Thinkers & Ideas

In Chokepoints: American Power in the Age of Economic Warfare , Edward Fishman argues that the nature of international power has fundamentally shifted from military might to economic statecraft. Fishman is a senior research scholar at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy and an adjunct professor of International and Public Affairs at Columbia. Previously, he served at the US State...

In There's Nothing Like This: The Strategic Genius of Taylor Swift , Kevin Evers examines the singer-songwriter's remarkable career success from a business strategy perspective. Evers is a senior editor at Harvard Business Review , where he has edited bestselling and award-winning books on high performance, creativity, innovation, digital disruption, marketing, and strategy. In discussion with Mar...

In Space to Grow: Unlocking the Final Economic Frontier , Matthew C. Weinzierl and Brendan Rosseau discuss the discuss the history, the present, and the future of the space economy. Weinzierl is the Joseph and Jacqueline Elbling professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School and founder of the Economics of Space project at HBS. Rosseau is an Orbital Launch strategy manager at the...

In The Corporation in the Twenty-First Century: Why (Almost) Everything We Are Told About Business Is Wrong , John Kay provides a novel perspective on the evolution of the contemporary corporation. One of the UK’s leading economists, Kay is a fellow of St John’s College, Oxford. He was the first dean of Oxford’s Saïd Business School and has held chairs at London Business School, the University of...

In Uncertainty and Enterprise: Venturing Beyond the Known , Amar Bhidé revisits and modernizes the concept of Knightian uncertainty. Introduced more than 100 years ago, the concept offers great potential for better understanding corporate decision-making. A renowned expert on innovation, entrepreneurship, and finance, Bhidé is a professor of Health Policy at the Mailman School of Public Health at...

In The M&A Failure Trap: Why Most Mergers and Acquisitions Fail and How the Few Succeed, Baruch Lev and Feng Gu provide a wealth of evidence on the success and failure factors of acquisitions. Lev, professor emeritus of Accounting and Finance at NYU’s Stern School of Business and Gu, professor of Accounting and Law at the State University of New York, have analyzed more than 40,000 acquisition...

In Mindmasters: The Data-Driven Science of Predicting and Changing Human Behavior , Sandra Matz explores what our digital footprints reveal about us and how these insights are used to influence our daily decisions. Matz is the David W. Zalaznick Associate Professor of Business at Columbia Business School, where she also serves as co-director of the Center for Advanced Technology and Human Performa...

In The Unaccountability Machine: Why Big Systems Make Terrible Decisions and How the World Lost Its Mind , Dan Davies examines why companies and governments systematically generate outcomes that everyone involved claims they do not want. Davies is an economist, writer, and former investment banker known for his insightful analysis of finance, corporate governance, and decision-making systems. He h...

In AI Snake Oil: What AI Can Do, What It Can’t, and How to Tell the Difference , Sayash Kapoor and his co-author Arvind Narayanan provide an essential understanding of how AI works and why some applications remain fundamentally beyond its capabilities. Kapoor was included in TIME’s inaugural list of the 100 most influential people in AI. As a researcher at Princeton University’s Center for Informa...

In The Age of Outrage: How to Lead in a Polarized World , Karthik Ramanna provides a framework for leaders to navigate outrage—the intense, polarized reactions to perceived social injustices, political stances, and misaligned corporate actions—by addressing root causes, engaging stakeholders, and building resilience. Ramanna, a professor of Business and Public Policy at the University of Oxford’s...

In The Corporate Life Cycle: Business, Investment, and Management Implications , Aswath Damodaran presents the corporate life cycle as a universal key for demystifying business finance, strategy and company valuation. Damodaran is a professor of Finance at the Stern School of Business at New York University. Known as “the Dean of Valuation,” he has published extensively in academic journals, writt...

In Big Bet Leadership: Your Transformation Playbook for Winning in the Hyper-Digital Era , John Rossman provides a playbook for becoming an innovation and transformation winner. Rossman was previously an executive at Amazon, responsible for launching their Marketplace business. Now, he is the managing partner of Rossman Partners, advising leading enterprises on large-scale change, and author of th...

