Thinkers & Ideas

In his new book, LOOK: How to Pay Attention in a Distracted World , Christian Madsbjerg explores the importance of observational skills. Drawing on various fields—science, philosophy, and the arts—as well as his personal experiences, Madsbjerg offers tools and insights to help us better pay attention and extract insights. Madsbjerg was co-founder and senior partner of consulting firm, ReD Associat...

In his latest book, Magic Words: What to Say to Get Your Way , Jonah Berger breaks down the science of language. The right words can influence actions and happiness, and reveal insights about those who say or write them. Berger, an associate professor of marketing at the Wharton School, is an expert on change, social influence, and word-of-mouth communication. Together with Martin Reeves, Chairman...

In her new book The Case for Good Jobs , Zeynep Ton explains why creating good jobs, particularly for frontline workers, will help companies thrive. Ton, a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management and president and co-founder of the Good Jobs Institute, has long been an advocate of investing in employees. Traditional bad jobs systems—characterized by low pay, high turnover, and poor operati...

In this special episode of the Thinkers & Ideas podcast, we invited Sir Partha Dasgupta and Simon Levin – co-authors of the forthcoming report " Economic Factors Underlying Biodiversity Loss " – and Georg Kell to discuss a topic often overlooked in sustainability discussions: biodiversity. They discuss gaps in our current thinking, a potential path forward, how to measure our progress along it...

Bent Flyvbjerg  has a sobering statistic to share: 99.5% of major projects fail to deliver their targeted results on time and on budget. His new book  How Big Things Get Done , coauthored with  Dan Gardner , explores this phenomenon—from infrastructure projects to major sporting events to corporate transformations. Flyvbjerg, the first BT Professor of Major Programme Management at O...

In a new book with longtime collaborator W. Chan Kim, Beyond Disruption , Renée Mauborgne describes an alternative path to pursue innovation and growth. Non-disruptive creation taps into a new market outside or beyond the boundaries of existing industries, to not only drive economic growth but also have a positive impact on society by avoiding the negative aspects of disruption, like job displacem...

A “microstress,” as defined by Rob Cross and Karen Dillon in their new book of the same name, is a small amount pressure from our everyday interactions that is hardly perceived in the moment. But when many microstesses pile up, they become debilitating. Cross, the Edward A. Madden Professor of Global Leadership at Babson College in Wellesley, Mass., has studied the underlying networks of effective...

In her book Think Bigger: How to Innovate , Sheena Iyengar dispels the notion that the best way of coming up with a good idea is to have a group brainstorm or to rely on the unpredictable intuitions of special gifted individuals. Iyengar is the S. T. Lee Professor of Business at Columbia Business School and an expert on decision-making and choice. Drawing on advances in brain science, she argues t...

In his new book,  The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism ,  Financial Times ’ chief economics commentator Martin Wolf explores the causes of and solutions to today’s global democratic recession. Wolf, who in 2000 was awarded the CBE (Commander of the British Empire) “for services to financial journalism,” is the author of several earlier books on global economics. Together with Martin Reeve...

In their book Sustainability, Technology, and Finance: Rethinking How Markets Integrate ESG , Georg Kell and Andreas Rasche explore the swiftly emerging and crucially important nexus among sustainability, finance, and technology. Kell is Chairman of the tech company Arabesque, which uses AI and data to assess sustainability performance and guide investments. He is also founder of the UN Global Com...

This conversation was recorded on November 16th, 2022. In her book Direct: The Rise of the Middleman Economy and the Power of Going to the Source , law professor Kathryn Judge examines the changing role of intermediaries in the economy. Judge, an expert on banking, financial markets, and regulation, is the Harvey J. Goldschmid Professor of Law and Vice Dean for Intellectual Life at Columbia Law Sc...

This conversation was recorded on November 28th, 2022.  Ram Charan is a business consultant, author, and CEO advisor who has had more than 40 years of experience advising executives and boards of top companies around the world. Ram has authored 30 books and sold over 4 million copies globally. In his latest book, Leading Through Inflation: And Recession and Stagflation , Ram provides hands-on...

