leaders. Thankfully it was in the relative safety of the Soho Grand Hotel over coffee and breakfas...

Rama Allen is one of the handful of people on the planet who are not only thinking about virtual reality, but are actually creating and designing content for those platforms today. He is an executive creative director at The Mill, where he also leads the Mill LAB, an arm of the Mill focusing on the intersection of art and technology, prototyping the future of film through experimental projects and...

Melanie Perkins is one of Australia’s most successful digital entrepreneurs. CEO and co-founder of Canva, an online platform which makes graphic design simple for anyone, Melanie and her team have grown the business to over 9 million users worldwide. I visited their offices in Surry Hills, Sydney where we talked about the power of authentic origin stories, disrupting the design industry, the chall...

Dan Gregory, a behavioural researcher & strategist, is the author of ‘Selfish, Scared and Stupid: Stop Fighting Human Nature And Increase Your Performance, Engagement And Influence’. He studies behaviour and belief systems, in other words, the things that make us buy and the things that make us buy in. In this fast paced discussion on human behaviour, we spoke about the power of identity, why desi...

Emile Sherman, the Academy Award-winning producer of ‘The King’s Speech’, is one of the world’s most prolific independent film makers. His other credits include ‘Top Of The Lake’, ‘Tracks’, ‘Shame’, ‘Rabbit Proof Fence’ and ‘Macbeth’. I caught up with Emile in his production office in Sydney, where we talked about the power of storytelling, why some ideas resonate with us at a human level, the imp...

Martin Lindstrom is one of the world’s foremost experts on building brands. Author of six best-selling books, and acclaimed by Time Magazine as one of the “World’s 100 Most Influential People”, Martin’s expertise is in the areas of consumer psychology, marketing, brands, and neuro-scientific research. I first met Martin many years ago, at the beginnings of the digital revolution in Australia - so...

Paul Husband is one of the world’s leading experts on luxury and retail in Asia. Co-author of the book, ‘The Cult of The Luxury Brand’, Paul helps brands understand the scale and dynamics of the Asian luxury goods market. If you have ever been to a luxury mall in either Hong Kong or Shanghai, chances are, you are in a building of retail experiences that Paul helped curate and bring to life. Catchi...

Everyone is talking about the Internet of Things, but just what does it take to merge the physical and digital world? Brazilian entrepreneur Rodolfo Saccoman has been working on designing hardware and platforms for the coming explosion of connected devices. Put one of his AdBeacon units in a retail store or next to a billboard, and you can track people’s reactions, their emotions and demographics....

Niki Scevak is one of the smartest people I know. He and I worked together at Jupiter Research, over a decade ago. Now he runs Blackbird Ventures, Australia’s largest VC fund with nearly a quarter of a billion dollars under management. When I visited him at his offices in Sydney, we talked about how enterprise software companies have shifted from steak dinner selling to letting their products pitc...

This weekend marks the start of the Miami high season, with Art Basel and the attendant influx of well-heeled collectors, bored oligarchs, and international jetset in search of fun, sun and an excuse for a good party. But that’s not the only reason why the world is watching Miami. The city is becoming an emerging hub for high tech companies, especially those with a focus on the Hispanic market. Ge...

What is it that makes us happy, motivated, and full of purpose? Dr Adam Fraser has been studying, writing and speaking about human performance for the last 18 years. We caught up in Sydney to chat about his latest research on what he calls, ‘Human 2.0’, the characteristics of people that thrive in complex environments, and those that fail. Many leaders today demand that their people be more innova...

Matthew Waldman is a New York based designer, best known for his iconic watch brand, Nooka. Like many of Matthew’s creative projects, Nooka timepieces defy traditional interfaces, whether they be ’telling time’ or other, everyday interactions that we rarely question or challenge. In his studio, situated amid the madness of Manhattan midtown, we chatted about how good design creates pathways of beh...

Chance are, if you have attended a business event anytime in the last ten years, you will have watched someone play the ‘Did You Know?’ video full of astonishing facts about the digital world. The man behind that video, the most viewed social media clip of all time, and a number of bestselling books such as ‘Socialnomics’ and ‘What Happens in Vegas Stays on YouTube’ is Erik Qualman. And it was in...

For bestselling author Tim Sanders, the biggest problem with the game of sales today is that it has become less like playing Pong, and more like a round of Halo. Selling in the 21st century is incredibly challenging. Sales professionals face multiple decision makers, layers of product complexity, and cloud based competitors. For Tim, the key to being a true sales driven organisation, is to build o...

Harper Reed is one of the world’s foremost thinkers on data and digital innovation. He served as the CTO of Obama’s re-election campaign and was also one of the founders of Threadless.com. His latest company, Modest, inc, was recently acquired by Paypal, where he is now working to figure out the future of commerce. Over dinner at Soho House in Chicago, we talked about digital bias and the stubborn...

Technology and science may seem the natural enemies of magic, but for Marco Tempest, who describes himself as a cyber-illusionist, they are his daily tools of trade. Magicians have a long history of deploying advanced technology to be ahead of the reality curve in order to fool their audiences. For Marco, that means experimenting with motion tracking, drones, augmented and virtual reality, project...

Art and fashion maven Hikari Yokoyama, is one of the world’s leading thinkers on the intersection of the art world and technology. A curator and art consultant, she was part of the founding team at online auction house Paddle8, the news platform Art Observed, and in her advisory business, connects artists with brands like Audi and Miu Miu. Over coffee in London, we spoke about the impact of global...

Luke Williams is the Executive Director of Entrepreneurship and the founder of the W.R. Berkley Innovation Lab at NYU Stern. He is also a fellow Australian. We met some years ago when we were both speaking at a digital conference in Norway where he was talking about his book, Disrupt: Think the Unthinkable to Spark Transformation in Your Business. Having previous worked at frog design, Luke is als...