In Critical Systems Thinking: A Practitioner's Guide , Michael C. Jackson emphasizes the need for integrating diverse systems methodologies to navigate complexity and uncertainty. Jackson, an emeritus professor of management systems and former dean of the  University of Hull Business School , has also served as president of several prominent systems thinking organizations, including the&...

There is no shortage of technologists touting the promise of AI, but the frontier of AI fervor is a noted philosopher who thinks the economy could double every few months—and that space colonization by self-replicating machines may not be hundreds of years away. Enter Nick Bostrom , who previously authored the 2014 bestseller Superintelligence about the dangers of AI, and now considers what can go...

In The Great Disconnect: Hopes and Fears After the Excess of Globalization , Marco Magnani explores the factors that are driving the crisis of globalization we are currently experiencing. Magnani teaches international economics at LUISS University in Rome and Università Cattolica in Milan. Previously, he was a senior research fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and worked in investm...

In Assembling Tomorrow: A Guide to Designing a Thriving Future , Carissa Carter and Scott Doorley explore the intangible forces that make it hard to anticipate how new technologies create impact and what we can do about this challenge during the design process for new applications. Carter is the Director of Teaching and Learning at the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford – also known as...

In How to Become Famous: Lost Einsteins, Forgotten Superstars, and How the Beatles Came to Be , Cass Sunstein reveals why some individuals become celebrities—and others don’t. Sunstein has long been at the forefront of behavioral economics. He is the Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard Law School and served as the administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Af...

In The Ritual Effect: From Habit to Ritual, Harness the Surprising Power of Everyday Actions , Michael Norton explores how the little things we do can create big impact. Norton is the Harold M. Brierley Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, where he also leads the unit for negotiation, organization, and markets. A well known and respected researcher on behavioral economi...

In Survive, Reset, Thrive: Leading Breakthrough Growth Strategy in Volatile Times , Rebecca Homkes guides leaders on how to turn uncertainty into opportunity. Homkes teaches business strategy at the London Business School, is on the faculty of Duke Corporate Education, and consults major companies on strategy. She has developed a framework for leading through uncertainty based on three principles:...

At the BCG Henderson Institute, we aim to bring forward-looking leaders the ideas and inspirations that will shape their next game. To honor this mission—and celebrate the 100th episode of our Thinkers & Ideas podcast—we welcomed three leading futurists to discuss the evolution of business and society. Rita McGrath is a professor of management at Columbia Business School, and has been ranked a...

In Look Again: The Power of Noticing What Was Always There , Cass Sunstein , together with his co-author Tali Sharot, discusses the importance of reevaluating the familiar to discover new insights. Sunstein has long been at the forefront of behavioral economics. He is the Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard Law School and served as the administrator of the White House Office of Informa...

In Why We Die: The New Science of Ageing and the Quest for Immortality , Venki Ramakrishnan explores the current research on and prospects for human longevity. Ramakrishnan leads a group at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England. For his research on the structure and function of ribosomes, he won the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. From 2015 to 2020, he served as president of...

In  Making Sense of Chaos: A better economics for a better world ,  J. Doyne Farmer  challenges traditional economic models, which rely on simplistic assumptions and fail to provide accurate predictions. Farmer, a complex systems scientist at the University of Oxford and the Santa Fe Institute, argues that with technological advances in data science and computing, we are now able to...

In Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI , Ethan Mollick explains how to engage with AI as a co-worker, a co-teacher, and a coach. Mollick is a professor of management at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, where he studies and teaches innovation and entrepreneurship. In his new book, he discusses the profound impacts AI will have on business and education, usin...

In The Intelligence of Intuition , Gerd Gigerenzer challenges a commonly held view of intuition—namely, that it is somehow inferior to logical rationality. Gigerenzer is director of the Harding Center for Risk Literacy at the University of Potsdam , director emeritus of the Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development , and an expert on human decisio...