In his latest book, How to Stay Smart in a Smart World: Why Human Intelligence Still Beats Algorithms , psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer examines how humans need to adapt in order to make the best use of new technologies like AI. Gerd Gigerenzer is director of the Harding Center for Risk Literacy at the University of Potsdam and director emeritus of the Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition at th...

Adi Ignatius is the Editor in Chief of Harvard Business Review (HBR). Prior to joining HBR, Adi worked for many years at Wall Street Journal as the Moscow and Beijing bureau chief, and subsequently served as deputy managing director of Time . He has authored several books, including Prisoner of the State: The Secret Journal of Premier Zhao Ziyang and President Obama, the Path to the White House. I...

Stefan Larsson , MD, Ph. D. is a pioneer in the field of value-based health care. Dr. Larsson is an independent advisor to healthcare organizations, a BCG senior advisor, a co-founder and board member of the International Consortium for Health Outcomes Measurement (ICHOM) , a non-profit that works to create global standards for measuring health outcomes, and a distinguished fellow on the Health an...

Will Guidara made his name in the hospitality industry as the co-owner of Eleven Madison Park , transforming it from a "good" New York restaurant to a 3 Michelin star establishment that was ranked number one on "The World's 50 Best Restaurants" list in 2017. In his new book, Unreasonable Hospitality: The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Expect , Will shares his personal memoir and...

Brian Elliott is an Executive Leader at Future Forum . He has spent the last three decades leading teams and building companies as a startup CEO, a product leader at Google, and Senior Vice President at Slack. In his book How the Future Works. Leading Flexible Teams to do the Best Work of Their Lives , co-authored by Sheela Subramanian and Helen Kupp, he points out that the way we worked in pre-pa...

George Serafeim is the Charles M. Williams Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. He is one of the leading academics and voices on corporate purpose, sustainability, and the integration of ESG concerns into business strategy and investing. George is the co-founder of KKS Advisors, a leading sustainability strategy consulting firm, an academic partner at State Street Assoc...

Joshua Gans is a Professor of Strategic Management and the holder of the Jeffrey S. Skoll Chair of Technical Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto . He is also the Chief Economist of the University’s Creative Destruction Lab. In 2018, together with Ajay Agrawal and Avi Goldfarb , he published Prediction Machines , an exploration of how basi...

Mike Evans made his name as the founder of GrubHub , which he co-founded back in 2004, guiding it to a successful IPO in 2014. Since then, he has bicycled across the United States, founded Fixer.com , a handyperson service and B-Corp focused on social impact, and written a memoir titled HANGRY: A Startup Journey focused on how to start and grow a business. In conversation with Martin Reeves, Chair...

Jeremy Utley is a Director of Executive Education at Stanford’s d.school and an adjunct professor at Stanford’s School of Engineering. He is the host of the d.school’s widely known program, “Stanford’s Masters of Creativity.” Perry Klebahn is an adjunct professor and Director of Executive Education at Stanford’s d.school. Previously he served as COO for Patagonia and CEO of Timbuk2. In their new b...

Dr. Mohan Subramaniam is a Professor of Strategy and Digital Transformation at the IMD Business School. His research is focused on the digital transformation of incumbent industrial firms, specifically, new sources of competitive advantage in the digital age. In his latest book, The Future of Competitive Strategy: Unleashing the Power of Data and Digital Ecosystems , Mohan discusses how companies...

In this special episode of the Thinkers & Ideas podcast, Martin Reeves, Chairman of BCG Henderson Institute, is joined by two of the leading minds in strategy to discuss the nature of competitive advantage. Join Rita McGrath and Roger L. Martin as they debate whether competitive advantage is more or less sustainable today, whether it has shifted in nature and whether it will shift prospectivel...

Nathan Furr is an Associate Professor of Strategy at INSEAD. His research focuses on how new and established firms adapt to technology, change, and enter new markets. Susannah Harmon Furr is a designer, entrepreneur, and art historian with a research focus on the Dutch Baroque period. She is the founder of a successful women’s clothing line inspired by her research on intricate embroidery. In thei...

Tony O’Driscoll is a Professor of Business Administration at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and the Pratt School of Engineering. He has authored two books on learning and organizational performance and numerous articles for publications such as the Harvard Business Review and The Financial Times . In his latest book Everday Superhero: How You Can Inspire Everyone and Create Real Change...