Innovation Archives - Big Think

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Cultivate Resilience in the Face of Failure

This class, featuring insights from Michael Strahan and Ginni Rometty, emphasizes learning from failure, building resilience through relationships, and fostering a growth mindset, ultimately equipping participants with strategies to thrive amidst uncertainty and embrace personal and professional growth.

Michael Strahan

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Master the Art of Influence

This class explores human learning and communication through four inquiry styles—Analytic, Procedural, Relational, and Innovative—while emphasizing the importance of question types and fostering self-awareness, empathy, and collaboration for effective leadership and deeper connections.

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The Art of Ambitious Goals

Led by experts like Peter Diamandis and Jane McGonigal, this class teaches participants to harness innovation and creativity through clear goal-setting, a challenge mindset, and the effective use of deadlines, fostering a culture of productivity and empowerment.

Peter Diamandis

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Grow Your Career Through Relationships

This class teaches participants to actively engineer professional networks for career development, offering strategies from experts like Christakis, Hidary, and Grant to build meaningful connections, leverage social dynamics, and foster mutually beneficial relationships.

Nicholas Christakis

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Find Your Focus

This class explores the link between neurobiology and productivity, teaching participants to optimize willpower and focus through strategies like meta-awareness, the Pomodoro Technique, and the importance of rest, while experts share insights on achieving peak performance amidst modern distractions.

Robert Sapolsky

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How to greet the dawn of “future-state predictive intelligence”

Brian Gumbel — President and Chief Operating Officer (COO) at Dataminr — explores the cutting edge of real-time information analysis.

Mike Hodgkinson

A digital collage features the title "THE NIGHTCRAWLER," a robotic dog inspired by China tech, vintage storefronts, and abstract purple geometric shapes.

A postcard from the frontlines of China’s tech boom

Welcome to The Nightcrawler — a weekly newsletter from Eric Markowitz covering tech, innovation, and long-term thinking.

Book cover of "Epic Disruptions" by Scott D. Anthony, featuring bold, stacked text and an orange lightning bolt—evoking the spirit of innovators like Mark Zuckerberg; left side reads "an excerpt from" on an orange background.

Gutenberg to Zuckerberg: How to handle disruption without hitting an iceberg

Even when leaders know disruption is a smart long-term decision, the pain of transition can produce a titanic shambles. Just ask Kodak.

Scott D. Anthony

Black and white portrait of Alex Osterwalder with glasses and facial hair, framed against a graphic background featuring striking orange, white, and beige geometric patterns.

How to bust the innovation myth

Strategyzer CEO Alex Osterwalder on why entrepreneurs should take a leaf from Amazon’s innovation playbook.

A man speaking into a microphone, an illustration of a person with a bun near Japanese text, and Kevin Kelly, a bearded man, are overlaid with red geometric shapes under the title "THE NIGHT CRAWLER.

What AI can never replace

Welcome to The Nightcrawler — a weekly newsletter from Eric Markowitz covering tech, innovation, and long-term thinking.

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Why your intuition, imagination, and emotion will outlast AI

A dialogue with Angus Fletcher — author of the bestseller "Primal Intelligence" — exploring the unique engines of human progress.

Book cover of "The Intelligence Explosion: When AI Beats Humans at Everything" by James Barrat, featuring a robot hand holding a globe, with the text "an excerpt from" reflecting the rise of AI.

Will AI create more jobs than it replaces?

The predictions of evolutionary theorists and current advances in “multimodal AI” offer strong clues to the future of employment.

Split image: Left side has the words "an excerpt from" on a red background; right side features the book cover "There's Got to Be a Better Way" by Repenning & Kieffer, highlighting insights on dynamic work design with a butterfly illustration.

Learn the 5 core principles of “dynamic work design”

MIT Sloan’s Nelson P. Repenning and Donald C. Kieffer outline their tried-and-tested solution for stubborn workflow blockages.

Nelson P. Repenning

A grayscale portrait of Caterina Fake is centered between an FDNY ambulance on the left and patterned designs with circular symbols on the right.

