Systems Thinking

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Book cover titled "Governing Pandora" by Andrea Bonime-Blanc featuring a colorful, geometric open box on a black background with white text—reflecting themes relevant to the Age of Pandora.
Business
Move fast and mend things
Why we should balance innovation with stewardship — while reframing the “techno-optimists versus doomers” polarization.
Andrea Bonime-Blanc
Collage with people in meetings, giving presentations, and arranging cards, interspersed with abstract blue, green, and purple network diagrams—highlighting leadership development.
Big Think+
The six elements of a successful leadership development system
A practical blueprint for developing leaders through systems, not sessions.
Scott J. Allen, Ph.D. & David V. Day
A woman in a red dress is gracefully ice skating on a frozen lake.
Starts With A Bang
Why ice skating is a miracle of physics
While ice itself is slick, slippery, and difficult to navigate across under most circumstances, skaters easily glide across the ice.
Ethan Siegel
A person wearing a light-colored cloak stands in a dense, green forest, surrounded by tall trees and moss-covered ground—an ideal setting for quiet reflection and systems thinking.
Business
The 14 rules for navigating complex systems
Welcome to The Nightcrawler — a weekly newsletter from Eric Markowitz covering tech, innovation, and long-term thinking.
Eric Markowitz
Two women stand and speak in front of a projector screen displaying a graph titled "YIMBY Action’s Ladder of Engagement" at a presentation or workshop.
The Present
Rethinking how we think about progress
To build a better world, we first have to understand how change actually happens.
Jeff Fong
Collage with "The Nightcrawler" text, an image of a tree, two photos of elderly hands working with clay—reminiscent of Warren Buffett’s wisdom—and partial faces of an older person, all highlighted by orange accents.
Business
Lessons from two of the greatest investors of all time
Welcome to The Nightcrawler — a weekly newsletter from Eric Markowitz covering tech, innovation, and long-term thinking.
Eric Markowitz
Collage featuring "THE NIGHTCRAWLER" text, a black-and-white photo of a person, tree roots reminiscent of smart forests, and code fragments, all overlaid on a gray grid background.
Business
What the forest can teach us about resilience
Welcome to The Nightcrawler — a weekly newsletter from Eric Markowitz covering tech, innovation, and long-term thinking.
Eric Markowitz
Abstract illustration of translucent human figures standing in line, with a mix of a natural outdoor scene and geometric digital elements in the background.
Neuropsych
Why AI gets stuck in infinite loops — but conscious minds don’t
The overlooked reason why "AI consciousness" isn't coming anytime soon.
Anil Seth
Halftone close-ups of a person's smiling mouth and eyes, with a small silhouette of people climbing a hill—evoking the adventurous spirit of Brad Feld—set against abstract backgrounds.
The Long Game
The Brad Feld interview: Meaning, mentorship, and giving first
A conversation with the legendary VC on his latest book, his work at Techstars, and why “give first” is more than a motto — it’s a mindset.
Eric Markowitz
A collage featuring an open book, a light source, and images of the moon captures post-AI wisdom, with the title "The Night Crawler" at the top.
Business
Creating wisdom infrastructure for the next 100 years
Welcome to The Nightcrawler — a weekly newsletter from Eric Markowitz covering tech, innovation, and long-term thinking.
Eric Markowitz
Collage featuring a snail, two hands gripping a baton symbolizing succession, and a boat, overlaid on a pink and black grid pattern with the text "THE NIGHTCRAWLER" at the top.
Business
Inside the subtle art of succession
Welcome to The Nightcrawler — a weekly newsletter from Eric Markowitz covering tech, innovation, and long-term thinking.
Eric Markowitz
Two glowing spheres connected by a thin line suggest a quantum link above a red, knotted rope, with abstract wave patterns in the background.
The Long Game
The “quantum long game”
A meditation on quantum physics, creative endurance, and the unseen forces that shape what lasts.
Eric Markowitz
A collage featuring a subway train, a person in elaborate costume, stylized crows, and the text "The Nightcrawler" on a dark grid background explores the myth of leadership in an urban landscape.
Business
The myth of leadership
Welcome to The Nightcrawler — a weekly newsletter from Eric Markowitz covering tech, innovation, and long-term thinking.
Eric Markowitz
Book cover of "The Systems Leader" by Robert E. Siegel, featuring overlapping orange geometric shapes and the subtitle exploring systems leadership and cross-pressures in today's companies.
Business
Why “Systems Leadership” is hard in the best possible way
The corporate world is no cake walk — as a leader you need a framework that can equip you for the cross-pressures.
Robert E. Siegel
Circular astronomical image showing constellations and celestial objects labeled against a dark sky, reminiscent of a NASA PUNCH video sun corona visualization, with a timestamp of 2025-06-03 01:52 at the bottom left.