Essential skills for “weird times”: How internet pioneer Caterina Fake keeps it real

Venture capitalist and Flickr co-founder Caterina Fake talks to Big Think about why AI won’t make the internet better, her influences beyond tech, and more.

John Candeto, in a white shirt, smiles while sitting outdoors near stone steps and green potted plants.

The John Candeto interview: Bigger dreams and the colossal effect of “power laws”

Fund manager and writer John Candeto is on a mission to decode the hidden patterns that drive extraordinary outcomes.

A grayscale portrait of David Senra is centered on a collage background featuring a marble statue, abstract black-and-white swirls, and purple book spines.

The David Senra interview: “Use history as a form of leverage”

The host of the Founders podcast joins Big Think for a chat about success, obsession, business genius, human nature, and more.

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Money as the dark matter of the Universe

Welcome to The Nightcrawler — a weekly newsletter from Eric Markowitz covering tech, innovation, and long-term thinking.

A person inspects a large, cylindrical section of a Higgs factory tunnel lined with metal pipes, cables, and equipment—a crucial site for particle physics research.

Starts With A Bang

The fastest, cheapest particle physics path to a Higgs factory

A next-generation collider is required for studying particle physics at the frontiers. Here's the fastest, cheapest way to get it done.

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The importance of intuition and the limits of rationalism

Welcome to The Nightcrawler — a weekly newsletter from Eric Markowitz covering tech, innovation, and long-term thinking.

A graphic with the text "an excerpt from" beside the book cover of "The Cybernetic Society" by Amir Husain, featuring a cityscape, robotic arms, and a nod to the rise of the modern cybernetic corporation.

Why your next CEO could be a machine

Are you ready for the “cybernetic corporation”? Amir Husain “profiles” the hottest company of 2035 — and makes a telling comparison with Nvidia.

A hexagonal telescope with a gold exterior and an open, black interior is shown against a black background, highlighting NASA habitable worlds observatory science.

Starts With A Bang

NASA’s Habitable Worlds Observatory: the future (or end) of NASA science

At the end of July, hundreds of scientists convened to plan NASA's upcoming astrophysics flagship mission. Will the US allow it to happen?

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Michio Kaku wants to solve Einstein’s unfinished equation

“An equation, perhaps no more than one inch long, that would allow us to, quote, 'Read the mind of God.'”

A digital collage with overlapping purple-tinted images, including a traditional building and a sculpture, explores panpsychism under the title "The Nightcrawler" on a black grid background.

On consciousness, AI, and panpsychism

Welcome to The Nightcrawler — a weekly newsletter from Eric Markowitz covering tech, innovation, and long-term thinking.

Book cover of "Blindspotting: How to See What's Holding You Back as a Leader" by Martin Dubin, featuring the word "blindspotting" and “an excerpt from” on a purple background.

How McClelland’s 3 universal motives can illuminate your blindspots

You might love your leadership role and inspire fierce loyalty — but what if that comes at the expense of a disastrous balance sheet? Here’s a way forward.

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The art of mentorship and long-term thinking

Welcome to The Nightcrawler — a weekly newsletter from Eric Markowitz covering tech, innovation, and long-term thinking.

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Manage your emotions, in 9 minutes

From trepanning to lobotomies, humans have long struggled to manage emotion. Today, we have better tools. Psychologist Ethan Kross shares what actually works, and why.

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The laboratory accident that saved 500 million lives

“Invention matters, but implementation matters more.”

Will AI erode human autonomy, or help us preserve it?

Today’s technologist archetypes share a blind spot. Brendan McCord, founder of the Cosmos Institute explains why “philosophy is essential” when building planetary-scale technology.

Cosmos Institute

gravitational wave effects on spacetime

Starts With A Bang

LIGO’s heaviest black hole demands next-generation science

With over 300 high-significance gravitational wave detections, we now have a huge unsolved puzzle. Will we invest in finding the solution?

Book cover for "The Generalist Advantage" by Mansoor Soomro, PhD, next to text reading "an excerpt from," all set against a light green background—highlighting the value of generalist superpowers.

The 6 superpowers of generalists: Leadership gold dust

From Apple to Airbnb to OpenAI the generalist mindset has been an invaluable source of advantage — and we can all learn from these successes.

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