Starts With A Bang
Video: NASA’s PUNCH mission sees the Sun’s corona in action
Launched in March, the PUNCH mission has viewed two incredible coronal mass ejections, tracking them farther from the Sun than ever before.
Ethan Siegel
Two men in suits stand in front of a graphic collage featuring technical drawings and a building with solar panels, overlaid with the text "The Nightcrawler," evoking innovation that stands the test of stellar age.
Business
The end of extraction and the rise of abundance
Welcome to The Nightcrawler — a weekly newsletter from Eric Markowitz covering tech, innovation, and long-term thinking.
Eric Markowitz
Collage with clocks, footprints in sand, a hand drawing a world map, binary code, and the text "The Nightcrawler" at the top—an evocative piece rethinking civilization and our journey through time.
Business
Rethinking civilization: A new architecture for humanity
Welcome to The Nightcrawler — a weekly newsletter from Eric Markowitz covering tech, innovation, and long-term thinking.
Eric Markowitz
A collage with "The Nightcrawler" text, historic photos of Indigenous people, a blue-toned statue reminiscent of Leonardo da Vinci's art, and blue ocean waves overlapping the images.
Business
How to “outlast”: What Leonardo da Vinci can teach us
Welcome to The Nightcrawler — a weekly newsletter from Eric Markowitz covering tech, innovation, and long-term thinking.
Eric Markowitz
A split image features a sketched portrait of a bearded man above, with rippling water merging into Leonardo Da Vinci-style sketches below.
The Long Game
What Leonardo’s obsession with water teaches us about longevity
What made Leonardo da Vinci last wasn’t magic — it was process — and his study of fluids can help us win the long game.
Eric Markowitz
An open magazine reveals a woman wearing a hijab and headphones on one page, with de-bias technology illustrations mapping the faces of three individuals on the opposite page.
Business
We can’t “de-bias” our brains but we can change our systems
By designing smart systems, we can help ourselves live up to our best intentions — and perform even better in our workplaces.
Iris Bohnet & Siri Chilazi
A green and abstract background with connected molecular diagrams and labeled sections: "Building block" and "Assembly pool," with an "Assembly index: 8.
13.8
The pre-life puzzle: Tracing the rise of complexity in a lifeless world
We need a "theory that explains the evolution of evolution," argues theoretical physicist Sara Imari Walker.
Adam Frank
Black-and-white photo of a smiling man centered against a colorful digital background with fragmented pixels, a stylized sun, and graphs on the lower portion, symbolizing elements of an AI strategy.
Business
Why long-term vision and “fusion teams” are crucial to your AI strategy
Vijay Tella — CEO of enterprise orchestration unicorn Workato — joins Big Think Business for an exploration of our “agentic” future.
Mike Hodgkinson
Abstract image of interconnected golden lines and nodes forming complex geometric patterns against a dark background, resembling a neural network or web.
13.8
Complexity science could transform 21st-century research. Here’s how.
The future belongs to complexity.
Adam Frank
A fictional map of a continent named eneropa, showing various regions like tidal states, ccsr, and solaria with topographical details and a scale.
Strange Maps
Europe remapped: What the energy utopia “Eneropa” would look like in 2050
A radical proposal reimagines Europe as a carbon-neutral continent where national boundaries are replaced by regions defined by renewable energy capabilities.
Frank Jacobs
A hand holding a camera lens against a yellow background with shadow patterns, symbolizing problem-solving success.
Business
Why “the pinch” can become your greatest problem-solving tool
What the breakthrough methods of laboratory research can teach the business world about brainstorming.
Jeff Karp
Three overlapping colorful bird feathers in a row against a textured background, symbolizing neurodivergent assets.
Business
Why a neurodivergent team will be a golden asset in the AI workplace
The transformational change driven by AI will elevate neurodiversity inclusion as an organizational asset, argues Maureen Dunne.
Maureen Dunne
A diagram illustrating the earth's orbit around the sun with positions indicating seasonal change, including facts about leap day.
Starts With A Bang
The 7 most bizarre facts about leap day
Leap day only comes once every four years, including in 2024. But the reason we have it, including when we do and don't, may surprise you.
Ethan Siegel
A hand is pointing at a diagram illustrating the tyranny of small decisions.
Business
How to fight the “tyranny of small decisions”
Acting "little and often" has huge consequences and they're not always good — but awareness yields solutions.
Jonny Thomson
entropy 2 stroke engine
Starts With A Bang
The entropy of a closed system doesn’t always increase
The second law of thermodynamics is an inviolable law of reality. Here's what everyone should know about closed, open, and isolated systems.
Ethan Siegel
A bricolage of a watercolor painting of a watermelon.
Business
How to adopt the “bricolage” mindset that supercharged Google
If you give yourself and others space to tinker and experiment, then you might create something incredible. Here's how to do it well.
Jonny Thomson
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